Your diarist has spent Christmas in Marienbad, taking the waters, though there is no doubting that the addition of a modest tincture of schnapps improves the chances of that looked-for sense of wellbeing.
But an early return from Bohemia brought only that most alarming of all threats to be heard over the Christmas period: the BBC’s promise of “entertainment for all the family”. So with this eager assurance of endless puerile programming guaranteed to rot the brain of anybody over 12, there was little option but to turn back early to politics: but what politics!
It is the accepted wisdom – always a dangerous phrase – that two lunatic egomaniacs in the US are together going to take over the world…. Now écoutez-moi, my dears: Christmas is indeed a time when we like to scare ourselves with stories around the fire, but talk of an imminent apocalypse is nonsense. “Madness is the exception in individuals, but the rule in groups,” wrote Nietzsche, a man himself not known for his optimism, but it is a useful phrase to live by. So please note: it is in the nature of your egomaniac not to be a notable team player, and Messrs Trump and Musk will fall out in chaos before the new year is much older.
It’s about time we took hold of life, rather than being scared of it. Greeting the new year while hiding under the bedclothes is no way to live.
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This week we read of a fascinating piece of research on the positions of our MPs on the political spectrum. It tells us that Keir Starmer is to the right of his party. Not surprising, perhaps, but it also tells us Kemi Badenoch (NW Essex) is to the right of hers too (which takes some doing).
So where does this leave the Overton Window? Where does the range of political arguments acceptable to mainstream opinion lie? If we peer through it, shall we find public opinion lies instinctively to the right, and these two party leaders are leading it? The polls hardly suggest so. Or does it mean that the parties themselves best reflect mainstream opinion, and the leaders are out of step not only with their members but with the voters too?
Let us not overlook Ed Davey, however. The leader of the Liberal Democrats is to the left of his party. No wonder our politics is so disjointed. So is it time to abandon Keir Starmer’s Labour Party until they do what they were elected to do – which essentially is to give us hope – and put all our faith instead in the LibDems? Their MPs seem a well-meaning and committed cadre, but the party itself is still too often taken up with playing silly election games which hardly paint them as a serious party.
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“So little trouble do men take in the search after truth; so readily do they accept what first comes to hand,” wrote Thucydides. Nobody has ever suggested that Nigel Farage (Clacton) is a classical scholar, as far as one is aware. He certainly doesn’t look like a scholar: his face looks more likely to be encountered at a racetrack or a fairground. So we must assume he took his lead instead from one of his heroes, Winston Churchill, who declared that a lie can travel halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on.
Over Christmas there was a terrorist outrage in Magdeburg in Germany. Before the ink was metaphorically dry on the story, Mr Farage had declared: “We have allowed people who hate us and our values into Europe. Christmas is their target. Any guesses why?” But within the hour, it had become known that the perpetrator was actually an Islamophobic who supported the German far right AfD.
Too late. The news reports were of course all of the Farage claims and innuendo. News that the murderer actually hated Muslims and supported the kind of things that the far-right champion, didn’t get a look in until much later.
Cynics might point out there is something of a pattern here. Mr Farage has previous on this kind of thing.
Southport, anybody?
But there have been other examples too, of course. Make an outrageous and unsubstantiated claim early, grab the headlines and twist perceptions, then harvest the outcome for one’s own ends. The BBC’s political editor, Chris Mason, extolled Mr Farage and his ability to tell a story. Perhaps this is the kind of thing he had in mind…
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One story on which Nigel Farage has been at pains not to make comment concerns the demands from Elon Musk that the British government – by what judicial means he doesn’t say – releases Tommy Robinson from prison. Saying “He’s not what we need,” Mr Farage is smart enough to recognise that tying his party to a person of that ilk is not going to go down with the bits of Middle England otherwise prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt.
But on the other hand, Mr Musk is waving $100 million dollars at him and seems like the kind of backer who would expect a certain obeisance to his views from his lackeys. So, will Mr Farage back the Musk claims that Robinson should be released? Or will he tell him to mind his own business? (Imagine, dear reader, had this been Ursula von der Leyen sticking her oar in…)
Will some inspired hack take the trouble to put the question to Mr Farage? Or will the media be content to be fobbed off with yet another picture of Mr Farage in a pub holding a pint?
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Readers may have noticed an entirely manufactured hoo-ha between Conservatives and Reform over who has the biggest. Biggest what remains unclear, since as in most boasts about size there is no means of judging without the embarrassment of revealing all.
It was supposed to be about membership numbers, but it has always been assumed that the Tories invent theirs, and Reform invent everything else so it would be a dramatic change of policy to begin being accurate now. The whole schmozzle was yet another confection to titillate a gullible press, who are always looking for something to write about over Christmas and for whom their energetic galliard with Mr Farage is a lazy staple of the newsroom. Then the Tories’ indignation and rebuttal brought a fatuous claim by Reform that they would go to law to protect their reputation, and the press duly swallowed that story as well.
But as one of the wise men at the Muckrakers pointed out, by any acknowledged definition of party membership, the Tories have to win the dispute. Membership is assumed to include holding voting rights, and on that basis they have 131,680. Whereas the only rights Reform ‘members’ have seem to be contributing to the coffers of what remains a private limited company. Voting rights in Reform are restricted to the company directors, and there are just three of them.
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This doesn’t feel like their Reichenbach Falls moment, but until now Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch have largely kept out of each other’s way. The big showdown is still to come, but whenever it occurs we can assume it will have nothing to do with policy.
Those who fear Mr Farage overlook the obvious fact that he is a just peddler of bad dreams, a wrecker who has built his entire political career on causing chaos. Making things work is not his metier. He cannot resolve the very conflict that he has lived by and which gives him breath. Ms Badenoch, on the other hand has shown herself as gossamer-light, an ideas-free zone. She is possessed of very little in the way of political nous, and appears about to embark on building an entire policy programme out of blancmange.
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Further evidence of how Kemi Badenoch is languishing, not only in public esteem but in support from her own MPs. We learn that Tory malcontents – of which you may not be surprised to learn, my dears, there are many – have already set up a group to oppose her.
It is said to be inspired by – if not entirely set up at the behest of – the man she defeated in the play-off: Robert Jenrick. Imagine! Even Bobby’s mum would never have believed her boy would ever have a group formed especially on his behalf. But matters within today’s Conservative Party are never simple. Even the slimmest schism can still be split into three or four further strands.
Last month’s rumour was that Mr Jenrick was about to decamp to Reform, following the money. Though this latest gossip doesn’t scotch that idea entirely, it would be dashing indeed if Mr Jenrick were actually playing an each-way bet here: conspiring with Reform while at the same time backing those who were looking to depose Ms Badenoch.
Nor let us forget that, waiting in the wings, we still have James Cleverly (Braintree). Does he have any interest in the doings of Blue Monday? Is the pope a catholic?
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Mr Pecksniff’s Diary of 19 October last year revealed exclusively that the government had begun talking secretly to the Liberal Democrats about social care. Yesterday we had confirmation that those informal discussions have reached the point where it can be announced publicly that cross-party talks will begin next month.
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More on the MV Ruby, the stricken ship loaded with potentially highly explosive fertiliser which docked controversially at Great Yarmouth. Regular readers will recall that East Anglia Bylines was the only news source at the time telling the truth about the dangers it might bring. But it now emerges that the evacuation of the entire town was indeed a possibility, and measures even included a no-fly zone.
The Ruby set sail from Russia and after it was damaged in a storm, was refused entry to other European ports on its way here We are even told of concerns that the stricken ship might be a ‘trojan horse’, part of a Russian plot to undermine commerce or cause deliberate damage. The amount of fertiliser on board was more than seven times the amount which devastated Beirut in an explosion in 2020.
The local MP is of course Rupert Lowe. He supported the ship’s arrival and contemptuously dismissed concerns at the time. Then in the past couple of weeks he has condemned the government’s handling of the incident as a “scandal” – even though it is not obvious that the government was in any way involved. He believes the authorities over-reacted.
We await clarification of his views on whether it was right to consider evacuation of the town, and whether – as he suggested at the outset – we should have left the whole thing to businessmen to sort out.
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Still in Norfolk, yesterday we heard of plans to divide Swaffham in two. The idea comes from the Local Government Boundary Commission, who like to get their numbers tidy, even at the cost of making themselves look ridiculous. They want to split the town into two different wards, and bring in bits of the surrounding countryside.
This was an idea not even the lunacies of former MP Liz Truss had countenanced. She famously described Swaffham as the centre of the universe, but now it seems we are to have two such centres. Your average Norfolk citizen tends to be somewhat circumspect about change for its own sake – or come to that for anybody’s sake. We watch eagerly to see how the idea goes down at Swaffham market.
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Thanks this week go to JJ Jackson and Karl Whiteman.
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