This week’s big event, the latest in a series of increasingly implausible catastrophes, was of course the budget. It has been well covered both here on EAB and elsewhere, so Pecksniff will not drag readers through the depressing detail yet again. But there was an illuminating observation, reported in the i newspaper, on the announcement from one of the region’s MPs, Charles Walker (Broxbourne). To set it in context, Mr Walker no doubt feels he can loosen his stays in this indiscreet way because he is retiring at the next general election, and leaving them to it.
Even that cynical analysis may be overly optimistic. It seems that Tory support among the under 50s and those who don’t own their own home outright has collapsed.
So where do they turn next? Are there enough elderly xenophobes and racists in the country to give them a majority? Pecksniff is endlessly pessimistic about the British public, but it seems unlikely.
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One MP lacking Mr Walker’s honesty is Vicky Ford (Chelmsford).
She was interviewed by the BBC and claimed the UK’s post-economic growth exceeded that of any of our economic rivals. Then she was presented with a chart which showed exactly the opposite, and in fact that the UK’s performance has been dire.
So here is Ms Ford deliberately trying to mislead the voters and being caught out. But she presses on in desperation as she realizes the full enormity of her embarrassment. “We have to look forward!” she pleads, anything but look back to the fact that her party has spent the last 12 years destroying this country under the contemptible claim of patriotism. And she is paid £80,000 a year to say this stuff.
Ladies and gentlemen of Chelmsford, I give you your MP.
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We are told that, having blown £30 billion of our money on a three-day vanity project, Liz Truss (South West Norfolk) has decided to reinvent herself as a caring constituency MP. The shine will be taken off the plan for her voters, however, with the knowledge that once again they are being taken for a ride. Ms Truss has had 12 years to establish herself with her constituency, but has instead treated their problems with brutal indifference. Any pretence at this stage would only confirm that they have been allotted a new role as grateful peasants in the new grand project to Make Liz Truss Great Again.
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Liz Truss will have an early opportunity to hone her credentials among voters.
“Now she has more time”, as they put it, activists for the tumbledown Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Kings Lynn are hoping she will take their cause rather more seriously. Presently the roof is crumbling and being held up by thousands of props.
It is such a pity that she didn’t turn her attention to the problem a few weeks ago, when she was in a position to do something about it, rather than when she has relinquished power and become a non-person among her fellow Tory MPs.
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We remain on the subject of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. This would be a most unfortunate time to have to face a by election if you were a Tory. Especially if you not only have to face the voters’ wrath over the defenestration of the economy but also some huge local scandal. So it is with an attempt at keeping a straight face that Pecksniff has to advise readers that there is indeed a by election in the offing – in Kings Lynn, home to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
What is more, the sitting Tory was forced to quit in disgrace having ignored his local residents and missed the last six months’ meetings. Reports from rival party canvassers claim voters are declaring they will change the voter of a lifetime to get the Tories out. The election is on 1 December. Bring popcorn.
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During their campaign, the hospital’s supporters have made valiant attempts at speaking to the health secretary, whoever it happens to be that day. The present incumbent is Steve Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire), a man who held the same post for two months during the summer, was sacked, then reinstated a month later. Mr Barclay is not what would be understood as a people person. He sometimes exhibits a bovine incomprehension when confronted by the public, as though he has no idea who they are or why they are bothering him. So naturally he is reluctant actually to meet with the QEH protestors. But they are determined, and undeterred. There is a cunning plan. The meeting will take place, one way or another.
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James Wild (North West Norfolk) is getting clattered over another health issue: the lack of dentistry in Norfolk. At some point he presumably decided he should fight back against his detractors and, making the absurd mistake of believing his own government’s propaganda, promised that any day you wouldn’t be able to move in the county for NHS dentists. When a practice actually opened in Kings Lynn, he was unwise enough to trumpet it as the first of many.
Dear reader, if you are of a regrettably cynical turn of mind, you may already have concluded this was not to be. Just so. It was the first and last, and after two weeks it closed its books and accepted no more new patients. Mr Wild busied himself with deleting his previous declarations. This week his local paper, the Lynn News, explained that its readers had been driven to carrying out their own fillings.
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Pecksniff’s spies pass on information from around the region on the temper of the voter. As any politico will tell you, it’s always an error to treat voters as the lumpen proletariat, all thinking as one with the same opinion trending in very part of every seat. But local party canvassers are the people with their ears to the ground, and know best what their neighbours are thinking.
It seems there may be some limited recognition of the prime minister’s part in the furlough scheme, but there has been no bounce. The furlough plan gave away billions, but it remains to be seen how voters set that against Mr Sunak’s plan to take it all away again, and then some. The issues coming up on the doorstep at the moment reflect fears for what lies around the corner, and how they can survive the winter. When those fears become facts, the voters are hardly likely to think any more kindly of him. There are also hesitant suggestions that there may be a racist response against him in some quarters. Certainly he is not loved, merely tolerated by his party.
Liz Truss had no bounce either, and was already held in contempt by the public at the time of her visit to the palace – as Pecksniff told the Tories endlessly. The last such new leader bounce came with Boris Johnson. The party still only reluctantly embraces the apostasy of acknowledging his failures and the amoral narcissism which led to them. The same people who declared that he should go are now, from reports, the very people who claim he has been badly treated.
But there looks no way back for either Mr Johnson or Ms Truss. And the pressing question will shortly be whether it is plausible that Mr Sunak either can lead his party into the next election.
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Haverhill Town Council added its fury to the uproar over the behaviour of Matt Hancock, who increasingly looks like another has-been. Interviews with his voters on the streets of Newmarket found little support, and one astute woman echoed what Pecksniff has been pointing out for the past few months: “If you haven’t got a horse he’s not interested”.
It remains to be seen though whether those who do have horses are still in reciprocal love with Mr Hancock. He was of interest when he was in the cabinet at the heart of decision making, with a huge budget to reinforce his sense of power. But he was never ‘one of us’, and now he has no further value. He has returned to his place below the salt.
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It is worth returning, with unapologetic bitterness, to the PPE scandal – not least because the news that millions of pounds worth of unusable material hidden across Suffolk was broken to the world by EAB.
Much of it was unusable when bought, the rest had only a limited shelf life which is now close to expiring. It was bought at prices often hugely above the going rate, presumably to make sure there was a thick enough cut to spread among the friends of the government. Much is being burnt, at the rate of 580 lorryloads each month. But what hasn’t been burnt is being flogged off for whatever it will fetch.
It fell to junior health minister Will Quince (Colchester) to announce to the Commons that £13 million worth of PPE has been auctioned for just £400,000. Part of it was bought from Full Support Healthcare, who in all received £1.85 billion from the Department of Health. Its owners recently bought a £30 million villa in the Caribbean. Mr Quince announced the fire sale wearing his usual rictus grin. It suggests the dawning suspicion that somebody has pinned an obscene notice on his back.
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We haven’t mentioned Therese Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) yet. (Shurely shome mishtake – Ed) Given her new position, naturally when one thinks of Dr Coffey one thinks of sewage. As we know, there are thousands of illegal sewage dumpings by the water companies, with one reckoned to splurge into our rivers every two and a half minutes. Every river in the country is polluted, some to dangerous levels. Dr Coffey told the Commons this week that meeting the water companies is not one of her priorities. Meanwhile the Office for Environmental Protection are not so sanguine and there is talk of taking formal enforcement action against the government. In a former post, Dr Coffey had been responsible for overseeing a funding cut to river protection.
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Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) has so often almost made it into the diary, only to be thwarted by somebody even more toadying and supine than himself. He is an exemplar of the modern Tory MP. For example, in an attempt to appear as though he actually listens to his constituents’ concerns, Mr Mayhew declared his enthusiasm on Instagram for the arrival of Liz Truss as prime minister, and then asked for the public’s comments. Sadly he had to delete them as they arrived, since they were not quite the responses he was looking for. Then when Ms Truss fell, in an embarrassed acknowledgement of his catastrophic lack of judgement he deleted the post. Now, it seems, Rishi Sunak is the man who can lead us to the promised land.
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But we learn about the dentistry debate through the good offices of Tom Hunt via a publication entitled (with teeth aching predictability) ‘Tom4Ipswich’. The remarkable thing about this publication is that nowhere does it give a single hint that the boy Tom is – whisper it soft – a Conservative … It seems he is so aghast at the state of his party – and worse, the state of the country because of his party – that he dare not mention who or what he represents.
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With so much absurdity about, some can get overlooked. This one however is a doozie, and a perfect example of the increasingly anally retentive attitude of East Suffolk Council planners. Neighbours have had protracted arguments over installing a new staircase, now resolved. But the planners’ latest demand is to know what kind of stair carpeting they will choose…
We confidently await their views on the plans for curtaining, and whether it will really go with the Breakfast Room Green of the front hall.
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With special thanks this week to Una ni Conin.
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