“Can somebody please tell the Labour Party that they won the election?” asks William Keegan in the Observer. He takes Rachel Reeves to task for her continued adherence to the previous government’s fiscal rules and her acceptance of austerity as an instrument of policy.
Now if we were to ask the man or woman in the street, we would find they don’t give a monkey’s about Ms Reeves’s fiscal rules. They just want life to get better. Hardly surprising. But Ms Reeves tells us that we can’t have a better life without her fiscal rules, only it turns out we can’t have that life even with them either. And it is not naïve or unworldly for the public to ask what’s so bloody special then about these rules, and please couldn’t we have some different ones?
There are plenty of economists who would tell us we can. But they are not the chancellor of the exchequer. There is a freemasonry which goes with that role. The worst sin for a chancellor is to break with orthodoxy, and to be seen as a good chancellor is to fit in.
So here we are, down among the dead men, and where is the optimism? Is a little hope too much to ask? Without it, some will ask, where was the point in voting Labour?
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JB Priestley described politicians as “a number of dwarfs trying to grill a whale”, which one would like to think of as being unduly unkind – though sadly, Brexit tends to suggest Mr Priestley may have had les mots justes.
On Wednesday, The Times quoted an unnamed government source as saying: “No one will say it publicly at this stage but there is an acknowledgement that this is an area where we will need to move. If we are serious about resetting relations with the EU then we need to be prepared to give them some of the things that they want.”
But the official government spokesperson was horrified at the idea, declaring: “We are not considering it, there are no plans for this, or any work being done on it, Our negotiating team has very clear red lines, and none of the preparatory work involves this.”
So what is going on here, (other of course than the government having its head up its rectum)?
Before the election, some Labour shadow ministers complained anonymously of the party’s position being untenable. We can assume that concern has not diminished. But the government are trapped in a position they desperately jumped into when pro-Brexit sympathies were rampant. It was to cloak their fears about public antipathy to immigration, but gradually, that fear has become the core of party policy, not to be challenged and not even mentioned.
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We learn from the polls that Keir Starmer’s rise in popularity achieved immediately after the election has dropped back to that when he was leader of the opposition. But on the other hand, most people support his actions against the rioters, or believe he should have gone further.
This is a frustration to the bruised and outraged right wing. The rioters had been induced to adopt ‘stop the boats’ as their cause célèbre, but these patriotic neophytes looting and chucking bricks at the police have left their supporters in politics and the media in a difficult position. As one contributor to social media points out: “Nothing says ‘Stop the Boats!’ louder or more clearly than nicking a load of over-priced soap”.
In the personal mythology of the hard right, the public are as one with them in their outrage at the arrests. Whereas all the evidence denies this. So, not for the first time, the Tories conjure up a mythical land of lost content in the face of reality. The difference is, they are no longer in power and so their delusions have become irrelevant. Until they face reality – and that seems a long way off – they can’t begin to re-emerge as a serious political party.
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We can only hope that Labour’s strategy team are noting such revelations as that the race riots “unquestionably” (in the opinion of a well-connected commentator and former MI6 agent) occurred through the involvement of the Russian state. The bemused rioters claim a faux patriotism, which however far it’s stretched couldn’t conceivably accept a reality that the country is being undermined at the whim of Vladimir Putin.
Of course, we still have the unredacted Russia report outstanding, publication quashed by the same prime minister who, while foreign secretary, escaped his security and took a flight to an Italian castle, to a salacious party given by the son of a known KGB agent, who just happened to be there too, and with whom that same foreign secretary then had a secret conversation.
We must hope No.10 has put ‘Russian sabotage and high treason’ on their very long list of Tory scandals, to be exposed some rainy day, or when the new government is getting a bit of stick over something else. In the matter of dead cats, this one would be a doozy.
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After waiting for 14 years, we are naturally impatient for the Labour government to show its mettle. A few ‘marquee’ policies can be brandished on arrival, then come some early fretful criticisms about things missing, but which we hope will emerge soon. But the government remains distrusted, especially on the left, and what we fear most is the prospect of their slipping in those policies which look like business as usual.
So there was anguish this week at allegations that the government plans to renew badger cull licences. The farming minister also happens to be Daniel Zeichner, the MP for Cambridge.
There is a powerful farming lobby, of course, but we understand that a badger cull is not the intended policy, and in the medium term an effective vaccination programme is expected to be introduced. This is one of those issues still lost in the corridors of power, however, and unlikely to be seen as a major priority. Until the vaccination programme is rolled out, the struggle will continue between the badger backers and the farmers.
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The absence of Nigel Farage from his Clacton constituency has not gone unnoticed, of course. He has always seemed the most unlikely MP. While Jaywick burns, Mr Farage is just about to take his third trip to the US since the election. So far Mr Farage has offered two excuses for his absence, and both seem to depend on his constituents taking a much more globalist view than perhaps we had assumed of them. His first reason for absence was that – as he claims his voters demand – he was saving the planet from World War III. His latest excuse is that he wanted “to represent Clacton on the world stage”.
What can this mean? This jeu d’esprit immediately paints an image of Mr Farage as a kind of duck-billed Butlins redcoat, welcoming Johnny Foreigner at the end of the pier. Is he intending to introduce an unsuspecting world to the apparent beau monde of life in Clacton? Inviting a bunch of visitors to come and visit? After all, the punters gave him their vote in the expectation that he would actually save them from having to mix with foreigners, not drag more of them in.
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To the deepest regret of this diarist, Nigel Garage has already taken over from Liz Truss as the omnipresent character in these scribblings. He has also been in trouble this week over his earnings, which no doubt readers will already have been told bring him over a million quid in addition to his parliamentary salary as the absentee MP for Clacton.
But what does he actually do for all this moolah? He declares 72 hours’ work a month, plus an extra 64 hours of one-off work. Much of his income is from his appearances on GBTV, for which we assume he must fly back to this country. So he is booked for about 35 hours’ extra-parliamentary work each week, which doesn’t of course include all that travelling. He could always fly into Southend airport, handy for Clacton, though readers may be surprised to learn there is no evidence that he has.
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Once again, we are reminded of Samuel Johnson’s observation regarding one of his contemporaries: “The more he spoke of his honour, the more we counted the spoons”. But it is clear that many Clactonians are prepared to grant their new MP considerable latitude in how he chooses to represent them. A potential loss of cutlery is of little consequence if you eat your fish and chips with your fingers. There are those whose forgiveness of their MP for any laxity overcomes all criticism. One respondent on a local social media page declares: “I think Farage is doing exactly what people who voted for him wanted. That is, just continuing being Nigel. Don’t think they have any interest in constituency surgeries.”
Not even in Jaywick?
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Just a word about the Conservative Party leadership contest, which will rumble on for weeks yet. Of the candidates, Kemi Badenoch (NW Essex) is a woman inclined towards holding strict views regarding other people’s moral principles, whilst apparently having little interest in exploring the trackless wilderness of whatever passes for her own. She shows a desperate poverty of empathy with those she is supposed to serve, except those with extravagant hordes of money and every intention to cling on to it.
So she promotes every attack on net-zero and applauds contracts for new fossil fuel drilling. Only one with a complete absence of interest on what goes on beyond her own small world could take this view but, to prove she means it, she is prepared to put other people’s money where her mouth is. She has accepted a £10,000 donation for her campaign from a Tufton Street based climate denial group, Net Zero Watch.
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George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) gives the impression of a man who takes himself seriously. He wears a look of bland self-satisfaction, almost of relief, like a character in an advertisement for a constipation cure. But then, knowing you’ll trouser 300,000 smackers this year would probably bring the same sense of wellbeing.
Mr Freeman notably complained recently about how he couldn’t subsist on a minister’s salary of £123,026, plus expenses. So it is possible he may have something to say if, as is expected, the government places strict limitations on MPs’ outside earnings, and may ban them altogether.
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With thanks to Jess Knopp
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