Reform’s MPs come out of the week well, for all their usual bluster. Driven only by the next headline, oblivious of nuance and looking only to grab headlines about violence against women and girls, none of them bothered to turn up for the Commons debate on the Bill. They might well have done, perhaps, if they had thought of proposing an amendment to the motion, specifying white girls and Pakistanis.
No doubt they were all busy, either hosting their TV programmes or sucking up to wannabe dictators.
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So James McMurdock, the Reform MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock will not have heard himself denounced by new Conservative MP for Huntingdon, Ben Obese-Jecty. Mr Obese-Jecty expresses the view that “Nobody who has served a custodial sentence for attacking a woman should be able to become an MP”.
This should surely be addressed by Mr McMurdock’s party leader, Nigel Farage, (unless of course Elon Musk has installed a replacement by the time of publication).
Mr Farage is known for his high embarrassment threshold, but this may eventually prove too much even for that. (On the previous occasion when he was challenged on Mr McMurdock’s criminal record, by Sky, his only response was to walk away declaring he was going for lunch.)
But Mr McMurdock is an embarrassment that won’t go away, and of course this may be part of the reason why not one Reform MP was present at the debate.
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By the way, this is the second time Pecksniff has had cause to write about Ben Obese-Jecty with some approval. In the event of this causing him embarrassment among his fellow Tory MPs, this diarist can only apologise.
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But we digress. This blatant hypocrisy over violence against women was not Reform’s only wheeze. In little more than a week, Nigel Farage has illustrated how he has so comprehensively made marionettes of the press. First, he claimed Reform has more members than the Conservatives. When Kemi Badenoch refuted the claim, he ludicrously threatened to sue. Then he declared Reform would mount a challenge to Ms Badenoch in North West Essex at the next election, as though they wouldn’t anyway.
So what has actually happened here?
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing. Mr Farage has conjured up three content-free non-stories, all of which have been eagerly devoured by the hacks.
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Chris Mason is the BBC’s political editor, and being a Yorkshireman, discusses politics with the grudging belligerence of a waiter when his customer is disappointed with what is on the menu. Presumably Mr Mason’s by now notorious recent comments on Mr Farage telling a good tale were meant to imply that he has the public eating out of his hand. But of course, this isn’t the case. The public get their news from the hacks, not direct from the politicians. So it is the hacks who are eating out of his hand.
Mr Mason and his colleagues might wish to consider whether this is a comfortable position in which to find themselves.
This hapless interlude was compounded by a near scandalous evening report by BBC News on ‘Pakistani rape gangs’ this week which, if one were uncharitable, could be seen as sensationalist and ill-informed. To this diarist’s eye, it looked as though reporters were badly briefed and not across the facts at all. Times were when the BBC used to take such things seriously. When these champions of press freedom dandle their sons on their knee and are asked: “What did you do in the great Democracy War, Daddy?”, what will they tell them?
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The election of James McMurdock as an MP is altogether a puzzle, however low one’s opinion of one’s fellow man. So whilst musing on this diary, your correspondent found himself browsing through the Basildon press, looking for some explanation as to the mindset of the constituency. One news story might provide the clue. It seems Basildon is about to get its seventh McDonald’s…
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Meanwhile, somewhere in this rat’s nest, Elon Musk (who has the same nuanced grasp of politics as a mollusc) declared that Nigel Farage is not up to the job of leading Reform, which is a bit of a problem, my dears, since Reform is Mr Farage’s personal property. Mr Musk’s preference would be Rupert Lowe, MP for that Byzantium of the east, Great Yarmouth.
Has Mr Lowe been playing hookey behind Fanboy’s back? Comments by Mr Farage on the Musk suggestion did not give the impression he and the boy Lowe are best chums, which must make things difficult when there are only five of them.
By an unhappy coincidence, earlier this week it fell to Mr Lowe to introduce a 10-minute rule bill in the Commons, on behalf of his party. (This manoeuvre has no significance whatever and, readers will be shocked to learn, is merely a way of MPs gaining an easy headline.)
It doesn’t matter what the bill was about – nobody cares – but not one among the Reform MPs had bothered to find out how to do it. The confusion consequent thereon was described by Mr Speaker as “an absolute shambles”. There was not even anybody in the lobbies to count the votes.
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While Reform were busy playing silly buggers, somewhere within No.10 the prime minister would have been wondering how to stop World War Three. Keir Starmer is a rational man, a lawyer who likes order. So finding Messrs Musk and Trump – both arguably certifiable – about to wreak havoc across the globe, probably doesn’t need a diary note to remind Sir Keir there is something he needs to fix.
But how? Donald Trump daily makes clear the manifold advantages of civilisation and refinement, and the problems arising from lacking both. He makes clear his indifference to the rest of the world, and that most certainly includes Britain. In suggesting a possible invasion of Greenland as his own Hegelian lebensraum, he is threatening a fellow member of NATO, and we are after all committed to standing shoulder-to-shoulder with our fellow members. (Post-Johnson, of course, it may not be clear to the rest of the world that Britain has any intention of standing by any commitments whatever.)
And in threatening to annex Canada as the 51st state, the president-elect is doing the same thing again, but in addition is also threatening the sovereignty of His Majesty King Charles, still Canada’s head of state. It is generally assumed that, in these circumstances, His Majesty’s government is as one with the king. Neither position allows for much negotiation with the enemy on the side in order to get a trade deal (though somebody once remarked that no problem is insoluble as long as you have a big enough plastic bag). So whether or not he admits it and in spite of his recent years as an apostate to the EU, the prime minister must recognise that, whichever way you butter it, the EU has become the only game in town.
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The prime minister has made clear of course that, in spite of seeking a “re-set” with the EU, he has no intention of doing anything that might make a re-set possible – other than perhaps agreeing to put them back on No.10’s Christmas card list. As they say: if it waddles like a duck and it quacks like a duck, there is every probability that it’s a duck. And Sir Keir insists there will be no return to the single market, customs union or free movement. Labour has become a committed Brexit party.
One Labour MP told Pecksniff this week: “I’m amazed how little Brexit gets mentioned – by anyone”. The fact of its not even being mentioned is depressing, of course, though one has to accept there are good reasons at the moment.
Still, a spark of recognition of the mess we’re in wouldn’t come amiss from someone up there. To whom can we look? Whatever happened to the boys of the old brigade? What tragedy struck the land of hope and glory? Where, beyond the saloon bar of the Muckrakers Arms, can one look for hope?
To quote Falstaff: “There lives not three good men unhanged in England, and one of them is fat and grows old.”
In modesty, Pecksniff denies one and would fight over the other.
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Twenty-twenty hindsight is a wonderful thing. It is a pity however that we seem to breed politicians who are only at their best looking in the rear-view mirror. This week Canadian PM Justin Trudeau announced his resignation. In doing so he admitted he wishes he had introduced proportional representation. It would have meant parties would have had to spend more time appealing to those beyond their tribal loyalties, he says, so as to win their favours as second or third choice. Hence: no extremism.
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As we have observed before in this diary, Nick Timothy (W Suffolk) is by common consent not a pleasant man. He writes a column in the Daily Telegraph, often described as a rant, whose main aim is to excoriate those forces which he imagines caused the pig’s rectum of his own making when advising Theresa May. It seems he may have gone too far, however, and his employers were forced this week to publish an apology.
“We previously reported that in the last parliament, the government issued more than 1.3 million humanitarian visas… and saw a further 1.2 million asylum seekers contribute to the record rate of immigration in Britain. The figures stated were incorrect and have been removed from the article. We apologise for the error.”
Indeed they were incorrect, apparently figments of Mr Timothy’s foetid imagination. The real figures were 350,000 asylum claims, and 500,000 for safe/humanitarian routes.
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One of Pecksniff’s prized intelligencers also moonlights for Private Eye, and is responsible for two of their stories in ‘Rotten Boroughs’ this week. Both concern Lucy Nethsingha, the Liberal Democrat leader of Cambridgeshire County Council. It seems that, according to the register of interests, she made donations to the campaigns of two LibDem candidates at the general election, both of whom won and – we make no allegation of a quid pro quo – both according to Ms Nethsingha then went on to offer her employment at Westminster.
Only one is in our region: Ian Sollom (St Neots and Mid Cambs). The other is somewhere in the west country. But Mr Sollom realised this might look a trifle unfortunate and has since disowned the suggestion. Ms Nethsingha is quoted by the Eye as admitting she had “perhaps been a little premature” in her announcement.
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The second Eye piece also involves Lucy Nethsingha, and a wholly owned council housebuilding enterprise called This Land. The company owes £113.8 million to the council and has only repaid £2.3 million in the past three years. But the council’s resources committee, chaired by Ms Nethsingha, agreed in closed session to lend the company a further £6.3 million. The verb which comes to mind to describe This Land is ‘languishing’. It would probably not be inappropriate for the council to explain its reasoning, but making decisions in closed session does rather suggest this is not what they have in mind.
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In yet another week of idiocies, we can always rely on ‘Lettuce’ Liz Truss to come up with a doozy. Usually, your diarist is able to ignore her increasingly hysterical attempts to appear still relevant. But this week she hit upon the wheeze of threatening Keir Starmer for defamation. He will insist on declaring that she crashed the economy, when everybody knows – well, Ms Truss claims – that it was an undefined entity called ‘the blob’. So she found some lawyers who agreed to send him a ‘cease and desist’ letter: a warning.
Such a letter however usually includes more specifics about what is threatened. This letter suggests none. Not really surprising, since the idea of suing the PM is nonsense. The law firm has previously tweeted about their “creativity” in litigation cases.
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Thanks go to Karl Whiteman and Andrew Rowson.
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