A Grand Day Out

High noon for Starmer at PMQs showdown.

Palace of Westminster, Big Ben, and Westminster Bridge as seen from the south bank of the River Thames.

One of the many pleasures of being retired and living in London is the variety of free entertainments on offer. One such, not everyone’s cup of tea perhaps, is a seat in the public gallery for Prime Minister’s Question time at the House of Commons. Anyone can apply to their local MP for tickets, but I have had the misfortune of being resident in Beckenham, for years a rotten borough for the Conservative Party. It’s been said of the Labour Party that in the old days, in Red Wall seats, Labour could put up a donkey and it would still be returned with a landslide. The Tories in Beckenham seem to have tested this theory in real time, via their MP for fifteen years, Bob Stewart, an embodiment of the term “Gammon”. Not for him the common courtesy of replying to the emails of his constituents, particularly those with an affiliation to Labour. Of course not. Where would the votes be in that?Bob had resolutely ignored all my emails requesting tickets over the years, so my delight in Labour finally breaking up the one party state of Bromley, had personal significance. Our new MP, Liam Conlon replied immediately, and after a wait of about 8 months, I finally got the nod and was informed that tickets would be available to pick up from the Admissions Order Office in the central lobby on Wednesday February 4th. Little did I know then that this would prove to be one the more significant PMQs, when The Epstein/Mandelson shit finally hit the fan.

It was a fascinating day – I’d recommend it to anyone with any kind of commitment to democracy and any kind of empathy for the idiosyncrasies of the quaint historical British system. Walking up to the Parliament building is like a guided tour of the democratic right to protest. Encamped at the traffic light island at the end of Parliament street was a very familiar face conducting a permanent protest with a cacophonously loud sound system.

The game was partly given away by the banner festooned around the railings of the traffic island: “We’re still here because Brexit is still crap.” Hard to disagree really – Steve Bray, the patron saint of eccentric British protesters, is still the man.

There are other smaller protests dotted around: Gaza, Greenpeace, Global warming etc . Then on to the building itself. Once you’re through fairly strict airport style security with scanners and plastic trays, and you negotiate a winding walkway past the statue of Oliver Cromwell, you enter through the main doors of Westminster Hall, before getting to the central lobby, a place as familiar as a film set, so often does it appear on nightly news bulletins.

The building is magnificent and oozes history. I ended up walking around gawping at the medieval Hammer Beam roof and the statues and paintings and plaques reminding everyone of the famous folk who have trodden the flagstones there.

It’s a long wait to get access to the public gallery, which is at one end of the debating chamber behind a perspex screen. You get a very good view of the Speaker’s chair, and the main players on both sides . The sound is well miked up and the proceedings are broadcast on screens in the gallery itself. I was disappointed that this masks the ghastly Reform UK fascists from view, and I had to content myself with a tv version of Cruella Braverman making her first intervention as a Reformista, to a satisfying chorus of boos.

Speaking of which, it’s made very clear through a series of official notices that you pass on the way to the gallery, that no clapping, shouting, cheering or jeering will be tolerated and throughout the proceedings, several frock-coated officials, probably all with names like Ermine Wolf or Black Hammer, hovered threateningly, glaring at the suitably silent and cowed members of the public.

The fact that the officials all seemed to be Dickensian in age as well as dress, and couldn’t police a determined gang of toddlers, didn’t seem to matter to the crowd, who all behaved impeccably. Unlike the rare protesters pictured above. That was on another occasion sadly.

A few random takeaways from the experience:

1.It’s a very beautiful, interesting, historic building and worth a visit just for that

2. It felt very different from the event I later saw reported in the media. On line, on the TV news programmes and in the press, it was all presented as an occasion of high drama, but in reality, it wasn’t like that at all. It was all very quiet and polite, to the point of being rather tame.

Perhaps this was the distancing effect of being behind the screen. Or perhaps the strange, artificial, performative nature of the whole event. Badenoch, as leader of the opposition, gets to ask 6 questions, but it seems perfectly possible to field those questions in a bland way, and wait until you get one of the series of “dolly drop” questions from your own side. Those questions had the effect of draining away any drama or sense of jeopardy.You know the sort of thing: “Does my honourable friend the PM agree with me that the opening of a new sausage factory is a welcome sign of this Government’s commitment to sausages, meat products in general and to the residents of my constituency, (insert name of town the MP represents but has only lived in for the past 6 months)

3. Although it’s better than nothing, it’s not really a good way of ensuring accountability. The adversarial layout of the chamber doesn’t help and neither does the in-built imperative to produce snappy sound bites for later broadcast. The select committee system provides a much more focused cross examination where it’s harder to get away with not answering the question or not being prepared.

4. The most disturbing thing happened right at the end of the event when we were leaving via the central lobby. It was full of the great and the good, a very familiar scene from countless TV news interviews. We passed Farage and Braverman chatting to two other people. Their conversation finished just as we were passing them, and Farage strode past us on his own wearing a very expensive looking dapper blue suit.

Tanned and confident, he was every inch the wealthy member of the establishment, aware that all eyes turned towards him as he walked along. Westminster Hall was packed with visitors, including loads of Sixth Formers and school parties. Many of these young people, shouted out to Farage. “Nigel! Nigel! This way Nigel!” as if he were a Pop Star. I’ve thought for years now that political education in this country was utterly pathetic, and it’s left at least one generation completely vulnerable to charlatans who are good communicators. Into this vacuum step Andrew Tate, Nigel Farage, Tommy Robinson, Jordan Peterson, Charlie Kirk lying shamelessly, all in the name of “Free Speech”. The young always used to be my hope for the future, being naturally attracted to the idea of social justice. Now I’m not so sure. Social Media has a lot to answer for.

5. The entire population of UK political journalists are having a laugh when they say the Mandelson affair is a worse political scandal than Profumo. I have no time for Starmer, and he will eventually go (probably after the May council election debacle), but all that has happened here is that he’s made a mistake. He’s not in the Epstein files. There’s no suggestion of corruption. There’s plenty of other things to accuse him of. Appalling policy on Gaza. Appalling weaponising of antisemitism against the Corbyn Labour Party. Appalling lies during his own leadership campaign. But in the grand scale of things, it’s small beer really. Have people really forgotten the shameful performance of Boris Johnson? – utterly corrupt, utterly venal, utterly dishonest and utterly unexamined when it comes to leaking state secrets to Russia via secret Bunga Bunga party attendance in Italy.

Later the same day there was an Opposition Day Debate on the whole Mandelson fiasco. Guess who wasn’t there? That’s right, man of the people, Nigel Farage. I wonder why?

We live in dark times and a trip to the Mother of Parliaments has not reassured me that our democracy is safe. Perhaps my next grand day out in that there London should be Madam Tussauds.

When Darkness Falls

A Journal of The Plague Year

May 2021

In the years when I was making the transition from being a little boy to a teenager and then a young man, some of the realities of history gradually unfolded before me. The second world war as a child appeared as a glorious adventure, fuelled by my weekly comics and endless black and white films on the telly, and part of ancient history. In reality, from the middle of the Sixties, it was only twenty years earlier, roughly the same distance as 9/11 is from today. Then, as the details of the Nazis and concentration camps emerged for me, I was genuinely shaken to realise, probably for the first time, man’s capacity for savage, industrial-scale, cruelty to others. The reality of the Holocaust more than anything else never loses its power to shock and baffle me. The final stage of this gradual loss of innocence, was the story of the rise of the Nazis in Germany in the thirties. I could never quite grasp how it was possible that the Nazis rose to power through the democratic processes of the state. Yes, I know there was manipulation and propaganda, violence and coercion, but even so it was a process that took several years. Did nobody notice? Was no-one motivated to resist? How could they possibly have allowed it?

For years, this formed part of my fundamental narrative: that the world was inexorably getting better, and that as universal education spread, a vaguely socialist perspective, rooted in a concern for the common good and a belief in collectivism, meant that steadily, with some slips on the way, fairness, prosperity and equity were growing. The rise of the Nazis belonged to a more primitive version of human society. It couldnt happen here again, not now. I’ve held on to that narrative, sometimes like a drowning man clinging to bit of driftwood, for years. Even during the beginning of the Tories austerity regime from 2010 I comforted myself that it was a passing phase, and that demographics alone meant that The Tories were inevitably a busted flush.

I was also bolstered by a belief that democracy works. That the population can be trusted not to make stupid decisions, so that, in the end, liberal values are not at risk. That belief has gone now, I’m afraid. It could only ever work as long as there was untrammelled access to reliable, accurate information. A combination of social media and the internet has put paid to that. To think that 20-25 years ago, one of the apparent attractions of the internet and its lack of regulation was the idea of democratising power and information flow, so that neither corporations nor governments, could propagandise their way to power, like the Nazis did in Germany all those years ago.

The Trump experience in the States shows how easy it is to convince people of lies. Even today, it’s clear that The Republican party, far from repudiating the Trump lies, has completely embraced them and Liz Cheney is to be expelled for not backing Trump in the aftermath of the election. What has the world come when Liz Cheney has turned into the poster girl for liberal democracy and the rule of law? Her father will be turning in his grave. This has chilling consequences for the next election. Now, one of the only two available choices to the American people, is as near as dammit fascist.

And the same applies here. The results from our own sweep of elections last week were not unexpected. But they were tremendously depressing nonetheless, not least for the fact that they presage probably another ten years of this, the worst Government and Prime Minister in my life time. And another ten years of this amoral crew really does not bear thinking about. What is the charge sheet as it stands and what can we look forward to?

Serial, repeated and proven lying
Corruption, misuse of money, cronyism with favours for friends
Contempt for the rule of law and the constitution.
Obstacles to Judicial review increased so the government cannot be held accountable by citizens
Stripping away of planning regulations for a plague of unregulated house building on green belt land
Gerrymandering election law via constituency boundaries and photo id for voters.
Removal of democratic rights to protest

There is probably more. There is so much shit cascading from Westminster that it’s impossible to compile a definitive list that can be relied upon for more than five minutes.

And when all of this is going on, the BBC acts like an organ of Government, craven and cowardly, frightened that the license fee will be abolished. As the playwright David Hare said a few weeks ago, “The BBC is like Pravda”. At 1 o’clock, 6 o’clock and 10 o’clock, regular as clockwork, the BBC news bulletin turns into a party political broadcast for the Government, aided and abetted by the COVID briefings that give Johnson star billing. Laura Kuenssberg, in an extraordinary article on the BBC website, supposedly investigating Johnson’s lying, cannot bring herself to find a single lie, and dances on the head of a pin to excuse or redefine lying. She is like some kind of mediaeval cleric writing a treatise about equivocation. It was only written in the first place because she was shamed into doing something on it by the 11 million internet views of Peter Stefanovic’s video compilation of Johnson’s 6 main lies to Parliament. She does not even have to do any work on it – he’s done it all. And still she exonerates him and waits patiently for her eventual place in the honours list in the future. Click the link below to see the article and make your own mind up.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56624437

And the people, those guardians against our slide into the pit of corruption and fascism, vote for it all, cheerily, proclaiming that good old Boris is a bit of a character. And Hitler and Pol Pot would be a laugh to go for a beer with. The most depressing part of the post-election spectacle was Chris Mason’s interview of a father and son on the dockside at Hartlepool, falling into line and providing the standard Vox Pop proving that the Tories are on the side of working people and Labour are just interested in trendy London Metropolitan types. One day soon, somebody on Universal benefit in some godforsaken Red Wall town, will actually use those words in a vox pop BBC interview: “No, I used to be Labour, like me father and grandfather before him, but now Labour are just for the metropolitan liberal elite, like.”

When pressed by Mason to explain why they had changed allegiance, they both referenced the Courts being closed, the local hospital being cut etc etc . They did not seem to realise that these issues, absolutely crucial for local communities everywhere, were the responsibility of the Conservative national Government and had nothing to do with the Labour local council, which presumably was on its knees because of swinging austerity cuts imposed by the Tories. Dear me. Johnson is living proof that you can fool enough of the people enough of the time, and that the current Conservative Party is a coalition of the Selfish, the Stupid and the Sentimental. That’s the MPs, before you start getting sniffy about blaming the voters. The only reason I don’t blame the voters, by the way, is because they’re given false information.

This is a genuinely astonishing clip.pic.twitter.com/YvPEvpWlOK
— Nick Jones 💙 (@resophonick) May 9, 2021

And so now, I can completely understand why and how the Nazis rose to power in thirties Berlin. And the rise and end of Trump transformed my understanding of The Handmaid’s Tale from it being a dystopian tale into it as a roadmap for the rise of the far right. The response of the hardcore Trump supporters and the Q anon crazy conspiracy theorists was chilling, but less so than the realisation that previously mainstream liberal Republican types would go along with it for personal power and advancement. Just as here, normal liberal Tories have been expelled (Grieve, Hammond, Greening, Gauke Stewart et al) and any moderates that are still in place, support the slide into moral turpitude to protect their own skins. I shudder to think for too long about where it will all end, and have no faith in The Great British Public to see through the Fake News.

Which is where I started. Regulate the Internet.

Next time: Why Labour has got it so wrong and why Peter Mandelson is most definitely not the answer.

Back to the Future, Part Two: We’re on the brink….

Johnson: Are you sure this will work?

Cummings: It’s the Will of The People…

At the time of writing, it all looks pretty bleak for Labour Party supporters. The last poll put the Tories 19 points ahead.(update at the bottom of this article) Yes, it was similar midway through the 2017 election. Yes, this is an election with, more than ever before, constituency-specific conditions that buck the trend of national polls. Yes, the campaign allows Corbyn more direct access to people to be able to counter the most egregious media bias. Taking all of that into account, it still feels like a mountain to climb, and the ambition of being the largest party in a hung parliament, realistic a few weeks ago, seems unattainable now. The first sign of a closing of the gap in the polls has brought out the big guns of the anti-semitism tactic, a hugely successful plan to discredit the most overtly anti-racist political party in the history of the known universe. You can’t argue against it, if you’re not Jewish, without running the risk of being accused of, at best being in denial about the problem and at worst, being a racist. Even Jewish labour party supporters who have the temerity to contest the MSM version of events are demonised as traitors or not being real Jews. Please, give the tens of thousands of Jewish voices who are pro-Corbyn some air time. Please, when you write these articles, give us some evidence. Please Jeremy, argue your case. Look at some of these links for more: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/mar/07/debunking-myth-that-anti-zionism-is-antisemitic Michael Rosen’s blog: https://t.co/H6kKX1R2b0?amp=1 Jewish Voice for Labour: https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/smoke-without-fire-the-myth-of-a-labour-antisemitism-crisis/

It could still be the case that real people voting on December 12^th will show the polls to have been wrong, but I have to be honest, I’m not expecting that and I’m beginning to feel more than a little depressed. Because what is at stake in this election makes it, by a country mile, the most important in my lifetime. Despite the best efforts of the mainstream media to normalise the Conservative Party led by Boris Johnson, to place them in a One Nation Tory tradition, they are really the Brexit party in all but name.

The Selfish, the Sentimental and the Stupid

Consider what has happened in the last year.

Moderate and mainstream Tories have left in their droves. Either they have something resembling principles, and they cannot in conscience be part of a party that is going to inflict such damage on the country. Or they cannot justify, with weasel words, (See James Cleverly, Matt Hancock, Nicky Morgan, Michael Gove) the blatant, repeated and outright bare faced lying and law breaking that is the modus operandi of the current leadership. Whether they have left, or have been ousted by the withdrawal of the whip, or the actions of rabidly right wing constituency parties, they are no longer there, a moderating influence on future policy direction. Look at the names of those who have gone: Rory Stewart, Ken Clarke, Amber Rudd, Dominic Grieve, David Gauke, Nick Boles, Justine Greening, Anna Soubry, Heidi Allen. His own brother, Jo Johnson, has stepped down as a candidate. We have no way of knowing, at the time of writing, how many of his children are standing against him for other political parties. The party is now an unembarrassed coalition of the selfish, the sentimental and the stupid, a mirror image of the voters they now attract.

You just have to look at the current cabinet for a flavour of what a Johnson Government would do.

Priti Patel as Home Secretary: Believes in the Death Penalty. Thinks poverty is the fault of local authorities. Broke Civil Service regulations last year as Secretary of State for Overseas Development by holding secret meetings without the required Civil service officials, with members of the Israel government over illegal settlements on the West Bank. Thinks British workers are “the worst idlers in the world” Has advocated reducing dramatically the welfare state in the UK and imposing working conditions of countries like Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea

Sajid Javid as Chancellor. His main role appears to be as a token person of colour in the cabinet. Has suffered outright and open racism from other Tory members in the way he has been treated and in the torrent of social media abuse he has experienced from many constituencies, members and officials. Played a leading role, before becoming an MP, in Deutsche bank, enriching himself on the back of his trading of collaterised debt obligations (no, me neither), the financial instrument that played a central part in the collapse of the global banking system.

Liz Truss as President of the Board of Trade. Someone with the largest recorded gap between their ability and their own estimation of their ability, coming just ahead of Andrea Loathsome, the person who wants to get rid of all workers’ rights legislation from Europe.

Dominic Raab, co-author with Priti of the book “Britain unchained”, a rag bag collection of lunatic fringe right wing stuff, both on economics and social policy. This is the stuff that passes for the intellectual wing of the party. The compensation prize in this election, if the Tories win, is the prospect of Raab, IDS, and even Johnson himself losing their seats. Most of them, Johnson in particular, wouldn’t be able to find the high street of their constituency without a minder holding their hand, because they don’t give a flying fig leaf for boring old constituency work. That sort of stuff is for social workers.

Matt Hancock, minister for Health, who will say and do absolutely anything he has to, to cling on to power and his ministerial limo.

And that’s before we get onto Jacob Rees-Mogg, Minister for the eighteenth century and Michael Gove whose policy crimes and misdemeanours, and his absolute equanimity about lies and law breaking almost rival Johnson himself. (What a dream team that would have made back in 2016 – The Mendacious Brothers).

So what policies could we reasonably expect to be enacted if the Tories have a working majority, given that the new crop of MPs are likely not to have a single scruple or moral instinct between them? Well, for starters:

Savage anti-immigrant legislation
Selling off much of the NHS to USA and a quantum leap towards Health insurance
Abolition of all meaningful workers’ rights laws – expect restrictions of sick pay entitlement and the right to paid holidays.
Abortion outlawed
Increase in State pension age to 75
Slashing of public spending on services and infrastructure
Increase in unemployment that not even the expansion of the unregulated gig economy can mask.

Most worryingly, once Johnson gets a majority, I don’t think that it’s far fetched to suggest that they will do everything in their power to stack the elections odds against Labour ever getting re-elected. The Boundary commission redrawing of constituencies will go ahead this time, with all that implies for Labour. They will bring in the blatantly partisan requirement for photo ID before citizens are allowed to vote. This will effectively disenfranchise tens of thousands of Labour voters. Johnson has shown his utter contempt for previously accepted norms of public discourse and for the rule of law and the conventions of parliamentary democracy, and will have no hesitation in dismantling anything that is a hindrance to his pursuit of power and his retention of power once he has his hands on it. The most recent heavy-handed threats against Channel four for not just rolling over are a sign of how none of the freedoms we have taken for granted for so long can now be guaranteed.

Lies, damned lies, and the media

Johnson: Won’t anyone notice?

Pa Johnson: Don’t worry -The great unwashed can’t even spell Pinochio

Cummings: Brilliant!

And it is this that is at the heart of this election, the reason it is of such importance. It is conceivable that reasonable, civilized people can vote Conservative because they believe in a smaller state and trickle-down economics. I don’t agree with them and I think that they are wilfully ignoring all the available evidence, but democracy dictates that we must suck it up when The People make the wrong choices.

But absolutely nobody can vote for this particular brand of the Tory party, who has any regard for the truth, for the law and for freedom.

It is possible that some of the apologists can convince themselves that the ends justify the means, that they know they are right so that it is acceptable, ultimately, to bend the truth and the law, to get a Tory Government. That is chilling enough. Even more sinister is the idea that they know they are wrong, but they want power above all else and are prepared to do anything to get it and then hang on to it.

I don’t want to be hysterical about this. I may be being overly susceptible because I watched the BBC4 series, “The Rise of the Nazi Party” a few weeks ago, and I’ve just finished reading the Booker prize winner, “The Testaments”, Margaret Atwood’s follow up to the dystopian nightmare view of the future, “The Handmaids Tale”. But the checks and balances of a mature liberal democracy that we have all taken for granted as guaranteed for ever are under attack, and suddenly it is possible to see how, step by step, populist authoritarianism slides in through the backdoor and slips into a seat on the back row. Before you know it, it’s taken the stage and the audience are all clapping furiously.

We’re half way there. Already Johnson has:

Suppressed the report into Russian interference and donations to the Tories
Unlawfully prorogued Parliament
Misled the Queen
Doctored video of Starmer talking about Brexit
Produced a fake “Fact checker” version of the Conservative Party website to mislead the public
Threatened a national broadcaster
Leant on the BBC, with the license fee an unspoken arm twisted behind their backs.
Avoided all serious scrutiny by the media
Avoided investigation into fraudulently funnelling money to Jennifer Arcuri when London Mayor.
Lied about the reason for having the general election

Ten to twenty years ago, just one of these things would have sunk any political career. Now, apparently, the public say that Johnson’s a naughty boy and we don’t trust him, but we like him and we’re going to vote for him because he will get Brexit done, with his “Oven-Ready” deal.

It’s not the deal that’s Oven Ready. It’s us – the long -suffering Turkeys.

Fight back! Vote tactically, even if that means holding your nose and voting for the Lib Dems. Find out who are the nearest challengers to the Tories in your constituency and vote for them.

Ps: Stop press! Latest polling suggests a narrowing of the gap -It’s not over yet and this makes the tactical voting message above even more important.