The wise men at the Muckrakers are used to Pecksniff declaring there are about a million words in the English language, and if you choose the right ones in the right order you can express anything you like. But how to describe the moral depravity of a man who can use the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of people to try to make a cheap political point, attempting to excuse a grotesque government policy we know he doesn’t even believe in?
We speak of course about James Cleverly, home secretary and MP for Braintree. This week he brought up the attempted genocide of 800,000 Tutsi people in Rwanda in 1994, to suggest that the country could do with a re-population programme, and the government’s plans to fly refugees to that country would help. All 300 of them…
It would even provide a step-up for the refugees, according to Mr Cleverly, making them financially much better off than staying in the UK… Which rather puts the mockers on the government’s idea that transporting refugees to Rwanda will be a deterrent.
At the 2019 election, Mr Cleverly won 34,112 votes: that is two thirds of the total cast. We have to wonder what kind of people live in Braintree. The people who watch The Iron on a Saturday, or go shopping in George Yard. Do they give any thought to the monster they have elected to represent them?
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It isn’t clear whether this explanation of the small boats policy seemed like a good wheeze at the time, from a man who, let us remember, is on record as describing the Rwanda flights plan as “batshit” before he was given the task of making it work. Or it may have come from an increasingly desperate No10 meeting of those who advise the prime minister. If the latter, then the idea of a group of supposedly responsible adults sitting round a table and eagerly discussing how they could make political capital out of the genocide of 800,000 people is even more morally grotesque.
However, since the idea is now being used more widely by Tory MPs, this may well be what happened. We know that Duncan Baker (N Norfolk) is keen to use the tale. He is sounding positively avuncular about the benefits to both the Rwandans and the refugees shortly to be dumped on them.
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By the way, an earlier comment from Duncan Baker in his letter should be noted if, dear reader, you have the stomach for it. He writes (and this was the day after those tragic deaths from an overloaded boat off the French coast):
“We have to stop (the boats) for many reasons, not least the appalling risk to life that paying people smugglers leads to, with those unsafe journeys. We saw this appalling situation only yesterday.”
But of course, the government have blocked every other legal means of travel, arguably breaching international law in the process, so leaving only the dangerous and illegal crossings. And here is Mr Baker, caught between wringing his hands at the deaths of people as a direct result of a policy he wholeheartedly supports, and then pretending this whole plan is in some way a means to give them a better life.
And, Mr Baker, if Rwanda also needs more people, it’s because they slaughtered 800,000 of their own.
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Lord Anderson of Ipswich (formerly David Anderson, KC) is always that rare creature, a moral man whom we can unreservedly applaud. This week he ruthlessly dissected the government’s Rwanda bill – a “post-truth bill” as he called it: dishonest, offering no proof of safety to refugees and with no system to monitor them, yet requiring the Lords to declare that Rwanda is not only safe but will remain safe in perpetuity. “Present-day untruth and future fantasy,” as he put it. Yet the government forced it through.
It is perhaps no wonder that in the dying days of this most corrupt and self-serving government, their entire focus in on a policy which they know can’t work but is all that is left to them. What passes for government these days is entirely performative: it is gestures only, like this bill.
Some believe the pursuit of culture wars can save them, but as a poll in EAB’s politics blog this week showed, it won’t. Only some Tories are persuaded by culture wars. The rest of the country are too concerned at paying the rent and getting the kids to school.
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This week, the EU proposed opening discussions on re-starting freedom of movement for young adults. It was immediately dismissed by the Labour Party, who declared that it would cross one of its ‘red lines’, which can usefully be summed up as ‘having truck with foreigners’…
Young people.
Warned against having anything to do with Europeans.
By a once-proud internationalist party.
Then expected to vote Labour.
Because the party is scared to death of the racists.
It is now the middle of Friday afternoon, and your diarist is looking forward to an evening at the Muckrakers, so there is what one hopes is an understandable reluctance to ruin it by turning to even more savage indignation. But once Labour has its fat bum in Downing Street, Pecksniff’s Diary will be written in blood every week and will be dedicated to bringing down every Brexit apologist MP in the region.
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There is a joke going round South West Norfolk… What is the difference between God and Liz Truss? God is everywhere, while Liz Truss is everywhere but here.
It is proving difficult for her to account for those absences, especially the ones which involved buckshee ski-ing holidays while the Commons was still in session. Pecksniff hears whispers that her campaign for re-election is not quite firing on all cylinders. One hears of a shortage of money, a shortage of helpers, nobody to answer the phone. Early days though, perhaps. She still has her supporters in the party, loyalty being everything, but it remains to be seen whether that loyalty holds good among her voters. She has a majority of about 20,000, but this time there are both Reform and also the independent but impeccably blazonried former Conservative James Bagge ready to eat into it.
By the way, Pecksniff owes Mr Bagge an apology. This diary described him as being a former lord lieutenant of Norfolk, but this was incorrect. He was in fact high sheriff and also deputy lieutenant.
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We return to the matter of dishonest election leaflets. Every time Pecksniff upbraids the culprits, Liberal Democrats express faux horror at the accusations. But if you publish something that is deliberately intended to mislead the voters then that is dishonest. If you publish something which is clearly not true, as in the LibDems’ spoof Huntingdon Gazette and the claim of “Proof that the Labour Party has given up on Huntingdon”, then what prevents that from being a lie? “The soul of wit may become the very body of untruth,” wrote Aldous Huxley. In this case, the headline is at odds with the copy beneath, probably deliberately.
“Given up on Huntingdon” means they haven’t included Huntingdon on the list of top target seats. There are after all quite a lot of them. But it is easy to understand the fury of those local Labour Party workers at this accusation, after tramping the streets at all hours, including the candidate Dr Alex Bulat, (who for some reason chooses to picture herself under a huge union flag, but more of that on another occasion).
For what it’s worth, Electoral Calculus gives Labour a 75% chance of winning the seat; Conservatives are given 23%, Reform 1% … and LibDems 0%.
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But fear not, LibDems, what do the polls know after all? The MRP method generally used these days ought to bring improved accuracy to what was a blanket assumption covering the whole country. MRP applies a number of filters to each seat, adjusting the bare data according to the voters’ education, income, age and numerous other factors, to get a clearer picture.
But it doesn’t actually investigate each seat itself, so if there are any local peculiarities – and there are lots – then MRP can’t spot them. One such seat we have featured before, arguably a three-way contest between the parties, is Ely and East Cambs. This week my esteemed colleague Stephen ‘Numbers’ McNair compared forecasts for the seat from three different pollsters, all using MRP.
Electoral Calculus give it to the LibDems with 32% of the vote, with Labour and the Conservatives almost tying on 26%. Survation for Best for Britain reckons Labour and the Conservatives are neck and neck on 35%, with the LibDems on 17% – about half what EC calculate. And YouGov have the Conservatives as winners on 31%, LibDems a close second with 29% & and Labour third on 23%.
Perhaps it’s the mutual loathing between Labour and LibDems which somehow produces such conflicting results.
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The Conservatives are worse at misleading literature, and with a more cynical purpose. They just want your details so they can bombard you with openly dishonest propaganda at the election. They learned from the Brexit referendum, when the Brexit teams produced literally billions of pieces of false propaganda in the 48 hours before the vote. Remember that absurd claim about six million Turks about to invade us when they were admitted to the EU? They still haven’t been admitted and were always unlikely to be. But the claims, on social media, were programmed to self-destruct after the referendum, leaving no evidence of what had clearly been a rigged campaign.
It worked well, didn’t it? So do not be surprised if Richard Rout, the Tory candidate, bombards you with misleading propaganda, and tell your friends and neighbours to look out for it too. But the way to avoid it of course is not to give him your details. Just answer all the questions in as withering a fashion as you can devise, then send it back anonymously.
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Tom Hunt (Ipswich) sometimes seems like all the incompetencies and narrow-minded bigotries of the Tories made flesh. He has cut a hapless figure for some time now. Having arrogantly spent the first part of his tenure as MP pursuing his own culture wars rather than serving the interests of his voters, he has left it a little late to become a man of the people. Mr Hunt has long since been rumbled, and he is putting all his eggs in the basket labelled ‘send them home’.
Mr Hunt seems to dislike refugees a great deal. His face takes on a snarl when he even uses the word. He was involved in an unpleasant protest outside the Novotel in Ipswich accompanied by those he declared were concerned citizens. Then EAB revealed some were neo-Nazis and white supremacists, and we had the photos (and police records) to prove it. He dropped the subject immediately.
But this is all he can think of to hold on to, even though the polls show the public trusts Labour more than the Conservatives on the refugee question. He makes personal attacks on his Labour opponent Jack Abbott, yet his claim of “speaking out on immigration on behalf of Ipswich residents” could just as easily be characterised, as we have seen and as we can prove, as “speaking out on immigration on behalf of bussed in Nazis and white supremacists and those who like nothing better than to dress up in Ku Klux Klan costumes”.
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Finally, the Bedfordshire police and crime commissioner has been ordered to apologise over some of his social media posts. Festus Akinbusoye, a Conservative, made allegations against a member of the public over misuse of public funds.
The criticisms come from the Bedfordshire police and crime panel sub-committee, who also accuse Mr Akinbusoye of having “failed to achieve the level of professional behaviour expected of those in public office”. He says he “totally rejects and refutes” the findings, from what was after all an independent panel, which on the whole isn’t an edifying position for one whose job is to uphold the law.
Mr Akinbusoye was also recently in trouble over appearing in party political literature whilst wearing his police uniform.
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Thanks go to Mike P.
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