As lunch approaches on Friday and this diary is finally blotted and sent on its way to the lofty heights of the editorial suite, the avalanche of results is only just beginning. The political landscape is bound to assume a less enigmatic and more dramatic aspect. But the practice of jumping to conclusions in politics has a long and honourable history, and Pecksniff is not the fellow to break with tradition.
So it is hardly a matter for surprise to find Reform dominant. Also, this was always going to be Labour’s mauvais quart d’heure, so the results are perhaps not of as much interest as what follows.
Meanwhile, no doubt to the strains of Vera Lynn and TV pictures of Nigel Farage behind a WVS trolley, Reform will be celebrating a return to the past. Their pilgrims represent a dismal testimony to what, for many people, represents all that is base and vile in our society.
But neither Labour’s demise nor Reform’s successes seem likely to be the most interesting aspect of these elections. Still in the early stages of reporting, two or three trends stand out. First, at this point Reform are not as dominant as either they or the opinion polls expected. An explanation might be found in the turn-out, which in many cases so far has exceeded 50%: very high for a local election.
Why? It is tempting to think it is because two thirds of the electorate, from left and right, could not stomach the idea of Reform, and this has brought out those protestors to vote. This probably explains the Rorke’s Drift recovery of the Conservatives. Throughout the campaign, Pecksniff’s spies have reported that the party’s demise didn’t seem as pronounced as the pollsters would have had it. Your échotier has also doubted whether the more fragrant of Tory voters could ever commit themselves to supporting a party so far below the salt as Reform.
It may also suggest that Reform have progressed as far as they can in making inroads into the traditional Tory vote. And though Labour have lost seats to Reform, it is not because Reform have recruited their voters. Recalcitrant Labour voters still decamp to the Greens, but the diminishment of their vote then lets in Reform. So it is not clear where Farage’s finest will look for future recruits.
All of which means the dominant question arising from these elections is: when will Labour agree to ditch first-past-the-post and instigate some form of proportional representation? The only way Reform can form a future government is through the preposterously unbalanced present system. Yet Keir Starmer, with his usual infuriating refusal to face reality, opposes any such move.
Dear reader, we have a long and eventful political odyssey ahead of us. Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
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Pecksniff has expressed some misgivings over Zack Polanski ever since his election as Green Party leader, fearing his success might put strains on the development of the party as one of potential government. He seemed to represent a combative metropolitan attitude, which would not necessarily suit established Green members or, more important, their existing voters.
In reality of course, his leadership has dramatically increased party membership, a huge triumph for which this diarist has been pleased to offer a hat tip in recognition. But that dramatic surge was bound to bring in all kinds of new members with shedloads of axes to grind. Some will have joined to use the party as a platform from which to continue their own fights, and with the consequence of all too predictable imprudence.
Enthusiasm is a fine thing, but one would hope by now that parties of the left would occasionally look over their shoulder at the pig’s rectum so many have made of their efforts in the past. (Your Party has effectively split amoeba-like into any number of fratricidal factions, each determined to flounce if they don’t get their own way.)
Greens are zealous in defending their free-thinking transparency, but a welcome for all makes the party vulnerable to entryists, who want to use it as a vehicle for their own demands. Whatever the evils being committed in Gaza, it is merely political self-abuse to believe we can elect a government entirely on the basis of something that is happening on another continent and over which we have no governance whatever. In the theatre of gesture politics, this would become the theatre of the absurd.
Mr Polanski is caught up in an antisemitism row. He was tempted into an unwise click on social media, as many of us have at some point, and is paying the penalty. The polls show his popularity fell off a cliff after last weekend. He swiftly and courageously apologised, instead of striking a pose which inevitably he couldn’t hold. (A lesson for other politicians.) But he and his party may pay a heavy penalty.
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Accusations against the Greens extend to the use of misleading election leaflets, which is after all what most parties attempt. What makes this spat different is that this ruse is so blatant that even Green election workers are refusing to distribute the leaflets.
It is alleged the leaflets are deliberately designed to resemble official correspondence from the city council. One Green activist claims she stopped delivering them when the first person she approached actually mistook the leaflet for just such a publication.
“We stopped delivering these after the first round, because we couldn’t continue in good conscience,” she said. “I would hope the Green Party doesn’t have to resort to this type of suspicious tactics to get people’s votes because the honesty of this party is something many people are voting for in the first place.”
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Sir John Curtice confirms that, in his view, it is a question of “when, not if” Keir Starmer resigns as prime minister. Sir John is professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde, in which environs they would say of the PM’s position: ‘His jaicket’s on a shaky hook’. Which, as students of Celtic patois would acknowledge, is one step before: ‘His bum’s oot the windy’.
Research from UCL’s Policy Lab this week shows that the public yearns for “a strong articulation of core values”. But the PM is reluctant to set out what they are, and it is perhaps telling that voters are said to feel he has “a discomfort with progressive values”. That has a telling ring to it.
His excuseniks would point to the government’s successes, and in terms of bread-and-butter policies they are considerable.
But we are not talking about bread and butter, but something a little more ambitious. In this context, Sir Keir gives the impression that his idea of haute cuisine would be cutting the crusts off sandwiches.
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So talk of a bid to replace Sir Keir with Andy Burnham amounts to more than a ranging shot. The first argument of the PM’s close circle against such an idea is that the international situation is too precarious to consider removing him.
As a tactic, it equates to ‘Always hold on tight to nurse, for fear of finding something worse’, which may be wise advice in the nursery, and is therefore a plausible reason why Sir Keir’s court flunkeys like Steve Reed chide recalcitrant Labour MPs as though chastising naughty children.
But history records that, during the Second World War, things looked up when Chamberlain was replaced by Churchill. There is no evidence to support keeping the status quo.
Meanwhile, Labour languishes in disgruntled accidie. If Mr Reed were to go down to the bazaars and listen, he would hear of the PM’s parsimony of imagination and the uncompromising monochrome of his ideas of government.
The second argument as to why Sir Keir should keep his job is a somewhat damning admission: that there is nobody among the cabinet to replace him. But the argument becomes fatuous when Team Starmer is doing everything to ensure that the most popular challenger by far cannot stand against him.
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So what of Andy Burnham? Mention of his emergence makes many Labour MPs and probably a majority of party members shoot their cuffs in anticipation. It is easy to see why. It is said he plans a “radical rewiring” of the state, including sweeping electoral reform, and a 10-year growth plan which would include a return to the EU.
So, with Mr Burnham we would get proportional representation and eventual EU membership. With Sir Keir we get a refusal to contemplate an end to first past the post, and a dogged determination to hold to his absurd red lines which prevent any meaningful approaches towards the EU.
What is most beguiling about plans for the Burnham accession is its audacity. His team would prefer Sir Keir to stand aside, they say, without bloodletting, and with the promise of his becoming foreign secretary. That would make them cough down at the Muckrakers, though is it impossible? According to The Times, Ed Miliband has already suggested such a course to the PM.
My dears, we must admit such nerve is rather breathtaking. But of course, Keir Starmer is not yet ready to cross the Styx. He will have to go, but his poor judgement extends to not realising things can only get worse. At some point he may be in danger of being outflanked by Team Burnham’s narrative and find himself in deeper waters than he deserves.
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Anybody who wants an end to first-past-the-post elections must surely realise that first we have to reject first-past-the-post attitudes. Such an obvious pre-condition it should hardly need expression.
Andy Burnham is booked to appear at a Compass event called Change:Now. He will be joined by two other Labour MPs, including Clive Lewis (Norwich S) but also speaking will be Caroline Lucas, a Green, and two Liberal Democrats. The event is supposed to show how progressives can work together across party lines.
But Mr Burnham is attacked by two fellow Labour MPs (and coincidentally Keir Starmer supporters). One says he should not be speaking alongside the Greens. Perhaps the give-away is that it is only Mr Burnham who is attacked. After all, the others aren’t bidding to replace Keir Starmer.
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Last weekend, Nigel Farage conspicuously failed to turn up to a series of TV interviews, followed by predictable charges that he was not keen to discuss the revelation that some billionaire had made him a personal present of £5 million. “There’s no money in politics,” avows Mr Farage, though he appears to have disproved that assumption.
We have no idea if this was with ‘no questions asked’, though it certainly led to ‘no questions answered’. Instead, and in what some commentators suggested was a ‘dead cat’ tactic, Mr Farage and Zia Yusuf arrived on our screens like a couple of bumptious comics performing for pennies in front of a theatre queue.
Their purpose was to introduce a new policy, which should be regarded as the final decay of all moral standards: setting up detention centres across the country, into which unfortunate immigrants would be bunged prior to being ejected from the country.
And what a wheeze it was to claim they would only be set up in areas which had not had the foresight to vote Reform! Only, even proposing the idea, some commentators have suggested, could be considered criminal under the Representation of the People Act.
In any case, it is also proving indigestible to the electorate. YouGov claim the punters reject it by three to one – with even a slight majority of sans culottes Reform voters opposed.
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This week’s loiterers at keyholes were Liz Crosbie, Mary Marshall, Andrew Coates, Malcolm Lynn, Karl Whiteman, James Porter, Celina Błędowska, Helen Forte, David Patey, Mark Popay, Kate Viascardi and Stace Richards.
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