East Suffolk Council are concerned at their area’s hosting a new nuclear power station, multiple offshore windfarm landfalls and solar power sites, all likely to have dramatic effects on the environment, local communities and the area’s thriving tourist industry. So they wrote to the energy secretary, concerned at what looks like a lack of co-ordination and insensitivity, asking for consultation.
Mad Ed Miliband, for it is he, made clear his disdain for any such concerns. He left the request to one of his minions for a response, which came in the form of a three-line letter, which the council tells us said: “the secretary of state is too busy and no discussions will be considered……….”
This is a letter of such shocking arrogance and malevolent bad manners it defies satire. In the whole dismal, corrupt and dishonest 14 years of their governance, it is doubtful whether any Tory minister ever acted quite as insensitively as this. Mr Miliband insults not only the elected council, but those who elected them and everybody else across the county.
Yet it appears in keeping with what Mr Miliband, in his catastrophic mis-appreciation of what constitutes firm government, is actually proud to claim as his modus operandi. He has a plasticine look about him, like a character from Wallace and Gromit, and seemingly a plasticine-like sensitivity.
There must be consequences. When there are, East Anglia Bylines and Mr Pecksniff’s Diary will be happy to report and encourage them.
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This was sufficiently outrageous to warrant a phone call to the Suffolk Coastal MP, Jenny Riddell-Carpenter, since clearly it places her in an embarrassing position. But six months after the general election, Ms Riddell-Carpenter is still unavailable to gentleman callers. Does this mean she still doesn’t have an office?
Dear reader, the good lady is not alone here.
We, the electorate, are entirely cut off from our MPs, and we have every reason to feel aggrieved about it. The only means of communication with the person we elected to represent us these days is via an email, or an attempted surgery appointment online, which in either case might take a month for any response. We may live in dangerous times for MPs, but little could be more dangerous for our democracy than for the system to show that voters are of no importance and have no role to play in our political system than to place a cross every five years.
How can this justify the name of democracy? Are voters informed? Involved? No, not at the MPs’ behest but, nevertheless, kept at arm’s length.”
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“He is the only artist, the only aristocrat by temperament and talent, in a party of plebeians and plain men.”
So wrote Beatrice Webb, doyenne of the Labour Party, about James Ramsay MacDonald in 1930. But with whom would we associate those remarks in today’s party? (If only Carlsberg made politicians…)
This is not to say that he or she doesn’t exist. Keir Starmer, for all his talents – and he has them – would not fit the bill. Nor would he aspire to it. But those who might grow into that role know that, in these mean times, this is not a propitious occasion to upset a ruthless and determined prime minister with little time for criticism.
So we huddle in almost Balkan misery, waiting – sadly without expectation – for that politician who can paint us a picture of who we are and where we want to be. But we are constrained within our dirty little island, because nobody dare look beyond it to describe our place in the world.
We, who still float on our Gaumont Pathé newsreel version of when the world was painted red, now daren’t speak of the world outside, because There Be Dragons. Europe is literally in our DNA, in our very bones, but we have no-one near government who will even talk about it.
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Ed Davey is at best a reluctant prophet against the evils of Brexit, feeling himself almost the last survivor of a forgotten priesthood. This week however he reiterated the benefits of joining an EU customs union. As David Gauke writes in the New Statesman: “The received wisdom in Westminster is that the Brexit process was so bruising and divisive that no party aspiring for power will want to go near the European question for at least a decade.”
As we have discussed in this diary before, that is precisely Labour’s position. It was over a year ago that Pecksniff mused on how possible it was that, in the fullness of time, Labour would become our only hard Brexit party. We seem close to that point, (excluding Reform, which isn’t really a party at all). The Greens are strongly pro-EU, the Liberal Democrats are shyly creeping out of the undergrowth to profess that they have really been pro-EU all along. (Nobody doubted it, but like Labour they simply daren’t admit it.)
But what is this? Kemi Badenoch (NW Essex) criticises her own Tory party for its failure to plan for Brexit. Now, this is still a long way from admitting Brexit was an absurd delusion, but it places the Tories in the same place as Labour: an acknowledgement that what we have isn’t working. Nobody likes Brexit. Everybody thinks it a failure. Yet at least the LibDems and the Tories dare mention it. Labour, our government, still daren’t trust its MPs to mutter a single word.
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Since we mention Reform, we might deem it fit to interpose that there is no substance to Reform, nor can there ever be, without fundamental change. They have no hard-working base, just a coterie of malcontents who believe we should send them all home and bring back the empire.
The party’s ‘policies’ are not intended to be serious suggestions about changing life for the better; just appeals to the pub braggart. Reform mostly exists in knee-jerk responses to questions from pollsters, a ragbag of unsubstantiated prejudices, Nigel Farage (Clacton) on Question Time and whatever headline-pleasing japes he has for us this week. The party is paper-thin, and its principles rarely stray beyond ‘We don’t want them here’.
Last week, Pecksniff reminded readers that Reform have five MPs out of 650 – less than one percent – and revealed that 11 other parties have more councillors than they do. This week we can add that, of the last 179 local elections they have contested, they have won just seven. This is not a party anywhere near government.
Mr Farage has a problem. The racist element in his party are uncontrollable and will lead him into dangerous waters; so if he wants Reform to be taken seriously he has to isolate them and look to a more acceptable position to appeal to the moderate conservatives he needs. But that in turn will drive away his core support.
So, for the moment, all he can do is wriggle a bit and watch the money rolling in.
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“When will Labour oust Rachel Reeves?”, Richard Murphy asked in East Anglia Bylines earlier this week. Pecksniff has frequently questioned how long Ms Reeves can remain, and only last month wrote:
“Ms Reeves publicly threatened the cabinet with her ‘iron fist’. She wants to be Aunt Agatha from PG Wodehouse, who chews broken glass and wears barbed wire next to the skin. But this fatuous ‘hard woman’ posture is becoming embarrassing. It is said Keir Starmer is ruthless, and he will know his party is becoming disillusioned. The government may be in for a long winter.
Cabinet shuffle in the new year, anyone? Unless things pick up, Ms Reeves may need some good friends in the months ahead.”
On Wednesday, Ms Reeves came clean on the pretence that the government is taking global warming seriously, by admitting that getting her sums right to keep her job is more important than preventing the end of the world. There is literally no argument to be made in her favour. She will be lucky to last till spring.
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And on the subject, Steve Richards is one of our shrewdest and best-informed political commentators. He writes: “‘Government insiders’ brief (to a hostile media) against cabinet ministers more than in any other government I can recall…and so early on.”
This only echoes what Pecksniff hears. For some in politics, treachery probably becomes a matter of habit, but we have to ask: is this a continuation of old scores to be settled, or has treachery already become party policy? If so, is it with the PM’s imprimatur?
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Dear reader, we take for our text this week ‘Alice in Wonderland’. Kemi Badenoch (NW Essex) tells us: “It is vital to discern between public spending that is vital, moral and fair, and public spending that is wasteful and neglectful.”
Meanwhile, we learn that the Tory government – of which of course by Ms Badenoch was a member – spent £700 million of public money on sending four volunteers to Rwanda: £175 million per refugee. Now it is not unlikely that enquiry may be made by a reasonable man or woman – as Pecksniff readers are, at least when sober – as to how Ms Badenoch has the gallimaufry to speak what is clearly all my eye and Betty Martin.
It seems she has taken her text from ‘Alice in Wonderland’. You will recall Humpty Dumpty’s dismissive retort: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less”. (I’m talking nonsense because the truth would be unsayable.)
Or Alice to the Cheshire Cat: “It’s no use going back to yesterday because I was a different person then.” (We were in power at the time.)
The cat in return absolves her of any blame: “Oh, you can’t help that, we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.” (I’m mad.)
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Donald Trump was inaugurated president of the United States on Monday, but your diarist avoided the event. Drooling over it – even in contempt, as millions did across the globe – is still drooling, which is always undignified.
Colleagues invited your correspondent to make mention of the Nazi salutes by Elon Musk. Very well, this is mention of it. But here comes the iconoclast. This is literally gesture politics (a pet hate of your diarist); Elon Musk is a buffoon, and there is little we can do about it anyway. So instead of adopting the usual cliché of moral outrage, like Voltaire I shall cultivate my own garden. (Weather permitting.)
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This however is closer to home. Among President Trump’s fawning admirers attending the event were our usual suspects, the plastic patriots like Boris Johnson, Laurence Fox, Suella Braverman, Liz Truss and Nigel Farage, now become little more than President Trump’s streetwalkers. Those who fervently proclaimed their ‘Britain first’ policies are now wearing baseball caps – my dears, baseball caps – inscribed with MAGA: ‘make America great again’.
Beau Brummel declared that “Fashions come and go, but bad taste is timeless.”
You will recall the last attempt by Liz Truss at ingratiation to Mr Trump was to turn up at his party conference, presumably uninvited, since she was photographed outside the conference hall as they wouldn’t let her in.
It is not clear whether she was invited this time either, since she chose to have herself photographed in the street. As one wag pointed out, her chosen style of dress suggested she was cosplaying Paddington Bear.
Whatever it takes, Ms Truss?
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