Jaws plummeted among the wise men at the Muckrakers at the inauspicious display of chaos over the Gorton and Denton by-election candidacy emanating from No.10. The first rule of crisis management is to sum up the known facts and tell them all honestly. Instead, No. 10 has assiduously applied themselves to obfuscation, denial and (in that they briefed two contradictory versions of what happened) dishonesty. It began with informing the media that the NEC would rule out Andy Burnham before they told him. Catastrophic mismanagement, and the only way out is to apologise. But apologies are always for softies in Labour’s No.10.
Instead of listening to their prophets, they came up with a growing series of excuses as to why they hadn’t told him and how the decision was reached, and predictably every position taken was immediately over-run. No.10 even insisted Mr Burnham was told by phone before the meeting that his candidacy wouldn’t be accepted: thus making clear the outcome was a fix even before it was discussed. Then as though that wasn’t enough, another No.10 source contradicted it.
Mr Burnham is a bit of a rock star ‘oop north’. He has the wholesome appeal of a popular secondary school teacher. He may or may not be the answer to Labour’s and the nation’s ills as PM, a role for which Keir Starmer appears to have little aptitude. But he represents what seems the most promising conduit to change.
*
One of the most serious of the many repercussions for Labour of the candidacy controversy is the resultant open attack on the party’s leadership by Andrea Egan, new general secretary of Unison, one of Labour’s major trade union backers.
“We cannot allow those currently in charge of the party to take us down with them… A radical change in direction could not be more needed.”
For some time, Pecksniff has been reporting dissent in the party over Keir Starmer, but with the absence of either the will or the nous to do anything about it. However, the game’s afoot when the unions begin to stamp theirs. Stalwart Labour supporters will tell themselves this will all blow over. It won’t.
By the way, watch Darren Jones…
*
The NEC meeting was always going to lead to internecine Labour Party war. The by-election itself will not be long delayed. This is a campaign Keir Starmer can’t win even if Labour holds the seat. Even before the Burnham brouhaha, one of the convocation of the wise with knowledge of the constituency declared that Labour would get “a pasting”.
On the other hand, other reports suggest the Labour vote may be holding up, in fear of Reform. There is now the ritual fan dance, but it is a sign of the times that the two parties with expectations are the new kids on the block, the ‘anybody but the above’ parties: Reform and the Greens, with the age of those bothering to vote a likely determinate of the outcome. Though the constituency has a significant Muslim electorate, and there is known advocacy for the Greens.
Reform was first to make its presence known, on social media, but it did not go well. Chief whip Lee Anderson published a photo of a happy group of Reformers, with the words: ‘Gorton and Denton. A cold but productive day in what will be a hotly contested seat. Reform UK fear no party. Bring it on.’
Unfortunately, unless Reform is even more incompetent than one supposed, this claim seems to be a porky. The picture was taken in Audenshaw, which is in the Ashton-under Lyne constituency, presumably on a different occasion unless Reform is actually canvassing the wrong voters: not impossible.
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“With Labour, Britain will stay outside the EU. But…we must make Brexit work. There will be no return to the single market, the customs union or freedom of movement.”
This is a quote from the Labour Party’s website. It is all my eye and Betty Martin, of course. Keir Starmer is determined to take Britain into the dark, and this week he exacerbates our self-inflicted wound by pretending “Britain must get closer to the single market”.
By their dissembling shall ye know them. The PM still insists we must “make Brexit work”, in spite of the past decade having shown the idea is a delusion.
Nor can we get closer to the single market without joining it. A belief to the contrary is another example of British exceptionalism, the idea that rules can be bent for us. Yet, ever since the travesty of the hapless Tory negotiations, the one principle carved on tablets of stone in any communication with the EU is that there can be no cherry picking. So if you want the benefits of the single market, you have to be part of it. To allow cherry picking would undermine the whole policy, probably the bloc’s most accomplished success (in which Britain played a notable part).
We should not fool ourselves or allow others that privilege. Keir Starmer’s dishonesty is only prolonging the profound sense of grief and betrayal that millions of us have suffered since that referendum. He has to go.
*
“Polling reveals that 22 million consider themselves to be in the centre or the centre right. Nearly a third of those people – 7 million – consider that no political party adequately represents their views.” So claims former Tory cabinet minister David Gauke in an article at Conservative Home, introducing the new ‘moderate’ Conservative group called ‘Prosper’.
Potentially millions of old-fashioned Conservatives are wondering who to vote for, and even a moderate return to the fold might dramatically split the right-wing vote. Prosper is clearly trying to climb back into the Tory party rather than establish something new, and Kemi Badenoch (NW Essex) is hastily turning her artillery on this new and perhaps unexpected threat from the left.
There was an interesting and aggressive piece in the Guardian on Wednesday by Justine Greening, driving a disingenuous wedge between the recent absconders – Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman – and their esteemed leader. The idea being to establish that the deserters are right-wing pedagogues, and their departure permits Ms Badenoch to return to more heterodox opinions. It is then easier to paint her as extreme too when she doesn’t.
In fact, Ms Badenoch finds herself on treacherous ground, caught between Scylla and Charybdis. She now has to fight on two fronts, and we must doubt whether she has the intellectual footwork for that.
*
What to make of those latest desertions from Tories to Reform, and how will Kemi Badenoch deal with cannons to the right of her and Prosper cannons to the left? Her tone this week has been rather Rorke’s Drift, her diminished band facing the increasingly disreputable army of Reform. Nigel Farage has, perhaps somewhat unwillingly, welcomed a positive Addams Family of grotesques, all apparently eager to climb into an abyss of financial scandal and political depravity. They seem infinitely prepared to accede to any depths in order to slake their unsatisfied ambition. Mr Farage will recognise the threat they pose to his position, but he was impotent to prevent their arrival – which in itself tells us a great deal.
Most interesting in the weeks ahead will be the inevitable confrontation between the leader of the Conservatives and her erstwhile colleague, the member for Fareham and Waterlooville. It sounds like a particularly squalid music hall turn, ‘Badenoch and Braverman’, in which the two protagonists throw ordure at each other across the stage. How long, dear reader, before the appeal among the audience of being covered in it themselves begins to pall?
*
Morgan McSweeney has become a hate figure for disenchanted Labour voters and others on the left, held responsible for those repressive right-wing policies the government pursues, most notably Sir Keir’s volte face on his support for membership of the EU. Mr McSweeney’s entire strategy has been based on pandering to the socially conservative ‘working-class’ group who he believes have swung behind Reform, those he apparently calls his “hero voters”. For that we have put up with Labour attacks on the small boats and an interminable assault on immigration, but most unforgivably, he is a fervent supporter of Brexit and is responsible for corrupting the PM into believing its delusions.
So just how successful has this strategy proved? Well, this week YouGov published a study of where 2024’s voters would now place their cross, and the total number of Reform voters influenced by Mr McSweeney’s strategy in government turns out to be… 0%.
That’s it: none. Nil. Nix. Nada. Zero. Zilch. Sweet fanny adams.
It can hardly appear churlish, therefore, to point out that the entire McSweeney-Starmer project has turned out to resemble a pig’s rectum. The whole strategy behind everything Labour has plotted since Jeremy Corbyn’s defenestration has been based on a chimera. And during that time, countless observers, including (one must modestly point out) your diarist, have spelled it out. Neither Sir Keir nor Mr McSweeney have anywhere to hide.
*
Debate over foaming bumpers among the wise persons this week included speculation on whether Reform actually has a Clacton office. After all, my dears, why would they? A presence in the town would only encourage long queues of voters requesting Nigel Farage to solve some problem for them, when he could more profitably employ his time on buckshee jaunts around the world at the expense of one of his billionaire backers.
His principal preoccupation, after all, is with money and his own personal entitlement to lots of it. Nowhere is it recorded that the interests of the people of Clacton feature on his agenda.
*
The East Anglian Daily Times can be a worry. Take this week. On Wednesday they published this, on the subject of the cancellation of local elections:
“A member of the public: Michelle Dorrell, from Ipswich, said: ‘I am furious, as is my right.’ When asked why she thought that the elections had been postponed, she replied: “because Labour and the Conservatives are scared of losing to Reform.”
Now, anyone who has ever had to solicit views from the public knows they don’t speak like this: as though from a script. Nor do hacks ever trundle in an interviewee out of context and call her primly “a member of the public”, with no further explanation. So, what do we read from this? Is the paper overtly supporting Reform? Local papers usually run a mile from being identified with a particular party. Or is it a ham-fisted attempt to drum up interest in a subject which they feel ought to be broadcast, only they know it will bore all but the political nerds?
Another curious coincidence of the story is that the lady involved (who so readily was to hand with what appears to be a previously prepared political statement) is a former employee of the East Anglian…
*
Readers may recall that the BBC’s political editor, Chris Mason, was once a half decent political correspondent. (As indeed in her time was Laura Kuenssberg.) So what is it that happens to them when they take on the mantle of editor?
Mr Mason often appears like the junior lead in an amateur production of some drawing room comedy. In parsonic overtones he constantly tells us that Reform hold the ring in national politics. But like his predecessor, he is wedded to the old boys’ club of Westminster, and mistakes that for real politics. He eulogises Nigel Farage and his popular impact on the electorate, in spite of the polls telling us two thirds of us wouldn’t have him in the house.
The Reform manifesto promises our own domestic version of President Trump’s ICE, and the introduction of concentration camps. It is fair to assume that a majority of the public might be appalled at the idea, but they will only be appalled if somebody tells them of the plans. There was a time when journalists, especially BBC journalists, might have thought that was their job.
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This week’s intelligencers are Liz Crosbie, Stace Richards, Karl Whiteman, Malcolm Lynn, David Patey, Celina Błędowska, Mark Popay and James Porter.
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