Last week, Clive Lewis (Norwich S), announced a private member’s bill proposing an independent commission to investigate the water industry and its ownership. This week, in what looks like an attempt to gazump the Lewis bill the environment secretary, Steve Reed, announced his own commission into the water industry. Only this one will specifically not consider a return to public ownership.
At the outset this might be seen as an attempt to head off potential support for the Lewis bill from Labour MPs. This is due for its second reading in March. The government’s commission reports in June. So, will Labour MPs be persuaded by the whips not to rock the boat only three months before their own recommendations are known?
Probably. Apparently, one of the options the commission might choose is forcing the sale of water companies to firms that would run them not-for-profit, run for public benefit. But would the government actually accept that recommendation? And would they be confident of enforcing it? Not to put too fine a point on it, would we trust them to come up with the goods? It is a sad state with the government only 100 days old, but an already cynical public probably would not.
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Speaking of the Commons, we have an update on the debacle of new MPs without offices four months into the job. A statement from the House this week explains: “The MP (you request) is one of the new MPs that we don’t have numbers for at the moment. We have an email address, but we are telling everyone that you are looking at 15 days for replies”.
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We are reminded by another poll this week that voters don’t care about settling the budget – the solving of which problem the government preposterously claims was the reason they were voted into power. Instead, the public make clear that they are happy to pay higher taxes to save the NHS and improve other services.
It is no argument for Labour to claim they have to find the money first: that would always have been the case. The government made claims: how they meet those claims is their problem, not the voters’. If they are in a mess, then it’s of their own making. You own it, sunshine.
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Two colleagues, Peter Thurlow and Simon Pease, have both written perceptive views recently on the plight of the Conservative Party, and the same subject has preoccupied the wise men down at the Muckrakers. The question always comes down to whether this is a death spiral or can there be a renaissance.
The problem is the rump of small ‘c’ conservatives across the country who the party has deserted. None of the other parties – particularly perhaps Reform – are equipped to fill that vacuum. So the country waits and conjectures. Though we have a new government and new ideas (and a generally relieved nation), the political picture will not become clear until a solution has been found as to which party can attract them into the fold. (The result of the big ‘C’ Conservative leadership election is unlikely to provide the answer.)
But we can’t move on till we know. Or until one of the other parties – and we must assume it would be Labour – seizes the narrative and makes theirs the story. Narrative is all in politics, and the prevailing narrative at the moment, whatever Labour does, remains with the Tories. After a huge election win, the government is still looking over its shoulder. Because at the heart of the Tory narrative, still, is Brexit; and Labour remain scared to death of it.
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Arguments between the two protagonists in the Conservative leadership contest seem to have run out of steam. It’s easy to see why. With 14 years of untrammelled ideological mayhem behind them, the only conniptions they can realistically have are with each other, and they know that would frighten the horses – or in this case the members.
So instead, like exasperated sorcerers, they attempt to summon unspecified demons unwilling from the abyss. They have to be unspecified, since identifying any of them would have them compared to the monstrosities introduced during the Johnson and Truss eras. All their creatures in the press can do is try to hijack an international conference on multi-billion investment initiatives with questions about a Taylor Swift ticket.
The worst spectre of all however has arisen and is awaiting the eventual winner. The Conservative Party is in grave danger of becoming an irrelevance, and that even applies to the attitudes of the members themselves. Robert Jenrick was booked to speak to members in Gravesend this week, but the event was cancelled through lack of interest.
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That danger of irrelevance became more real on Thursday, when a fascinating tale broke on LBC, revealing that Nigel Farage (Clacton) had written to every one of the 1352 Tory councillors facing election in May, urging them to defect to the Reform Party. He refers to the Tories as a “busted flush”.
In spite of Mr Farage’s declared intentions to build a solid party base for Reform, Pecksniff has warned that the practical difficulties in doing so from scratch can be monumental. (Reform only has 28 councillors at the moment.) But simply taking over another party would be much simpler. Attracting experienced councillors with their contacts and knowledge of how local government works would provide Reform with a valuable resource, and quite possibly the basis for an acceptable party. (The Clacton Cogliostro is quite bright enough to realise that he can’t rely on chancers, racists and the terminally dim as membership forever.)
But it will not be a push-over. Some will be attracted, but many have been Tory members for most of their lives and still cling to what they fondly recall of Conservative Party values. Council candidates are still standing under the guise of ‘Local Conservative’, to differentiate themselves from the party at Westminster. Many will be repulsed by Reform’s politics.
The move however is bound to bring some success, and it is safe to see this as a further move towards the break-up of right-wing politics in this country – though no clue as to who is going to win over those angry ex-Tories.
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An early recruit for Reform comes with the defection from the Tories to Reform of Councillor Jaymey McIvor,representing Ongar on Epping Council, though his credentials at the moment seem likely to raise the decorum of his new party. Cllr McIvor was also due to stand as Conservative parliamentary candidate for Hemel Hempstead. But only hours before the deadline for submitting candidates, the Tories suspended him after complaints about his conduct.
We still have no idea what those complaints were, or whether they were upheld. But whatever the situation, they are now the responsibility of Reform, where no doubt Cllr McIvor will find himself at home.
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It would be a brave Tory councillor who jumped ship in Great Yarmouth at the moment. Relations between the party and Reform’s MP Rupert Lowe could hardly be worse. Mr Lowe is a man well-versed in recognising the collective deficiencies of the world. He may wonder why others don’t see those same vicissitudes as clearly as he does – but probably not. Wondering – especially about what others think – has never been a prominent part of the Lowe Weltanschauung.
He is a jagged character, made of sandpaper, and such is his capacity for causing outrage that one wonders how his relationship with his fellow Reform MPs will survive. Of the five, he seems the most semi-detached, and since his behaviour in his constituency has upset the entire political establishment there, it has probably put the mockers on the Farage cunning plan. Which suggests that already his actions may be causing problems for Reform.
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There are arguments within the Conservative leadership contest over the timing of the announcement of the winner. As it stands, it is due on the Saturday after the government’s major budget announcement. This is traditionally one of the big Commons events of the year, and it would seem an opportunity for the new incumbent to show his or her mettle.
So that would need the announcement to be brought forward by a few days. But Kemi Badenoch refuses to budge. She insists it is preferable for Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt to lead the budget response, given their Treasury experience. Or, to put it another way, she has bottled it. She doesn’t feel up to the task as the new leader. As the Tories’ greatest heroine, Margaret Thatcher, would have put it, she is frit.
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Through all the roiling tribulations of recent years, Margaret Thatcher is one of only two Conservative leaders whose reputation remains unbesmirched. Her political endeavours, readers will recall, were almost entirely based on ending what she called “the dependency culture”, and that particularly included government providing houses to rent. Better they sleep in the streets than that anybody should stretch out a hand.
The other is Winston Churchill. In his diaries, Harold Macmillan notes discussions about West Indian immigration, and records one of the less celebrated Churchillian phrases: “PM thinks ‘Keep England White’ a good slogan!”
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Now, if James Cleverly (Braintree) had made the final cut there would have been no issues of backsliding with him. He has frequently stood at the despatch box and uttered the most complete pig’s rectum of nonsense without batting an eyelid. Readers will recall his stout support for the absurd and wildly impractical Rwanda scheme, even though he was already on record as declaring that the whole idea was “batshit”.
But of course it is his role in that scheme which brings him once again to prominence this week. The role in this instance was making a day trip to Rwanda, to sign a deportation deal which never deported a single person, and spending £655 per head on in-flight catering.
My dears, how is that bar bill even possible? This story came up among the wise men at the Muckrakers this week, but the price of drinks is always a touchy subject in the presence of mine host George. The fact of another Tory wallow in the public funds, though, recalls an old myth about British politics. It was said that Labour scandals were always about money, because their MPs hadn’t got any; whereas Tory scandals always involved sex because they weren’t getting any.
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Fellow Essex MP, Richard Holden (Basildon & Billericay), has performed a feat extraordinary even for the dying days of the Tory ancien regime. As chairman of the Conservative Party, he elbowed aside rivals to claim the last place in the lifeboat, securing a safe parliamentary seat literally hours before the deadline for registering candidates. It came as a shock, not least to members of the local Conservative Association, who hadn’t invited him. But it was too late to find anybody else.
This unseemly scramble did not go down unnoticed by the good people of Basildon and Billericay, who reduced his majority from over 20,000 to just 20 votes: 12,905 to Labour’s 12885. But heigh-ho, Mr Holden had found himself a comfy seat from which to while away the next five years, and it’s better than working. So now he feels he might appear to be doing something to keep the punters happy, and he has chosen pie and mash as his unlikely cause célèbre. He claims it is a traditional Cockney dish and should get protected status, like champagne or Cornish pasties.
But the point of protected status of course is that the dish has to be unique to the area. Mr Holden’s case then rests on the assumption that nobody else had thought of encasing meat in pastry or crushing potatoes with a fork. British cuisine has rightly been castigated for its lack of imagination, but humdrum cooks all over the country might take umbrage at this claim.
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Among the most worthless and unworthy small minds on the remaining Tory back-benches is that of James Wild (NW Norfolk). He looks like the one you watch out for and avoid at school reunions, and with good reason. His present unprincipled stand on prison releases is an example of the worst kind of embarrassing opportunism.
His government ran down the prison service till it was bursting at the seams, and was forced to release prisoners because there was nowhere to put them. Then they left the mess to Labour. Three months into the new government, Mr Wild is accusing Labour of letting out prisoners early and suggests they should build more prisons.
Readers may recall another incident when Mr Wild obviously thought he had a gotcha moment in interviewing the BBC’s director general. He complained gleefully that the union flag didn’t appear anywhere in its annual report.
Dear reader, what has your diarist done to deserve having to report on the sweepings of humanity like James Wild? Sometimes there is some charmless nerk who gets under the Pecksniff skin, and Mr Wild is one of them.
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With thanks to James Porter, Celina Błędowska and Karl Whiteman.
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