An opinion poll this week on which party has the best policies shows that, on every issue, ‘No confidence in any party’ beats them all; coinciding with Andy Burnham appearing to perform a reverse ferret on several of the key problems he promised to fix, and which brought him to No.10.
Electoral reform, the EU, water, political donations… According to the headlines, the new PM seems about to ditch his promises on all of them. We shall have to wait for the ludicrous fortnight MPs get between the summer recess and the long drag of the conference season to learn more.
After the uncompromising monochrome of Keir Starmer, Mr Burnham was expected to prove more venturesome. He has committed himself with some courage to finding a plan for social care, and these are still early days. But given the years of cynicism and inaction on just about everything, our impatience can hardly prove unexpected. Hence the poll results.
Once again, we are failed by our political class. A fundamental requirement in politics is to persuade the voters: without that trust, nothing can be achieved. Every party claims they ‘get it’, yet in response they receive a resounding and well-deserved raspberry. If the situation is so bad that no party can hope to make any change for the better, they should say so. Then we can sack them all and start again. The present stasis is no longer tenable.
It is easy to forecast that, unless Mr Burnham bucks his ideas up, he will be down among the dead men with approval ratings vying with Nigel Farage for bottom spot. We have put all our eggs in his basket. He is in danger of getting them all over his face.
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As to the notorious EU red lines, Andy Burnham’s statement this week is bleak. He is keen to stick to the party manifesto: when he can write his own, then perhaps he will take a different view. Yet he gives us no hope of that – presumably deliberately. And presumably because fear of the racists is still the dominating factor for the Labour government. A reiteration of the red lines precludes the meaningful relations with Europe the PM claims to want.
The red lines were Theresa May’s, 10 years ago… In a decade, we have refused to move on because our politicians are still terrified of the Brexit bogeyman. (This in spite of a Daily Mail poll this week which shows 84% of readers – Mail readers – would support a return to the EU.)
It would be impossible to find traction from our present Brexit-phobia to some kind of membership from a standing start. The mood music has to begin to change now. Yet so far, Mr Burnham has shown no indication that he is prepared to challenge the ossified status quo. It is on this he will be judged.
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There seems a puzzle here. It seems that, while public concerns about climate change are becoming more pronounced, support for net zero policies is falling. But perhaps the puzzle is not so impenetrable. One of the common complaints over the years has been that the public doesn’t seem to show interest in the dangers to our environment from climate change, yet now we have all experienced the heatwaves, and can form our own opinions on that.
But the phrase ‘net zero’ is only a vague and distant government policy, which gets lots of bad publicity from the right, while nobody from the government bothers to make the connection. Dear reader, would it be too much to ask them to take the trouble to explain the link?
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We have not heard the last of Farage Fest. East Anglia Bylines’s own scoopster JJ Jackson has explained this week the background to the event and the hoo-ha over a licence. It is not, shall we say, located in an area beyond belief that, having applied for the licence too late, somebody at Reform decided the event would go ahead anyway. Whatever penalty was incurred would be nothing compared to the loss of face of having to cancel.
We can be sure that the organisers of the piss-up were, shall we say, of low batting averages, and since there is a brewery just down the road from the Great Oakley site, readers can draw their own conclusions. In any case, Nigel Farage must surely have known, and as party leader he is certainly ultimately responsible for the event, whether or not it broke the law. Being of a discrepant nature, even Mr Farage himself might probably accept that following regulations tends to play a subordinate part in his life’s plan.
It is rather droll, however, that having applied for a special licence but messed up the application, the party’s defence against claims they are in breach is to flounce: they claim they didn’t need a licence anyway, so there.
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According to the Sun’s Harry Cole, Suella Braverman has become an apostate: she is on “resignation watch” and is “considering her position”. So how on earth can her decision to throw in her dubious lot with a bunch of chancers, sociopaths, narcissists, carpetbaggers and megalomaniacs have brought her to this?
Kemi Badenoch described Reform’s ex-Tory recruits as “drama queens” and “amongst the most dishonest people I have met”, which may provide a clue. After all, surely it can’t have been Reform’s exercise in moral laissez-faire which Ms Braverman found so enticing?
Our old chum Zia Yusuf does little better with Conservative Home, who call him “an antidote to charm”, and it is true that it proves difficult to nominate any of his fellow princelings with whom he does not share a vicious antipathy. Meanwhile Lee Anderson made it clear in a live interview this week that he had no time for Richard Tice, and Robert Jenrick won’t even talk to his colleagues without a lawyer present.
Then there is the small matter of Reform losing a councillor every three days. We might adapt Lady Bracknell’s observation and point out that, losing one councillor may be a misfortune, but losing them by the small boatload looks like something a great deal more iniquitous than carelessness.
To George’s chagrin down at the Muckrakers, somebody has chalked on the wall of the gents’ a new ditty to the wartime version of Colonel Bogey:
Farage has only got one ball Kruger has two but very small Jenrick has got a small dick But poor old Dick Tice has nothing at all
On this occasion, the wise men are unusually silent.
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There is further antipathy between Conservatives and Reform in the spat between James Cleverly (Braintree) and Nigel Farage, who alleges that Mr Cleverly has failed to prevent asylum seekers from Wethersfield, in Braintree constituency, standing about and looking suspicious. (Some of them may even have their eyes too close together.)
Mr Cleverly retorts that the ministerial code prevented him from expressing views on his own constituency and so opposing his own government’s plan to house them there. Indeed, Pecksniff recalls writing about it at the time. Mr Cleverly goes on to point out that the two Tory ministers responsible for the decision at the time have since both defected to Reform – Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick.
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Reform-led Essex County Council boasts this week of 100 successes since it took power in May but declines to reveal them. Meanwhile and still on Wethersfield, during a visit to the asylum centre council leader Councillor Peter Harris was allowed by BBC Look East to describe its residents, unchallenged, as “illegal migrants”.
As asylum seekers, of course, they are not ‘illegal’. Under international agreements like the 1951 Refugee Convention, anybody fleeing persecution has a right to request protection upon arrival, regardless of how they entered.
Yet Reform is permitted to broadcast blatant and untrue propaganda, uncorrected. This was a disgraceful attempt at journalism of which Look East should be ashamed.
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Pecksniff has always criticised the Green Party for its apparent inability to talk to anybody but themselves. But then came a strategic change of direction, led by Adrian Ramsay (Waveney Valley) who was leader at that time and had a seat to win. The radical new idea was that the party should remove its head from its collective fundament and realise they had to stoop to talking in terms voters could understand. Uber-Tory Suffolk suddenly blossomed a bright Green, and – apart from winning Waveney Valley – the party presently runs three councils there.
Then came the leadership challenge by Zack Polanski, who felt the party could move faster. The membership agreed, and Mr Polanski then led an extraordinary rise in popularity, and membership numbers also soared – an achievement for which your diarist has already offered him a hat tip.
But, buoyed up by hubris, its enlightened and progressive beliefs on social and political issues opened the door wide for any carpetbagger looking for a platform. Those newcomers were not interested in talking to the voters: they had other fish to fry. So the Greens returned to arguing among themselves. From fighting Reform at the top of the polls and being considered as a possible partner in a future coalition government, they have fallen to fifth place, on 9%.
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Pecksniff’s spies within the Green Party are increasingly alarmed at the direction it appears to be taking. An example which illustrates its quandary has been the election this week of Eleanora Folan, an activist from Norwich, as the female representative for the east of England on the party’s internal council, its highest ruling body.
Some long-standing Greens believe activists campaigning strongly on trans issues have gained disproportionate influence within the party because members are reluctant to challenge them for fear of being accused of transphobia. They point to Ms Folan as an example.
Ms Folan herself says: “Our party has changed, and my election as a proud anti-Zionist trans woman symbolises that change.” She thanked Greens for Palestine for supporting her election and said she wanted to help build a “radical anti-imperialist Green Party”. Her social media posts include demands for Israel to be abolished and support for Iran: “Glory to the Iranian resistance”. When he was prime minister, Keir Starmer declared: “Over the last year alone, [Iran has] backed more than 20 potentially lethal attacks on UK soil.” From our own sources, EAB knows Iran is heavily involved in organised disinformation campaigns in this country.
What is noticeably missing from Ms Folan’s recent public political profile is much apparent interest in climate change, environmental concerns or other traditional Green strengths. Meanwhile, in Mid Suffolk, East Suffolk and Babergh, it is the long-term activists whose hard work and grounded views have produced competent and effective local government.
One prominent Green tells your diarist: “Entryism from internet-based militant leftists is going to do massive damage, destroying decades of work by moderates.
“There are a number of trans people who are protected from any criticism by the shield of their identity, which allows them to attack others with impunity. An accusation of transphobia is career-ending in the Greens, in contrast, for example, to accusations of antisemitism.”
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There is a furore at Huntingdonshire District Council over the resignation of the two Green councillors from the ruling coalition, so leaving the council with no overall control. The councillors are Stephen Ferguson and Lara Davenport-Ray, who now have their own website excitingly (if somewhat tongue-in-cheek) called The People’s Republic of St Neot’s.
The hoo-ha is all about a car park which might be turned into housing. It seems a development company was asked to look at viability, only the terms of reference appear to have been somewhat vague. Money has already been spent, lots of it, though nobody seems clear on quite what, or what comes next, and the council’s position has been compared by one councillor to boiling frogs.
The embarrassment arises from nobody knowing quite how it happened or whose responsibility it was, and there are also dark mutterings about the developers. Will the failure of our political class provide the People’s Republic of St Neot’s with the opportunity of fomenting revolution? My dears, don’t mock. Remember, this is Oliver Cromwell country.
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To Reform, all politics is gesture politics and simply amounts to ‘gotcha!’. So, the condemnation of a hundred councillors from across Norfolk for meeting over lunch to discuss how to make the local government plans work is – according to Reform – an example of their profligacy with the public purse. The bill for this feast of Lucullan magnificence is £1,000. For 100 attendees. If Reform’s Norfolk leaders got out more, they would discover that wouldn’t even provide them each with a burger.
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This week’s cryptologists and listeners at keyholes were Malcolm Lynn, David Patey, Celina Błędowska, JJ Jackson, Liz Crosbie, James Porter and Stace Richards.
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