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.

Liars!

Rish! and The Tories exposed as desperate and shameless after only two weeks.

I write this after two weeks of an already dismal and depressing election campaign – almost a third of the way through. Nothing much has shifted in terms of the polls – Labour are still a country mile in front and the Conservatives are still resolutely useless. So much so that my ingrained fear of the media establishment lying the Conservatives back to power, reinforced by enduring many unsuccessful campaigns in the past, has not really kicked in. I should be sitting back enjoying the campaign assured of victory, but I’m not. First, it’s extremely depressing watching a series of Tory ministers (or at least the few that are still standing ) lie their way through interviews, knowing that the supine interviewers will not call them out on their lies.

Second, unlike 1997, we are deprived of the delicious prospect of watching one grotesque Tory criminal after another being trounced by tactical voting. The biggest of beasts is vulnerable to ending their career in a rerun of the Portillo moment, shuffling from foot to foot in a drafty sports centre, as bepearled supporters sob uncontrollably. It’s petty and unworthy, I know, but it’s been the only thing keeping me going since 2010. Who would give the most pleasure? Jacob Rees Mogg? Michael Gove? Priti Patel? Cruella Braverman? Mark Francois? Andrea Jenkyns. Dear me, even reading the list sends a shiver down the spine, as the full depth and breadth of the Tory fuckwittery is laid bare. Deeply stupid. Deepy incompetent. Deeply callous. In some cases, vaguely criminal.

The trouble is that evolution has not produced a creature with a more acute nose for danger to their own self interest than the average sitting Tory MP. They’ve known for at least the past year that their days are numbered, and so they grandly announce their intention to stand down, citing privilege and honour, having made sure that they have secured a lucrative directorship or three of some businesses involved in their area of ministerial “expertise”. No reckoning for these charlatans after all. Michael Gove, taken by surprise by Rishi’s shock election call, didn’t even tell him he wasn’t going to stand. His announcement that he was standing down produced the most extraordinary paeans of praise for this supposed modern day titan of Westminster. The bar is set very low indeed if Gove is a titan. Coke head, drinker, lickspittle, his main achievement is proclaimed by the Torygraph and The Spectator as the rescuing of Education from the clutches of the Blob, all, supposedly in the name of “Standards”. Standards my arse, as Jim Royle might have commented. Now there’s someone who would have made a better Education Secretary than Gove. Along with Pingu, and Ant and Dec. What an interview shortlist that would have made.

The other source of pleasure denied, of course, is the prospect of an incoming Labour government that would begin the herculean task of repairing the damage created by 14 years of incompetence, greed and corruption. But unlike 1997, when there was real excitement at the end of Thatcherism, and what a Blair government could achieve, there is no similar joy or hope. Starmer has continued to disappoint and, lately, enrage. Before any of you Labour centrists explode, ranting about middle class Corbynistas threatening to jeopardize the Starmer project and thus betray “hard working families”, let me explain. (And don’t worry by the way about non-working, non families. No-one gives a toss about them. It’s their own fault.)

I absolutely get the strategy of saying virtually nothing and making no commitments that might give the Tories an easy target. We’ve been shafted too many times before by The Sun and the Mail. But what Starmer has done has gone way beyond that, way beyond what might reasonably be deemed sensible and cautious. Their policies have gone to the right of the Tory party. Watering down of the Green deal. Processing immigrants overseas. Keeping the 2 child benefit cap. Not nationalising Water, Energy, Rail etc. Not talking about Europe and the single market. Not talking about PR. The list is endless – a Mandelson-advised Labour party outflanking the Tories on the right. Who’d have thought it?

There does seem to be a genuine prospect that the Conservative Party might split after the election. Whereas before that would have been a reason for celebration, now it would just be a bit of schadenfreude. Why? Because there’s no need for the Tory Party, given the transformation of Starmer’s Labour. The Tories, who had via Brexit turned into the English National party, can split asunder. The knuckle draggers will migrate to Reform UK, who are basically the Nazis with fewer policies. The Tories who represent seats in leafy Middle England will join Labour. Socialists and even mildly left of centre libs will join the Greens. And this inexorable drift to the populist Right will continue unchecked unless Labour is deprived of a majority and PR somehow gets itself back on the table. And at the moment, that doesn’t seem likely.

This is the mother of all own goals. After what has happened since 2010, the appetite for socialist policies in poll after poll is enormous. They are clearly popular and different to the tired old policy sacred cows that derive from redundant concepts of sound money. The trouble is you have to make the case for them over time, and in doing so, debunk the hysterical name calling that promises of increased public sector spending always provokes. But the leadership don’t really seem to believe in it any more. Despite Starmer bizarrely self identifying as a – gulp – socialist. I’m still trying to work out the Machiavellian calculations that lie behind that announcement. Perhaps he just forgot.

The latest talking point is of Rishi Sunak taking politics and his own reputation into the gutter by his deliberate, desperate and blatant lies on tax. As ever with Rishi, despite the endearing flutter of excitement amongst the Media attack dogs on the night of the first debate, it’s all gone pear shaped twelve hours later. Everything he touches turns to dust, and I predict that before the end of the campaign, there will be major defections and open warfare amongst the Tories. It really couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of people.

It was to be expected, of course. The Forty five year Thatcherite experiment has produced a shed load of evidence of its own spectacular failure. In every area of governance, Britain is significantly worse than it was in 2010. You only have to walk through your local town centre to see it with your own eyes. And you’d have to walk because it’s too hard to get a bus or a train. Even they can’t defend the rising tide of shit their ideology has generated, so the only thing left is to lie about it. And they’re not even very good at that, apart from their lack of shame. They are certainly world leaders at that.

I am still undecided, but currently The Greens are making it hard for me to vote Labour, but I suspect I’ll wait until the July 4th and assess the state of play then. The way things are going , I’ll be able to vote Green with a clear conscience, knowing that Labour’s majority is unthreatened. Labour’s continuation of right wing policies, their timidity on economics, their disgraceful position on Gaza and Israel’s genocidal madness make it increasingly hard to support them. Ultimately though, I take the Mick Lynch line on this: the very worst iteration of a Labour government is a hundred times better than the very best iteration of a Tory one. But it’s getting very close.

Hold the Front Page! Latest Tory haplessness – just before going to press the D Day scandal was breaking. Sunak’s crack team of advisors have outdone themselves this time. I’m starting to believe a tweet I read that suggested that the only rational explanation for their campaign’s increasing level of incompetence is the idea that Rish! has got a hedge bet on that depends on him losing the election by achieving less than 100 MPs. It’s delicious – the ultimate vaccuous flag shaggers hoisted by their own petard by the Dad’s Army propaganda sheets, The Torygraph, The Mail, The Sun and The Express.

More ramblings from the election battleground next week.