As general election fever rages on, especially following the dramatic entry into the fray of Nigel Farage and the publication of the party manifestos, the Conservative party’s campaigning shows ever increasing desperation in the form of repeating proven lies (like the £2000 additional tax under Labour one), introducing one policy gimmick after another and extreme scaremongering about ‘putting Keir Starmer in number 10’. Not to mention the spiteful tweets eg Rishi Sunak: ‘If Labour get in, they will change the rules so it’s much harder to ever get them out… they will change every rule to make sure they keep power’. Yet another stupid tactic but one which has gained traction in the collusive media is this harping on ‘dangers’ of a Labour ‘supermajority’: there’s no such thing as a ‘supermajority’ but this hasn’t stopped it being trotted out at regular intervals.
But despite these relentless efforts the polls have barely shifted, with Labour still 20 points ahead. With press headlines alluding to ‘Tory wipeout’, it’s been predicted that even a number of Cabinet ministers will lose their seats – Jeremy Hunt, Penny Mordaunt, Grant Shapps, Johnny Mercer and even Sunak himself. An unprecedented situation: even more if an off piste candidate like Count Binface gains traction. Many are so disillusioned with politics and politicians that we can’t rule it out. Social media wags have taken to asking who we’d most like to see lose their seats – name the top 5. Mine would have to include the absurd and empathy free Rees-Mogg and the complacent and nasty targetter of the vulnerable Work and Pensions Minister Mel Stride. On the topic of polls, questions have been posed as to whether they are now too powerful. Some countries apparently disallow them, because they’re thought to artificially influence voters too much, but surely it’s better to have polls in order to prevent too much political party propaganda from gaining traction.
But I’ve been mystified why, especially as a new constituency here, we’ve had no advance information about its name or anything else and we shouldn’t have to dig this out of websites. We’ve now received polling cards and postal votes but only leaflets from Labour and Reform when at least eight candidates are standing. I contacted the Lib Dems about this as it seems presumptuous and disrespectful of voters to totally ignore them and the response I got was ‘sorry but we have to target our resources on seats we can win’! I don’t think that’s an acceptable attitude and despite the sudden nature of the election announcement all parties have now had a chance to get their acts together.
The frequent election debates are certainly adding to the febrile atmosphere and besides all the repetition we’re hearing, it seems our PM is getting tetchier and tetchier in response to the awkward questions thrown at him. Thursday’s 2 hour Question Time was a good example, during which the audience openly groaned and laughed at some of his statements, for example trying to explain away the dreadful state of the NHS and public services and threatening sanctions to young people not volunteering for national service, like restrictions on finance and driving licences. There were also shouts of ‘shame’ when Sunak refused to commit the UK to remaining in the European Convention on Human Rights. Sunak’s deep-seated sense of entitlement leads him to think no one really has the right to challenge him.
‘This wasn’t just Tetchy Rish!, it was Angry Rish!. He had no time for the little people bothering him with their stupid questions. Why couldn’t they accept he was Mr Integrity, Accountability and Professionalism? Hell, no one ran a better gambling ring inside No 10 than him. The Avatar was now completely out of control. Furious that the only applause was for the audience questions. Furious that there was not more gratitude for him. Furious that no matter how patronising and condescending he became, no one warmed to him or believed a word he said. At one point he was even laughed at. The billionaire Avatar was now just a standing joke. Stop the Boats. Stop the Bets’. Heaven knows how much angrier he will be when 4th July arrives.
We might wonder how many times before July 4th we will see Sunak in a hard hat, trying belatedly to indicate some commitment to one industry or another. Besides a succession of tone deaf own goals, he faces an increasing number of challenges to his authority and credibility. It’s clear that the ever widening betting scandal, which has dominated the news during recent days, is not going away, many asking why it’s taking Sunak so long to deal with the situation instead falling back on the non-authority of the Gambling Commission. It’s also noticeable that the police officer under investigation was suspended immediately whereas the two Conservative candidates accused – Craig Williams and Laura Saunders (married to the Tory campaign director, Tony Lee, who has since taken leave of absence) – are carrying on regardless. (An interesting facet of the police officer case is that it’s the first time I’ve seen the crime of Misconduct in Public Office cited although it could well apply to some politicians. Because it’s apparently a criminal offence contrary to common law rather than statute it’s not clear cut and the misdemeanour needs to have been ‘wilful, done on purpose, and to such a degree as to amount to an abuse of the public’s trust in the office holder’. You can just hear the excuses which could be proffered: ‘I didn’t intend to cheat the system, I didn’t intend to put £100 down, it just happened, I’ve not done anything wrong so can we now just move on?’)
Some suspect that the reason Sunak hasn’t acted (although he’s long shown weakness with others like Truss, Johnson and Braverman and their off piste policy making) is that many more are suspected of gambling on the election date and he doesn’t want this to emerge. An X user tweeted: ‘It’s because there’s more than the 2-3 already implicated. There are rumours of a cabinet minister also involved. So he’s just waiting a couple of weeks until they are all out of jobs and it doesn’t matter any more. After all he prides himself on spreadsheet-like efficiency’. There are now reports that Sunak knew about this betting scandal two weeks ago and could have stopped the candidates standing but chose not to, hoping it wouldn’t come to light. And now more alleged gamblers have been thrust into the limelight. What does this confected anger of his remind you of? Yes – Boris Johnson initially pretending to be ‘very angry’ on ‘discovering’ there had been government parties during lockdown when a totally different story emerged later.
And now yet another nightmare for Sunak and the Tories – a recording of James Cleverly aide James Sunderland declaring the Rwanda Plan to be ‘crap’.
Another noticeable phenomenon is the Tory habit of underplaying serious issues and events – it’s a kind of reality denial. Williams alluded to having had ‘a flutter’ and the Tories’ terrible poll ratings are merely ‘disappointing’ or ‘regrettable’. But whereas the usual stance is to wring an apology from the miscreant and say ‘he/she has apologised, we need to move on’ (and note the constant allusion to ‘this election is about the future’, denying accountability for the last 14 years), this scandal is sticking in the public’s minds as it reinforces Tory behavioural stereotypes. A recent twist on this is Saunders having the nerve to threaten the BBC and other media with legal action for reporting on her. No wonder hashtags like Tory Criminals Unfit to Govern have been trending on Twitter.
But besides the long record of Tory criminality, it doesn’t end with the betting scandal: Elizabeth Philp, wife of policing minister Chris Philp, has been reported to the Crown Prosecution Service by a former employer and is being sued in the high court for alleged corporate espionage. She’s accused of data handling offences and illegally using confidential data from this former employer to set up her own business. A key irony, which we’re now so used to seeing in today’s politics, is that Chris Philp has called for ‘zero tolerance’ of all crime, by which we must assume he includes ‘white collar’ crime.
Another blow for the Conservatives is the Supreme Court landmark decision dictating that Surrey County Council must have considered the full climate impact of burning oil from new wells (under the usual planning law it was assumed that only the impacts of creating the oil wells was counted, not the much wider area of the use of the products of such wells). This is a stunning win for climate campaigners and also leads to the possibility of other oil and gas project costs being differently assessed. Needless to say, this precipitated a slew of Conservatives in media interviews repeating the lie that the new licences helped safeguard our ‘energy security’ etc when this is untrue as the products are sold on an international market, not domestic. It’s flabbergasting how often politicians like departing Scottish Conservative Party leader Douglas Ross and renewable minister Andrew Bowie aren’t challenged on this more often.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cxwwzmn12g9o
As if all this wasn’t enough, former Tory minister Chris Skidmore has publicly condemned the PM’s policy on climate change, saying that he will vote Labour. Writing in the Guardian, Skidmore said: ‘His decision to renege on net zero means the UK has scaled back on measures that would have saved households £8bn a year in lower energy costs. Worse still has been an extremist rhetoric that frames net zero policies as an imposition. This false narrative is the product of both ignorance and deliberate misinformation. Nobody has ever been told that they must remove their boilers or replace their petrol cars. The energy transition is a transition – an act of shifting from the past towards the future. Sunak’s decision instead to side with climate deniers and to deliberately politicise the energy transition is perhaps the greatest tragedy of his premiership. It has cost us not just environmentally but also economically. For the first time, I cannot vote for a party that has boasted of new oil and gas licences in its manifesto or that now argues that net zero is a burden and not a benefit’. Oof.
And Nigel Farage continues to snap at the Conservatives’ heels, his latest controversial statement (and, of course, it’s his clear intention to disrupt proceedings and gain media attention) during his Panorama interview with Nick Robinson being that EU expansion effectively caused Putin to invade Ukraine.
Of course the NHS continues to be one of the election’s focal points and the latest news about GP shortages is something the Conservatives will find very hard to wriggle out of. On top of what’s already wrong with the NHS, (perhaps, in a nutshell, inadequate funding per capita, inefficient organisational fragmentation and severe workforce shortages) this is the absurd situation where people struggle to get a GP appointment, often waiting weeks, at the same time as locums can’t find work and are considering leaving the NHS. ‘A survey of 1,852 locums, conducted by the British Medical Association found that 84% cannot find work despite patients across the country waiting weeks for GP appointments. Just under a third (31%) of respondents said that the lack of suitable shifts was leading them to leave the NHS entirely, while 71% said the government funding model was to blame for the levels of unemployment’.
An earlier BMA survey had shown that over half had had problems with cash flow, meaning locum cover became unaffordable, a result of the current funding model. Dr Katie Bramall-Stainer, BMA England’s GPs committee chair, called the model ‘ridiculous’: ‘We have made it clear to the government that this needs to change so we can have more GPs working in local practices…We’re hearing lots of pre-election promises about increasing GP numbers, but the first challenge for the next government will be to find a way to keep the GPs we already have in the NHS. To run a bath, you first must put in the plug…’ Clearly, this government doesn’t recognise what a ‘plug’ constitutes and their overall ‘long term’ NHS workforce plan is just that – ‘long term’ so they think they don’t actually have to deliver much right now. Meanwhile, the government boasts about its equally absurd Pharmacy First scheme, which isn’t even working, which pharmacists are unhappy about, and patients want to see doctors, not a cheaper alternative including physician associates who only have two years training, if that. But it’s long been recognised that what the Conservatives want to do is run down the NHS to such a degree that it finally breaks, leading to the long term goal of privatisation and normalisation of health insurance schemes – great for the American health conglomerates which started making inroads here years ago.
There’s been much discussion recently of our broken justice system, ministers still blaming the pandemic for the backlogs in court cases but just in time for the election comes news that prisons in England aren’t just full – they won’t be able to accept more inmates after 4th July. ‘The heads of jails in England and Wales were informed by HM Prison and Probation Service officials earlier this month that data pointed to an ‘operational capacity breaking point’ only days after the 4 July general election. The development signals a significant logistical headache for an incoming justice secretary. It is expected to trigger Operation Early Dawn, a crisis measure that allows offenders to be housed in police cells when jails are full, while other measures can prompt magistrates courts to delay cases’.
Since many of us won’t have detailed knowledge of the prison system, this problem has been allowed to grow under the radar, and I’ve been struck by the ongoing absence of key ministers in such scenarios eg Justice Minister Alex Chalk and also Environment Minister Steve Barclay. At least Labour are onto it – ‘Shabana Mahmood, Labour’s shadow justice secretary, said: “This is just the latest example of the chaos the Conservatives have created in our criminal justice system. Not only are they releasing prisoners in secret, now they are deliberately delaying the delivery of justice. For months, the Conservatives have been operating under a cloak of darkness. They must now come clean about the true scale of the crisis on their watch’. But to ‘come clean’ will take persistent questioning from the media and this can be very selective, as we know.
It also hasn’t played well for the Conservatives that progress on Levelling Up, which many never believed in in the first place, has been ‘glacial’. The Institute for Fiscal Studies, a reputable organisation which the government can’t just dismiss, said that, on many measures, regional inequality had widened and the UK had gone into reverse. ‘In 2022, the government set out a white paper containing 12 goals aimed at ‘levelling up’ the UK… but ‘in key areas such as employment, primary school attainment and self-reported life satisfaction, the country’s overall performance has got worse even as gaps between areas have widened’. An additional survey by the Guardian showed that rather than improving, key areas including health, housing and pride in place had ‘gone backwards’. Interestingly, the article doesn’t state how the government has responded to this – were they even asked for comment? But we pretty much know what such a response would be: disagreeing that things had gone backwards, progress was being made but it would take time because of, yes, you guessed it, the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
With all this bad news showing the Conservatives in such a poor light, it was lucky that last week came news that UK inflation had fallen to 2% in May, reaching this official target for the first time in almost three years. But, try as they may, the Tories can’t claim credit for it as it was nothing to do with their mythical ‘plan’ no one has actually seen and it’s important to remember it still means that prices are continuing to rise.
It’s not been plain sailing for Labour, though: there’s been criticism of Keir Starmer for timidity in the party manifesto, for unclear positions on a number of issues, for sidelining and cancelling left wing candidates, and planning for further privatisation in the NHS, even if it is to help clear the backlog. Overall, though, he comes across well in interviews, in my opinion, and has a quality of gravitas none of the recent PMs have had which is essential for our (now much reduced) standing on the world stage.
There must be some good news out there, you might think. At least last week, despite the much reduced credibility of the honours system, the King’s Birthday Honours saw the unassailable Alan Bates get a knighthood, for his admirable campaigning for justice for the victims of the Post Office scandal. Having previously refused this honour, ‘the former post office operator and founder of the Justice for Sub-postmasters Alliance said he was accepting the honour “on behalf of the group” of branch operators and the “horrendous things that had happened to them.” And, of course, the official Inquiry won’t be completed for some time yet, revelations of skulduggery emerging all the time.
I admit to detesting the Americanism ‘side hustle’ but it was interesting to hear that, according to a poll conducted by Sage, the software company, 47% of adults have more than one source of income and a further 10% are looking for one. On average ‘hustlers’ are pulling in an extra £546 a month. This made me wonder whether they’re declaring this to the Inland Revenue. Besides the cost of living crisis being a major factor, it’s also likely that people gain a sense of satisfaction from their business ventures which their ‘day job’ does not provide.
Finally, on the topic of bringing in the money, it’s flabbergasting to learn that Transport for London, which must lose quite a bit of revenue via fare dodging, is also owed huge amounts because of embassies not paying their congestion charges. First up is the US, owing £14.6m, second is Japan, owing £10m, third is India, owing £8.5m, with Nigeria, China and Russia not far behind. I’ve long wondered whether ‘diplomacy’ isn’t a bit of a racket and this would appear to confirm it!
Politics and mental health - the missing link? 