As the world teeters on the brink, your weekly oracle paradoxically feels the unmistakable fizz of optimism. For the world we knew, this is apparently the end game. Time to find the courage to be honest with ourselves. (On this subject, any reader who has not read the Mark Carney speech to Davos should do so.)
So we begin with optimism, not with the moral cirrhosis of Donald Trump and his grisly mise en scene of world events. It is with regard to Labour’s tangled relations with the EU. For literally years, Pecksniff has been insisting their present position cannot hold till the next election. Current world events only serve to highlight that.
Till now, Keir Starmer has been dishonest about closer EU links and has effectively forbidden his MPs to mention Brexit. But this week, the New Statesman told how Labour MPs had been casually invited to “drop-in” sessions with Nick Thomas-Symonds, minister for European union relations. It was so popular that somebody likened it to “political speed dating”.
Gleeful MPs were told they now have permission to talk up the EU. Is this as a result of cataclysmic international affairs, and being Billy No-Mates in the cold new reality? Perhaps. Anyway, there is no going back to omertà. As far as Labour is concerned, the EU is now back on the menu and the government’s claimed position to date won’t hold water.
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We find more cause for optimism in the present world chaos. If you need it spelled out, dear reader, then Mark Carney in his Davos speech does so. We have been living in pretence, a dishonesty in which we all colluded. But Donald Trump has forced us to face a brutal reality – only not the reality he thinks it is.
Mr Carney sets out the new reality, and your diarist challenges readers not to admit to a frisson of excitement that, at last, a world leader has spoken honestly and courageously. To be fair, Keir Starmer tries to be honest and even courageous. His speech at PMQs has rightly been praised. But we have discussed before how he is a man who believes fervently that all we need is a bit of invisible mending and everything will be well. He is a gradualist, at a time when we need radical change.
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Unfortunately, after that speech we were introduced to the usual hubris. The PM tells us:
“We’ve got through the last few days with a mix of British pragmatism, common sense, but also that British sense of sticking to our values and our principles.” Nowhere does he even mention our EU or NATO allies, who were perhaps there just to make the tea. His comments might reasonably have been seasoned with a little humility. In its absence, the omens for the PM to grasp the need to move closer to the rest of Europe are not compelling.
So far, Mark Carney’s historic speech appears to have been ignored by the British government, presumably because the PM would see Mr Carney’s argument as burning our boats.
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We will know we are becoming a more civilised country when our politicians no longer feel the need to boast constantly that we are world leaders in whatever comes to hand. Really, the British people will not succumb to the vapours without it. We used to be known for our British understatement, and we can only assume the hubris is a vulgar habit picked up from our constant obeisance to American philistinism.
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Mark Carney’s speech is already being hailed as historic because here was a world leader being honest and admitting that things have to change fundamentally. It was a call to arms. In a part of his speech which could well have been specifically aimed at Britain, he said: “There is a strong tendency for countries to go along, to get along, to accommodate, to avoid trouble, to hope that compliance will buy safety. Well, it won’t.”
Sir Keir does not have the luxury of the dramatic gesture, nor is it in his character to know quite which gesture to make. (Answers on a postcard, please…) But he seems under the delusion that ambiguity is the safest place to be. Mr Carney’s speech is not yet holy writ. But the PM faces a choice: between the old way which under President Trump is guaranteed to fail, or the adventure into a new world where there is no guarantee of success.
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On the subject of the Labour leadership, this diary has reported moves afoot to find Andy Burnham a seat in the Commons, and this week the proposed seat has come up for grabs. Andrew Gwynne (Gorton and Denton) is to retire, which will mean a by-election, and it is in Greater Manchester where of course Mr Burnham is already the popular mayor.
There are many precarious steps before Mr Burnham could have his name on the ballot paper – let alone actually be elected – not least of which is having his nomination confirmed by Labour’s national executive: rigorously disciplined by Morgan McSweeney and stuffed with Starmer loyalists.
But for them to refuse Mr Burnham’s nomination, as a potential threat to their hegemony, might well bring civil war to the parliamentary party, as well as destroying the remaining integrity of the PM.
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We learn that the Trump spat over the Chagos Isles may have been promoted by none other than the present leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, Kemi Badenoch (NW Essex). She met Mike Johnson, Republican speaker of the House of Representatives and, it is alleged, put him up to suggesting the Trump outburst. (It is also alleged Nigel Farage did the same, but we will let them fight it out between themselves.) It must be galling to have to appear to back your political opponent at dangerous times like these, but effectively acting as a fifth column takes Ms Badenoch’s lack of judgement to a whole new dimension.
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More optimism. We learn that the Conservatives’ own polling shows Reform’s vulnerability lies in voters’ fear of their economic policies. At the same time comes the realisation that they can’t beat them on immigration.
This might introduce a potentially dramatic change to our domestic politics. If it is the economy and not migration on which the Tories will concentrate, that ought to mean immigration and thus small boats occupies less news space.
It would also leave only Reform and (checks notes) the Labour Party fighting it out over who can be most brutal to immigrants.
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The manner of Robert Jenrick’s dismissal from the Conservatives and subsequent jump to Reform seems to have been an embarrassment for all involved. Mr Jenrick faced the excruciating realisation that he had been betrayed by leaving his plans behind in a photocopier. Kemi Badenoch (NW Essex) made the best of a bad job by exposing her erstwhile colleague’s conceit.
For a while, Honest Bob had no answer to the charges. He had hoped triumphantly to seal his acceptance within Reform and then march in with hosannnas, and palm leaves strewn before his feet. “A new sheriff in town” was how he described himself. It is difficult to imagine anything better designed to offend Nigel Farage’s amour propre. But as it was, Mr Jenrick had merely been caught avec le pantalon descendu.
When Nigel Farage was asked whether Mr Jenrick would be joining Reform, he claimed (apparently truthfully) that there had been no such agreement. But in the circumstances, neither Mr Jenrick nor Reform had much option but to go ahead.
Even then, the intended celebratory press conference went off half-cocked when Mr Jenrick failed to appear. Was he lost in the corridors of the media centre, as one version had it, or did he deliberately keep Mr Farage and the hacks waiting?
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We must wonder what Mr Jenrick hoped to gain by jumping ship. Only a couple of months ago he had hopes of becoming party leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. Now, he has been forced into joining a party wholly owned by its leader, so it is hardly likely that job will become vacant.
Mr Jenrick plainly feels a philosophic detachment from the woes of the country and the principles and demands of public life. He is out to capture such spoils as may be available. If only he grew his sideburns into piccadilly weepers, he would go the full ravioli and look like a Dickensian villain out to cheat his nephew out of his inheritance and throw some random paupers into the gutter.
So did he really join Reform just to become one of Mr Farage’s loyal courtiers? Not on your nelly, my dears. However he calculated it, the move was a bid for power. Mr Farage recognises that too, never fear. So… Might it have been a cunning plan deliberately to upset whatever Reform apple carts might be available, encourage antagonism among an already restive membership, cause a schism, and then rely on all his thus-far thwarted ambition to out-do the Farage faithful? Unlikely? Perhaps. But we are looking at a practice well known on the radical left of politics. It is called entryism.
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Nigel Farage is coming under increasing stress: including from his party’s faltering in the opinion polls – this week Kemi Badenoch beats him for popularity – his financial affairs, and the collapse of his political investment in Donald Trump. Now comes the Jenrick dilemma.
It was no surprise that the devoted Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg wanted to put him on our screens again, but it was a surprise that he declined, claiming a convenient illness. It was perhaps also a surprise – or at least the cause of raised eyebrows – that he was later known to have attended a lunch instead (which involved money, of course) and then was well enough to swan off to Davos the next day.
Mr Farage has never enjoyed having to face questions and explain himself in public, though Ms Kuenssberg is hardly the most intimidating interviewer. For reasons best known to themselves, the BBC also decided to give Robert Jenrick half an hour’s publicity, during which La Kuenssberg pointed out he had previously claimed Reform could only split the right. But a volte face comes easily to Newark’s finest. His line now is it can only strengthen it. (His seat is an anagram of what people call him.) Ms Kuenssberg of course let it go.
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We mention ‘entryism’ above in musing on Robert Jenrick and Reform. But its traditional home is among Trotskyists, and it is there that it appears this week too. There have been stories over the past few years of frustrated ex-Corbyn supporters leaving Labour for the Greens, and that would naturally include Trotskyists. But now we have confirmation that indeed the Greens are in danger of being blown off course as a serious party by Trotskyist infiltration: entryism.
The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty have published (at inordinate length, of course) a project for its members to conduct “reconnaissance” within the Green Party (i.e. infiltration), in the hope of turning it into yet another self-indulgent and deluded group of lefties – something in which historically at least the Greens should need no further tuition.
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President Trump’s excesses have put all kinds of stresses on his UK supporters, including Rupert Lowe (Gt Yarmouth), who like everybody else takes exception to his suggestion that British troops “stayed a little back,” in the Afghanistan fighting, “a little off the front lines”.
He still supports Mr Trump though.
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The government’s plans for excusing water companies’ excesses regulating the water industry are about to be launched. They do not consider a return to public ownership (supported by 82% of the public). Clive Lewis (Norwich S) is a leading campaigner on water, and he and a group of campaigners wanted to meet the environment secretary, Emma Reynolds. It is fair to say that she was somewhat reluctant to agree.
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Readers will not be astounded to find Your Party has already split, again, with its latest schism (apparently led by Jeremy Corbyn) being The Many.
This diary began with such optimism, but really, my dears, what can one do? Except of course bugger off to the pub, which is where your diarist is headed. Every week it’s the same. Friday night at the Muckrakers, halfway through the second pint and there is an urgent call from the esteemed editor: “You can’t say that!”
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With thanks this week to: Mary Marshall, James Porter, Malcolm Lynn, Liz Crosbie, Celina Błędowska, Karl Whiteman, Mark Popay, David Patey and Helen Forte.
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