As we discard the crumbling political landscape of 2023 and emerge fearfully into the harlequinade still to come, it might be judicious to pause and take our bearings. So this week’s diary looks not back to the past week, when (but for old lags like James Cleverly) most of the region’s Tory MPs are still finishing their new year’s resolutions on how to make even greater arses of themselves in 2024 than they did last year.
Abjuring a crystal ball in favour of a limitless supply of Old Unprintable at the Muckrakers Arms, your humble diarist and the wise men of the saloon bar set out, with your approval, certain speculations on the political year ahead. These are the stories which this diary (and the Muckrakers’ finest) divine we will be revealing in the year ahead.
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Let us begin where we have planted our flag resolutely over the past two years; the European Union, and the British opinion of it.
All polls during this period have shown an increasing majority declaring that Brexit was a mistake. Pecksniff has no doubt that opinion against Brexit will continue to grow during the year ahead. However, our two main opposition parties will still refuse to recognise it. As a result, the pro-EU lobby will take on different forms in an attempt to outflank our politicians.
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Meanwhile, through unofficial channels the EU will discreetly hint that, when the mood music is right, the EU will listen empathetically to new approaches by the UK.
But officially it will remain aloof since the key to progress is that question of mood music. The EU will want to see Tory xenophobia vanquished and a chastened change of heart from Labour and the Liberal Democrats before they judge the time is right. They want no more revolving doors, so they will need convincing that the change of heart is permanent. They want to see enthusiasm for the European ideal. That requires time, and there is no suggestion that we are anywhere near that position yet. So there will be little if any progress officially during 2024. Though expect guerrilla attempts at outflanking the formal party positions.
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Which brings us back to the puzzle of quite why Britain’s two main opposition parties are so frightened at kicking at an open door. This issue was addressed only yesterday in a typically shrewd assessment from EAB (Our politics failed us over EU membership, then over Brexit, and it fails us still). Their dithering and obtuseness over Brexit will continue through much of 2024, as the rest of us increasingly consider the question which lies behind their ineptitude: Who are we?
This is the problem at the heart of Brexit, and though the question begins to gain traction, not least at the Muckrakers, it is ignored by the political class. One of the reasons why the English at least have no idea of our identity is that our politicians are so reluctant to consider the question: to admit the conundrum reflects badly on our whole political class. It is an indictment of their record – whichever the party.
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So during this year there will be a growing realisation that the real reason for our leaders’ reluctance to accept that we were wrong to choose Brexit is the national humiliation it would involve. That humiliation would undermine not only our political elite but our entire establishment, certainly including the monarchy. Nobody within that hegemony is prepared to confront their failure and its implications for their view of our history, or what it would do to their claims of who we are as a nation.
Or, of course, what it would mean for them, their own interests and what they represent.
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But when will the election be? The wise men scratch their heads and gloomily call for another round. Too often, staring at all those Conservative backbenchers at PMQs, one is reminded by their appearance of that verse from Revelations about the sea giving up the dead that are in it. Electoral Judgement Day is likely to treat them harshly, so they will not welcome too early a meeting with their electorates. Rishi Sunak’s current frantic manoeuvrings can never work, a realisation he must share – like that Anthony Powell character, Widmerpool, “forever floundering towards the tape in races never won”.
So here, dear reader, your Nostrodamus of the saloon bar must let you down. It is not possible to predict the date of the election since neither Mr Sunak nor the Fates have made up their minds. All one can say with certainty that his comment this week about a presumption of an election later rather than sooner is worthless.
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The polls have been pointing to a Labour landslide for two years, but veteran commentators look knowingly and proclaim it will be much closer.
But those commentators are wrong. It will be closer to a landslide, and the Conservatives will lose some seats for the first time ever.
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The Labour victory however will not rest on a ‘road to Damascus’ conversion of former Tory voters. For the bedrock of the party’s support, their values are too entwined with Conservative thinking ever to stray towards the left. So there will be little swing. When the general election comes, we will see huge numbers of Tory voters simply staying at home, and Labour will triumph mostly on the backs of their usual supporters. The extent of Labour’s victory depends largely on this factor.
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In the small boats issue lies all of Rishi Sunak’s hopes. This is the hill he has chosen to die on, like many of his MPs. It is impossible that the Rwanda plan can ever work – probably ever be tried – but it hardly needs a soothsayer to predict that he will go on claiming that it is working. The government will go on spending even greater sums of money, some of which will be shown (in the best traditions of our government) to have been siphoned off, either by Rwandan officials or Conservative donors who have been given further dubious contracts to make money out of the beleaguered asylum seekers.
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Readers with long memories may recall a certain former prime minister who was recycled a few weeks ago in order to give the government what is referred to in traditional Conservative circles as ‘bottom’. David Cameron was brought back into government and given a peerage, in the hope that it would bring fond memories to voters of when there was a modicum of competence at the top. Similarly, it was hoped that Europe would be as impressed by the mere presence of a toff as the British always are.
As if. The wise men at the Muckrakers describe him as “another Tory gob on a stick”, and the response from the general electorate and European diplomats was hardly much more complimentary. The opinion polls dubbed the appointment a failure, but Rishi Sunak is stuck with him now. David Cameron is damaged goods in the eyes of EU diplomats, and attempts during 2024 to schmooze them will get nowhere.
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During the year, it will become increasingly apparent that Labour’s plans for growth are at odds with its promises on the climate. The party will choose to back a form of growth traditional enough to be understood by its supporters, and there will probably be attempts to smear climate activists as extremists. In the vanguard will be the trade unions. This is likely to come to a head later in the year, probably at the party conference, and will prove an embarrassment, though it is unlikely to affect an election held in the autumn since both Labour and the government will be fighting over the same ground. Climate change needs radical solutions, and Labour is not a radical party.
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Over the past year, EAB has twice reported on the goings-on at Ipswich Novotel. It was leased by the Home Office to house asylum seekers, like many hotels around the country, and hapless Ipswich MP Tom Hunt led the objections. He was joined by an unsavoury group of far-right protestors, who he insisted were merely concerned local citizens. That is, until EAB were able to reveal that several of them were neo-nazis and Ku Klux Klan supporters, bussed in for the day, and provided the photos to prove it.
We heard no more from Mr Hunt after that, and the protests dwindled even if their ramifications for the asylum seekers didn’t. The government decided they would re-house asylum seekers elsewhere, or at least throw them out of the hotels. But the contracts with hotels episode may not yet be closed, however. Pecksniff peers into the future and sees there will be further revelations on the hotel deals done by the Home Office – revelations which will prove exquisitely embarrassing for the government.
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It may not surprise regular readers to learn that a number of MPs have secrets to keep. But during 2024 a few of those secrets will escape and also cause embarrassment. At least one will involve money, at least one will involve behaviour, and another is likely to involve criminal prosecution. Another secret may even test the constitution and the jealously guarded freedoms of the House of Commons. It is not impossible that this too may involve criminal charges, though Pecksniff certainly foresees that it will cost the reputations of more than one of its actors.
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Those readers of a more exotic bent may care to know that your diarist is by way of being a third or fourth generation fortune teller. This is not a skill that is often employed at EAB – as far as is known there are no plans to introduce a daily horoscope. But since the occasion arises, your diarist consulted the cards…
They tell of drama ahead. That drama is mostly concerned with finances, which may not need much clairvoyance to predict, but present plans – of either Conservative or Labour – will come to nothing. The government’s determination to cling on should not be underestimated – for them too this election is seen as a possible watershed. They realise that defeat at the polls will lead to much more than losing the government. It will challenge the party’s very existence as an electoral power. Catastophe, ruin and disgrace awaits.
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