Your diarist was determined not to discuss in any detail the shenanigans around the appointment of Peter Mandelson to Washington as ambassador. For all the froth, there is still no evidence that anybody lied, or even behaved improperly. There are suspicions of what actually happened, but they may (or quite likely may not) be allayed when the select committee interviews Morgan McSweeney next week.
But it is clear that somebody jumped the gun, and clearly (and however he was advised), Keir Starmer agreed the appointment. The buck stops with him.
He is notoriously distanced from policy and detail, and the Mandelson episode appears to fit into an unfortunate pattern. Things happen on Sir Keir’s watch which seem either ill-advised or insufficiently thought through. Whatever the protestations of his supporters in the country, in dark corners of the Palace of Westminster his doubters gather like Florentine conspirators. His party is now looking beyond Keir Starmer towards who or what comes next.
It is said that Team Burnham has now identified a new route back to the Commons for their man; and if it is true that he is picking up support from senior colleagues, he will be the man to watch. Unless Wes Streeting makes a break for glory, the country will probably have to wait until Andy Burnham gets his ducks in a row. Let us hope none of them prove to be lame.
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The government’s popularity, or lack of it, will be mirrored in the forthcoming local elections, of course. (Or the ‘mid-terms’ as the excruciatingly embarrassing chair of Reform, David Bull, describes them. Readers will recall Dr Bull – who can be counted upon to show a tragic lack of dignity – appearing on TV wearing an impromptu bandage over one ear, in apparent slavish solidarity with Donald Trump after his supposed assassination attempt.)
‘Vote Reform, get Starmer out’ is Dr Bull’s refrain. More accurate might be: ‘Vote Farage, get Trump’.
But these local elections will also be a test of how far tactical voting might achieve the electorate’s aims, at least until somebody eventually ends the first-past-the-post system. According to the polls, vast migrating tribes of voters are on the move, suggesting enormous swings away from the traditional two main parties towards the insurgents: Reform and the Greens.
In fact, we may be in the odd position of having a Labour majority in the Commons, yet the party all but vanquished locally across much of the country. Which illustrates the vast upheavals there have been in the past two years. Voters are turning in their millions against those who have terminally frustrated and disappointed them, to other parties who may prove even worse.
These are dangerous times. Whispers from the Pecksniff spies suggests Labour and the Tories are rabbits in the headlights. It seems they can’t face the prospect of what – according to the polls – is about to hit them.
But are the polls correct? There are reasons to harbour some doubts, and East Anglia Bylines will explain as we go. Readers may wish to follow our rolling election blog on the campaign, as it unfolds.
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Though it seems the Mandelson scandal is having little effect on the voters – perhaps too esoteric – it appears to be having a huge impact on Labour morale. They have good reason to believe the voters are not altogether disposed towards them. Tales from around the region report limited electoral presence by the party, and the troops are proving difficult to motivate into canvassing the streets. One prominent figure calls the situation “jaw dropping” and asks: “How has it come to this?”
What little there is from party supporters on social media seems to be exhortations to ‘Stand with Starmer’ and demands for party discipline. But meanwhile, reports to Pecksniff from Labour backbenchers are of “contempt” and “simmering fury”.
Whatever one’s party preference, for progressives, Labour’s demise could only represent a catastrophe. The Labour Party has led the cause of the left for more than a hundred years yet appears in danger of collapsing before our eyes. Their present failings will affect us all.
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Among the most pressing reports of the demise of Labour’s ground game come from Hertfordshire, where there are few reported sightings of the party’s canvassers. The Liberal Democrats here are usually well organised, but tales from the inside suggest many of their voters are being tempted to go Green. But LibDem voters are canny by now, so that may be merely tactical, for this election.
There is an interesting suggestion that Green membership particularly surged at the time of the recent flag-waving bravura from the far right. If so, then we might hazard a guess the surge was by those who wanted to confront the incipient fascists and considered the Greens were most likely to pursue the same course. The trend in Hertfordshire was said to be particularly noticeable following the bout of flag self-abuse in Royston.
In fact, Reform in Hertfordshire seem to be bleeding some support to Restore, which is bound to be a worry to Mr Farage et al. Remember: the revolution always eats its children.
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Few electorates are more sophisticated than Cambridge. (One ward boasts among its voters six Nobel Prize winners.) This has been a safe Labour city and the party should not be underestimated. But there are more tales of party members leaving here too, some predictably for the Greens. There were already suggestions that the city might fall to a Liberal Democrat/Green coalition, and those rumours have grown stronger.
But this is Cambridge, so the Tories are always spectators here, and Reform hardly feature.
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Much electioneering in Norfolk will inevitably focus on Norwich, in whose intemperate political circles Labour and the Greens will continue to squabble like petulant schoolboys, though without much changing the county council arithmetic. There are conflicting reports of Labour activity, though it seems their efforts are being concentrated in the Norwich South area, where the reputation of the popular Clive Lewis as MP might hold up the vote.
In North Norfolk, the Liberal Democrats are commendably turning their heavy artillery directly onto Reform. A showdown! In Erpingham, for example, PollCheck reckons Reform will achieve 42% of the vote, with the Liberal Democrats on 41.5. The Greens are expected to attract 11%, so if those votes switched tactically to the LibDems it might safely keep out Reform. Will they do so? Will the fight against fascism win, or will it be back to the old tribal politics? There will be a savage reaction against any ‘progressive’ party whose supporters put their own hubris against the best interests of the public, only to let in Reform. And it will be led by this diary…
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Will the Greens in Woodbridge in Suffolk also vote Liberal Democrat to keep Reform out? PollCheck expects 40% to the LibDems against 37% for Reform. The Greens are given 18% with Labour and the Tories nowhere. So as with Erpingham, will Green voters overcome any temptation to hubris and vote tactically? There are few more civilised places in East Anglia, so in Woodbridge they just might.
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Pecksniff has been pointing out the slow decline in Reform support for months. Readers will know the refrain by now: they have got to the point where their rhetoric is barely respectable and must look to keep the Tory votes they have amassed and those they still need. Yet on the right they are being outpaced by Restore. There is also the point of the news media at last lifting the rug to peer at what is underneath, and the delayed realisation of just what Reform really represents.
Mr Farage picked a fight with YouGov a few weeks ago, for forecasting this fall from grace. His latest reactions are not recorded though: YouGov this week gave the party a handsome lift of three more points. This poll may be an outlier – it is just one poll – but also it might be a reflection of the way the nation’s doormats are being made impassable by the flood of Reform election material slithering through its letterboxes.
They can do this because this literature usually doesn’t include the name of the candidate, so does not count in the sum allowed to be spent in that division. So Reform can spend millions and it is all legal. The issue has been known (and abused by the Conservatives) for years, but nobody has done anything about it. Another example of just how chronically unfit our procedures are to deal with the present cynicism of our politics.
Incidentally, another poll on Friday in the Daily Express and from Electoral Calculus reports that the Reform slide continues. So perhaps that YouGov finding was an outlier after all.
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Reform’s election is being fought by maildrop, since they have the money to do it. But as we have noted, another reason for that tactic is that they are short of what is known as the ‘ground game’: they don’t have enough activists. People join Reform in order to ‘get’ somebody they don’t like. They don’t do so in order to schlepp around the streets on chilly April evenings, in order to have somebody elected to discuss social care budgets. Few are even superficially invested with the characteristics and demeanour of elected representatives of the people.
There has been almost a constant in Reform literature: the supposed letter ‘from a neighbour in the local community’, expressing comforting slogans about how local people know best. Only of course it is no such thing. It is word-for-word the same letter that has been circulated across the country, with a name merely pasted in.
Another example of Reform cutting corners in the matter of honesty involves the appearance of at least one candidate in two different elections, many miles apart. Who among us, my dears, does not set a higher value on ourselves than Fate has ordained? But Scott Holman appears as a candidate in New Addington South, in Croydon, and also Colchester Abbey division, in Essex. Will he appear simultaneously at both counts…? Perhaps his ambition is to bestride the Home Counties like a Colossus. Or on the other hand, perhaps his party just shoved in his name to fill a gap, and he doesn’t know the difference between Colchester Abbey and a cheese and pickle sandwich.
If Reform has placed one such interloper among us, then we must reasonably suppose that there may be dozens, hundreds of Reform candidates who are really nothing of the sort: just fill-ins to cover up that the party is neither as powerful and all-encompassing, nor anywhere near as local, as they pretend.
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Always a cut above the political vin ordinaire is Chris Hinchliff (NE Herts). In official pictures he sports a sleek-looking moustache, which makes him look like a character from a back number of La Vie Parisienne. Last year he championed a charter for community rights, which included rights to a clean and healthy environment, a healthy home, right to roam and to participate in decisions which shape communities.
Mr Hinchliff is a Labour MP, but sadly not always a whips’ favourite. All the above may seem nailed-on objectives for a Labour government, but as we know, politics doesn’t always work like that. Mr Hinchliff has given the whips further reasons for chewing the rug this week, by writing to Wes Streeting calling for the NHS to break with the notorious company Palantir. He cites its close ties to the “genocidal Israeli military” as one good reason, though there are others.
Fortunately, Mr Hinchliff’s is not a lone voice.
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Tales from Your Party were becoming as regular as episodes of Mrs Dale’s Diary, but last week’s happenings had to be squeezed out. In short, the party purged itself of its Trotskyist affiliates. This week, the Morning Star – the Morning Star! – appears to applaud the party’s move towards ‘democratic centralism’.
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Mark Popay, Karl Whiteman, Stace Richards, Mary Marshall, Andrew Coates, James Porter, Malcolm Lynn, Celina Błędowska, David Patey, Yasmin Gregory and Helen Forte.
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