As the Middle East crisis rages on, causing political upheaval way beyond those borders, not to mention Ukraine, the UK is experiencing a constitutional crisis which has been building for some considerable time, yet it doesn’t seem to be acknowledged as such by politicians or the media, except somewhat in the Radio 4 Today podcast. Using the Gaza protest marches as a pretext, then Home Secretary Suella Braveman ratcheted up dissent, ensuring that marches did indeed attract the very right wing thugs responsible for the violence she’d projected onto the protesters. Then the events coinciding with what’s only recently been dubbed ‘Remembrance weekend’ was enough for Tories to cynically suggest (never the case) that marchers intended to disrespect this occasion via their proximity to the Cenotaph (when they went nowhere near there), unfortunately meaning that many were taken in by this weaponising, writing sanctimonious letters to newspapers and indignantly calling phone-ins.
Braverman’s article in the Telegraph, berating ‘hate marches’ etc, surely illustrated another dangerous trend set in motion by the lawless Boris Johnson – that of disregard for party and parliamentary discipline. Braverman refused to make the changes to the article requested by Downing Street, a snub to authority decried by party stalwarts like Lord Howard. The fact is that Johnson had normalized the breaking of rules across the piece, also highlighted by veteran Labour MP Barry Gardiner during his interview by Jacob Rees-Mogg on GB News. It’s well known that Mogg despises Sunak but, following the opening stages of the interview, during which he railed against Sunak, he wasn’t expecting a vigorous ticking off from Gardiner for disloyalty. Mogg’s response was to say he was loyal to his constituents, but this didn’t cut much ice because parliamentary convention demands loyalty to one’s party leader. Mogg also probably has no idea what his constituents think, especially given his GB News gig besides his Westminster bubble.
Having been repeatedly urged to sack the disrespectful loose cannon Braverman, Sunak eventually did so, swiftly followed by Braverman presenting this humiliation as her ‘resignation’, writing Sunak a venomous letter, which, amongst other things, accused him of reneging on an agreement they had reached to secure her support during the leadership contest. It sounded as if she was over-estimating the value of this ‘support’, but if this letter was surprising, much more was to come, including Sunak’s Cabinet reshuffle. Mostly deckchairs on the Titanic stuff, it saw the not before time departure of the lazy and disengaged Therese Coffey, the demotion of James Cleverly from the Foreign Office to Home Secretary (demotion as Cleverly had loved the jetting around the world) and the installation of an inexperienced Victoria Atkins at the Department for Health and Social Care. Just one absurdity the media seized on was her husband being MD of British Sugar, yet Atkins maintained that no conflict of interest was involved.
What no one saw coming was Sunak bringing back David Cameron from the political wilderness, and what would have had some people spitting including Nadine Dorries, giving him a peerage to enable his new Foreign Secretary role. This was yet another plank in the creation of the constitutional crisis. As many pointed out, as a member of the House of Lords Cameron cannot be accountable to the Commons – seen as yet another way Sunak has connived to avoid scrutiny.
As if there wasn’t already enough to debate, the political discourse was inflamed further by the Supreme Court’s rejection of the Rwanda plan, giving rise to the deepening crisis, Sunak seeming to lose all sense of reality by defiantly deciding to create emergency legislation in an attempt to circumvent the judgement. One of the many dystopian elements of this situation has been the number of Tories prepared to take this seriously, for example Home Office minister Laura Farris during various media interviews trying to insist that only one part of the plan was rejected and trying to normalize the Orwellian intention to legislate.
Needless to say, commentators were fulsome in their responses, some castigating the untruths behind this move and also pointing out that threatening to leave the ECHR would wreck the Good Friday Agreement. Some still stick to the line that the UK is a democracy, but it now feels more de jure than de facto. What kind of country are we living in, where our elected representatives break the law right, left and centre, line their own pockets at every opportunity, curtail free speech, fail to address the cost of living crisis and undermine the regulatory framework to the extent that it barely works?? No wonder the waiting list for talking therapy is through the roof, because these events introduce yet more uncertainty on top of financial struggles and the fact that nothing in the UK is working.
Said Martin Kettle in the Guardian: ‘The Rwanda judgment drives a coach and horses through a signature policy on migration, thus leaving the underlying cross-Channel migration problem completely unsolved. At the same time, it is also an explicit refutation of the argument that the European convention on human rights (ECHR) is the easily addressed cause of the defeat, because that is quite simply untrue. It is hard to see where the policy goes from here, other than to the knacker’s yard’.
John Crace captures the heart of the crisis, illustrating how Sunak and most in his government have embraced ‘post-truth’ to get round facts, they fantasize. ‘Rishi had uncovered the secret of government. Any uncomfortable truths could just be airbrushed out of history by an act of parliament. No more would the UK be constrained by reality. If you didn’t like something, you could make a law to suit your own version of events. There was no longer such a thing as truth. Just post-truth. The world really could be how you wanted it to be. It didn’t matter if Rwanda was objectively safe. Only that the government had said it was. That changed everything’. The Humpty Dumpty of politics, where words can mean whatever you want them to mean. Former Supreme Court judge John Sumption has called it ‘a law to change the facts’.
‘He implied that the government was already well on the way to securing changes that would in fact allow it to comply with the ruling. There would be a new treaty with Rwanda and emergency legislation deeming the country “safe”, and the flights could then begin. Forget it. Even Sunak himself is unlikely to believe what he said today’. Much of this clearly about saving face but it’s alarming the lengths Sunak has gone to, especially when many can see how risible it is. Well, it would be if it wasn’t so serious. Observed one tweeter: ‘: This is the manufacture of massive distractions from Tory failures. We have a Tory government obsessed with “illegal” immigration, feeding the extremes of their voting base. That’s why they won’t address the claim backlog – they need the issue simmering in media and thus in public consciousness, rather than inflation, NHS, schools, energy etc’. Another said: ‘Our entire establishment is corrupt. The regulators don’t do their job, whether regulating sewage dumping or financial plunder and the govt and far too many MPs find personal plunder more important than pride in and duty to their nation. We have a government of vipers at war with its citizens’. Another X user made a key point about the cost: ‘How many more billions are we going to have to spend on buttressing idiotic Tory hubris?’
Sunak’s ridiculously defiant response to the judgement was clearly an attempt to claw back some authority but this could only work with loyal Tories. Crace again: ‘Now, though, they were high and dry. All vestiges of competence and credibility shredded. Just aimless husks orbiting around their depleted egos. Of no relevance to the country. Or even their friends.
… As if the courts will back off because Sunak has said so. It was the work of an entitled child. A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’. You almost have to feel sorry for the Tories picked to participate in media interviews and having to defend this nonsense. Sunak’s recent efforts to present himself as an agent of change, for example in the King’s Speech, have manifestly failed.
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton had allegedly told former colleagues he was ‘bored s***less’ being away from frontline politics so he must be so grateful Sunak has lighted on him as a saviour, giving him a chance to repair that problematic legacy. He will soon announce that the UK has a ‘moral mission’ to help the world’s poor and that he plans to ‘unlock’ (yes, how?) billions of dollars for foreign aid over the next 10 years. So he doesn’t have a ‘moral mission’ to help the poorest in this country, created by his government? Rather than the saviour Sunak intended, though, Cameron’s appointment could divide his warring party even more, as the right wingers are already angry that it all signals a dash for the political centre ground. ‘Cameron will say that the UK must find fresh ways to meet the UN’s sustainable development goals, including ending global hunger by 2030’. Good luck with that – can he even ensure that hunger in the UK will end by 2030?
Elsewhere commentators focus on ‘Dave’s’ legacy, which Sunak struggled to summarise when asked what his greatest achievement was, lamely suggesting a G8 summit. What Cameron is likely to be forever be associated with is ‘the holding and losing of the Brexit referendum, the accusations of familiar relations with a pig’s head in his Oxford days and more recently the pocketing of $1m (£800,000) a year for his lobbying of ministers on behalf of the distressed finance company Greensill Capital’.
We’re told that despite far reaching political changes since he left the scene, ‘Cameron’s cosy social world has remained familiar. The groups can be loosely defined as those of the west London Notting Hill (twinned with Westminster) set, where the couple have a £4m home, and then, of course, the glamorous community around the town of Chipping Norton, near where Cameron and his wife bought a cottage in 2001, and the name of which the new peer of the realm has adopted in his title’. Journalist Peter Oborne in 2011 described this ‘set’ as ‘an incestuous collection of louche, affluent, power-hungry and amoral Londoners located in and around the prime minister’s Oxfordshire constituency’. We will wait to see whether Cameron is able to move on from his feeling of ‘unfinished business’ and ‘that’ legacy but one thing’s for sure – commentators will be keeping an eagle eye on the moral dimensions of his activities.
Yet before we write off ‘Dave’ altogether (and what’s the betting this is how he’ll be alluded to rather than ‘Lord Cameron?) and assume the appointment makes us even more of a laughing stock internationally, there’s apparently a positive view in some European circles. And we have to say that he has more gravitas about him than his dim predecessor. Helene von Bismarck is a Hamburg-based historian specialising in UK-German relations, who says that although they ‘can’t help laughing’ at this return, they welcome it, too. Why? ‘What many British remainers who resent Cameron for calling the referendum and then fleeing the scene do not understand, however, is that it is Boris Johnson who is blamed by politicians and diplomats across Europe for the post-Brexit fallout, much more than Cameron. Yes, there will be jokes in Brussels, Berlin and Parisabout Cameron and his garden shed, but it’s worth reminding ourselves of a basic point: he does not hate the EU, nor – as a new peer – does he need to impress people who do. He is neither an anti-European ideologue, nor a careerist populist who has to sell his every move to the tabloids at home’.
With the world in the state it’s in, diplomacy is of supreme importance, so Sunak’s gesture towards centrists with this appointment is seen as a helpful development. Imagine a typically angry and intransigent ERG-type bod in this role. Remember the appalling ‘Lord’ Frost? ‘At a time of crisis, the UK’s foreign secretary needs a full contacts book, a realistic view of how international diplomacy works and a personal ability to engage with counterparts. With his experience in summitry, his contacts and lack of ideological fervour, Cameron is not badly placed to do this’. Expect the jury to be out for a while.
Wouldn’t you have thought that after everything that’s emerged in recent times about the extent of Tory corruption and of the taking of second and even third jobs, they would have stopped, but no. We have to wonder if some have used the Middle East and Ukraine wars to take attention away from the latest examples. We hear that former Conservative chair, Brandon Lewis (yes, he of the ‘limited but specific’ intention to disobey the law regarding the Good Friday Agreement) will be paid £250,000 to advise a company part-owned by two Russian oligarchs with sanctions against them. Next up is new Environment Secretary Steve Barclay, who accepted £3,000 donation from Michael Hintze, a key funder of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. This was a few weeks before the reshuffle but it’s still a massive conflict of interest.
‘The think tank focuses on questioning policy on the climate crisis, and was set up by the former Conservative chancellor Nigel Lawson, who has said that climate change is not a threat, but “happening very gently at a fraction of a degree per decade, which is something we can perfectly well live with”. The think tank has produced reviews – at odds with mainstream science – that claim the climate emergency is not happening, or downplay the extent of it’. It’s the government’s normalization of such arrangements that’s so alarming. And a source tells us: ‘Steve is fully committed to the government’s net zero aims. Protecting our environment for future generations is one of his key priorities and that includes urgently tackling climate change’. What’s the logic here?
As if this isn’t enough, the Good Law project has revealed that a firm owned by a Tory donor has been awarded an £11.5m contract for supplying temporary classrooms for schools affected by the faulty concrete RAAC. ‘The Department of Education has asked Wernick Buildings Limited to provide “temporary accommodation and associated services to mitigate schools disruption due to rebuilding, condition and refurbishment programmes”. The company is controlled by David Wernick, who has given more than £71,000 to the Tories either through his companies or in a personal capacity between 2001 and 2021. More than half this amount – £42,000 – has been donated since 2019’. Wernick had also been the beneficiary of other government contracts during the pandemic. The Department for Education apparently told the Daily Mirror that the Government ‘will spend whatever it takes to ensure children are safe in school’. What an absurdity – this does not equate with involving Tory donors and what about the obligation to put such contracts out to tender?
Another nail in the Tory coffin is surely Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s appalling plan to cut benefits in order to facilitate tax cuts for the wealthy. Yet another under pressure from right wingers, Hunt has warned that “difficult decisions” need to be made to “reform the welfare state” and that there’s ‘no easy way to reduce the tax burden’. He and others are now resorting to desperate measures to shore up their flagging support in the face of their failures. We’re told that Hunt now has £13bn ‘fiscal headroom’, though this has come about through cynical measures and nothing constructive he has done. ‘Adam Corlett, the principal economist at the Resolution Foundation, said the government’s six-year freeze in income tax thresholds had “turned from an £8bn ‘stealth’ tax to a gargantuan £40bn tax rise” because of higher inflation’.
He still hasn’t addressed an earlier intention to help the vulnerable with fuel bills eg a social tariff and, typically, he was on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg claiming credit for inflation reducing (yet they don’t take responsibility for it rising).Quite a few will be nervous about Hunt’s Autumn Statement next week and it won’t help him that former Chancellor Ken Clarke ‘told Times Radio that he did not think Hunt has any “headroom for tax cuts” and that he would risk a severe public backlash if working people and those on benefits had to pay for it.“Choosing inheritance tax at the present time might appeal to the Conservative right, but it leaves them open to the most appalling criticisms when inflation and the state of affairs is making poorer people in this country very vulnerable indeed’, said Clarke. Hunt just tweeted what we should expect on Wednesday, to which one tweeter responded: ‘Let me guess, tax cuts for the well-off funded by reducing benefits for the sick and disabled? Inheritance tax scrapped to sweeten up hard-pressed high-earners? Ideological bankruptcy’.
You’ll be aware there’s been much attention paid in recent years to arts and museum sponsorship, especially given the extensive and discredited Sackler family disgrace and protests against institutions’ perceived seduction by the fossil fuels industry. This is even more important now that government funding for the arts has not been seen as a priority. Having shed the mantle of BP, the National Portrait Gallery (very busy since its re-opening earlier this year), which it ‘wore’ for 30 years, critics have accused them of jumping from the frying pan into the fire by reaching an agreement with Herbert Smith Freehills, which includes fossil fuels companies amongst its clients. This is to fund its portrait prize. ‘Chris Garrard, a co-director of Culture Unstained, said: “To end your sponsorship deal with BP – a major producer of new oil and gas – only to then replace it with a law firm that has actively enabled BP and others to produce more fossil fuels is a complete climate fail’.
You’ve heard of ‘greenwashing’: this is dubbed ‘artwashing’ by sceptics. But the Gallery’s director hit back. ‘In an interview with the Times, the gallery’s director, Nicholas Cullinan, said they had red lines over who it would accept money from, but museums could not afford to be activists and it was difficult to find law firms or banks without links to fossil fuels’. The Gallery is a charity and only part-funded by government so has to generate 70% of its running costs. This debate is likely to run and run as climate activism increases but so does the need for the arts to seek funding.
Sticking with similar territory, you’ll remember the hoo ha about thousands of objects going missing at the British Museum (and others), when various unprofessional practices emerged such as there being no overall catalogue of articles in its possession. At the time politician turned journalist turned museum overseer George Osborne stuck to a defensive line, despite a source, interviewed in the media, being able to tell the story of how these losses/thefts came about. He’s now admitted ‘we failed in our duty to look after objects’. ‘The British Museum must “own [its] mistakes” and not shy away from controversy, chair George Osborne has said in a speech at the institution’s annual dinner for trustees. Acknowledging that 2023 has not been the “easiest of years” for the museum, Osborne pledged that it would be more open in addressing contentious issues such repatriation, as well as confronting its failures in dealing with the alleged thefts.“I think too often we’ve thought: let’s keep quiet; if we don’t talk about things that are difficult, then no one else will,” he said’. Museum watchers will be keen to see whether this new policy of transparency takes root: if only the same could be said for politics.
Finally, chocolate lovers and others have long lamented the perceived decline in the quality of the goods when a huge conglomerate takes over an iconic British brand: this happened with Cadbury’s and Fry’s to name just two. We now hear that upmarket brand Hotel Chocolat, which boasts many high street outlets and a chain of cafes, has fallen prey to this scenario, allowing itself to be bought out by the US food and confectionery empire Mars, in a £534m deal. Hotel Chocolat isn’t any old brand: in 2006 its co-founder Angus Thirwell bought the 250-acre Rabot cocoa estate in St Lucia, part of the company’s mission to produce more sophisticated chocolates with ‘more cocoa, less sugar’ and to treat its farmers fairly. This is in contrast to what Thirwell considers to be the quality of supermarket chocolate: ‘boring and rubbish quality’. It seems the reason for this deal is HC’s struggle to expand into the US and Japan but not having the muscle for this which ‘big chocolate’ does have.
Thirwell sent customers a bullish email yesterday, saying that Mars has similar values and priorities to HC. He will remain CEO and they will operate as a standalone brand within Mars: ‘I would like to reassure you that our mission to make people and nature happy through re-inventing chocolate very much remains in place… Onwards with the chocolate revolution!’
It will be interesting to see how this pans out.
Meanwhile, it should be an interesting if worrying fortnight ahead, with the Autumn Statement due on Wednesday and the start, at the Covid Inquiry, of evidence from Sir Patrick Vallance (whose diary extracts we’ve heard recently) and with Boris Johnson appearing soon. Will he or won’t he behave in the same petulant and avoidant manner he adopted at the Commons Partygate interrogation?
Politics and mental health - the missing link? 