A leading political commentator was asked this week to write a long read, 4,000 words, on whether the Tories could possibly be re-elected. He asked: “What am I going to say in the other 3,999?”
Short of a world war, the Tories are toast. Voters were prepared to give Rishi Sunak the benefit of the doubt after all the previous chaos, since he might have been a safe pair of hands. But now he is seen as a multi-millionaire who doesn’t have a clue about the plight of the man in the street. They have effectively turned their backs on him, he’s beyond discussion, and governments rarely fight their way back from there.
*
One LibDem wag wondered this week: “When Rishi Sunak says he’s still going to hit net zero, is he referring to the number of MPs they’ll have after the next general election?”
#Sunakered
*
Speaking of polls, one such this week suggested only 5% of people will vote primarily on environmental issues. This is an extraordinary and depressingly low figure – almost inexplicable. Pecksniff bores colleagues constantly by reiterating Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which says that people can only concern themselves with their most immediate and pressing priorities. And the problem facing environmental campaigners is how to make immediate something which can’t be directly and urgently linked to what’s happening now.
But still. Perhaps as a species we have a death wish. Perhaps such a dangerous species already carries the seeds of its own destruction, so that we dwindle and die out and the earth can continue into infinity without us.
*
This week saw another burst of Brexit hysteria which once again illustrated our extraordinary British solipsism in assuming, once again, that it’s all about us. There was an independent report about the future of the EU, which mentioned the UK once in a passing example. This was snatched up as a plot devised by Macron and others, perhaps Starmer, to squirm a way for this country to find a way back into the EU via the back door.
But it turned out it was nothing to do with Brexit, or the UK. As one EU diplomat said: “It’s deja vu – like the old days of Brexit negotiations. UK politicians are talking to themselves, ignoring what we’re actually saying in the EU.”
British exceptionalism, it’s called. It’s a particularly chronic form of home-grown stupidity. Tories are born with it, the rest of us are just too lazy to think for ourselves and break out of the arrogance and complacency the Tories propose to us. Throughout the Tory years, EU diplomats repeatedly complained of those two traits. “We don’t have to take it seriously,” say the UK. “We don’t have to work at it, we’re British”.
Well, I’m afraid we do, we did and, unfortunately, we are.
*
The story above and Labour’s snarling, aggressive and wildly misjudged response illustrates both the problem of British exceptionalism and Labour’s ineptitude on anything concerning the EU. A Labour spokesman said:
“We’ve left the European union and we’re not going back in any form. We don’t support dynamic alignment. We’re not joining the single market or the customs union. We will not be in a situation where we are a rule taker. Any decisions on what standards we follow will be made in the UK parliament.”
In chest-thumping hubris this has to be the most risible outburst since Liz Truss blundered across the stage in her bid to become prime minister. It is also the most depressing single statement this correspondent has read in a long time.
It burns boats. It makes enemies of the very people Keir Starmer was visiting this week. It can’t stand – not if the man has any real intention of improving relations with Europe or improving our lot.
*
So, it’s time for a lesson in politics I’m afraid, dear reader. It is essential in any form of political activity to control the narrative, and in Brexit and in any mention of Europe, it is a measure of just how appallingly served we are by our two leading opposition parties that neither of them dare mention the subject, let alone make a persuasive narrative. It is arguably the most pressing concern of both, certainly the most passionately argued and most keenly felt, yet both are terrified of the subject.
Look at the Labour statement above. It is defensive. One can smell the fear. It is made in terror of what Brexiters might say. The narrative is still with Brexit and Labour daren’t even attempt to win it back.
This is no way for a serious political party to behave, skulking like cowards. We have every reason to ask what value has any democratic political party that resolutely refuses even to mention the very subject that it knows will transform the country and the prospects of its citizens? The referendum happened over seven years ago. We have every right to ask when Labour will get off their knees and speak up. Until then, they and the Liberal Democrats deserve nothing but our contempt.
*
But in a spirit of comradeship and looking to the future, your correspondent wants to begin writing nice things about Keir Starmer. So we might have an agreement. He stops saying bloody silly things about Brexit, and Pecksniff will stop reporting them.
*
Today sees the opening of the Liberal Democrat conference, and it would be such a shame to overlook it. What enthralling delights might the next three days hold? A quick scan through the agenda shows there is no mention whatever of Europe or of Brexit.
Not wholly surprising, however depressing it is. If Labour is scared of mentioning it, the LibDems are terrified. They can imagine only too well the kind of pro-EU rant the world might hear from the rostrum, and how that would be used by the Tories and their heavy breathers in the right wing press. But does that mean there will be no mention at all in all those little gatherings off-piste during conference? Will the LibDem thought police be touring the bars and the side rooms to quash any sign of pro-EU sentiment?
Actually, by a glaring cock-up so redolent of our political class, the organisers of the National Rejoin March contrived to arrange that too for today, a brilliantly inept clash. So perhaps frustrated LibDem members will choose to come to London instead, and bawl their defiance from there.
*
And what wisdom and serious assessment of Brexit do we find in the national media? This is from the Independent: “Watch police wrestle man to the ground for stealing Eddie Izzard’s hat at a pro-EU march!”
*
After her defenestration as prime minister and while she licked her wounds, Liz Truss (SW Norfolk) promised to be a vigorous constituency MP, a champion of all those people she had mocked and ignored until then. It was of course just something to say to hold the fort while deciding where the main chance lay. (That certainly wouldn’t be among her much-despised mud and turnips of Swaffham and Downham Market, though they have often come in handy as dinner party jokes.)
The main chance turned out to be making a personal fortune out of almost bankrupting the country and sending millions of people into near penury for a generation. (“I’ve delivered!” she insisted, to which one exasperated constituent cried, “You couldn’t deliver a pizza!”) Never mind, free of all that she could actually boast about her ignorance of economics and brutal disregard for people and become the champion of free enterprise! She would be paid a fortune! And she could also preen her ego too, so what’s not to like?
Meanwhile and needless to say, the good people of South West Norfolk have still seen neither hide nor hair of her since. And she is still being paid £84,000 a year for representing them, plus £125,000 as an ex-prime minister. Good joke, eh?
*
And another. While Matt Hancock postures across the TV as part of ’Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins!’, he also continues to collect his £84,000 salary as the MP for West Suffolk. Like the good people of South West Norfolk, those of West Suffolk see nothing of their MP, who doesn’t even pretend to work on their behalf any more. He just trousers the money.
Pecksniff has reported before that his successor as Tory candidate in that constituency will be Nick Timothy, Theresa May’s ex-hit-man and universally acclaimed as one of the most unpleasant men in Westminster. (Ask Lord Ipswich, the recently ennobled David Anderson QC, who used to be her anti-terrorism czar.) So with these credentials, we might assume that, whatever West Suffolk Conservative Association have in mind for their putative MP, it probably isn’t that he should be popular with his constituents. The punters’ only role in this is to cast their vote, after which that could be the last they will see of Mr Timothy. Will he just trouser his £84,000 MP’s salary to add to his fee for writing a column in the Daily Telegraph –shall we say another £200,000? – and join the coming Tory bloodbath over what constitutes the soul of their party?
*
Then we have another one. Andrew Rosindell (Romford), who has been suspended from the Commons for the past year. He faces criminal charges of rape, sexual assault, abuse of a position of trust and misconduct in public office, and has been bailed four times. He too still draws his £84,000 salary, plus expenses. And there is even more good news for Mr Rosindell. His local party has just re-selected him as the Tory candidate at the next election.
This certainly shows confidence in their man, though it seems they aren’t quite so sure that the voters would feel the same way. Apparently, though the allegations against Mr Rosindell were tabled more than a year ago, the good people of Romford haven’t been told of them yet.
*
A mysterious letter arrived on the Pecksniff escritoire, apparently from m’ tailor over a trifling sum outstanding on the account… But with the diligent application of lemon juice and the slops from the Muckraker’s Old Unprintable it reveals, as expected, the secret writing. And what a splendid piece of gossip: there are rumours that Priti Patel (Witham) may be about to jump ship and defect to the Reform Party.
Unlikely, of course, but then as your diarist has pointed out more than once, the lady has been acting out of character. After being sacked after her abysmal performance at the Home Office, she went into a sulk for a while and one wondered whether she might join the voluntary exodus of Tory MPs. But then she appeared re-energised, and not at all like somebody preparing to take leave of public life. She has (checks notes) stood up for her constituents, and she has attacked the present Home office incumbent Suella Braverman – my dears, isn’t it too exquisite? – for incompetence.
So Ms Patel certainly seems keen suddenly to promote her profile, though she is clearly not looking for preferment in this government. Another bid for leadership of the rump of the Tory party after the election? Leading a splinter group (perhaps one of many), claiming to search for the party’s lost soul? Or even joining Reform? If the latter, improbable though it may seem, your diarist invites readers to conjecture what might be the plan?
… Anyway, a gentleman always pays his tailor last.
*
Last week we reported on the curious case of the new Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for the new constituency of Harpenden and Berkhamsted. This is one Nigel Gardner, who has quite a lot of previous in standing as a Labour candidate, both as an MP and MEP. The curiosity lies not in his having swapped sides, but rather than he doesn’t seem to have included these facts in his C.V. to the Tory selection committee. He wasn’t asked about them and he didn’t mention them.
But this week there are allegations of other omissions. It is claimed that Mr Gardner also ran two public affairs firms which included among its clients the Russian state-owned energy firm Gazprom and the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei. He made no secret in his C.V. about his companies, though he failed to mention their clientele.
They would have been huge accounts; they would have expected a lot for their money. So what was it?
It seems that the committee of the local Conservative Association which arranged the selection procedure have some questions to answer. Their PPC is an ex-Kremlin lobbyist. Did they not take reasonable due diligence over vetting his credentials? Or if they did discover Mr Gardner’s background, why did they decide not to tell their members?
*
Last week, Pecksniff reported on the decision of Tory Norfolk County Council to hold discussions on its multi-million-pound road cock-ups in secret, away from the prying eyes of opposition councillors and press. We suggested the only plausible reasons for doing so were to cover up corruption, incompetence or illicit sex. In reply, Councillor Graham Plant, NCC’s cabinet member for highways, infrastructure and transport, carefully avoided any of those suggestions and waffled instead about “meaningful discussions” and “confusion and disagreement in recent months”.
By “disagreement”, we must assume Cllr Plant refers to some councillors having other ideas, not popular in the NCC’s ruling group. In another example, they have criticised an environment campaigner, Andrew Boswell, for challenging through the courts the decision to proceed with three A47 road schemes as being “pointless legal challenges.”
Pointless? To determine whether the council is acting illegally?
These people are charlatans and incompetents. If they can’t abide by democratic principles they have no business being in public life. The fact that they hold positions of power is an excrescence on the life of Norfolk. They should never hold elected office again.
*
With thanks to LibDemTim.
<<< Previous Pecksniff’s Diary
