“We haunt a ruined century,” WH Auden remarked. He was talking about the last one, of course, and though it’s too early to judge this one, it already feels like no change. So far, the auguries have not – shall we say – been propitious. But Pecksniff has always disliked cynics: if we listened to them, we would still be living in caves. After years of the arrogant, the constipated, the sociopathic, the deluded, the out-of-touch and the timorous, there is still no excuse for failing to welcome a PM promising hope. It is significant that the word was used several times in his speech by Andy Burnham.
For years, No10 has been a joyless place and our dull consciousness of national decline politically, economically and culturally, was never going to be arrested by those who came before him. Much has been made of our having had seven prime ministers in 10 years. But this only shows that our political parties have been in a flunk, terrified of having to declare what they stand for. Readers will note that this lost decade exactly coincides with the 10th anniversary of Brexit.
*
Nobody could accuse Mr Burnham of lacking a legitimate political hinterland. Unlike his predecessor, he wallows in it. But that was not the only change in his overture speech: there was a flounce from the national media over his decision not to take questions. But the decision was entirely correct. Put simply, the emerging story is either going to be Mr Burnham’s, or whatever the hacks choose to make it.
Let us consider… Chris Mason asks who is going to be chancellor of the Exchequer: will it be Ed Miliband? Mr Burnham declines to answer. The result? The story isn’t whatever Mr Burnham said, but what Mr Mason thinks about his refusal to rule out that Ed Miliband might be his controversial choice for chancellor. The speech has been mugged.
So the key is always to own the narrative, whatever the hissy fits of the BBC’s finest.
With the hacks left only with what Mr Burnham said rather than what they could interpret him as having said, Mr Burnham got his own headlines. The money markets reacted calmly to the fury of Kemi Badenoch (NW Essex) and perhaps much of the news media. And as predicted, an early opinion poll since the Burnham speech shows Labour overtaking both Tories and Reform.
*
It would have been the hope of both the Burnham and Starmer camps that the latter’s valediction could be executed with dignity, however difficult given the circumstances. For Sir Keir, posterity demands it: sour grapes is never a good look.
But already, two events appear to have damaged any hopes of that. It can hardly be just a petite folie that Team Starmer ‘forgot’ to mention the black hole of £5bn in defence spending which Andy Burnham will suffer the obligation of agreeing, and which may well scupper his plans. It is similarly difficult not to believe there will be gloating from the Starmer camp – for why else would they not have mentioned it, if not a ‘gotcha’? Which implies that Sir Keir’s heart-felt desire only to do the best for his country might be superseded by a fervent wish that Mr Burnham’s government collapses about his ears.
Then there is the revelation this week that the US-UK drug deal to placate Donald Trump will actually cost an extra £45 billion from NHS funds and which, according to analysis published this week, could result in more than 200,000 excess deaths in England. A failure to stand up to an overweening US bully, then, exactly what alarmed the Starmer critics at the time.
Does Mr Burnham have room to manoeuvre? If Team Starmer had gone out of their way to foul up the new Burnham administration, they could hardly have done much more. We can only give Sir Keir and his colleagues the benefit of the doubt.
*
Reform’s party chair until recently, Dr David Bull, sounding embarrassed at his leader’s discomposure, suggests Nigel Farage “needs to take some time out and have a bit of a break, really”.
Meanwhile the party’s treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick says Mr Farage should come clean on his £5 million gift. And more mutterings from Reform’s morose and soi-disant ‘shadow home secretary’, Zia Yusuf, who looks like a taxi driver who has just been refused a tip. (He is not shadow home secretary, of course – there can only be one of those.)
It was said Dr Bull stood aside from his role as chair in order to concentrate on an election project. Dr Bull lives in Central Suffolk, and whispers from within rival party Restore claim he has his eyes on that seat if it becomes vacant shortly. (Present incumbent Tory Patrick Spencer faces criminal charges of alleged sexual assault, which if proven would see him leave the Commons.) But Mr Yusuf is also said to want it.
He is disgruntled because he feels he is being left out in the cold by his party. He needs to become an MP because, anticipating a Farage demise, he wants to be the next party leader. And that, no doubt, is what all the manoeuvring is about.
*
But Reform isn’t the only far right party to face splits. Now it is the turn of Restore. However extreme they become, the migrating tribes of the disconsolate far right will always demand more. So last weekend the party’s supporters are reported as being outraged at the revelation that the founder, Rupert Lowe (Gt Yarmouth), supports multiculturalism…
Well yes, but only in a few strict circumstances… Like, for example, his son just happening to have married a Libyan woman whose father is a prominent Muslim academic.
Restore’s supporters demand a commitment to the mass deportation of foreigners. One prominent member said: “That’s the bare minimum we expect. If he won’t do it, then we’ll need a new vehicle.”
Another split then. If Jeremy Corbyn had a sense of humour, he might allow himself a wry chuckle.
*
Zack Polanski has a continuing problem with activists whose overriding concern is Palestine rather than the Green Party’s wider environmental agenda. The recent Green surge inevitably includes many entryists trying to take over the party for their own ends. Some appear to have joined in the hope of turning the Greens into a single-issue vehicle centred on Gaza rather than a broad environmental movement.
The loudest mouth belongs to Tony Greenstein, thrown out of the Labour Party for harassment and abusive language. But the free-for-all Greens let him in, and naturally he has been trying to take over. Having hardly got his knees under the table, he claimed: “The old guard in the Green Party, people like Caroline Lucas and Carla Denyer, have long supported Britain’s role as an imperialist power. That meant support for NATO, the imperialist alliance of western powers that has wrecked such havoc in Ukraine.”
So are the Greens to be a party of the environment and climate change, or the happy repository of any disgruntled poseur who fancies a free ride? As we go to press, we hear Mr Greenstein has been expelled from the party.
*
For all their bravura, representation of the people seems to be a role for which Reform councillors have little aptitude and even less interest. Almost their only concern appears to be in settling old scores with a world they don’t pretend to understand and have for years despised.
Pecksniff has reported on Reform’s efforts to challenge the plans for local government reorganisation regionally, but this week relations within Suffolk County Council appear to have reached a crisis. Reform is under fire for pursuing a judicial review without even the new Reform cabinet having seen, let alone approved, proposals from their leader, Councillor Michael Hadwen; they were not put before the council until it was too late to call them in; and members of the public who were entitled to make representations were refused. This is the same public, by the way, who showed a majority during the consultation phase in favour of the plans Cllr Hadwen is presently trying to undermine. There is no mandate for the challenge, yet the judicial review may cost £500,000 of taxpayers’ money.
At a meeting on Monday things did not go well. Council staff could hear the raised voices from around the building. Cllr Hadwen and opposition leader Andrew Stringer (of the Greens) are reported by eyewitnesses as becoming “almost physical” as they confronted each other at the end of the meeting.
Good for morale chez SCC it is not. As one eyewitness to the fracas observed, council staff are “trying to remember we work for the people of Suffolk and not some lunatics”.
*
But that same Councillor Hadwen had other exciting things on his plate. He was busy dashing to Barnham, where villagers needed to have explained to them what their reaction should have been to news of plans to house asylum seekers near the village. When the East Anglian Daily Times conducted its vox pops among villagers, they seemed unconcerned.
But the jubilant Cllr Hadwen found a quite different attitude. Readers may not be astounded to learn that, according to him, this involved sending back the ‘illegal immigrants’, as he refers to them, even though he is talking about asylum seekers, and by definition under international law, the act of seeking asylum cannot be illegal.
Another curiosity is that, from the pictures of his arrival in the village, those who turned out to support Cllr Hadwen saw the safety of their village as being dependent on waving enormous flags of St George, and moreover they all seemed to have one handy.
*
Meanwhile, the situation seems little better at Norfolk County Council than in Suffolk. An East Anglian Bylines colleague asked the council the position on its own judicial review into the same local government re-organisation. The response from their communications team was: “You’ll need to contact Reform representatives directly about that.” From which we can only assume that Reform councillors have not consulted their officers on their policies: which, my dears, happens to be unlawful.
So if the council’s officers have not been informed of such a decision, then Reform will be in deep trouble – not least over spending half a million quid of taxpayers’ money possibly without proper authorisation.
*
That toxic buffoon Councillor Ryan Coogan, Reform group leader on Huntingdon Council, barges his way into the diary again this week. He has successfully campaigned to have a gay pride flag removed from council buildings. Gloating over his triumph, he declares that “the progress pride flag is believed to represent paedophile behaviour”.
The response has been savage. Cllr Coogan was elected by the voters of Ramsey ward, who we must assume didn’t know what they were doing. (Your diarist puts it no stronger.) It is known that the remarks have caused concern even within the local ranks of Reform. One party member declares of him: “A nut job…How the hell did we end up with him I’ll never know”. Such views are a poisonous excrescence on the body politic. It is now Reform’s duty to distance itself from such views before the entire local party is further tainted.
Which, my dears, be sure it will be…
*
Seekers after dissipation and those uninstructed in moral licence might be disappointed to learn that there are to be no more sex shops in South Norfolk. The council has banned them. Only, there never were any. This, it seems, was a precautionary measure, to avoid any leanings towards the disreputable in Long Stratton or the emergence of Dionysian rites in Diss.
Mind you, it has rather got up the nose of the Broadland Sun Association, a nudist camp, who were contacted to warn them the council were bringing in new powers to regulate “sex establishments”. They accuse the council of implying nudity itself is sexual and suggest such attitudes are a “throwback to the saucy postcard era”.
*
This week’s Mata Haris and James Bonds are Stace Richards, John Elworthy, Andrew Coates, Mary Marshall, Malcolm Lynn, Liz Crosbie, Celina Błędowska, James Porter, Helen Forte, David Patey, Mark Popay and Yasmin Gregory. Karl Whiteman is missing this week, believed either on holiday or a victim of Smersh agents.
<<< Previous Pecksniff’s Diary
More from East Anglia Bylines
Friends of Bylines Network
There has never been a greater need for grassroots journalism that investigates the stories that really matter, holds power to account and champions the voices of everyday citizens. We are proudly powered by volunteers but what we do isn’t free.
STAND WITH US for independent, citizen-led journalism that makes democracy stronger, and you will even get some exclusive benefits.
