You almost have to feel sorry for beleaguered PM Rishi Sunak – while his MPs swan off on holiday for weeks on end, he doggedly continues trying to defend his government’s terrible record despite most of the problems being of his own making. He’s been slammed for taking no genuine interest in green policies or the climate emergency; NHS and rail strikes continue; the cost of living and mortgage crises show no signs of abating amid strong indications of energy and retail sector profiteering; his Illegal Migration Bill might have passed, with appalling measures, but with no Rwanda flights even possible till January; he chose to enter the Nigel Farage/NatWest fray and besides the recent byelections humiliation he could be facing more, including the Mid-Bedfordshire seat of Nadine Dorries, who clings on earning that large salary despite not appearing in Parliament for over a year and attracting a lot of criticism to boot. Sunak’s weakness has been increasingly apparent, including his refusal to deal with law breaking Braverman, Dorries and the other Tories breaking parliamentary rules by interviewing each other on GB News.
On the subject of Awol mid-Bedfordshire MP Nadine Dorries, her conduct is increasingly attracting negative criticism and now her local council and constituency association have publicly complained about her absenteeism. She hasn’t been in the Commons for a year, hasn’t held a constituency surgery since 2020 and therefore she’s not doing the job she was elected to do. Today Radio 4 played an interview clip of her Nadinesplaining (following her failure to resign, as she’d promised) that she needed some time to ‘process her thoughts and things’, that she was an author producing a book a year and has her tv show. If she was doing her actual job she’d have no or little time for such things. We hear her book about the bringing down of her hero, Boris Johnson, called The Plot, will appear in September. I can’t wait to see the reviews but meanwhile, her antics are a good reminder of the need not only for a written Constitution but also new parliamentary rules, allowing locals to unseat a non-functioning MP. I’ve suggested to political investigators like Pippa Crerar, Paul Brand and the Good Law Project that they explore this increasingly common problem of inactive MPs, those who’ve not officially stood down but who are MPs only in name.
Rumour has it that the Tories are trying to identify a new leader – good luck with that as they’ve already scraped that barrel. There was some hope, with Rishi, that we’d finally see some decent governance after the Johnson and Truss chaos, but no, things have got worse, if anything. This is the government that’s been said to preside over £58m of fraud between 2020-21 and a government which has recently admitted what we’ve known all along – that Boris Johnson’s much trumpeted 40 new hospitals schtick was a piece of spin. But Rishi plods on, still robotically reeling out his five failed priorities during every media interview and apparently hoping for ‘an economic sweet spot’ around next May when they imagine circumstances might be more favourable for them.
But the failing getting the most attention is Sunak’s lack of urgency and even interest in the climate emergency. Parliamentary sketch writer John Crace sums this up in his article headline: ‘Forget climate change – reelection is Sunak’s only burning issue’. The catalyst, though he’s never been that engaged with the climate emergency, was the Uxbridge election turning on the ULEZ expansion policy. ‘After the byelection in Uxbridge last week, which Labour lost principally because of Sadiq Khan’s ultra-low emission zone policy, Sunak has declared a bonfire of the Tories’ green agenda. He had never really believed in it – despite most of the country supporting climate crisis measures – and had now declared it to be just a woke indulgence… Getting the Tories re-elected in 2024 is far more important than making sure the world survives for future generations’.
But even Crace has ‘misspoken’ here because (shockingly ignored by the media last weekend) the original policy was not Khan’s but a Boris Johnson policy which the then Transport Minister in 2020 (Grant Shapps) made the condition of the Mayor receiving pandemic funding for cash-strapped Transport for London. Tories claim to be committed to tackling the climate emergency but their ongoing support for fossil fuels and apparent retreat from the net zero goal is evidence to the contrary.
I think it’s really striking that 92 civil societies have written to Rishi Sunak demanding that the UK maintain its climate finance undertaking. Back in 2019, it undertook to spend £11.6m but these groups have been alarmed by news reports that the government could step back from this, citing ‘fiscal burdens from the pandemic’ and the war in Ukraine. (Not their own mismanagement of the economy and failure to address massive fraud, of course). After reminding the PM what the undertaking was, the letter goes on to spell out the dimensions of what’s at stake and the moral dimensions of this issue: ‘The world cannot afford such tragedies from short-sighted decisions.
While fossil fuel companies in the UK enjoy record-breaking profits, it is impossible for the world to comprehend claims from this government that the UK cannot afford more than 0.5% of gross national income to contribute towards global efforts to address poverty, nature degradation and loss, and climate change. This government has chosen to cut Official Development Assistance (ODA) while at the same time drawing on it for climate finance, which civil society has repeatedly warned is both unsustainable and unjust….. Climate finance is not a handout, but a debt we owe to countries and communities that have been made vulnerable to climate change, while the UK has benefited from burning fossil fuels. We have a historical responsibility to address the harm caused and to play a leading role in financing a global just and equitable transition away from fossil fuels and towards resilience. This is not aid and climate finance should not have come from the ODA budget in the first place. It is also in the UK’s enlightened self interest to prevent further climate breakdown…’
Almost on a level with the climate emergency issue has been this government’s apathy with so many causes and those in need (one of the latest being the contaminated blood scandal and kicking compensation down the road) but their jumping to attention regarding the Nigel Farage and NatWest debacle. ‘More curious is the way that senior Tory politicians – from Rishi Sunak down – have joined in the clamour to get Rose and the Coutts boss fired. Sunak has not called for heads as water bosses pump sewage into rivers and streams. But for l’affaire Farage, Sunak pulls out all the stops. The Brexit elite looking after one another. Jobs for the boys’. But this is also thought to be the Tories’ fear of Farage splitting their vote and therefore choosing to placate him.
Such is the dislike of Farage that many have complained about what’s seen as excessive media coverage of Farage’s woes and that Farage didn’t care about people being debanked until it happened to him, etc. While this may well be true, I think it overlooks the fact that Farage, using his public profile, has usefully exposed the longstanding arrogance and lack of transparency displayed by both the BBC and the banks. Two resignations resulted from Farage’s investigation and we have to wonder, regardless of our views of Farage, who else could have achieved this? No doubt many of the previously debanked have objected but have been successfully fobbed off. It’s nevertheless worrying that yet again, it’s thought political interference has been another key element. ‘There is a real sense of disquiet that political pressure has led to a midnight exit for such an important banking CEO’ an official at the City regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, told the Guardian. ‘They should have allowed due process’….But we know how much respect this government has for ‘due process’: in some situations they shamelessly cite it when trying to avoid acting but ignore it when it suits them.
Another element which doesn’t seem have had much media coverage is the revelation that the GB News owner and presenter Farage have both profited from shorting the NatWest share price prior to the resignations. This matters because the losses (£1bn off the bank’s market value) will be shared by the taxpayer, as the government holds 39% of the bank’s shares, having bailed out the group during the 2008 financial crisis. ‘Sir Paul Marshall’s hedge fund Marshall Wace has a 0.59% short position in NatWest, according to regulatory filings first unearthed by the Telegraph… NatWest shares have lost 8.4% of their value in the past week as the company has come under fire for how it handled Nigel Farage’s account with exclusive bank Coutts. That represents close to £2 billion in market capitalisation, meaning Marshall Wace has gained around £11.7 million in that time period by betting against the bank….According to the Telegraph, the decision to bet against NatWest was likely made by a computer based on analysts’ reports, rather than being linked to any association with Farage’. But this still isn’t a good look for him or for GB News, which survives, astonishingly free of toothless regulator Ofcom sanction for various activities such as Tory MPs interviewing each other on air which contravene broadcasting regulations.
Farage may be widely disliked in some quarters but this new website he’s launching to help others through the data request process could be the start of inroads into the arrogance and lack of transparency of so many organisations in recent years. Every day we hear stories of customers struggling to get redress from retailers, service providers and others, but just getting stonewalled. It would be good to know what Martin Lewis thinks about it.
But Rishi Sunak continues to brazen his way through this and numerous other calamities, perhaps still imagining it will be ok when he reshuffles his Cabinet following the summer recess. Good luck with that as there’s nothing left of the vacuous barrel to scrape. Unusually and counter to protocol, James Cleverly went public to make crystal clear that he wanted to ‘stay put’ as Foreign Secretary, deludedly suggesting that this was a job he was good at. He’s certainly good at jetting around the world and making statements of the bl….n obvious but there’s little evidence of his capacity for original and insightful thought or to act promptly in crises or resolve difficult foreign policy issues.
None of this news, from the inaction on climate change to the cost of living crisis, is good for our mental wellbeing, the effects of each situation being aggravated by the incompetent and corrupt government time and time again proving itself unable to deal with them. It’s even more alarming what’s happening in the mental health field, following on from Met Police chief Sir Mark Rowley declaring in May that from 31 August his force would no longer deal with mental health crisis calls. . There’s been a considerable rise in demands on the police: In Merseyside, calls of this kind have increased from 7,629 in 2017 to 28,039 in 2022 – a 313% rise. It could be argued that the police have their own jobs to do and that for far too long the NHS (itself under-resourced, of course) has relied too heavily on the police to respond to emergency calls. But now policing minister Chris Philp has broadened this to all the police forces in England, the only exceptions being ‘whenever there is a risk to public safety and if there is a crime’. At the time of Rowley’s announcement mental health professionals and others were already pointing out the faulty logic underlying this decision, as many situations are a grey area and 999 call handlers could be left uncertain where to direct them.
‘Police officers who find themselves with non-criminal mental health incidents will be urged to hand over cases to health workers within an hour rather than spending far longer escorting them to hospital or another safe place and staying with them before handover – for as long as 14 hours in some cases’. And wouldn’t you just know that this strategy has to have a snappy title (Right Care, Right Person)? It ‘looks likely to create tension between police and health services over the speed of rollout and the resources available to ensure vulnerable people do not fall between the cracks’. But those cracks are already appearing because it states that police forces will decide the RCRP timeframe locally but after liaising with health and other professionals. This will surely lead to different arrangements and timeframes all over the country, though Philp has said he wants it all up and running within two years.
The doubts expressed by mental health charity MIND are similar to those of other mental health organizations: ‘[It] goes nowhere near offering enough guarantees that these changes will be introduced safely – there is no new funding attached and no explanation of how agencies will be held accountable. It is simply impossible to take a million hours of support out of the system without replacing it with investment, and mental health services are not resourced to step up overnight’. For its part the Royal College of Psychiatrists said that this must not be a step towards discontinuation of police involvement in such emergencies, reminding us that there are legal powers held only by the police which apply in some situations (eg the power to take someone from a public place to a place of safety) so there must always be a police role. Mental health services have long been under-resourced: it’s probably unlikely but it would be good to think that this initiative will lead to a proper conversation about how those with mental ill-health should be helped and proper funding to go with it.
Meanwhile, this is the kind of hypocritical statement we get from the mental health minister, Maria Caulfield: ‘Anyone going through something as awful as a mental health crisis deserves to know they’ll receive the best possible emergency response. It’s vital the right people who are trained and skilled to deal with the situation are on the scene to assist’. It is indeed ‘vital’ but the personal accounts of so many point to the support often not materializing and the Conservatives have never funded mental health as they need to in order to make delivering the right treatment the norm.
This and other funding shortfalls make even more of a nonsense the fact that the Royal Family have effectively had quite a hefty pay rise. It must have been anticipated that the public would largely be unhappy about this amid the cost of living crisis, to the extent the Treasury spun the figures as a pay cut for the royals, when, In fact, their grant is due to increase from £86m to £125m in 2025. Former Cabinet Secretary Lord Turnbull, who had been heavily involved in royal finance, condemned the dishonesty. ‘You get people writing in saying: ‘Isn’t it a good thing that the king is so sensitive to public opinion that he has waived some of the money he could have had?’ I think it’s bollocks. It is deliberate – that’s really what makes me so cross about it. It is a deliberate attempt to obfuscate how the thing works’. Apparently a Treasury spokesman said the amount will be reviewed in 2026, with a view to bringing it back down in 2027. We will believe that when we see it.
Many public transport users have been up in arms at proposals to remove staff from railway station ticket offices, alleging that ‘only’ a small percentage of passengers buy their tickets this way. But just leaving us to websites and a bank of machines is no substitute, failing to take account of complex ticketing and of the needs of those with disabilities. And what happens when the machine isn’t working? An angry tweeter said: ‘180 million journeys (per year) are facilitated by ticket offices”. The Government and the Train Companies are saying FU to 180 million people. To them you are just a number, and a number that counts for nothing’.
At least we now have till September to comment on these ‘proposals’. The rail companies say their plan is to move the staff from inside offices to concourses etc where they can be more helpful, but this sounds like a con. Just this week a ticket office team leader let drop that they’d been told they’d lose their jobs. Instead, these companies might recruit people at much lower pay, on limited hours and without the knowledge gained often over years by the current staff and without the tech the offices currently have. Let’s hope as many as possible will respond to these consultations and take part in the protests being planned.
When you think you’ve seen it all there can be further surprises or should that be shocks? In this week’s Boris Johnson column for the Daily Mail, his subject is the much-publicised Barbie film, in which the film critic manqué suggests (hopefully tongue in cheek but you never know with this narcissist) what the real message of the film is, a message which has so far eluded the critics. He reckons ‘it’s a satire on the tragic plastic sterility of Barbie the doll and a great Mussolini-esque rallying cry for human fecundity’. But I thought the most interesting sentence in this column was his irony by-pass statement of what he’s allegedly gained from getting older: ‘But I have reached the age when you can not only absorb what is going on but also actively enjoy yourself, even when you are half (or completely) asleep’. Doesn’t this just capture his irresponsible modus operandi in government?
‘Looking on the bright side….’ – there can be plenty of good things in our daily lives but it often seems that when we come to major, world-changing issues, there’s not much positive to report on. So it’s interesting that this piece interviews 13 experts in their fields from the climate crisis to culture wars, all of whom present evidence to the contrary, at least in part. I was struck by the echo chamber one, that the proportions of left leaning and right leaning ones were perceived as so small and this is further evidence of how much the mass media messaging can have a corrosive effect, spinning a narrative we’re brainwashed into thinking reflects reality.
Finally, an interesting development which should give wildlife a better chance of survival: a ‘swift brick’ produced by a Derbyshire brick maker, with design input from the RSPB. These have a small hole in front, a grippy entrance enabling swifts, an endangered species, to land, a concave dish to facilitate nest building and internal channels for drainage. These can be laid alongside regular bricks in new buildings and a petition to make their use compulsory in new UK housing projects will be debated in Parliament. Has anyone told Michael Gove?
Politics and mental health - the missing link? 