Pecksniff: Conservatives reduced to 25 seats, claims poll

Last week, Pecksniff mused on why Rishi Sunak might feel inclined to go for an early May election, rather than hanging on. This week’s polls offer another reason. The numbers just get worse and worse. The Ipsos poll earlier this week for the Evening Standard gives the Conservatives the lowest recorded since serious polling began in 1978. It suggests the party has only 20% of the vote, giving Labour a 27% lead.

We have to add the usual provisos here. But if this were a blanket figure across the country then it might leave the Tories with just 25 seats, a loss of 351. The Liberal Democrats with 47 seats would then become the official opposition.

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Our colleague Stephen ‘Numbers’ McNair was among the wise men at the Muckrakers this week, and as always has a fascinating analysis of how the current crop of polls might play out across East Anglia. East Anglia Bylines is planning to cover 20 seats of interest – a selection from those that may change. Of those 20, Electoral Calculus gives 15 to Labour, two to the LibDems, with the Conservatives holding on to only three.

But there has been a smorgasbord of boundary changes across the region, making detailed calculations difficult. Be sure, however, that the most comprehensive coverage of the region’s elections will appear here. Pecksniff and others in the politics team are always keen to make new contacts among the political cognoscenti. So should you feel an inclination to join our team of spies, écouteurs and dobbers-in for the general election, do please write to the editor@eastangliabylines.co.uk; or tweet a direct message to @PecksniffsDiary.

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We then have to wonder quite what sort of Labour government we would have under Keir Starmer, with 537 seats and a majority of 445. Huge majorities make governments flabby. They become arrogant and complacent and lackadaisical. So then, we look to the new bright sparks who might come in and make the difference, those who can lead an opposition from within, since the Tories seem unlikely to manage it from without.

But so far, we see little enough evidence of bright sparks. Both Labour and Liberal Democrat candidates look an unpromising bunch, on the whole. (Your diarist is always keen to hear news that suggests otherwise.) Pecksniff has his ear to the ground – or at least your diarist has people with their ears to the ground, obvs – yet rarely hears of promising young whippersnappers likely to think for themselves. There are any number who are bright and ambitious, but also too many who can only recount the party line, with no questions asked. Keir Starmer’s automata.

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It so happens that, before the last entry was written, Pecksniff already had in mind a quote recalled by one of the wise men after the third pint of Old Unprintable.

“Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”

So wrote Edmund Burke of the relationship between the voter and his or her MP, and it seems wholly relevant given the last entry. Burke is pointing out that your MP is not a delegate. We do not elect him or her to do what we tell them. We are supposed to trust our MP to use his or her own judgement. At the moment of course we are not getting policies according to the judgement of the MP, nor even our judgement. Our MPs act on the judgement of their whips. So we are just getting what the party whips think.

Is this what Burke or anybody else had in mind? Is this what you had in mind, dear reader, when you placed your cross? And will all those ingenu MPs, in a Labour government with a huge majority, insist on their proper role and vote on what they judge is best for their constituency? Or will they vote on what the whips tell them is best?

Sadly, we already know the answer to that.

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We had an interesting revelation this week, of government correspondence during the Covid pandemic. It throws a light on the claim by Matt Hancock (still West Suffolk) that he had thrown a “protective ring” around care homes. But we read an email from Jenny Harries, deputy chief medical officer in 2020, which shows that – on the contrary – infected patients were to be deliberately and complacently moved into care homes.

Ladies and gentlemen, Matt Hancock lied. They all lied, or at least connived at covering up the lies. And as a result, thousands of elderly people died often terrified and alone.

The claim will be made that they acted for the best, that it was better for public morale not to know the truth. Dear reader, this has been the excuse of governments throughout the ages, to cover up their incompetence and self-interest. So that too is a lie, of course. They lied to save their own skins. You do not improve morale by deliberately sending elderly people to their probable deaths.

Meanwhile, to keep our peckers up, we were infantilised by being exhorted to applaud into the void or throw money at an old man staggering up and down his garden path. For what purpose was never clear, but it was certainly never to build a sauna for his family.

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Still on West Suffolk, when Nick Timothy was adviser to Theresa May, he was universally considered one of the most unpleasant men in politics.

That may of course have been one of the deciding factors when West Suffolk Conservatives chose him to succeed Matt Hancock as their candidate in the next general election. He is in the news this week for what leading economist Jonathan Portes calls “hypocrisy and dishonesty off the scale” in his latest Telegraph column.

Mr Timothy writes: “The attempt to define Islamophobia and impose it on society is not just about protecting Muslims. It is designed to protect Islam … from criticism and shut down legitimate debate.”

But Mr Portes points out: “it’s fine to accuse British Muslims of being more loyal to the ‘Ummah’ than to the UK. Five years ago he said it was blatantly anti-semitic to accuse British Jews of being more loyal to Israel than the UK.”

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Whatever is grinding away at the Conservative vote, you may be sure that the absolute pig’s rectum they have made of their vaunted Rwanda policy has played a significant part. Every week the convolutions become more exaggerated, more hopeless, yet the government persists and even comes up with more. Since this is about the only policy they have left.

These days of course it features James Cleverly (Braintree), the home secretary, who we already know believes the policy he inherited is “batshit”. But still he perseveres. Last week he sacked his chief inspector of borders and immigration, for letting the cat out of the bag on just how far government policies have come off the rails. This week we learn that his government has been lying about how much it’s costing. Original assurances were that each refugee “processed” would cost about the same as existing schemes – about £1200. But the National Audit Office reveals the actual cost for the numbers mentioned as being £1.8 million. Each. That’s 1500 times as much…

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Still on Rwanda, Lord Deben (the former MP for Suffolk Coastal John Gummer) has been causing ructions on the government seats in the Lords again. “You can’t vote on truth,” he points out. “It is, or it isn’t. The courts are the place to make that decision.” And he points out that the Supreme Court has decreed Rwanda isn’t a safe place. Whereas the government believe they should have the right to overrule the courts, even when (by their own admission) Rwanda isn’t safe.

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All over the region, MPs who had depended on having a job for life find that safe true-blue seats are in danger of becoming almost extinct. The most unlikely MPs have stirred themselves to show their faces – faces which have often almost been forgotten. Whoever thought, for example, that Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk) would become quite so exercised at the concerns of his voters?

One in particular attracts our attention though. Having imperiously ignored his constituents for the past four years, preferring the tender embrace of his party whips, we find Duncan Baker (N Norfolk) desperately trying to re-make himself as a people’s champion.

This week the vehicle he has chosen for this task is a new roundabout for Sheringham. His appeal strikes a plaintive note. “God loves a trier!” he declares of himself, the little man taking on the might of the government. (His government, mind, and not something he thought of doing until now.) Though his observation doesn’t really suggest he has much hope for the project. “Come on, give us the money!” he pleads of Michael Gove.

By the way, the tactical vote in this constituency should go to Steffan Aquarone and the Liberal Democrats.

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In a similar vein, 70 alarmed Conservative backbenchers, seeing the chasm yawning beneath their feet, have woken up to the fact of the country’s special educational needs provision is a disgrace. (And few are worse than Suffolk or Norfolk.) But more worrying than that, there is clearly a possibility that this could affect parents’ votes.

So having voted year after year for cuts, these MPs now require the chancellor to do something about it. Of that number, five are from our region. They are Priti Patel (Witham), John Whittingdale (Maldon), Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford), Andrew Selous (SW Beds) and Peter Aldous (Waveney).

Sadly, there is a likelihood that at least three of these MPs will survive the coming general election bloodbath.

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Last week, Pecksniff wrote about a gentleman who had been excluded from a so-called “public meeting” by Tom Hunt (Ipswich), on the grounds that he had uttered “death threats”.

This did sound unlikely, since the gentleman in question is elderly and disabled and gets around in a disability buggy. Your diarist reported that the gentleman was consulting his lawyers about the accusation, and indeed there is progress of a kind.

He tells your diarist that he has tried contacting Mr Hunt at both his Westminster and constituency addresses, but without response. He has also tried the local party chairman, with a similar result. So a formal complaint has been lodged with the Parliamentary Commissioner of Standards.

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EAB is non-party political, as has frequently been pointed out, but it is appropriate for us to mention that one of our contributors, Alex Bulat, has been nominated this week as the prospective Labour candidate for Huntingdon. We naturally wish her well.

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