This week, a political journalist called Marie Le Conte addressed the British media and their failure to hold to account the chancers of the right. It happens, she suggests, because “in your speeches and your national columns, the wishes of the people, however unrealistic, dangerous and spoiled, should be indulged at all costs, meaning any mistake they make cannot be pinned on you.”
This happens, she says, because this soi-disant elite “do not have the answers, and they are only too well aware of that. Instead of trying to find them, they are choosing to let themselves be carried by the current”.
These days, our political and media elite are interchangeable, part of the problem. Neither have the answers. But it seems the public are the only ones taking this alarming drift away from stable democracy seriously. Politicians often have a habit of dismissing talk of democratic renewal by suggesting it bores the public. But actually, it is they who have no clue what to do about it, so pretend it is of no importance.
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The threat of rapid transition to globalisation and the ironic disconnectivity imposed by IT has been disorientating. It is easy to draw parallels with the rise of fascism in Europe during the 1930s – too easy, perhaps, but that isn’t to say that history isn’t relevant. The public were disoriented then too. During both periods, opinion was and is led by agents simplificateurs: party leaders who brazenly promise simple but competing policies to different audiences – those same policies which Ms Le Conte points out are left unchallenged by the media. Little wonder then that those audiences are gullible enough to vote for their own demise.
Perhaps democracy can no longer thrive in an age of unfettered and unfiltered mass communication. It undermines the structures that democracy has to rely on, and places no particular value on either truth or reason.
Last week, Reform won almost half the votes in a local election, from a standing start. But the turn-out was only 18%. So four out of five voters were too angry or confused to vote for anybody. Nationally, Reform cannot muster a majority when the voters take the election seriously. But democracy has been devalued in the eyes of the voters because their politicians too often lack honesty and ideas.
And let us remember: neither Fascists or Nazis needed a majority when they first entered government in the 1930s. They were both minorities, but facing parliaments that lacked both the courage and the will to oppose them.
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Let us return to the issue of the media and “power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot though the ages”, as Stanley Baldwin put it. (And that was back in the 1930s too.) This week, the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason listed what the government could possibly do to improve the economy, but somehow contrived not to mention the EU.
In this, he was only following the tried and tested formula of supporting the status quo, as established by Sir John Reith, who laid down the principles of the BBC. But this daunting figure was not quite as morally incorruptible as he is portrayed.
When John Reith wrote his application to lead the British Broadcasting Company to its director, Sir Richard Noble, he added the magic words: “I think you know my people”. Magic indeed. In his diary, Mr Reith wrote of the interview:
“Sir William came out to get me smiling in a confidential way… The fact is, I hadn’t the remotest idea as to what broadcasting was and I hadn’t troubled to find out… I think they had more or less made up their minds that I was the man before they saw me.”
Dear reader, I believe he was right. They had. The man who set up the BBC had not a clue what it was for, but was given the job because of who he knew. His face fitted. The principles on which this paragon of virtue founded it were to avoid frightening the horses, and to make clear that the audience were all devout monarchists without the option. These principles are what guide the organisation to this day, only these days the BBC are terrified that they might no longer know what constitutes the status quo so how not to frighten the horses. Mr Mason only knows that mention of the EU might start a stampede.
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As Keir Starmer continues his pretence at prevarication between the US and EU, he tells us the choice is misleading. “It’s not as simple as that,” he says.
Every week this diary is upbraided for not taking Sir Keir’s efforts seriously, even though every week we sympathise with his difficulties. But in some ways the choice really is simple, since sitting on the fence is not only uncomfortable, but only reinforces Europe’s opinion of us as ‘perfidious Albion’. We are not to be trusted.
Even the PM’s attempts to pose the dilemma reveals the truth. Government ministers constantly talk up the prospects of a trade mesalliance with fascist America, whilst refusing to contemplate publicly anything of the sort with the EU. Do tell, Sir Keir: what are we and Europe supposed to deduce from that?
On one hand we have a tyrant who makes clear he cares nothing for Britain, the leader of a fading world power whose influence (under which we cower) will be corrupted and gone within the next decade. On the other is Europe. of which we are a part and always have been, whose culture and history are in our DNA. Europe might well dearly love to be able to invite us back, surprisingly, and within the EU we would have influence (unlike with the USA) and in some aspects the leadership which apparently we crave.
Only they can’t. Not while we think it’s shrewd to play them off against America, thus demonstrating the very transactional attitude which made us such uncomfortable partners before. We still refuse to recognise or welcome our obviously shared values and morality, a long-term relationship towards a shared prosperity.
We used to be considered such a classy bunch. But now, we always look for the quick buck, the something fallen off the back of a lorry, the what’s-in-it-for us, the Del Boys of Europe.
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Perhaps Labour’s problem is that whatever doubts we may have entertained during the months before the last election, in spite of ourselves we still expected more than Labour could reasonably deliver. But on the other hand, what irks so many is not what they have managed to achieve, but what their professed beliefs are. In too many cases there seems a chasm between what we thought we knew of Labour’s principles and those they profess now. Unapologetically, in fact sometimes proudly, they seem to want to be seen as being more right-wing than Reform.
So there must come a time when we realise finally that Labour can no longer claim to be the kind of progressive party that millions were longing for. In that case, we have to look beyond them – or at least beyond Keir Starmer’s version of them – to a party that the progressive centre and left can truly support. The question is not so much whether we have reached that point yet. It’s more who on earth would replace them?
We have four years left before the next general election. Not long. Will Labour’s members rebel against the Starmerist putsch that has taken over their party? “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly,” but holding one’s breath is not recommended.
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What does Kemi Badenoch (NW Essex) do all day? When she was elected leader, her MPs rather half-heartedly hoped she would make a wartime condottiere, but that hope has long since gone the same way as all the others. The party has an unchanging taste for mediocrity in choosing who represents them, which ought perhaps to give them pause for thought but is unlikely to do any such thing.
She has made herself utterly irrelevant, an ideas-free zone wholly reliant on borrowing whatever lunacies they can grab from the Trump juggernaut. Sometimes Pecksniff overlooks to mention her and her party at all. On Thursday she seemed to suggest to BBC Breakfast that it was more important for the country to hear her thoughts than for her to understand public concerns.
Her interviews hardly enhance her reputation: her usual demeanour is that of a chatelaine interviewing a house parlourmaid. She fails to represent her own parliamentary party effectively, let alone the membership or the hopes of the electorate. Whoever thought that the Conservatives, the world’s oldest political party, would just atrophy away in a puddle of irrelevance?
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On Monday we learned that two former prime ministers and three former home secretaries may have to give evidence before an inquiry into conditions at Manston refugee holding-centre in Kent.
They face serious allegations of chaos and unlawful activity. To place this in further context, the former independent inspector of borders and immigration declared that the poorly managed and insanitary conditions he found at Marston were so bad he was rendered speechless. A senior trade union official described it as a “humanitarian crisis on British soil”.
Chris McAndrew via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)
Our particular interest lies in two of the former home secretaries having been MP in this region. Sir Grant Shapps (formerly MP for Welwyn Hatfield) was very briefly in post during October 2022, but he was preceded by Priti Patel (Witham), who was home secretary from 2019 until 2022.
As the BBC explains: “Earlier this year a legal hearing revealed the existence of a document listing all the allegations of potential failures. A High Court judge ordered its disclosure.”
Can’t you just see Ms Patel’s nostrils flaring at the affrontery of holding her to account?
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This week, Byline Times published the latest obloquy on Matt Hancock, formerly of this parish, revealing that he was instrumental in the success of one bid for a PPE contract through the VIP lane, which the Tory government claimed didn’t exist, and did so via his personal email account, which that government claimed had never happened. Mr Hancock had also denied both.
His acquaintance with veracity frequently seems superficial, but then it would be fair to point out that honesty was not a virtue universally practised among the government in which he served. It is not clear whether ruthless moral strength has ever been a quality to which Mr Hancock has ever made claim, and certainly this writer has never heard it said.
Needless to say, the contract was awarded, at a cost of £25 million, without any formal competitive tendering process. To quote Byline Times: “Excalibur, which provided the NHS with tens of millions of pounds worth of unusable equipment during the pandemic, later folded owing over £22 million to DHSC.”
It is not only the depravity of purpose of that government which is so repulsive, it is their vulgarity, at which (as he later went on to demonstrate through his embarrassing attempts at a TV career) Mr Hancock excels.
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