“Along the cool sequestered vale of life, They kept the noiseless tenor of their way” – Gray’s Elegy
So have lived all those faithful Liberal Democrat delegates, when each year conference was like Salad Days in all its carefree innocence. In a display of reckless bravura, the leader would exhort his or her disciples to vanishingly unlikely victories. The oddest was Jo Swinson’s belief she was about to become prime minister, but the most revered version remains David Steel’s “One more heave!”
Until now.
This year though, they may once again have been washed up on that elysian shore that is Brighton, wearing as eau de cologne the distinctive smell of dining rooms in small private hotels. But they now have 72 MPs, their highest tally since 1923, and it seems they have a purpose at last. After sharing several miserable years of shameful funk with Labour and months of showing the occasional ankle, the party of Europe at last dares declare it publicly again. Ed Davey may look like a Dickensian villain, but any past excoriations for cowardice in the face of the enemy may be commuted. The Liberal Democrats want to be in the single market again.
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“Ed Davey put on spot as Lib Dem members raise hands to demand UK rejoins EU,” gasped the Sunday Express, three days before he acceded to their sentiment. Wouldn’t it be nice, dear reader, if we thought Mr Davey was swayed by the opinions of his members? But we can be sure his speech was already prepared. More than that, if the leadership didn’t at last share the views of its members, would they ever have allowed the question to be put to the audience?
In fact, one is tempted to wonder whether the question might have been deliberately put up by the leadership, as a neat taster for Mr Davey’s speech.
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We can be sure that Labour delegates will not be offered the same opportunity to express their views from the floor, even though (or perhaps especially because) there has always been a huge pro-Europe majority among the membership, albeit cowed into silence over the past deceitful years. But Pecksniff has pointed out in previous diaries that, with a majority of labour MPs now ingenues, the power of the whips isn’t what it was, for all that they try. (See below.)
We can be sure that Europe will appear nowhere in the conference agenda, but the Starmer administration has already lost some of its gloss through its boorish high-handedness. Backbenchers and members might have toed the line, giving the prime minister a break, but after the whips’ thuggishness they may have lost some of their clout. It is not impossible that a conference expected to be jubilant at regaining power after 14 long years may turn out to be less obeisant and more radical than anticipated.
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“Ministers know Starmer’s party have much to celebrate in Liverpool,” declares the Guardian. True, but they also have much scope for getting it cataclysmically wrong. The government’s first couple of months haven’t exactly been marked by their sensitivity and grasp of nuance.
This needs delicacy, not marching into the conference in pit boots. This diary has criticised Labour for offering no optimism, so by all means bring it on, but there is a difference between optimism and hubris. This conference needs to be all about the country, not the party. Labour won with a huge majority of 158, certainly something to celebrate, but with a vote share of only 34%. The comparison of those figures should give them pause for thought.
One of the wise men at the Muckrakers this week was comparing the mood of the country at the first Blair election – one of expectation and relish – with the attitude on the doorstep this time. Voters just wanted the Tories out. There was little enthusiasm for who would replace them.
There was anger at the state of our politics, and too much blundering ineptitude since 4 July – especially, of course, over winter fuel payments – will have done little to assuage that temper. So let us hope for honest optimism for the country, but none of that self-congratulatory bumptiousness that Labour does so well.
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Hardly had Pecksniff been put to bed last week – one uses the term journalistically, of the column, rather than implying your diarist might have been guilty of overdoing the Dionysian rites – than one was drawn into a conversation with the aforementioned wise men on the question of the winter fuel payment.
They were incredulous at the way the government had handled it, but it was noticeable that there was little anger. These are men (and women) immured by long years of political disappointment, and for whom a “tough decision” is whether to go for a pint of Old Unprintable or the throwing bitter. They were unanimous in their bewilderment. “Aren’t they supposed to be good at politics?” was the general tenor.
Good point. But the prime minister’s hard man is predictably a Glaswegian, Pat McFadden, who only knows one way. In this he is reminiscent of a previous member of Labour’s Glaswegian hard men, John Reid, who after leaving a particularly bloody meeting – bodies everywhere – was heard to mutter to himself: “Ah must get more in touch with mah feminine side”.
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It was quite possibly Pat McFadden who was behind the threatening letter to those disobliging backbenchers who absented themselves from the winter fuel payment vote. The letter was described by one as “feudal”, and it seems to have been crass, ill-judged and politically cloth-eared. Those MPs are being threatened with punishment for, incontrovertibly, doing what they were elected to do: which is, what they think is best for their constituents. Instead of doing what the whips tell them to do in the interests of the party leadership.
Nowhere in Bagehot is there any reference to the primary duty of MPs being to do what the whips tell them.
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Incidentally, Pecksniff has read one explanatory letter from a new Labour MP to a constituent on the winter fuel payment, which uses the word “tough” twice in two sentences. George at the Muckrakers claims he knows of a similar letter which uses it three times. There are rumours of a four. Pecksniff would be interested to hear of any more new MPs prepared to debase their principles in this way. Is there a five?
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Pecksniff has written previously about how Labour’s position on Brexit seems likely to have been formed through the phenomenon of groupthink. Some of the discontent already so apparent within No.10 and the government also seems likely to have groupthink as its cause. The thing about it is that the very blinkers and closed minds to other options which bind the group’s reasoning also exclude others. So some of the prime minister’s key cabinet members were and probably still are excluded from decision-making. Not really a way to appear collegiate.
Then there is Starmer’s benefactor, anxious for him to maintain the appurtenances of his station by settling all his tailor’s bills. What can this mean? It was always accepted that a gentleman paid his tailor last, but surely when Sir Keir trousers £167,391 each year he can afford to buy his own suits?
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Those donors, eh? The prime minister is in hot water for allowing one to pay the cost of his wardrobe, whereas the Conservatives have long since given up pussyfooting. Money still appears to be the party’s primary raison d’etre. Candidates in their leadership contest have a cap of £400,000 in their campaign spending. Where on earth can such a sum be frittered away? Perhaps they entrust it to Dido Harding. But my dear, they are also expected to raise £50,000 for the party, just to enter the race. No questions on policy or principles: just how much moolah can you bring in?
James Cleverly (Braintree) is perfectly aware of what his party requires of him.
He was quizzed by Laura Kuenssberg on whether, as leader, he would continue to take money from Frank Hester, who said Diane Abbott makes you want to hate all black women and should be shot. In fact he was asked four times, but declined to deny that he would.
Mr Cleverly is a man whose star has risen far, and to ensure that it has not yet reached its apogee he has been prepared to find himself in positions which a more fastidious man might choose to eschew.
Katherine Whitehorn once remarked that: “It is a pity, as my husband says, that more politicians are not bastards by birth instead of vocation”.
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“So what’s that Daniel Zeichner been up to then, eh?” I hear you cry. “He’s minister of something. What can we blame him for?”
Indeed he is, and it just so happens that this week the MP for Cambridge looms into range of our artillery. Mr Zeichner is the minister for food security and rural affairs, and his parliamentary colleague Clive Lewis (Norwich S) points out a Guardian headline on Thursday… “Revealed: Far higher pesticide residues allowed on food since Brexit”.
“A textbook example of what Brexit was always about,” Mr Lewis points out, with some heat. “Deregulation. Profitability. Exploitation. Defra needs to act and quick.”
So it’s down to Dan to do the business. Now Mr Zeichner is a popular man. It is difficult to find an unkind word spoken of him. He is highly thought of. So no doubt that glower presently hurtling down the outside lane of the A11 from Norwich to Cambridge will not be needed. We shall however scrutinise Mr Zeichner’s doings for the right result.
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That is to say, we shall scrutinise Daniel Zeichner as closely as we may, though that may be difficult – as his wife has discovered. Her husband was formerly a shadow environment minister, and the good Mrs Zeichner was used to chatting to her husband about what her husband was up to during his day. But things have changed now he is in government. To the good lady’s bemusement, we understand, his schedule is covered by the Official Secrets Act. She is now no longer allowed to know.
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The reason why Nigel Farage doesn’t have a Clacton constituency office becomes clear this week. He doesn’t need one. With his usual braggadocio, he announced he has no intention of meeting his constituents face-to-face.
Readers will recall his contemptuous remark to The Times: “Do I want to spend every Friday for the next five years in Clacton?” He went on to explain that he wouldn’t be the usual kind of MP. And indeed he is not. It is not usual, for example, for MPs to imply that those constituents with problems to bring to their MP are likely to be potential murderers.
On Thursday he told LBC: “Am I allowing the public to flow through the door with knives in their pockets? No, I’m not.”
Perhaps wondering whether he might have gone too far, he then added that he might begin surgeries “when parliament allows me”. So the fear of murder is immediately displaced by the implication that he would be prepared to take his life in his hands every Friday, only those bureaucrats in Westminster won’t let him.
Only, anybody who has had dealings with the House of Commons knows that the authorities fastidiously avoid telling MPs what to do, and high in their priorities is to protect the sanctity of the close relationship between MPs and their voters. And they have no record of it.
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It is a matter of regret that this diary is unable presently to offer much in the way of diatribes or approval of the performance of our local MPs. But since their election, for the first couple of weeks they were trying to find the lavatories and waiting to be given an office. Then they had to employ a whole new team to deal with their work. About then parliament swanned off on recess, and as soon as they were back they were whisked away to the party conferences.
So actually, they have hardly started the day job yet. Once the dust has settled and the blood has congealed after the Labour conference, things should prove more promising.
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With thanks to Clare Sansom, Karl Whiteman, James Porter and Sarah Patey.
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