For months Pecksniff and several contributors to our series ‘Our Place in Europe…?’ have pointed out that the EU won’t be interested in cherry-picking or unpicking any Brexit agreements. Yet Labour’s leadership has blithely promised that they will renegotiate the Northern Ireland Trade and Co-operation Agreement. Then this week they learn what we already knew: they won’t. Because, as has been explained countless times, the EU isn’t interested.
Perhaps Keir Starmer would be well advised to read the series… Many equally influential people have.
In November last year, East Anglia Bylines wrote that Starmer “sets out ideas to ‘build on’ the existing Trade and Co-operation Agreement, in pursuit of a closer trading relationship. But the EU doesn’t see it this way at all and has no intention of revisiting the already agreed trade terms. Once again, Britain isn’t listening and is determined that our way will prevail. That old British exceptionalism again. Not a good look for a new leader who needs to impress.”
This astonishing stupidity can be compared to the delusions of the original Brexit gang, confident Britain could just walk away from the EU and be better off, however often they were told it was impossible.
Bizarrely however, we have no choice but to vote for these people. Once the election is out of the way, we must do something about that.
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This week, a US newspaper so perfectly encapsulated the horror show of the last 14 years that, with sharpened quill, one can do no better than to write it here word for word. The quote is from the New York Times.
“For over a decade, the Conservatives have ransacked the country they claim to love, unmooring it from its foundations and enriching their chums. While the wealth of the very richest rocketed, the party’s program of austerity, begun by David Cameron in 2010 and continued by each Conservative prime minister since, starved public services, created one of the most miserly welfare states in the developed world, and contributed to one of the longest periods of wage stagnation – for many, wage regression – since the Napoleonic Wars.
“Life expectancy is down, child poverty is up, and there are few signs of a reprieve on the horizon. Life under the Tories has become poorer, nastier, more brutish, and shorter.”
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It was left to the hapless Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) to come up with an excuse as to why the government has let Chinese spies hack vast tranches of private data about us, after being specifically warned. The one excuse which he didn’t use – and would most certainly have been believed – was that the Conservatives were too busy doing the same thing themselves, in order to bombard us with propaganda before the election.
The statement was trailed heavily beforehand: a means of diluting public rage before he stands up and has to talk about it. The government will take swift action, Mr Dowden bleated. Chris Bryant for Labour – Chair of the Commons Select Committee on Standards – was, not surprisingly, unconvinced. Swift action? The government has known about it for three years.
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Nick Timothy is the Conservative hopeful who wants to succeed the contemptible Matt Hancock as MP for West Suffolk. Given Mr Hancock’s record, it is surprising he has the gall, though he may need more than gall if he is to hold off the challenge of Labour’s redoubtable Rebecca Denness. But he is also a columnist on the Daily Telegraph. A job he was given because he used to be Theresa May’s chief adviser, and by the way is held responsible for just about every decision she ever made.
In Westminster and Whitehall he is not liked. It is not generally known that the civil service has its own rhyming slang, but he is, as they say in the Treasury, a bit of a Jeremy. Anyway, with China in the news and Mr Timothy having often expressed views about the country, his editor made the mistake of assuming he knows something about it. He asked him to write a column.
Big mistake. If Mr Timothy knew anything at all about China, one assumes he would have expressed it. Instead, his resultant oeuvre suggests it was written by AI after a very long evening at the Muckrakers. As one political economist observed: “This is literally a complete word salad. It is both conceptually and technically meaningless.”
* China seems to have upset everybody’s apple cart. Liz Truss seems to have particular problems in deciding what to think. She is perfectly clear this week, saying “China is a threat and must be labelled as such by the Government”. Trouble is, only six months ago she was equally clear – if entirely secretive (though not from Pecksniff who reported it) – in lobbying the government to sell them defence equipment.
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Pecksniff has often pointed out the complete lack of self-awareness demonstrated by Liz Truss. Anybody else would feel themselves humiliated at crashing the British economy in a few days. But the point is – as also forecast by this diarist – something like it was always going to happen. She is a chancer and will say whatever suits her interests on the day.
This week she is reported as having claimed to an eager US audience that she was brought down by the British “deep state”. Last year she was complaining in the Sunday Telegraph that her demise was all down to the “left wing economic establishment”.
Those lefties who secretly run the country, eh? So obvious when you think about it.
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Fortunately for Liz Truss, her constituents in South West Norfolk have few problems needing the attention of an MP, so she felt free to spend almost the entirety of February in the US, meeting right wing politicians and finding a free week or two for skiing. Naturally she didn’t pay for it: her sponsors coughed up the £32,000 bill. Such friends can come in handy when you only have your £84,000 salary plus expenses as an MP, and the odd £125,000 annual expenses she is paid as a former prime minister.
After all, didn’t Jeremy Hunt declare that £100,000 a year “is not a lot of money”? To be fair, it may not be for the 2% of us who earn that much, but probably sounds a lot for the 10% who earn as much as £60,000. The average salary in Britain however is £41,000, though it is significantly lower in Norfolk at £30,600.
So appalled are many of those who have supported Ms Truss – those she dubbed the ‘turnip taliban – that one of their more distinguished, James Bagge, is standing against her at the general election. Mr Bagge is a former high sheriff of Norfolk.
Will that be enough to vanquish her? If an obsequious servility to one’s betters is all that sustains her, then Mr Bagge ought to make a hole in her support.
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So, since it seems we are engrossed in a full flavour ‘Where Are They Now?’ retrospective my dears, you will naturally expect the next name to slip from our sepia collection of golden-oldies to be Nadine Dorries. And you are not to be disappointed. In case you missed it in your Daily Mail this week, Lady Ms Dorries has written a piece asking: “Why, at 66, men are finding me so sexy and desirable!”
Answers on a postcard, please, to …
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Pecksniff reported recently on the decision to proceed with building awaste incinerator in Wisbech. Nobody seems to want it. Local people are enraged, and so was local MP Steve Barclay, who also happens to be the environment secretary.
We have seen indecision, muddle and incompetence, laced with the usual breaches of procedure to favour ministers’ political interests. The decision should have been made by energy secretary Claire Coutinho, only she was away, so it was made by her junior, Lord Callanan, and that decision was published. Only it seems the decision was the ‘wrong’ one. When she returned, there was a row, and she ‘unpublished’ the decision, to the bewilderment of all concerned. Then, it was reinstated.
The next step is for the Environment Agency, for which, er, Mr Barclay is responsible. There were plans to delay the decision for at least a year. Only by now, the sticky dabs of both Ms Coutinho and Mr Barclay were all over it. Leaked advice from government lawyers was that the delay “would be unlawful”, describing Mr Barclay’s longstanding public opposition to the scheme as a “powerful exacerbating feature given the perception of bias.
“The strong impression is, and the allegation in litigation will undoubtedly be, of every possible step being taken to overturn the effect of a [decision] on grounds of political advantage, rather than on legitimate policy grounds.”
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This week James Cleverly (Braintree) was beside himself. As home secretary, he complained in disbelief of “Labour peers continually delaying and obstructing what I am trying to do” on Rwanda, thereby overlooking that actually that’s their job. That’s what the opposition is for. Besides, Labour’s position, contemptible though it is, happens to be not to block the bill, as Mr Cleverly well knows. His fiercest opposition appears to be from his own Tory peers, among them Lord Deben (formerly John Gummer) and Lord (formerly Kenneth) Clarke.
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Suffolk Coastal is the seat of the execrable Thérèse Coffey. Like many other MPs in what were seen as safe Tory seats, Dr Coffey has suddenly become keen on being seen Doing Things. So like her colleagues, she is trying to tempt potential Tory voters to let her have their details, so they can be bombarded with implausible propaganda once the election arrives.
Judging from responses to the questionnaire seen by your diarist, it seems Dr Coffey is not well-liked. But her seat is the perfect example of how opposition parties working together could beat her. It is also the perfect example of how they won’t. Electoral Calculus gives it to Labour easily, with a 75% chance of winning, but that doesn’t allow for the fact that Liberal Democrats, Labour and Greens have all put forward candidates, and all insist they are fighting to win. By doing so, they know they may be ensuring that Dr Coffey will survive. Let us be clear: all of them are putting their own party interests above getting rid of the Tories.
But there is news, of a sort. In the past, Labour have always siphoned off all supporters to work in Ipswich, usually a marginal seat. This time however, Jack Abbott appears to be what one understands is called a ‘slam dunk’, so he was excused canvassing on his own beat and sent off to support the launch of Labour’s Suffolk Coastal campaign. It featured candidate Jenny Riddell- Carpenter, along with Harriet Harman and former national Labour secretary Iain McNicol. They were wheeling out the big guns. Does that mean Labour are taking the seat seriously?
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This week, BBC Newsnight broadcast from what they called the “South Cambridgeshire blue wall”, which shows how lazy and out of touch London-centric political journalism is. There has been a revolution. It’s an orange wall now: most of it has gone LibDem.
Which is why instead you should gain your political insights from EAB. Here, instead of sitting around in Westminster and musing on how the funny little people in Gorleston or Hitchin are going to vote, we begin at ground level, quizzing canvassers and our own spies on the ground. What we tell you are the views of the voters. Direct.
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More opprobrium heaped on the heads of council planners, this time in Bedford. The reason is the usual: claims of letting developers get away with murder. In this case, a plan for 500 new homes at Clapham. The Council for the Protection of Rural England accuse Bedford Borough Council of holding “cosy chats” with developers, with no further opportunity for the public to have a say till decisions have already been made. According to the CPRE, this is why affordable housing targets are being missed.
Another example, perhaps, of the public being seen as an impediment to what those making the decisions see as progress. Readers may be interested in our forthcoming series on the increasing exclusion of the public from decisions affecting their lives, called ‘What have we lost?’ which begins tomorrow.
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After years of controversy, it seems plans for the Norwich western link road are no more. Natural England have declared that, since the road would trash the home of the rare barbastelle bat, it cannot be built. Or at least, that is the claim of the Conservative controlled Norfolk County Council. Initial claims by their political opponents seemed to suggest the real reason was financial: the council have already spent £47 million on the scheme, and now there are dark mutterings of possible insolvency.
Though the plan survived a legal challenge, nevertheless it does seem to have dragged on, getting more and more expensive. It has become a hideously expensive bore. Council leader Kay Mason Billig has accused Natural England of “subverting the will of the people”, which is the go-to excuse of James Cleverly and other Tories when also driven to desperation with a hopeless scheme that won’t go away.
Samuel Johnson observed that “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel”. Does this fit here, one wonders?
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Thanks this week go to Bridget Burke and James Porter.
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