In the wake of the impactful Autumn Statement and as we enter the last week of November we’re faced yet again with a relentlessly depressing situation: continuing industrial action from transport workers, postmen, university staff and soon nurses; the news that by Spring millions of households will be spending a third of their income on fuel; more government corruption coming to light in the form of Baroness Mone and her £29m ‘gain’ from the PPE ‘VIP lane’; yet more bullying accusations against Justice Secretary Dominic Raab and an inquiry no doubt we will be paying for; the news that water companies are dumping sewage on beaches and in rivers even in dry weather when it’s only ‘supposed’ to happen during exceptional periods eg heavy rain preventing the normal systems from working; the continuing war in Ukraine; endless hypocritical handwringing over the political aspects of the World Cup; and continuing immigration and asylum seeker system failures despite the government giving yet more funds to the French. And if this wasn’t enough, Matt Hancock now being in the final of I’m A Celebrity, prompting one tweeter to wonder if the promotional tweets were being funded by his fee or coming out of his parliamentary expenses.
It seems to me this captures how low standards in public life have sunk, not only that this former health secretary who inflicted colossal damage during Covid is parading himself so proudly in public but also that so many viewers are voting for him. Conservatives continue to get away with repeating their soundbites based on misrepresentations and straightforward lies, challenged neither by the media nor the very weak Commons Speaker and unfortunately the gullible and those not using other news sources will fall prey to them.
The damaging effects of BBC government collusion are captured by the following tweet: ‘The BBC does amazing reporting on struggles of workers and the persecuted overseas under authoritarian governments. What happens when they report on the UK & become the tool of a destructive government against the interests of workers & persecuted? How do they explain this to themselves?’
A key example is the way strikers like the nurses and rail workers are being demonised rather than the government taking responsibility for the unrest. Most of these workers aren’t ‘demanding inflation busting increases’, as suggested in the right-wing media, but reasonable rises when in many cases their pay has remained stagnant for years. And new Transport Minister Mark Harper is being disingenuous by blaming rail unions when it was clear that the government had intervened last week to prevent the Rail Delivery Group making a pay offer – so much for ‘the employers’ being in charge. It seems a kind of hubris which prevents ministers sitting down and negotiating with the unions but now these strikes are becoming very wearing, not to mention disruptive and damaging all round. And a key factor surely is that workers no longer (if they ever did) buy the government’s argument that the country ‘can’t afford’ pay rises when for years now we’ve seen millions of pounds wasted or siphoned off by corruption.
It’s possible the Lady Mone scandal won’t be easily shrugged off, though, as the Guardian spent two years investigating the profits she and her husband made from their links with PPE Medpro, the goods supplied weren’t even fit for purpose and there’s substantial evidence that Michael Gove was involved. It’s surely shocking that it was journalists who had to uncover the story because of the weakness of current channels and a reminder that Rishi Sunak still hasn’t appointed an ethics adviser. Another thing a new adviser could get their teeth into (though, again, surely existing government machinery should have stopped this) is the news that a year since the Owen Paterson revelations about MPs’ second jobs followed by a government promise to clamp down on it, MPs have nevertheless earned more than ever this way.
‘Overall, MPs made more than £5.3m from outside work in that period, with many, including former cabinet ministers, taking on new roles as advisers and non-executives in the last year for companies that in several cases were run by major party donors. Many have taken jobs in areas they used to oversee in government. Former education secretary Gavin Williamson took on a role in June as chairman of the advisory board of RTC Education Ltd, a private education group whose chairman Maurizio Bragagni and chief executive Selva Pankaj are major Conservative party donors’. Corruption, pure and simple.
Some are wondering why lingerie purveyor Michelle Mone was even elevated to the Lords by David Cameron. When reports emerged of her links to one of the many fraudulent PPE suppliers during Covid, facilitated by the government’s ‘VIP lane’ they were met with repeated denials and a key aspect of this story is that although it’s been covered by other media, the BBC has not yet reported it. Something to do as ever, with their DG and Chair being embedded with the Conservative Party but as this omission amounts to a kind of censorship it’s another serious breach of the BBC’s mission ‘to inform, educate and entertain’. A good example of this is that Gove wasn’t asked about his role in this affair when interviewed at length last week on Radio 4’s Today programme.
‘However the Guardian has chipped away at the edifice of the denials. A two-year investigation establishing the couple’s links to PPE Medpro culminates today with newly leaked documents indicating that Mone and Barrowman (husband) secretly received tens of millions of pounds originating from the company’s profits, which were sent to the Isle of Man’. A tweeter said: ‘Baroness Michelle Mone started lobbying Michael Gove BEFORE her husband’s company Medpro had even been incorporated at Companies House. It seems Medpro being setup at all was contingent on them getting the nod for the £203 contract. The PPE cost £46m and they pocketed the rest!’
Gove definitely sounds on the ropes as a result of this investigation, giving inconsistent responses to questions. ‘Asked in an interview on Thursday how he had responded to Lady Mone’s approach in May 2020, Gove said he had referred all offers of PPE to ‘the appropriate civil service channels’. That explanation appears to be at odds with a chain of emails previously released under the Freedom of Information Act that shed light on how the company, PPE Medpro, was added to a “VIP” lane that prioritised politically connected firms. The emails suggest that after initially being contacted by Mone, Gove suggested she contact another then minister, the Tory peer Theodore Agnew’. An additional misdemeanour (but very telling) is the use of private email addresses by all parties.
Parliamentary sketch writer John Crace went to town on this, pointing out the very telling fact that no prominent Conservative was made available to answer the Opposition’s questions in the House, and the only one they could find was someone no one had ever heard of, one Neil O’Brien, a junior minister in the Department of Health and Social Care. He gave feeble answers to Angela Rayner’s questions, eg What due diligence had been done? How come Medpro had been granted a contract via the VIP fast lane? How come tens of millions of public money ended up in private offshore accounts? Why wouldn’t the government publish its correspondence regarding attempts to reclaim the money?
‘But he did want everyone to know there was nothing sinister about a VIP lane. It was just a way of making sure that people with access to Tory MPs were given priority treatment. But they were still subject to the same low levels of due diligence as everyone else. There were no special favours. And getting money back was proving quite tricky. There was no VIP service for the government to reclaim money that had been obtained for worthless contracts. The VIP channel was strictly one-way. The government’s way of reaching out to business’. I suspect we can safely say he won’t be invited again. Meanwhile, Mone is still trending on Twitter and the scandal doesn’t look like going away any time soon, yet another shaming burden for Sunak to contend with.
An even more damning article in The Times (worth reading) addresses the mystery of how Mone was ever elevated, the author describing her as ‘the most chaotic person I’d ever met. You occasionally come across people like Mone in interviews. They’re narcissists, obviously — ambitious, flinty, flamboyant. But there’s something else: a nasty whiff, a flicker of anger, a sense that this person might lamp you or knife your Porsche… But it isn’t long before a huge scandal engulfs them’.
Something else that must be very worrying for the PM is the fact that nine Tory MPs (and how many more to come?) have already announced that they won’t be standing in the next election. There’s a witty headline (‘I’m a Tory, get me out of here’) to an article which says the number could rise to around 50, as MPs have to declare their intentions soon. Those who have so far gone public include Chloe Smith, the former Work and Pensions Secretary, William Wragg, the chair of the Public Administration Select Committee, Sir Gary Streeter and Dehenna Davison (levelling up department). This cowardly departure of rats from the sinking ship so that they don’t have to face humiliation at the next election is not dissimilar to their erstwhile boss, Boris Johnson, having stepped down from the party leadership contest when he understood that if he’d stood and failed, then his fee for appearances and speeches would plummet. It’s been almost amusing recently to see that (after what must be months of absence) that Johnson has finally been putting himself about in his Uxbridge constituency. He must be feeling the cold draught of insecurity at last. You can always trust the Tories to act cynically in their own interests. Good luck to them in trying to find a job. I’m sure we’re comforted to know that the older ones will be ok (unlike many of those currently in the general workforce): said one Tory ‘Some of those are in their 60s and 70s. If they go, they’ll get a good pension and be able to do the odd bit of work here and there’.
Of course, the economy and cost of living crisis continue to be major preoccupations on all sides of the political spectrum, especially as the UK is predicted to be in recession until some time in 2024. Something I’ve noticed recently is the gaslighting and scapegoating of the ‘economically inactive’ (as per previous blog posts). As we know, many of those not currently working and receiving out of work benefits are unwell, awaiting NHS treatment and that list is now beyond 7m. Some of them are suffering the effects of Long Covid, and there aren’t nearly enough NHS facilities to treat everyone who needs help. It seems to me that the government is not even thinking about how to resolve this workforce issue but just wants to blame those for its own disastrous mismanagement of the economy. In a speech to business leaders the Bank of England Chief Economist implied that these people are likely to be contributing to interest rate rises and that this economic inactivity ‘could force a response from Threadneedle Street’. But some have left the formal workforce of their own accord, choosing more casual work or reliance on savings, due to a number of factors including poor working conditions and bad management including bullying.
Another cause of ‘economic inactivity’, this time in younger people, is the crippling cost of childcare, yet something else the government hasn’t addressed. ‘There is no help for mums’ says Felicity Hutchinson, who has just taken the drastic step of giving up her job in a cafe, because reduced hours meant there was no way she could cover the cost of childcare…. Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement this month, which promised to set the UK on a path to sustainable growth, made no mention of childcare – but a vocal coalition of campaigners and experts say the existing system is broken, and fixing it should be a key plank of economic policy. The UK’s patchwork of provision is among the costliest of any developed nation, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’. Of course this situation doesn’t only affect young parents but grandparents called upon who may have had to give up their own work to help with the children.
Commentator Fraser Nelson points up the short-termism at the heart of the government’s inaction in this area, suggesting that people aren’t getting the necessary help to get back into the workplace ‘because employers and politicians are too quick to reach for the short-term fix of imported labour. We can’t carry on like this. No country can truly prosper while overlooking 13% of its working age population’.
The current situation makes a joke of Chancellor Hunt’s bullish declaration that the government’s priorities ‘are stability, growth, and public services’ when we don’t have any of those things. As for his vow to ‘protect the most vulnerable’, it’s doubtful that those relying on food banks or lying on their floor still waiting for an ambulance after 10 hours would be able to take that seriously.
Not surprisingly, we’re told that Black Friday got off to a sluggish start. Besides the cost of living crisis it might be that customers are now generally more cautious, since consumer organisation Which? said that most of the ‘offers’ were duds. Hospitality traditionally pins its hopes on Christmas as a business generator but not this year: it’s unfortunate that so many establishments are closing because they can’t get staff or afford the bills including heating, but I struggle to sympathise with the upmarket joints which charge up to £200 a head for a meal. How is that ever justifiable? One such owner is ‘very scared’ that a lot of restaurants could collapse in the months after the Christmas. ‘Aussignac’s fears are echoed in cities, towns and villages across Britain – a pattern of closures that many fear is about to accelerate as recession, rent rises and squeezed household spending combine with fraying public transport and rail strikes…. there was “nothing” in chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s autumn statement to tackle the staffing crisis in the industry’. An industry survey estimates that more than a third of hospitality businesses are at risk of failure in early 2023 due to cost increases.
So is there anything positive in this unrelenting catalogue of misery? A few things, yes, including (hoping their training will be effective) that north London Islington council is training barbers in mental health issues so they can be even more helpful to their customers, some of whom would be what used to be called ‘hard to reach’. The training has been designed to recognise when customers may be struggling with their mental health. It’s part of a £1.6m three year programme (Young Black Men and Mental Health) organised by the council and the NHS,
But it’s not new: years ago a project at the Maudsley Hospital did the same thing, with good results. ‘Black British barber shops have long been a sanctuary for black men and youth, not only to transform their hair, but to talk about love, financial woes and even mental health’. One barber observed: ‘For the black community, we don’t have a pub culture…The pub culture for the average Brit, it’s not just about drinking. It’s about socialising, it’s about communities coming together’. This work is important, having a creative approach to mental health awareness, especially since ‘black people of African and Caribbean heritage are far more likely to be sectioned under the Mental Health Act. Black people are also 40% more likely to access treatment through a police or criminal justice route, and less likely to receive psychological therapies. Two-thirds of permanent school exclusions are black pupils, and 60% of black people in England feel they are treated with less respect than others because of their ethnicity, according to data from Islington council’.
Finally, in its amusing yet eye-rolling ‘spirit of the age’ section, The Week tells us that the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich is limiting visitor numbers to its Moon exhibition on Mondays, specifically to enable influencers and other social media users to get ‘the perfect Insta shot’ of the exhibition’s installation. Apparently the College hopes these people will come on Mondays and so there will be fewer on other days. So now you have it: if you can’t get a ticket on a Monday you’ll know you’ve been bumped in favour of an influencer!
Politics and mental health - the missing link? 