Not for the first time, Pecksniff is left wondering – no doubt along with many party members – quite why it is the Liberal Democrats insist on looking yet another gift horse in the mouth. With Labour, Reform and Tories in an apparent death struggle to determine who can make the biggest arse of themselves, the LibDems and Greens are the only remaining contenders to hoover up the majority of voters who want a return to Europe.
The Greens, to be fair, are still getting their knees under the table in national politics – though it’s taken them long enough. But that leaves Ed Davey’s finest in pole position, and with the party conference season on the horizon too.
It is possible that the inexplicable inaction by the LibDems suggests they have taken that bit about how the meek shall inherit the earth a little too literally. There is the by-now regular plaintive motion at the party’s conference on the EU, but though it bemoans the lack of ambition by the government, it entirely overlooks a similar charge against its own party. There are endless ways of presenting the EU centre stage without burning boats, if that is really what the party leadership want. But please, while the electorate are spitting ‘À la lanterne!’ to just about every politician, will we at last see the light of battle in Ed Davey’s eyes?
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There is always something of the pantomime about Reform. The big policy announcement of the week (not) was the Nigel Farage boast of immediate deportation of every illegal immigrant on arrival, though of course no immigrant is illegal until deemed so by the courts. No matter. Nigel wants them out – yes, including women and children. That policy was so carefully thought through that, within 24 hours, Mr Farage was explaining that when he included women and children he didn’t mean, you know, actual women and children. And anyway, he didn’t say it, he was misreported.
Part of his wheeze was to throw money at lethal foreign regimes to take some of these unfortunates, among them Afghanistan’s Taliban. It can hardly have come as a surprise, surely, that the electorate finds the idea revolting – and that includes a majority of Reform voters. On occasions like this, Mr Farage often looks hunted, and though by whom is open to conjecture, he may have a point.
Yet that didn’t stop No.10, not to be outdone, claiming they would be just as ruthless. And they did so as the electorate’s revulsion was becoming known through the polls. Can there be a single Labour Party member who isn’t left squirming in embarrassment at each of these unprincipled blunders from their glorious leader’s eyrie?
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On Thursday, Ben Obese-Jecty, the Tory MP for Huntingdon, wrote to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, “asking him to investigate the Member of Parliament for South Basildon and East Thurrock, James McMurdock MP, after he appeared to instigate this racial slur, spelling out the racist slur “N*****”, aimed at Sky News Westminster lobby journalist Mhari Aurora”.
Mr McMurdock is no stranger to controversy or to allegations of being a contemptible human being, of course, as this diary has catalogued several times before. He is another who faces an uncertain immediate future, given the investigations into his financial dealings. Reform had a glimpse of whatever he had been up to and dropped him hot brick-wise. But in the public’s eye he remains one of the party’s own. If (as is possible) he faces a mandatory by election soon, how readily will his voters elect another Reform candidate?
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As the fascists become bolder, we have a report of a union flag twinned with a swastika painted on a wall in Ely. Once again: the revolution eats its children. Reform started this, but it’s out of their control now. How far will the British voters tolerate far right thugs brandishing swastikas?
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As we hear of Nigel Farage skipping the opening of parliament on Monday in order to earn a few quid giving a speech to Trump allies in Washington, an earlier speech of his has just emerged, from last year. In it, Mr Farage appears to suggest that “the route to saving western civilisation” is to ban abortion. Completely. This is not however likely to be announced as a Reform policy: Mr Farage is not that naïve. You only get to hear this opinion if you pay him £13,000 for the speech, as did a group of extreme right-wing Americans.
Whether it is likely to become Reform policy were they ever to gain power we can’t know. But just to be on the safe side, dear reader, it might be as well to make sure you mention it to every woman you know.
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The Conservative leader of South Norfolk Council this week appeared to blow up a solar farm with a rocket launcher. Only ‘appeared’, since the stunt was a spoof, based on a violent video game called Grand Theft Auto. Councillor Daniel Elmer (for it was he) represents Cringleford ward and seems unrepentant. However South Norfolk’s Labour MP Ben Goldsborough is not amused. He claims it was it was “inappropriate for the council to use ‘violent’ imagery”, but it is rather more than that. It reveals an extraordinary discord with the voters. Hardly one in ten would know about Grand Theft Auto, which leaves this as just a rather puzzling display of a council leader inexplicably destroying a solar farm with a rocket launcher.
Curiously, although Cllr Elmer is a Tory, he is described online by the Norfolk Business Board as working in the Cabinet Office – which of course would be working for what is now a Labour government. This could explain a lot.
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Over the past two weeks, this diary has featured an organisation called OneSuffolk, a campaign group on behalf of one version of local government re-organisation, and which turns out to be a front for Suffolk Conservatives. The campaign has already come under fire for its aggressive tactics, and in particular, to quote this diary of last week: “To the outrage of non-Tory councillors, the council has spent £100,000 on promoting the Tories’ preferred OneSuffolk option, with leaflets delivered to every residence in Suffolk”.
This last point seems to have landed OneSuffolk and its backers in deep water. Pecksniff has seen a letter from those charged by the minister, Jim McMahon, to run the local government re-organisation programme. The letter is addressed to all council chief executives, and one of the points it makes is:
“We would like to also take this opportunity to remind you of your responsibilities under the Code of Recommended Practice for Local Authority Publicity. Please do take care in having regard to … the principles of objectivity and even-handedness and particularly paragraph 16 which states that local authorities should not use public funds to mount publicity campaigns whose primary purpose is to persuade the public to hold a particular view on a question of policy.”
It is difficult to see how blowing a hundred thousand smackers of the punters’ moolah on a personal caprice, to shore up a fiefdom under threat, can amount to anything less than a flagrant breach of this requirement. We await with interest the explanations offered by senior officers and political leaders of the council.
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Often these days, when checking the magisterial content of this diary before its final despatch to She Who Must Be Obeyed, your diarist realises there is no mention of the Conservative Party. The reason they are so easy to forget, of course, is because under Kemi Badenoch (NW Essex), they have nothing whatever to say.
They had been forgotten again this week, until your correspondent happened to read something by Tim Montgomery on social media. Mr Montgomery used once to represent the more portentous wing of the Tories, till reality stubbornly refused to follow his party’s policy, especially over Brexit. So he went off to Reform.
But this week he makes some observations about his erstwhile colleagues, on which we might dwell:
“What I find extraordinary is the extent to which so many Tory commentators, editors and so-called thought-leaders are so willing to excuse Badenoch’s contribution to the party’s freefall; have failed to undertake their own proper post-mortem on the Tories’ catastrophic time in govt; and still indulging in internal sectionalism. The Conservatives should – by now – be in the foothills of charting some kind of route map to recovery, but they are getting even deeper into wilderness territory.”
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The dynamics of the forthcoming Conservative Party conference and the inevitable leadership election are interesting. There is Kemi Badenoch, and two obvious contenders plotting behind the arras, Robert Jenrick and James Cleverly (Braintree). But is there also a dark horse out there? Still, perhaps more relevant these days than who will lead what is left of the party is who is likely to be next to leave it.
The conference presents an ideal opportunity for Reform to undermine them further, with the announcement of two or three high profile defections. Andrew Rosindell (Romford) perhaps? Though hardly high profile. The same goes for Patrick Spencer (C Suffolk). This week he unexpectedly added his name to a motion by Rupert Lowe (Gt Yarmouth), though he is reckoned to be one of the Tories’ most left-wing MPs.
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Norwich City Council has recently been embarrassed by the leaking of a report that claimed the council knew their wholly owned housing company Lion Homes would be unable to pay back its loans almost a year before they decided to liquidate it, losing £6 million of public money.
The council’s shareholder panel was supposed to meet four times a year, but it only met once in three years. The chair of the company through most of its existence was at the time Councillor Peter Prinsley, now the MP for Bury St Edmunds.
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One last thought, after another week of painting flags on zebra crossings and more demands that immigrants should be sent ‘home’, a contributor to social media posed this thought-provoking question:
“The French have “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” as a reference set of principles to guide their decisions during confusing times. What does the UK have? What does the Union flag stand for?”
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Thanks this week go to Malcolm Lynn, Celina Błędowska, Karl Whiteman, James Porter, Liz Crosbie, Yasmin Gregory, Kate Viscardi, Mark Popay, Jess Knopp, Rebecca Denness and Alex Briggs.
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