This week a poll was brought to the attention of your humble diarist, in particular a question illustrating just how much the country wishes it hadn’t had its head up its backside over the Brexit referendum. The question asks:
“You said Britain is on the wrong track. Which of these moments, if any, do you think is most responsible for putting Britain on the wrong track?”
(Bizarrely, the list of multiple choices does not include Ipswich Town’s relegation from the Premier League, but no matter.) What is noticeable however is that, by a long way, “the 2016 Brexit referendum” is the most damned cause of the apocalypse, identified by 28% of all those asked. (Covid is second, with 18%.)
Liberal Democrats felt it most keenly, with 49%, ahead of Labour with 40%, which ought in theory to be an embarrassment to the government. Since it appears that the only ones who do not see the referendum as being the cause of our troubles are the Tories, Reform and Keir Starmer.
Now tell me, dear reader, what does this make the prime minister?
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A year ago the excellent Simon Pease, retired senior diplomat, wrote for East Anglia Bylines about our politicians’ fear of talking about immigration – the bogey man behind Brexit. He quoted a conversation between two women in a supermarket queue: “It’s Brexit, isn’t it. We’re not supposed to talk about it, but it’s there every day.”
The reason why we’re not supposed to talk about Brexit is because we’re not on any account to talk about immigration, in spite of our having an obvious and pressing need for more of it. To quote Mr Pease: “These are not things the government wishes to discuss in front of the children – sorry, I mean the electorate.”
So we go on in the same British way, living off our legends and our myths, refusing to come to terms with reality, like children frightened of the dark.
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Jonathan Reynolds. Image by David Woodfall via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)
Jonathan Reynolds is at it again. The business secretary’s main claims to fame are that he looks like a by-blow of the royal family, and his shameless sucking up to Keir Starmer’s absurd stance on “making Brexit work”. On this he is a serial offender.
This week he insisted again that: “Our biggest trading relationship is with the EU, but on an individual country basis it is the US”. It doesn’t matter how he plays with words, this is untrue. “An individual country basis” is nonsense. We are speaking of trade here, and all EU trade negotiations are conducted as a single bloc. To pretend otherwise is dishonest and does not become any more honest however many times he repeats the lie. The care with which he tries to mislead only confirms that it is a deliberate and cynical attempt to mislead the voters.
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Jonathan Reynolds is also a leading culprit in exhorting growth whilst avoiding any mention of the dread words EU or Brexit. Growth is the magic word for the government, that will solve all our problems.
But do we suppose for a moment that growth will actually include us? The downtrodden masses? Perhaps in some way, Britain’s GDP will increase by a percent or two, but where will the money go? Will the public feel better off? Will we feel more confident about paying the rent, or affording an evening in the pub? Or will we just happen to turn a few more millionaires into billionaires?
Keir Starmer came to power promising ‘change’, but change does not come easily to him. He is the perfect status quo politician. This diarist does not for a moment doubt that he Means Well. But he just wants to mend things, not change them. He deeply distrusts major change.
He opposed Brexit mostly, one suspects, because the EU was the status quo, and Brexit represented fundamental change. But now we’re stuck with it, that becomes the status quo, and the PM doggedly supports it.
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There is an old phrase which is again becoming commonplace. We are told we are ‘living beyond our means’. But my dears, do you know anybody over the past few years who has had even the opportunity to live beyond their means? The suggestion is outrageous.
If ‘the nation’ is guilty of having done so, it cannot be lain at the feet of the NHS or our schools. It hasn’t helped more affordable housing or overcoming the disgrace of our pensions. So we return to that old question: if we are the world’s sixth largest economy (fifth before Brexit), where is all the money? Where has it all gone? Presumably it has gone to whoever it is who is living beyond their means. The people the government dare not touch.
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Whilst we are on the subject of shameless and unprincipled politicians, we should not let the week pass without drawing attention to the Liberal Democrats’ early day motion on more free movement in the EU for British touring artists, professional drivers and tourists. It is shameless because the LibDems know it is not in the gift of the British government to do anything about it. The restriction on movement is there because we are no longer members of the EU. So this trumpeting of outrage is entirely cynical.
What makes this particularly absurd is that an EDM is pointless. They are only ever employed by politicians who have run out of ideas and are merely looking for a cheap headline.
They mean nothing and go nowhere. It would be unkind to draw comparison with the party proposing the motion, but when are they going to grow up and take Europe seriously?
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By the way, Pecksniff rather likes the Liberal Democrats, in spite of the frustrations. The only things they have to do to dissuade this diarist from blowing raspberries at them is to become honest on EU issues and grow a backbone. Do they support joining the single market or a customs union? If so, say so, loud and clear, not whisper it when they hope nobody is listening.
That is a sentiment one rather feels would be echoed by LibDem members across the country. They seem somewhat less cowed than their Labour counterparts. Pecksniff is always pleased to hear the views of members of any party, and anonymity is guaranteed. Write to [email protected], or on BlueSky go to: pecksniffsdiary.bsky.social.
Oh, and by the way, hasn’t anybody in the LibDems ever heard of a strategy?
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Last week Diss suffered the monstrous intrusion of recreational hate brought by malevolent intruders into a country town just going about its business. The reason was, of course, that a hotel in the town has been playing host to families of asylum seekers. Hate is only fun if you can inflict it on other people, apparently, particularly those who are in no position to defend themselves. Police arrested two of the demonstrators – one who was featured in Pecksniff last week, one who was about to be.
The situation was made so much more febrile by the usual crass insensitivity of the Home Office, who decided – without informing the town, the hotel or the residents – that the present incumbents were to be moved, to god knows where, and replaced by single men.
Now of course there is no reason why single men should offer a threat, but the brutish behaviour of the HO only exacerbated the bewilderment and concerns of local people. They are claimed to be represented by Diss Park Hotel Community Action Group. It is perfectly justifiable for the neighbourhood, having been kept in the dark, to want to know what is happening in their backyard. Local families are entitled to expect their legitimate concerns to be heard and to be assuaged.
This is not Yvette Cooper’s HO way, however, so Diss then becomes a playground for all the misfits, racists, psychopaths and the rest who invaded the town last week. Local people, as well as the residents of the Park Hotel, are those who suffer.
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Just how sick the refugee protesters are, may be judged by what they claimed as a victory in last week’s rowdy scenes in Epping. We read of one fantasist, Callum Barker, calling himself ‘the Lion of Epping’. Another we have mentioned before, an inadequate called Kai Stephens, who boasted of how he had organised the unrest both at Epping and Diss on behalf of the far-right Homeland Party.
Stephens posted on social media: “Patriots run this block”. If this reminds you of the kind of embarrassing and puerile claim that might be found in disturbed teenagers, dear reader, then this assumption would only be enhanced by other material across social media. These people are for the most part just embarrassing. But then one suspects the same might have been said at the time of Messrs Goebbels and Himmler.
But we digress. Local Epping children had made a banner declaring: “Epping welcomes all except racists”. It was seized and burned. Mr Stephens gloatingly reported: “Epping: true British patriots burnt the leftoid slop”, and “Successful Homeland patriot patrol in Epping. Lefty propaganda sent to hell”. This embarrassment is accompanied by a picture of the burning banner.
It is fair to point out that Mr Stephens is clearly not very bright. In fact his every act – most of which he appears to publish – suggests an unpleasantly disturbed juvenile who bears a grudge that nobody will let him onto the cool kids’ table. It is believed that he may be one of those presently helping the police with their enquiries over the Diss disorder. It is unlikely that destruction of property on the basis of hate will avoid their further attention either.
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Before we leave this unpleasantness, however, we should record the courageous and principled stand by local Conservative Councillor Holly Whitbread, who wrote: “Local parents and children made this sign – in a democracy, they have the right to free speech too. While most people want the Bell Hotel closed, they do not want extremist politics in our town. Callum Barker and his fascist colleagues… do not speak for Epping”.
Though it would be more impressive still if all Cllr Whitbread’s colleagues on Epping Forest Council stood behind her.
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For all his protestations, it is a remarkable coincidence that the apparently groundless accusations of dishonesty made against Nigel Farage keep on coming. Regular readers will recall last week’s, when he made up the claim that Essex police had been conniving with opponents of anti-immigrant protestors. It wasn’t true: somebody invented it and he gleefully and knowingly repeated it.
This week’s controversy involves his accusation is that one third of Londoners had suffered phone theft during the past year. In fact the original ‘survey’ from which he took the idea was not ‘last year’, but ever; and the findings were not from London but nationwide. Further, the survey was not from a reputable polling organisation but a group of “Reform fanboys” called Nuke From Orbit.
We also learn that the parliamentary standards commissioner has launched an inquiry into Mr Farage’s possible infringement of the rules on registration of interests.
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The excellent John Elworthy of CambsNews is a proper journalist, and like East Anglia Bylines the News is a proper paper, (except neither of us is an actual, you know, paper). Pecksniff has remarked more than once in the past that the politics of Peterborough are not for the faint-hearted, and over the past couple of weeks we have heard intriguing murmurings from Mr Elworthy of Goings On.
Three people have been arrested at Peterborough City Council for alleged misconduct in public office. The offence can involve either neglect of duty of wilful misconduct. Councillors have been warned to stay shtum.
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There is another mystery in Cambridgeshire, this one involving Cambridgeshire County Council. The problem is concerned with the council’s entanglement with their own failed property development company, This Land. In April, East Anglia Bylines reported that the council had loaned the company £118.3 million, but it was a high risk strategy and, regrettably, the investment has tanked.
This has led to the council becoming involved in somewhat byzantine plans to get out of the financial mess. Critics are not convinced, shall we say, that what they are doing is either convincing or even proper. “When is a £60 million write-off not a write-off?” muses one of the Pecksniff intelligencers. There will be more on this.
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Keen-eyed readers and those not yet inebriated may have noticed that no mention has been made of a new political party of the left. There is a good reason for this. It took a week to decide whether it had actually been launched, and a couple of weeks more to decide who it was who launched it. There is still no clarity on what it is for, nor have its founders decided on a name.
So we have a probable party of some sort, without a name, and unclear quite who it’s for. Avid political nerds would already have guessed that, with this kind of organisation, one of the two known founders had to be Jeremy Corbyn.
Pecksniff will return to it some time soon.
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With thanks to this week’s intelligencers: Andrew Rowson, Celina Błędowska, Karl Whiteman, Liz Crosbie, James Porter and Malcolm Lynn.
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