Pecksniff had discussed with colleagues a wish to try and lead this week’s diary with somebody other than Andy Burnham: he’s had a decent run. Fat chance. His speech was the most electrifying your diarist has heard in 50 years of political involvement.
Last week, the diarypointed out Brexit was not scheduled to make an appearance in the conference hall. “Too sensitive” declared one source, echoing the defeatism which has dictated Labour’s response to Brexit for the past decade. But Pecksniff wasn’t convinced, and wondered: “When we compare Mr Burnham to his party machine, there seems a discrepancy. The machine grinds on as usual, patronising, controlling and bureaucratic. But that doesn’t seem like Mr Burnham’s kind of politics. So will he kick over the traces?”
Will he ever. It seems Mr Burnham hadn’t read the script, or at least is in a position to ignore it. Brexit, electoral reform, social care, water under public control… all those issues Keir Starmer wouldn’t touch. No wonder delegates were in tears. With one bound, Andy Burnham had set them free, free of the humiliation of the past decade and a return perhaps to the pride the party so earnestly desires for itself.
*
Minutes after the PM finished speaking, East Anglia Bylines received two press releases. Both attacked plans to abolish the pensions triple lock, both desperate for the title of ‘pensioners’ champion’.
But for a party which wants to be taken seriously, it is not a good look for the Liberal Democrats to vie with Mr Farage as to who can grab the most luridly melodramatic headline.
This is the old politics, lashing out at your opponents as a cynical knee-jerk, knocking down any new idea on principle. But imagine, dear reader, if somebody had a little strategic thinking here and took an entirely different approach… Imagine instead that the LibDems had actually applauded the initiative, declared what a bold and imaginative move it was. The electorate would have been delighted: they are crying out for grown-ups to agree. The party could have ridden the Burnham coat-tails and probably risen in the polls. Instead of which, they look as though they will have to spend the next three years insisting that black is white, knowing they are on the wrong side of the story but too embarrassed to admit their failure.
*
Instead, Reform, Liberal Democrats and now Tories are going to be fighting over the same squalid opportunism. The LibDems simply haven’t read the room. Ed Davey has expressed enthusiasm for negotiating on social care, and with more strategic thinking (and honesty) he could have opened his talk with Mr Burnham starting on the same page, and basking in the reflected glory. It seems his party is knocking down what may be a politically feasible way of raising much of the money before talks even start.
This is the kind of unprincipled ruse which might be upheld over a three- or four-week election campaign. But the next election is three years away, three years in which economists will continue to point out the triple lock was unsustainable and the public becomes increasingly excited at the prospect of a National Care Service. Time, surely, for LibDem members to have a quiet word with their leadership.
*
There are those desperate for a return to Europe who claim Andy Burnham is still pussyfooting: he should be bold.
Well, according to some in his party he has already been reckless in even mentioning it. Conference organisers tried to shun the subject. But the PM has chosen the shrewdest path, and so far appears the most sophisticated politician we have seen for decades. My dears, cease flouncing for a moment and consider. Opinion polls favour closer ties with the EU, but opinions may be soft and it would not be enough to scrape through the vote. To convince the EU of our bona fides, the degree of support has to be convincing. That needs time to build the case. The last thing we need is for this to look as though the country has been stampeded into the EU at Mr Burnham’s whim. The move has to be seen to be the will of the electorate.
By promising a calm and rational debate on the EU – which we have never had in more than 40 years of membership – there is time and scope to put over the argument persuasively. This time Mr Burnham holds all the cards.
*
Then o’ course you’ve got yer electoral reform. Another controversy which Andy Burnham approached head on. He didn’t point out, for good political reasons, that ditching first past the post would also reassure the EU that any future agreement had broad political support and would not simply be overturned by the next government. But reforming voting fits in with Mr Burnham’s overall philosophy of putting more power into the representative hands of the voters themselves instead of the system.
*
More evidence this week of how Kemi Badenoch (NW Essex) is outperforming her party, presumably because, in the words of one member of a focus group: “You used to know who all the big figures in the Tory party were. Apart from Kemi Badenoch I don’t think I know hardly any of them now. I mean there’s nothing there.”
Ms Badenoch still relies on the most perfunctory of gesture politics to get her through the day. (This week she backed referendums for villages with proposed asylum hostels nearby.) That lack of heft and direction prompted the focus group member to remark: “She’s good at challenging, but she’s in a party that’s like a smoke alarm with a low battery. You’ve got used to the beeping, so it doesn’t mean anything anymore.”
Meanwhile, the Tory un-dead rise from their political graves. David Gauke, Amber Rudd, Gavin Barwell, Ruth Davidson et al – they have only been hiding in the shadows. They re-emerge as Prosper UK, to win back their party. As entryism goes, this is quite bold. They are holding a conference within the Conservative conference, with planned events over three days. One phrase may tell us where they are going: “Can the Conservatives Be the Tactical Choice for Both Left and Right?”
*
There is news this week that Richard Tice MP and his partner Isabel Oakeshott have been entertained by Lubov Chernukhin, the wife of Russian oligarch Vladimir, on their yacht in the south of France. (Readers will notice the frequency with which it is always the wife of the big man with the embarrassing Kremlin contacts who is the prime mover on these occasions.)
By some oversight, Mr Tice overlooked to record the hospitality with the Commons authorities within the required 28 days. It finally appeared on the register on 23 September – the day after Hope not Hate contacted his office to ask why it was missing. (It may be that the reason such occasions are so frequently forgotten is that their drinks are spiked, of course.)
(There is no suggestion of course that money changed hands: it was just reportedly “lavish hospitality”.)
But the source of Reform’s money generally has been the subject of prolonged speculation. Dame Margaret Hodge is the government’s anti-corruption champion. Speaking at a Fabian event on donation caps this week, she was startlingly direct: “I think it came from the Russians.”
But back to Mr Tice. He represents Boston and Skegness, where we can be sure some old-fashioned views on patriotism prevail. So lavish hospitality from a former member of a government with whose country we are supposed to be almost at war will surely not go down well.
*
The Green Party hold their conference this weekend, then the Holborn and St Pancras by election looms. Zack Polanski has invested his personal political capital in winning, but evidence – including growing pessimism within the party – suggests he faces a difficult contest. The party’s enormous success over the past few months was influenced by Keir Starmer’s unpopularity, so it is misfortune that the emergence of Andy Burnham has changed Labour’s posture and thus perhaps deprived the Greens of much of their recent support – as the polls report.
But the party has brought part of its sudden decline on itself through hubris and naivety. Members elected a cosmopolite as their new and charismatic leader, and it can hardly be a surprise that much of his appeal is to other cosmopolites. The passions which the party’s long-standing members and supporters embrace seem lost in ‘placard politics’.
A council seat in the Cotswolds was lost to the Tories this week when the Greens vote share fell from 56.4% to 6.9. And down in deepest Suffolk too, where the party has been working hard for years and now controls three councils, the spats over Palestine and trans politics cut very little ice.
*
Regular readers will be aware of the sinister charade being acted out by Reform’s Essex County Council in setting up their Operation Vanguard. The claim is that its private security guards (who have no enforcement powers) will protect citizens from crime committed by residents of Wethersfield asylum centre.
Essex Police say crimes linked to Wethersfield are very few. Reform claim the initiative is “a positive and proportionate response to the concerns residents have been raising”. So they are not acting in response to crime, but only to fears that this bunch of dusky foreigners might commit crimes. This is what is called ‘racism’. Since there is no evidence of this group being more likely to commit crime, Essex taxpayers might wonder whether Reform are entitled to squander their taxes merely on the political auto-eroticism of pursuing their unfounded prejudices.
The prime minister wonders that too. “Councils are at liberty to take local measures in response to local concerns, but I would say first and foremost it is for the police to decide these issues,” he says. “That is why people pay their police precept on their council tax.”
*
Ben Goldsborough is the MP for South Norfolk, and has brought to our attention a truly shocking correspondence with Reform’s Norfolk County Council leader David Bick. It had been the intention of your diarist to set it out here, but we now have Mr Goldsborough’s permission to use his own words, which will be more telling than anything written here.
We hope to be able to publish it on Monday.
*
There is more on Councillor David Bick. The BBC has learned that he and Councillor Kabeer Kher, a Reform colleague, enjoyed dinner at a five-star “luxury” hotel shortly before the hotel owner, Dennis Bacon, was controversially appointed the council’s new £215,000 chief executive. The advertisement for the appointment was published the next day.
He has no experience whatever in local government, yet his interview lasted just one hour. In the words of Councillor Dan Roper, bin collectors face a more rigorous recruitment process. There are allegations, as yet to be confirmed, that the proper recruitment procedure was not followed.
Cllr Bick says he doesn’t remember meeting Mr Bacon at the hotel, though Cllr Kher believes he does. Both also declared receiving hospitality valued at £50 each for dinner: not a fortune, but another puzzle. At the time of the 1 July event, the hotel was operating as room-only accommodation and did not itself serve food on site.
What we clearly need here is a discreet bit of dobbing in. There must be readers who work at Norfolk County Council, or who have other means of peering at what might have been swept under the carpet. Pecksniff can guarantee that any information received will be treated in the utmost confidence.
*
Reform and its supporters have coarsened the textures of life in more than one way. Is it a requirement that every Reform candidate has to look as though he runs a breakers’ yard in Luton?
Yet another of the party’s councillors has decamped this week. Councillor Gary Keogh, who represented Bosmere on Suffolk County Council, has resigned, citing as his reason that he hadn’t realised he actually had to do stuff and not just shout about immigrants his personal circumstances have changed.
The party is currently losing its elected representatives at the rate of one every three days.
*
This week’s dobbers-in were Liz Crosbie, John Elworthy, Mark Popay, James Porter, David Patey and Malcolm Lynn.
<<< Previous Pecksniff’s Diary
More from East Anglia Bylines
What happens when the media itself becomes part of the problem? Who holds it to account? 14 years after the Leveson Inquiry reported its findings, has anything really changed? And how can we build something better?
Join Bylines Network on Wednesday 21 October, for a vital conversation about the media Britain needs — and what it will take to get there.
The event will conclude with a live audience Q&A.
