This diary had gone to press and your diarist was already engrossed with the wise men at the Muckrakers when news broke of the resignation of Boris Johnson as an MP – he has read the Commons report on his lying and decided the game is up. But it is too dramatic not to put down one’s pint for.
Mr Johnson always disliked the Commons, never held any feelings for the Conservative party and had no interest in being an MP, except that was the only way he could become ‘king of the world’, his boyhood ambition. He carelessly or perhaps wilfully destroyed anything decent left in our political culture, depending as it does on the assumption that MPs are ‘gentlemen’. He didn’t bring it down through Machiavellian cunning, but by means of the boorishness which through his life had left a trail of broken promises and broken lives. But he showed others with equally no regard but for themselves that the carcass of British democracy was there to pick the bones clean.
It was he who brought down the once mighty House of Commons and made it toothless, and contemptible in the vacuous pomposity which was all it had left. Few politicians have made the mark that Boris Johnson has, and it is most of all what is left of his party that will come to realise the vacuum he has left and the amoral absurdity of his time there. They have little left but their humiliation. He has betrayed everybody and everything, but most of all he has betrayed his country and its people. We will all live with the consequences for many years to come.
What follows is what has been chronicled through the week, before his resignation. Most of what is here would probably have been written differently. Tomorrow will be a different place without his malignant influence. Power has shifted, though it’s too early to say where. His creatures will creep away, leaving us with the almost impossible task of rebuilding our country.
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On Monday the always excellent Sam Coates of Sky wrote about Rishi Sunak’s most pressing strategic problem, and it isn’t that sing-song voice which sounds as though he’s addressing morning assembly at a not very bright primary school. It’s the cost of government borrowing.
It is almost at the level which horrified financial commentators during the brief Liz Truss fiasco. That’s three times higher than in recent years. This is a reflection of the money markets’ lack of trust in Britain to pay our debts, which suggests the government is no more popular around the world than at home. Yet if they don’t go on spending, millions more people may face the agonising worry of not being able to pay the mortgage.
And this would be happening in the months leading up to the general election. The idea that the government may yet come up with a cunning plan to save themselves rests on their having a modicum of control. But they are adrift. Proposals over refugee boats are just to keep the backbenchers happy and do nothing to prevent the ship of state’s drift towards the rocks.
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Today, East Anglia Bylines announces an important new project, ‘Our place in Europe?’. The idea is to address honestly, realistically and coherently that question: “Would they ever have us back?” Europhiles may be aghast at some of the preliminary findings, though it’s as well to begin with where we are and not fantasise about an early return to the EU, if it’s palpably impossible.
So, we begin with the world as it is, warts and all. (The warts, as you will have guessed, are all assembled here in the UK.) We will hear, for a change, the views of Europeans: politicians, diplomats and other worthies, but also from that bloke who you might bump into in the Bar au Fantassin in Strasbourg, or the taxi driver who picked you up from the Eurostar in Brussels.
One of the issues to be explored will presumably be whether the British can ever get the hang of a club which is based on rules, rather than being influenced by who you know or who you went to school with. Or whether it can accommodate the principle of being judged by those rules rather than by your peers as a good chap who can be let off just this once…
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As we go to press there is still confusion as to whether Rishi Sunak will accept Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list from his time as prime minister. Acceptance has been on and off for months, and at the moment insiders seem to think Sunak will once again take the easy way to avoid party anger and let it through, but with a couple of omissions.
Nadine Dorries (Mid Beds) may be one of them, and it says something about her public standing that he would throw her out yet approve of most of Mr Johnson’s family becoming peers, as well as his chief of operations who played the music at one of the Downing Street parties, and probably the hostess of Carrie’s surprise baby shower, the woman who sold her the gold wallpaper, the owner of certain incriminating photographs and a bloke Mr Johnson once met in a pub and who poured him into a taxi.
But perhaps there is another reason. Ennobling Nads would mean a by-election. We know she won’t be standing at the next general election anyway, but at the last election, Mid Beds was one of the Tories’ safest seats. Ms Dorries won 60% of the votes, 25,000 ahead of Labour who were her nearest challenger. But a lot of sewage has flowed under the bridge since then.
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But hardly had the Pecksniff nib been wiped dry, and the latest outpouring about Nadine Dorries been well and truly blotted, than true to her fashion she was all over the media, apparently making up new opinions as she went along.
At 10:41 on appeared on TalkTV to declare: “The last thing I would want to do is cause a by-election in my constituency.”
Then at 15:50, only five hours later, she tweeted: “I have today informed the chief whip that I am standing down as the MP for Mid Bedfordshire, with immediate effect.”
We might read this as meaning that during the mid-morning Rishi Sunak, being decisive, decided that he really couldn’t face the flak he’d get for booting her into the Lords. Then, by mid-afternoon a few backbenchers had whinged, and he decided he couldn’t face another rebellion and changed his mind.
But Ms Dorries hadn’t finished with our entertainment. The wording of her resignation tweet had gone on to add: “It has been an honour to serve as the MP for such a wonderful constituency but it is now time for someone younger to take the reins.”
But she apparently re-read her resignation tweet and decided it was just a little careless in its wording. So, five minutes later she amended it to: ““It has been an honour to serve as the MP for such a wonderful constituency but it is now time for another to take the reins.”
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There was a time when Her majesty’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs cut a very grand figure indeed. Those were the days, eh? In more recent years, however, though the position’s incumbents seem to have recognised what went before, their attempts to continue the tradition has been embarrassing indeed. Boris Johnson seemed to believe that empty bombast, rhinoceros-hide boot laces and a limitless supply of Keating’s Powder would do the trick. Liz Truss confused style with reckless megalomania, and a limitless Treasury credit card.
But what can we say about James Cleverly? He has copied an idea of Ms Truss that had her reviled: travelling all alone on his own private and hugely expensive airliner. It won’t serve him any better. His was a very large airliner – presumably chosen because it was bigger than hers.
He seems still at that precarious stage of assuming size is everything, which makes for some alarming prospects in his future judgement. But there. These days, the leaders of all the most corrupt and tin-pot little states are similar braggarts and spendthrifts of their people’s looted money. Why should we expect the British government to behave any differently?
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News comes this week of the decision of Caroline Lucas to step down as the MP for Brighton Pavilion. For probably most non-partisan observers this will be greeted with regret, though your diarist knows only too well there is an inexplicable savage hatred for her among some Labour members.
She is however the only sitting Green MP, and for a party with such high ambitions and who have sought national stature for so many years, this must be an embarrassment. The decision does however place huge pressure on the party and its national leader, Adrian Ramsay, who is the Green’s candidate for the new Suffolk/Norfolk constituency of Waveney Valley. He is the best (and possibly the only) serious hope the party has of holding a seat in the next parliament. Electoral Calculus suggests that the new seat is likely to be won by Labour, but your diarist fancies their logarithm does not account of the parties’ ground game. In May’s local elections, Mid Suffolk which covers much of the new constituency was won by the Greens with 24 seats. The Tories were reduced to six, the LibDems won four and Labour is without a single seat. An analysis of the wards which went Green suggest that, on that basis, the Greens would take it.
Pecksniff was there to see for himself, and there seemed a lack of Labour presence and a glum resignation among its voters. Elections can’t be won without a strong ground game.
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The Eastern Daily Press provocatively points out this week that Brandon Lewis (Great Yarmouth) has just taken on two more new jobs outside Parliament, bringing his extra-parliamentary earnings to £180,000, on top of his MP’s salary of £86,584 (plus all those lovely expenses, of course). That totals £266,584. The average wage in Great Yarmouth is £26,000 – but without the benefit of those expenses.
This is what is called (with apologies to the editor) ‘taking the piss’, and one would hope his voters feel the same way. The thing is, what is it about Mr Lewis which makes him worth so much to so many businesses? From personal experience Pecksniff can assure readers that it is not his charm. He has no obvious talents or qualifications to demand such remuneration, so what is it? Things he knows, perhaps, or people he knows. Things he knows about people he knows. It’s difficult to say. It is left to you, dear reader, to draw your own conclusions.
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Politics in Peterborough has always seemed a dirty business. Latest revelations suggest there is little improvement. The excellent John Elworthy of CambsNews reports this week on the resignation of a leading Conservative figure, Councillor Mohammed Farooq. Cllr Farook claims to have been forced out by his own Tory group through baseless allegations of plotting against the council leader, the by-now notorious Councillor Wayne Fitzgerald.
The allegations were proved to be unfounded, but Cllr Farooq has nevertheless resigned from the Conservative group. Later another councillor, his son Saqib Farooq, also resigned.
“I’ve been in a toxic atmosphere been victimised, been bullied and the suspension over the last three weeks has been the final straw,” he told CambsNews. “It has almost killed me.”
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Regular readers of East Anglia Bylines will recall that the Spotlight investigations team have written at some length about the goings-on at Thurrock Council. We are still not done with them, but you will appreciate that these things can take some time when there are so many people with so much to hide.
As something of a progress report however, Pecksniff thought it might be of interest to illustrate the effectiveness of the process involved in making freedom of information requests. The investigation is into, among other things, the shared services board, which involved three local authorities sharing, er, services and – in particular – the joint fraud team. The four involved are Thurrock, Castle Point, Southend and South Essex Homes, which manages council-owned properties. (‘Jaw-dropping’ is hardly an adequate phrase to describe some of the allegations.)
So the freedom of information requests were duly sent. The way in which such requests are dealt with is governed by a strict code, we are always assured. So it is a puzzle how one of them can reply with odd bits of information and claims not to know the rest; two appear to have refused to respond, and one has coughed up the lot. All following the same rules, you understand.
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Last week Pecksniff wrote of the attempts by Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) to ingratiate himself with his voters, a bit late in the day according to some. He is likely to pop up anywhere there may be a camera. (Anybody who has recently wondered who on earth is that squinty-eyed chap with the manic grin in your daughter’s wedding photos need look no further). This week he has publicly taken up two important local issues: housing and GP surgeries.
But here lies the rub. He has been an MP for four years, and during that time he has invariably supported his government in their cut-backs to NHS funding. He has watched from Westminster as those cuts bit more and more painfully. He has supported all his government’s half-arsed policies on housing, and watched as every one failed. Now, and with the polls telling of calamity for the Tories at the next election, he thinks more housing and no more cuts to GP services would be good for his constituency. Yet refuses to acknowledge that for four years he has been voting relentlessly for NHS failings and a growing housing crisis.
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The BBC has announced that it is to hold a special edition of Question Time in front of an audience entirely made up of Brexit voters. It will take place at Clacton on Sea – that hotbed of Brexit fervour – and will be broadcast on the anniversary of the referendum, 23 June.
It will naturally ignite the fury of Brexit critics, but that is exactly what it is intended to do. On the other hand, it may well reveal the extent to which support for Brexit has dwindled. In any case, it will confirm that QT is not a serious politics programme and hasn’t been for years. Dear reader, it’s showbiz, and it exists solely to provoke outrage. (Which is why Nigel Farage is such a frequent guest.)
The viewers are being played by the BBC, and for all those Brexit opponents who religiously watch it with the outrage dial turned up to maximum, all you have to do to take it off the screens is to ignore it. When viewing figures fall, so will the programme. But you won’t, will you? So the BBC can go on patronising you and using you for its own political devices, and you – as with so much that has gone wrong with this country – will just suck it up.
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