This last week, the end of August and start of September, is often characterised by a poignant change in the light, signalling the end of summer, returns to school, college and work and perhaps the necessity to face up to harsh realities which holidays can obscure. But there’s no sense of any new beginning in our politics: the vanity project Conservative Party leadership contest went absurdly into its seventh and final week, the likely successful candidate, Liz Truss, being considered the ‘Johnson continuity candidate’. Yet again, when we might think Boris Johnson couldn’t do anything worse, he embarked on a ‘farewell tour’ (funded by the taxpayer?), making ridiculous speeches, one of which included the ‘advice’ to purchase a new kettle. Meanwhile, ‘Boris is so out of touch’ has been trending on Twitter and the cost of living crisis continues apace, the absent government doing precisely nothing except promising action once the new PM is in post. Too little, too late and such a contrast to some European countries.
During a Radio 4 interview former Cabinet Minister Rory Stewart cut through the Johnsonian grandstanding: ‘I’m afraid he has an extraordinary ego and he believes that he was badly treated. He doesn’t see the reality, which is that he was a terrible prime minister and that he lost his job because of deep flaws of character….I think we need to remind people why he left. He should have gone much, much earlier. What he did was deeply, deeply shameful – and dangerous…He’s going to be hovering around, hoping for a populist return…I fear we’re going to end up with a second Berlusconi or a second Trump trying to rock back in again’. Several commentators predicted as much months ago, as the narcissist cannot bear having been rejected and being out of the public eye, making all the trumpeted ‘farewell’ coverage a bit of a nonsense. Conservative peer Lord Marland is the latest to suggest that Johnson is building up his financial reserves in order to facilitate a comeback. Needless to say, Johnson himself has been careful not to publicly commit himself to anything. One of the feeblest ‘last’ comments he made must be this one: ‘We’re going to get through; I just want to give people a sense of hope and perspective’. So this is all he’s got? Some may believe the first but he’s demonstrably incapable of the second.
Again colluding with this narrative (it seems the Emily Maitlis revelations about Tory bias in BBC news coverage have made no difference whatsoever) we hear one Johnson hagiography after another, including predictably deluded comments from Nadine Dorries: if you didn’t know otherwise you might think he’d been quite a good PM. This is the only news some people follow, leading to a dangerous deficit. But some commentators have been quick to supply reminders regarding Johnson’s catalogue of errors, poor judgement, serial dishonesty and corruption. As two new phrases enter the political lexicon (Boris-washing and Long Boris, very fitting) one tweeter summed it up: ‘Breathless hagiography from Sarah Vine in the Mail’s latest instalment of Boris-washing. We’re invited to imagine him as a “potential colossus” brought low by his flaws and the petty jealousies of lesser men rather than a fraud and a self-serving distracted clown’. It’s depressing to learn that even after all we’ve seen, 40% of Conservative voters still believe the party did the wrong thing by removing Johnson.
Of course, Tory bias doesn’t only apply to coverage of Boris Johnson. All the time now the presenters of so-called ‘flagship news programmes seek to defend the government and big business when ministers and CEOs make no effort to make themselves available for interview. It sounds like sophistry to me but it seems there’s a debate about what constitutes ‘impartiality’ and ‘balance’, the BBC claiming to represent the latter approach. As someone tweeted following an example of this collusion: ‘There’s no problem with testing an interviewee’s position by putting a couple of opposing points, which might come from the government. There is a problem with presenters taking the side of the government, almost embodying the government’. Another said: ‘If the government of the day won’t send out people for interview then they should say ‘The Truss administration sent out a press release but it fails to answer the questions we wanted to pose them so we won’t be reading it out’’.
I am part way through watching (a must-watch) three episode series on BBC2 called Days That Shook the BBC, presented by veteran broadcaster David Dimbleby. It’s widely been noted that he has benefited hugely from the BBC for years, but to hear him regularly state that the BBC is ‘independent’ (from government) is a joke, likewise claiming that people ‘trust the BBC’. Because of what we’ve recently witnessed and which has been made clear thanks to Maitlis, such claims should surely not go without challenge. The dangers cannot be overestimated: because so many only get their news from the BBC they could end up with a worryingly skewed idea of what’s actually happening.
One way of avoiding addressing the cost of living crisis is to pretend it doesn’t exist. Former MP Edwina Currie, who often seems addicted to controversy, as if this is clever, got into an ill-advised spat with finance expert and consumer champion Martin Lewis. Look at this patronising wording: ‘I would like you, Martin, to stop using words like ‘catastrophe’ and instead advise people take sensible steps to reduce the effect on their families and businesses’. Lewis came right back: ‘It is a catastrophe, Edwina’….. then stressing how energy bills in January could on average cost more than half the full state pension and an even bigger proportion of the basic Universal Credit payment. Quoted in the Independent, Lewis got it in one: ‘To allow people to stare into the pit of financial doom that is coming this winter without offering them the torch at the end of the tunnel and saying ‘help will come’ and being specific is terrible for people’s mental health’. The vital mental health element has largely been ignored by this government.
This last week the emphasis has moved from solely domestic coverage of the crisis to how businesses and organisations could be affected. There are some frightening scenarios which could be realised, eg NHS, libraries and council buildings being without sufficient energy and businesses being forced to close, with damaging consequences for their staff and customers. This will even further jeopardise the plan for ‘warm banks’. Edwina Currie was continuing a longstanding narrative reinforced by ministers recently, especially Liz Truss, pretending there’s nothing wrong, there’s no crisis, nothing to see here and so on. The worst gaslighting is to suggest that those who recognise the crisis are ‘talking Britain down’. ‘Crisis, what crisis? The right’s love of pretending nothing is wrong may have dire consequences come winter’ suggests the Guardian.
The writer isn’t the only one to comment on what a poisoned chalice Johnson’s successor will inherit. Many would baulk at it but such is the magnitude of the egos involved the nature of the chalice won’t prove an obstacle. ‘The easiest way to justify doing next to nothing to help the public through an impending socioeconomic catastrophe is to convince them that it isn’t really happening’. Apparently she told one hustings audience: ‘I don’t agree with these portents of doom. I don’t really agree with this declinist talk. I believe our country’s best days are ahead of us…. We can unleash opportunity here in Britain’. We can imagine that went down well with that audience – all we need to do is ‘unleash opportunity’.
Meanwhile, the Institute of Fiscal Studies has followed other organisations like the Resolution Foundation in finding serious fault even with plans for the economy which Truss has so far deigned to disclose. ‘Without a capable prime minister, it is not doomsaying to understand what lies ahead for Britain: mass fuel poverty, broken public services, rocketing bills, and an ever-increasing risk of social unrest. Britain may be Truss’s poisoned chalice, but it will be the rest of us who are forced to drink from the cup’.
A Liz Truss eulogy (‘Comment’ ie no identifiable author) appears in The Telegraph, which seems wrongheaded from the first paragraph, describing her as ‘principled, classical liberal, pro-market, well-read, economically literate and policy-driven…..She believes in freedom, material prosperity, the power of choice and the importance of economic – as well as social, cultural and political – liberty’. What planet? But now we have it – this author reckons her critics (and heaven knows, they have good grounds) just don’t get her. ‘Her enemies don’t understand any of this and, often suffering from Truss Derangement Syndrome, underestimate her’. The worry is that many readers will just lap this up. At the same time, a Tory MP has called her ‘the worst possible choice at the worst of times’ and we hear a group of them are planning to table a vote of no confidence within a week of her taking office.
Needless to say, the poignant death of Mikhail Gorbachev was cynically used in some quarters to further mythologise Margaret Thatcher and to attempt to associate the current Tory administration with hers. As ever in these situations, world leaders and commentators fell over themselves to acknowledge Gorbachev’s legacy, not least in the context of the war in Ukraine and Putin’s conduct. Angela Merkel described Gorbachev as ‘a single statesman who’d done more to change the world for the better than any other’ – a description which could never be levelled at any UK ‘statesman’ at present, least of all Boris Johnson, who contributed his own eulogy (including recognising Gorbachev’s ‘courage and integrity’) with apparently no sense of irony.
Meanwhile, would our political class regard as heresy the suggestion to cancel the MPs break for the party conference season? Do these conferences actually serve any purpose or have any public benefit? Or are they just an excuse for a jolly, backslapping echo chamber presented as ‘networking’? Campaigner Gina Miller’s proposal seems a no brainer, with the crises ravaging the country and given MPs have already had a long recess, with others on the horizon. Miller wrote to both leadership candidates: ‘As the candidates for prime minister, you should urgently speak to the leaders of other parties and agree conference recess will be cancelled so MPs can work on the immediate challenges facing the country’. She believes that the Common should sit for a minimum of 40 weeks a year and criticised politicians for ‘partying whilst millions face destitution…You should be spending your time working for the people of the UK who elect and pay for you, not your party’s members’. Oof! Not surprisingly, it appears that no response was received from the candidates’ teams.
As barristers and BT workers join the ranks of those taking strike action, an equally frank piece from the Resolution Foundation’s Torsten Bell stresses that political business as usual won’t any longer suffice, yet we continue to see only this from ministers including the leadership candidates. ‘The emergency created by soaring energy prices is so grave that normal politics doesn’t apply’ he warns. ‘Our leaders must wise up – and fast’. This is a two stage process, though: leaders must act but first they have to intellectually grasp and process the severity of the situation which demands extraordinary measures. And here’s one for the put on another jumper brigade: ‘We also do not want ever stronger incentives for people to turn off the heating: cold homes lay behind 8,500 excess deaths in 2019’. The government needs to stop giving ground to short-term distractions and to challenge their adherence to market-led ideology as ‘there’s nothing free about a market being manipulated by Putin to further his war aims’. It’s questionable whether the current calibre of ministers (and Truss’s predicted Cabinet appointments just re-arrange the chairs on the Titanic’s deck) have the insight and intelligence to do the necessary. The last few years haven’t filled us with confidence.
Notwithstanding all the above important news, jeopardising our welfare and mental health, what I’ve found most intriguing and appalling in equal measure this week is the transparent attempt by the government machine to undermine two legitimate processes which have shown themselves and other key figures in a disgraceful light. One is the sudden ‘finding’ by Sir Thomas Winsor (going back on previous findings) that Met Police chief Dame Cressida Dick was forced out by London Mayor Sadiq Khan not ‘following due process’. The truth, as we know, is that Dame Cressida had long been criticised and under scrutiny for the problematic culture within the Met, going right back to their treatment of the Stephen Lawrence murder and their unlawful killing of Jean Charles de Menezes back in 2005). The longstanding accusations of institutionalised racism and sexism continued but what possibly made the most significant impacts recently were the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer, when he had already been investigated for previous sexual offences, and the bizarre reaction to Partygate, declaring that they could not investigate historical events.
As others have said, it was surprising Khan didn’t offload Dick before, given her errors since her appointment in 2017 and inaction over clear wrongdoing amongst her force, one of the worst examples being officers taking photos of two murdered sisters in a London park. Khan stated: ‘On the former commissioner’s watch, trust in the police fell to record lows following a litany of terrible scandals. What happened was simple – I lost confidence in the former commissioner’s ability to make the changes needed and she then chose to stand aside’. One commentator tweeted: ‘Cressida Dick has *never* accepted democratic oversight. She blocked and refused to cooperate with investigations into corruption and murder. Sadiq Khan was quite correct that London had lost confidence in her. In fact, it was long overdue – and she was only protected by Patel’. Another said: ‘The inquiry into the mishandling of the Daniel Morgan murder found that the Met is institutionally corrupt and that Cressida Dick personally attempted to obstruct that inquiry, did it not? She should have been dismissed at that point’.
The second attempt to undermine legitimate process is the ‘legal opinion’ (requested by the government and for which the taxpayer is footing the bill) from QC Lord Pannick suggesting that the Commons Privileges Committee, in its investigation of Boris Johnson allegedly misleading Parliament over Partygate, would risk paralysing democracy by disregarding whether or not the misleading was ‘intentional’. A key aspect of this (and the Dick accusations) is surely the timing: it’s almost as if the Tories know Truss will be a disaster so they’re already preparing the ground by undermining opposition figures who’ve been involved in bringing them or their appointees down. Journalist and commentator Jonathan Lis made a key point about inappropriate judicial involvement: ‘There was zero reason to commission legal advice on the committee. Its remit is entirely a matter for parliament and outside all scope of the courts. Johnson spent £130,000 of public money to try to apply pressure on MPs holding him to account. The word for that is corruption’. Another tweeter commented on the lack of media coverage: ‘Why is Radio 4 Today not talking about the scandalous Trumpian exercise being carried out for a fee of £130,000 by Lord Pannick?’
It will be interesting to see if either of these belated ‘opinions’ are allowed to gain any traction.
An investigation of the state of parks in England could make us see their neglect as a metaphor for the entire country at present. Access to these open spaces is so important for our mental health, yet this is rarely officially recognized. Of course, it’s cheaper and convenient not to recognize it. Local authorities vary as to how well they look after their public spaces but huge cuts to their budgets by central government have put such expenditure at risk and many of us have seen councils raise money by allowing parks to be used for festivals and the like, the resulting damage taking time to recover from.
‘Last week a Guardian investigation found that local authorities in England are spending £330m less a year on parks in real terms than they were a decade ago. The study found that less affluent parts of the country have been hit the hardest by austerity, with parks in the north-west and the north-east suffering in particular. Our urban parks are the last vestiges of truly free public space in an age of privatised squares…They offer robust support for our mental as well as physical health, they offer us solace through solitude and joyful social space without an obligation to buy anything – they are democracy rendered in three dimensions, with jumpers for goalposts in the background’.
It’s really depressing to walk around a neglected park, with overgrown paths, depopulated flower beds and dried up fountains full of litter: instead of just tolerating this status quo councils could, as they have in some areas, come to an agreement with local volunteers whereby the local authority agrees to purchase (using their bulk buying leverage) supplies of plants and bulbs and the local groups undertake to improve and maintain that space. If some can do it (including some very cash strapped) surely others can too. It’s a win win situation, as gardening is well known to be beneficial to mental health.
Those interested in nature and conservation might be pleased to hear that despite appearing on its online menu, grouse will no longer be served at the Ritz. The prestigious London hotel and restaurant attributes this to ‘supply issues’. ‘The glorious 12th’, 12 August, marks the start of the grouse shooting season, very unpopular with environmentalists because of the disturbance caused to local ecosystems. ‘Around 700,000 red grouse are killed throughout the season, which ends in early December. Shooting parties can pay up to £14,000 a day to participate in the activity’. It’s thought that 40% of shot birds suffer a slow and painful death and that many other moorland animals are wounded in traps and snares. Campaigners can celebrate the removal of grouse from the Ritz menu but have some way to go because other traditional restaurants will still be serving it.
More mixed news for conservationists comes from Nature England, which has recorded the successful fledging this year of 119 rare hen harrier chicks in northern counties including County Durham, Cumbria, Lancashire, Northumberland and Yorkshire. This is the highest number in more than a century but these chicks nevertheless face a hazardous journey to survival, since the parents feed their young on red grouse chicks, a problem for the grouse shooting estates. Although hen harriers have been officially protected since 1950, this could not have been enforced as these birds have apparently been persecuted for years. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is very pleased with the latest findings but remains concerned about the lack of law enforcement. ‘….the risk of these young birds being illegally killed after leaving the safety of their nests remains very real. That is why we are calling on the UK government to provide resources to support the conservation of hen harriers and ensure that existing wildlife protection laws are better enforced’. Good luck with that, as Conservative party landowners are more than likely to prioritise their income from shooting parties.
Finally, we hear that the latest domestic item to be in short supply is the Mars bar. Journalists trailed around North London supermarkets and consulted some of their websites and more often than not found empty slots where those items should be. It’s been noticeable during the last six months that quite a few of the shortages affect less than healthy items so perhaps some consumers might start thinking they’d be better off without them. The message from the manufacturer, Mars Wrigley, seems quite ambiguous, first saying ‘We are experiencing high levels of demand on a number of our treats’, then adding ‘We are producing significant quantities and want to reassure the British public that our much-loved brands are still available nationwide’. We could wonder where these ‘significant quantities’ are and how far some may be prepared to travel (from North London at least) in order to track down their Mars bars!
Politics and mental health - the missing link? 