“All we’ve done is make a bigger problem for ourselves in January, and all for a policy that’s probably illegal. No10 has f*cked it, totally f*cked it”. Thus spake one backbench Tory MP during the rigmarole of the Rwanda vote this week. Dear reader, he spoke for many more than would admit it. If a definition of madness is to repeat the same thing ad infinitum and expect a different outcome, then that sound you can hear is of white coats flapping.
The Rwanda policy was always mad, but the Sunak government have retreated into an increasingly tiny bunker in which all that matters is to get something right. Anything will do, but since they’ve invested everything on stopping the boats, that’s the policy they cling to.
With every new initiative the polls show their public credibility on the refugees issue falls further. But then they come up with yet another, and another, and each one always madder and more expensive than the one before. It cannot work on any level, and Rishi Sunak knows that. He just doesn’t know what else to do. A clever man might have deliberately engineered a Commons defeat on the vote, so he could have resigned on a point of honour and left them to get on with it.
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One of those who knew it was mad from the outset was the man now tasked with making it work, the new home secretary James Cleverly, MP for Braintree. Even he is sure it won’t work. We know that because, before it landed on his plate, he called the idea of trying to export our refugees to Rwanda “batshit”. But Mr Cleverly is not a man to let an insane, unjust, illegal, unworkable and hideously expensive scheme go by the board just because it’s wrong on every level. He wants to be seen as a safe pair of hands, a man who will act in the narrow interests of the party whatever the criticism. (And of course, bugger the interests of the country.)
Mr Cleverly was even good enough to write to your correspondent, extolling the plan. He points out that Labour have voted against the plan “80 times”; though surely it is far more telling that the Conservatives have tried 80 times to get the batshit idea to work and are still no closer to achieving it. But one would have to admit, Mr Cleverly does not lack chutzpah. After making a further series of blatantly untrue claims, on behalf – let’s repeat it – of a plan he thinks is crazy, he then asks if your diarist will “chip in” fifteen quid to pursue it even further.
Methinks an investment of the same sum in Old Unprintable at the Muckrakers will produce a much more immediate and certainly more satisfying outcome.
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But if this lot aren’t bad enough, there are a couple of new conspiracy theories doing the rounds. Either of them would shove us through the looking glass.
Nadine Dorries repeats one which fits her schtick. As you will have guessed, it involves the undead, Boris Johnson, who many MPs are supposed to want to rise again to become their leader. But “party bosses” – somebody presumably higher than the cabinet, shadowy figures conniving in the darkness – are prepared to thwart the idea by having David Cameron “imposed” on the party. (You will note that nowhere in this is there any consideration for the poor bloody voter.)
But David Cameron is now Lord Cameron, and the last prime minister to play the role from the House of Lords was Lord Salisbury in 1902. There is a good reason for this, as Alec Douglas Home accepted when he renounced his own peerage in 1963: it is impossible for a democracy to accept being ruled by somebody the voters cannot eject. Nor is one of our lordships likely to have the common touch.
There is an anecdote about Lord Salisbury. One day he happened to see in a jeweller’s window a set of silver napkin rings. “What on earth are they?” he demanded of his equerry. “They are used to keep napkins between meals for those too poor to have them laundered between meals, your grace,” the man explained. Salisbury was aghast. “I cannot conceive of such penury!”
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Incidentally, the other conspiracy theory naturally also includes installing Boris Johnson as prime minister (by some means yet to be explained), with as his deputy Nigel Farage, who you will note isn’t even in the Conservative Party. Again, neither is an MP (though in the case of Mr Farage, not for the want of trying). Presumably the thinking behind this, if we can term it thus, is that the punters would rush to embrace these gentlemen – even though their own popularity must be in some doubt. But then, one can’t help thinking that those fanciful MPs don’t really envisage the people being in any way involved in elevating these two shining examples of public service to this vaunted office. Democracy, you see, does not figure in any form in whatever plans today’s Conservative Party espouses.
We have to realise that no politician could possibly have proposed these things in any period but our own.
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While we are on the subject of conspiracy theories, we might turn back to happenings at Thetford Town Council, where a group of locals decided that apparently the civic monthly meetings were actually a cover for something called the New World Order, led by Bill Gates. (Hiding nano-capsules in Covid jabs to enslave us, all that stuff.) The improbability of Bill Gates choosing Thetford as the focus of his attempts to take over the world was lost on them; and, it has to be said, on some Thetfordians.
One of their number was elected last year to the council. But they have set up their own ‘sovereign council’ – undemocratic, of course – and are busy trying to ban some books and sex education in schools, and certainly any mention of gay sex. Their latest success they claim is having Tesco remove from their shelves a sweet called ‘Candy Kittens’, which the group insists encourages children to fornication.
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It is interesting to note that, on the Rwanda vote, the government had the support of five of its former MPs who, for one dubious reason or another, have all had the whip suspended. One of them is from our region – Matt Hancock (West Suffolk).
So, if he didn’t vote for the Rwandan transports because the whips told him to, what was his motivation? What’s in it for him? For all the sins of which he is accused, Mr Hancock has never been on the xenophobic wing of his party – more the vainglorious wing. He is another Glendower: “I can call the spirits from the vasty deep!” he boasts to his friends. Mr Hancock has always been a little man who want to be a big man, and showing off to his friends and those whose social position he covets has always been his greatest political motivation.
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Here he differs from Liz Truss (SW Norfolk). She has always sought excitement, and along the way she became encouraged by the realisation that schmoozing among the movers and shakers also tended to lead to an enticingly prosperous lifestyle. She has never put much effort into her top jobs and was notorious as foreign secretary both for her alarming personal faux pas and for her boredom with detail. (Why read through this official report when there is a drinks party in the next room?)
She must have been among the most surprised of us all at just how easy it was to dupe an entire political party’s membership into mistaking witless cliché for Churchillian rhetoric. She is bored by detail, and probably rather scared by it, which is probably why she deviated from economic orthodoxy to crash the pound. She was afraid she might not understand it. Easier just to make up as new set of rules and dare the world to take her on.
But of course, that’s what the world did, and Ms Truss was given the bum’s rush. Since then she has been polishing her credentials as the champion of the free market, as that is where the money is. Though there is still lots in public service if you know where to look. She is being offered a prime minister’s expenses for life of £115,000 a year, for running her private office. (Me neither.) This is for the few weeks she spent breaking our economy and costing every household thousands. The reason Ms Truss comes up in this week’s diary is that there is presently some conjecture as to whether she would have the gall to accept it.
As they used to say, dear reader: ‘Answers on a postcard, please…’
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Before the Rwanda vote, Rishi Sunak entertained a group of some of his more troublesome backbenchers to breakfast. One might have expected them to burst out of No.10 like the Nazgul riding out of Barad-Dur in Lord of the Rings. But no. They mostly emerged rather downcast. But the boy Tom Hunt (Ipswich) positively scuttled away, looking (as one observer remarked) as though he was making off with the cutlery.
Mr Hunt cuts an increasingly forlorn figure. The only song he knows is the one about refugees and small boats, and he can’t find anybody any more who knows the words. One of Pecksniff’s most assiduous spies whispers discreetly in your diarist’s ear about a recent public meeting called by Mr Hunt. It follows a model to similar meetings held by Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal).
One voter turned up to the gig, in a church hall, to be turned away curiously because he didn’t live in that particular ward. Another was refused because he didn’t have an invitation. All of which suggests that Mr Hunt is being a teensy bit selective about what constitutes a public meeting. (Its purpose lies in the name, really.) But then, Mr Hunt has never been very good with the public.
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Whatever is Norfolk County Council doing over its devolution plans? They have agreed to a devolution deal which will see a new and directly elected mayoral-type figure take over much of the power of the council. But councillors are still unhappy about it. There is little money devolved to the new regime, and there remains an ongoing wrangle over just who or what the new figurehead should be. As usual with Norfolk County Council, personal rivalries and bruised egos lie behind it.
Conservative councillors fear a May 2024 ballot, since they think they will get hammered, and if it coincides with a general election they know they will be hammered. Also, many simply don’t like the proposals, and in particular the power it seems to confer to one or two individuals at the centre. There are lots of ‘twin hatters’ in Norfolk – councillors who sit on more than one authority, and they reckon the power of the lower tier, the districts, is bound to be weakened. So we have a number of disgruntled Tories who see their positions being undermined by the rivalry between a few individuals to whom – if the plans go ahead – much of the power will accrue.
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And still the disputes go on in the Ely and East Cambs constituency. The seat is presently held by Lucy Frazer, a Conservative, but some polls make it a three-way fight. Labour and the Liberal Democrats in the seat resemble a punch and judy show, constantly hurling abuse and accusations at each other. Pecksniff has reported on it before: the general argument seems to be from Labour that the LibDems are misleading the voters; and from the LidDems that Labour are just piqued because in the district council the LibDems hold sway and Labour aren’t even represented.
This is the perfect parliamentary seat to watch the effect of tactical voting: if the two opposition parties came to an agreement, they could easily dislodge Ms Frazer. But of course that won’t happen. The two parties hate each other, probably more than they dislike the local Tories. This is not the place to look for conciliatory debate.
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This will be the last Mr Pecksniff’s Diary before the new year. Your correspondent will spend much of his time in consultation with wise men of his acquaintance, so expect 2024 to open with an astonishing array of predictions for the year ahead.
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