There has been the expected hysteria in the news media over Reform in last week’s local elections results. Reports might almost have been written before the ballots closed, so sure were the hacks that Reform would grab the headlines. Having done more than any deranged, extreme, right-wing billionaire donor to promote the party, the media seem keen to protect their investment.
So the story was – true or not – that Reform was sweeping the country. Only it wasn’t true, as a story from my colleague Stephen ‘Numbers’ McNair made clear in East Anglia Bylines this week. Writing of the national picture in ‘The right is not rising in the East’, he points out:
“Two features are notable in the results: the splitting of the Conservative vote with Reform, but also a modest overall swing to the broad left… Overall, the number of seats held by parties on the broad left – Labour, Liberal Democrat and Greens – increased by 4%, while the number of seats held by Conservative and Reform remained unchanged”.
Elections were limited across the east, but the Liberal Democrats broke the Tory stranglehold on Herts County Council, and on Cambs County Council the party gained an overall majority for the first time.
My dears, however one looks at this, it is shameless misrepresentation.
*
A somewhat audacious example of the media’s blinkers apparently arose at the count for the Peterborough and Cambs mayoral elections. The winner was former Conservative MP Paul Bristow. But according to Pecksniff’s spies at the count, the first candidate on whom the BBC swooped for an interview was not Mr Bristow… but the Reform candidate, who had lost.
*
We are watching what is probably the death of the Conservative Party as an electoral force. There is no apparent way back. Any cause they have espoused over recent years can be better expressed by Reform. The party reached a kind of constipation during the Theresa May term, and having lost any sense of who they were, they elected Boris Johnson. That was both a symptom of their malaise, and then the cause of their final destruction.
Having booted out their moderates, the party has lurked amid the deluded fringes, till even they could hardly spot the difference between themselves and Reform. Last week’s local election results saw them crushed. The only thing that could save them now is a return to their traditional centre right core, but the MPs have no taste for it and the membership wouldn’t allow it.
It is the members whose rabid resentments and unchanging taste for mediocrity have driven their party to these extremes, and who have brought about the final irrelevance of the world’s oldest political party. They did so out of pique, at finding they couldn’t tolerate a modern reality which failed to live down to their prejudices. Reform members of course have yet to make the same discovery as the Tories, though it might be argued that their members are scarcely attached to reality anyway. But their turn will come.
*
But for Labour, the destruction of the Conservative Party also represents mortal danger. Politics since the war has been a Tweedledum Tweedledee double act between the two. But the draconic fall of the Tories means a long-awaited shifting of the tectonic plates. There is a yawning vacuum where the traditional Conservative Party used to be, but it isn’t axiomatic that another party can simply step in.
The nation had long since outgrown the old political model, but until recently there has been no clear role for other parties that voters could take seriously. The Tories’ lack of ideas and direction allowed space into which Reform could grow, and to give them credit they stepped into it boldly. It is this boldness which has won the day, and from the signs looks as though it may have lit a few fires under the Greens and Liberal Democrats.
Meanwhile, Labour too have lost track of who they are and what they represent. It is a curiosity though, that the Conservatives have failed because the parliamentary party felt no option but to follow their members. Labour teeters on a similar brink, but in their case it’s because the leadership ignored theirs.
*
“Since the election, Labour has lost more than three times as many voters to the Lib Dems as to Reform.” So writes Rachel Sylvester in the Observer. About 10% of Labour voters are sympathetic to Reform. On the other hand, 55-60% have favourable views of either the Liberal Democrats or the Greens.
Digging into the detail though, we find that a higher percentage of those Labour voters who might be attracted to Reform have already jumped ship, whereas the number who are attracted to either LibDems or Greens but have yet to make the jump is much higher. So the potential is for Labour to lose far more votes to progressive parties than to Reform.
For many voters, to describe Labour as progressive or even sentient would already be considered an unconventional hypothesis. Inside the party it can hardly be any more joyous. Labour members squat disconsolately in their trenches away from the heavy bombardment from Reform, but without the means of returning fire. They have no idea what ammunition they are supposed to use.
*
In spite of the measured and almost nonchalant response to the outcome of last week’s elections by Kemi Badenoch (NW Essex), in political terms the results were less the discomposure she implies, and more comparable to the retreat from Moscow.
Why did her party choose her? (Fair point if you said because the alternative was Honest Bob Jenrick.) The idea of Ms Badenoch was always desperate, bordering on the ludicrous. She has sometimes given the impression she may have a few pages stuck together, but since Margaret Thatcher, the Tories have always hugged the powerful female myth to their bosoms. Perhaps the idea reminds them of nanny. But one Tory MP tells the Independent: “We cannot continue as we are and she [Ms Badenoch] is just not up to the task”.
Another says: “If we give Kemi another year it could be curtains for us. There are no policies, no ideas, no strategy and she has no charisma.”
But it is acknowledged that one of Ms Badenoch’s problems may be her choice of staff, senior among whom is Baroness Thérèse Coffey.
*
When Kemi Badenoch falls, and Pecksniff has already suggested it will be at the autumn party conference, Robert Jenrick loiters. But let us not count out as postulant James Cleverly (Braintree). Mr Cleverly is nothing if not accomplished in Tory leadership-speak. On the question of yet another new leader, he tells us Ms Badenoch “knows she has my full support”, but without drawing breath goes on to add that he could “rule nothing out and nothing in”.
*
Meanwhile, what will happen to that great swathe of voters who used to represent middle England, the home counties Tories who voted for moderation and against change? They won’t be tempted by the bully-boy swagger of Reform, and couldn’t vote Labour. Both Greens and Liberal Democrats might offer the sanctuary they seek.
But given the present state of the Tories, one thing appears clear. Any Conservative renaissance must have Europe at its heart. “We’re all pro-Europeans now,” claims former Tory home secretary Amber Rudd. “What we want now is what’s the best relationship … for a future Conservative government facing towards Europe.”
Think. The catastrophe which has engulfed the Tory party is Brexit-shaped. There could be no re-birth which encompassed that hara-kiri. If a move to the left is the bleedn obvious strategy for Labour, for the Tories it might be the only thing that can save them. Pecksniff has mused previously on the unlikely scenario of the Tories embracing the EU before Labour. Not so unlikely now, perhaps. But what would Labour do then, if the Tories declared themselves pro-EU first…?
*
There are signs that, as the old assumptions tumble, both Greens and Liberal Democrats are taking the initiative at last. It is striking how many elections these days are a five-way split, with all the leading parties achieving a respectable vote share.
The most consequent progress has been made by the Greens. As one commentator observed, the party is now “one of three”: they are considered on their own merits and have at last reached the top table. There is talk of their having a target of winning 30 parliamentary seats in 2029, a huge leap from their present four. In this region, it seems they will have their eye on at least two more seats in Suffolk.
*
There is one consequence of this week’s elections however of which, sadly, we can be certain. With Reform beating their chests and even the slightest possibility that they may be returned in government in 2029, the prospect of real rapprochement with the EU is now pushed back into the middle distance. The EU would not countenance any likelihood of our storming out again. So there is no prospect of further EU membership until at the earliest the mid 2030s.
However savage this may make us feel, frustrated anger is not the way. Let us look for retribution.
*
It is the dreariest certainty after any election in which the governing party gets a drubbing that the leader will tell the frustrated electorate: “We’re listening”. Then things will go on just as before, because the government knows best.
So sure enough, after last week’s results Keir Starmer told us: “I hear you…”. And then No.10 announces there will be no change in policy. As the Arabic proverb goes: “The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.”
*
One of the outcomes from the government’s refusal to change policy on cutting benefits is that they face a revolt of what is thought to be 42 of their MPs. Regular readers of this diary will not be surprised to learn that one of the region’s MPs known to be among the dissenters is Terry Jermy (SW Norfolk), again listening to the interests of his constituents rather than those of the party whips.
*
To this week’s headlines denouncing Kemi Badenoch, East Anglia Bylines can add our own. It would seem that her response to the much vaunted but always over-sold trade deal with the US was written by AI. Pecksniff has often criticised La Badenoch for her lack of ideas, but according to two experts who work with artificial intelligence, the phrasing and in particular the use of punctuation in her press release attacking the supposed deal point inevitably to that conclusion. So the leader of the opposition is so short of ideas she has to ask a computer.
*
But in the Haughley and Stowupland ward of the Greens-led Mid Suffolk Council, the Conservative candidate has his own idea of how to attract the punters. Rats. According to the East Anglian Daily Times, Kieren Clayton has distributed a leaflet suggesting that a change in the regularity of emptying the bins would lead to swarms of them. His election leaflet shows a large rat in a party hat and the words “at least someone’s happy about it” and “great news for him”.
Stay classy, Kieren. This may not be the most inspired idea, but at least it’s one the computer would probably not have dreamt up.
*
And a hat-tip to colleague JJ Jackson and others who have worked on East Anglia Bylines’ exposures of the goings-on at Thurrock Council. This week one of the characters regularly featured in our investigations, Sean Clerk (formerly the council’s finance chief), has been banned by the Financial Reporting Council from practising for five years.
*
Voters want ambition, optimism, change, hope. We look for any of the progressive parties to begin to tell that story, of a culture of courage in the face of cynical populism, and a recognition of common humanity. The government daren’t tell it, and the Greens and Liberal Democrats have yet to do so. But the voters are giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Yet there is enough in this week’s diary to show how impatient the electorate are for change. We have been disappointed once, last July, but perhaps there is a new optimism now. It is time voters put some muscle into the parties and make clear what we expect of them. They are the MPs; we are the voters. We outrank them.
*
With thanks to Karl Whiteman, Liz Crosbie and Celina Błędowska.
<<< Previous Pecksniff’s Diary
