At last, a tentative breakthrough on Brexit. Ed Davey didn’t actually mention the word at the Liberal Democrat spring conference, but for the first time he took a deep breath and spoke of the single market. Yet where was it reported?
Keir Starmer was tackled on it this week and once more firmly ruled out EU membership, customs union and single market. But since this writer has dwelt for so long on his cowardice and that of the LibDems in confronting their nemesis, it is only fair to quote Mr Davey’s speech. Only the Liberal Democrats, he says, have a clear plan “to renew the ties of trust and friendship, to set us on the path back to the single market.
“We know it won’t be easy. We know it won’t be quick… This will take great care and determined effort over years. But if we are to transform Britain’s economic future, we must start today.”
It will be fascinating to see how this small but dramatic change plays out in the polls and on the doorsteps. And, of course, in the Labour Party…
On behalf of the millions who have been waiting for this, may this diarist offer heartfelt thanks and the observation that it’s about bleedin’ time.
*
One shrewd observer makes an interesting point of Ed Davey’s careful use of language. He does not mention Brexit. He mentions the single market. Brexit was a (non-binding, let’s remember) referendum on leaving the EU. The decision to leave the single market was on a vote by MPs. So there can be no nonsense about needing a further referendum in order to rejoin that. Parliament can do it, if it wishes, without any accusation of betraying the voice of the people. And they could probably do it with the wholehearted support of the voters.
*
In recent weeks, we have mused on how a May election might suit Rishi Sunak more than waiting till autumn. It seems he had considered it too. Last weekend one of his team floated the idea to his MPs, who promptly made it known that they would throw him out if he tried it.
Whatever their plan, it was enough to scare the increasingly Norman Wisdom-looking Mr Sunak. Tory leadership contests are coming to resemble some kind of masonic ritual. Everybody is bound by the rules, even if they make them all look ridiculous, nobody understands them and there is the suspicion that they are being made up as they go along.
This week’s YouGov poll would give Labour a 398-seat majority. It seems likely Mr Sunak will hang on till October, hoping for a deus ex machina… But also giving his MPs much more time to replace him or decamp to the Reform Party, whichever is their choice.
*
This week’s news on the falling inflation rate was also handled badly by the government. Rejoicing at a fall in the increase in prices rubs up against the immediate experience of an electorate who are often down on their uppers, looking to pay the mortgage and still have enough left over for the groceries. They will not have been rejoicing. They will have been even more furious at the state we’re in, given that the misplaced hubris of the government is entirely at odds with their own lives.
In public relations, it is recognised that any message has first of all to connect with the audience. Otherwise, whatever it says, it won’t be heard. The government lost connection with their electorate some time ago, so they are not listening. It is in this atmosphere that Tory canvassers on the doorstep will find doors slammed in their face. “Our plan is working!” simply won’t be heard. The government have lost all credibility. There might have been a way back from this point, but it is far too late now.
*
A new ploy of Rishi Sunak’s is to send his MPs home on an extra holiday, so they won’t be hanging around the bars and the tea rooms at Westminster causing mischief and plotting. At this week’s desk-thumping 1922 Committee meeting of Tory backbenchers, he announced his parliamentary party would be on a one-line whip until the Easter recess. Which in practical terms means they are not expected to turn up. If they aren’t muttering together in the bars it’s more difficult to plan the coup. So that buys him until mid-April when the Commons returns.
Imagine: an extra week’s holiday for MPs, announced only a week after Mr Sunak also gave them all a 5% pay rise. One imagines the electorate will be dancing in the streets at hearing of their representatives’ good fortune.
*
What a shambles we are in, and what relief can we expect Labour to bring? Not a lot, judging by the polls. This week we learn that Labour will form an administration with only 37% of their supporters doing so with any enthusiasm. The party’s one redeeming feature is that they will get the Tories out. But once that has been accomplished, they will have very little goodwill on which they can call. At times, they seem to have gone out of their way to ignore and antagonise their supporters. They will be faced with almost insoluble problems and so will desperately need the goodwill of the people, but they have spent the last couple of years squandering it.
*
Labour’s politics were forged in smoke-filled rooms, and whatever the many merits of their members across the country, the party’s leaders can’t bring themselves to look outwards, nor (come to that) trust the membership. Though that’s largely down to Peter Mandelson’s determination to make the party more professional. He had a point. But still, with the exit of Tony Blair, they have yet to grow. Beatrice Webb was a doyenne of socialism – albeit perhaps ballroom socialism – but remarked that Labour’s failure to become a natural party of government was its inability to show statesmanship. We search the week’s events in vain: that observation still holds true.
*
Readers will recall the hoo-ha last weekend over claims that disgruntled Tory backbenchers were preparing a coup to replace Rishi Sunak with Penny Mordaunt as interim leader. This was accompanied by the ritual rebuttals and claims to support him from Kemi Badenoch (Saffron Walden), who actually never lets a day go by without briefing against him.
But Ms Mordaunt absolutely refutes any such suggestion. She too, it turns out, is still staunchly backing Mr Sunak, even though coincidentally pictures of her began turning up on social media, looking sternly like the warrior heroine in some new Netflix sci-fi drama.
Yet on this occasion she may even be telling the truth. What gives cause for believing her is the suggestion that our smirking jack-the-lad from Welwyn Hatfield, Grant Shapps, had concocted the whole allegation. Pecksniff has already reported on how defence chiefs despair at his ever putting time into the day job as defence secretary, when he is so preoccupied in plotting his own grab at the top spot.
Mr Shapps is obviously proud of that smirk. He wears it often. It has a certain quality, like Robert Jenrick’s, which in anybody else would make one wonder whether he can have come by it honestly.
*
All of which reminds one of a remark by the redoubtable Denis Healey, a proper politician. He was a man of countless and often very obvious faults, but he had served in some brutal theatres of war, including being beachmaster at Anzio, and it was clear that after having people endlessly trying to kill him, Westminster politics was very small beer. He was quite prepared to be a plotter himself, and when challenged about his reputation for being a bastard he admitted it was a fair description.
“But there are lots of bastards in politics,” he pointed out. “It’s OK to be a bastard. But you must never be a shit.”
Now, dear reader, how would you describe Ms Badenoch and Mr Shapps?
*
Earlier this week, East Anglia Bylines reported in the politics blog the story of how Councillor Shabina Qayyum of Peterborough had allegedly been abused by staff members of the city’s MP, Paul Bristow. Cllr Qayyum is a Muslim, and in the interests of community cohesion and inter-faith relations, she had written a piece for the Jewish News. It was this that apparently brought the ire of Mr Bristow’s staff.
But the story has moved on since then. During Wednesday’s Peterborough Council meeting, a spat between Cllr Qayyum and the leader of the Conservative group, Cllr Wayne Fitzgerald, ended when the council voted that Cllr Fitzgerald “no longer be heard”. He was accused of disgusting behaviour and of breaching the Nolan principles of public life. So he summoned his group to him and marched out, though only some of them followed him.
Since losing control of the council last year, Cllr Fitzgerald has frequently been accused of being obstructive. He is known to be close to Mr Bristow, who could have done without all this malarkey. At the general election, Electoral Calculus gives his Labour opponent Andrew Pakes an 86% chance of displacing him.
*
Lucy Frazer’s tenure as MP for South East Cambridgeshire has been wholly unremarkable, and with a general election looming she would have preferred to stay out of the embarrassment caused by the incompetence of her fellow Tories on East Cambridgeshire Council.
It seems controversial plans for a retirement village in Bottisham were rejected by the council’s planners, and the decision was upheld on appeal. But the developer submitted another almost identical plan, and this time the planners failed to respond within the proper timeframe. So the developers’ subsequent appeal was approved, on the technicality: even though the inspector agreed it would cause harm.
So Ms Frazer is driven to grovelling to her colleague at the absurdly named department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, hoping that he can suggest a way to overturn the decision. In the meantime, yet another local community is left fuming at having a brutal new development foisted on them at the greed of developers and by the incompetence of the district planners. It seems to be a growing trend.
*
Two of our region’s MPs have been exposed in ignominy this week. It is revealed by the Mirror that George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) and Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) both billed taxpayers for buying their Remembrance Day wreaths last November.
Mr Freeman has recently complained of course about the difficulties of making ends meet on his MP’s and government minister’s salary, and we wait in vain for news of a whip-round among the drinkers at the Dereham Cherry Tree,or staff at the town’s care homes, to raise a few quid on his behalf.
But Mr Freeman claims that – for his part – the wreath business was all a mistake, so we take his word for it.
*
Interest is growing in the political future of Suffolk Coastal. The incumbent, Thérèse Coffey, is reviled rather than revered, and in the present climate seems eminently beatable. But for that to happen, the Greens, Labour and the Liberal Democrats – who all hold substantial positions on the local East Suffolk Council – would probably have to come to some agreement.
This is the classic seat which could rest on co-operation between the parties, but none of the parties are likely to give way. The Liberal Democrat candidate Jules Ewart showed her usual impatience in jumping in first – no question of a deal there – and was followed by Labour candidate Jenny Riddell-Carpenter. The Greens, whose candidate is Julian Cusack, appear at least to have been prepared to talk but were trampled in the stampede.
*
This week another contributor to EAB has been selected as a Labour prospective parliamentary candidate. Pecksniff offers congratulations to our colleague and raises a glass to Rebecca Denness, who hopes to replace the disgraced Matt Hancock in West Suffolk.
*
Finally, this is too good to miss, so your diarist leaves this here in the certain knowledge that you, dear reader, will be able to find politics in it somewhere. A newspaper headline: “Sex festival in Tunbridge Wells sparks concerns about parking”.
*
This week, thanks go to Peter Fane and James Porter.
<<< Previous Pecksniff’s Diary
