As it seems we have been rendered pretty impotent when it comes to influencing our government’s policies on international affairs, especially the increasingly dangerous antics of Trump, Putin and Netanyahu, focusing on the news at home seems appropriate and there’s no shortage of it. Just to say, as it’s both domestic and international, the announced intention to proscribe Palestine Action seems an appalling example of shooting the messenger, in my view, when no one has been hurt and direct action has resulted from people being deprived of a real voice. (Ditto re the Glastonbury controversy, without condoning the words but the message was the same). Years of marches and petitions about Gaza have done nothing to alter this government’s support of the Netanyahu regime so it’s hardly surprising (even in relatively well-behaved Britain) that protest has become much stronger out of frustration at our enforced powerlessness. But as ever the mainstream media talk in headlines without the detail, such as how far the proscribing would go. If every member of Palestine Action is deemed to be acting illegally, for example, will they be identified via PA’s records and tech and if so can they expect a visit from the plod to demand compliance with this absurd strategy? It would be nothing short of excessively authoritarian to follow through on this.
Verdicts on Labour’s first year in power have been coming thick and fast, many, unfortunately, from right wing sources which fail to acknowledge key successes and areas of progress. True – major mistakes like the acceptance of freebies and the need to partially u-turn on the Winter Fuel Allowance and disability benefits were avoidable and besides so many thinking that the PM has no ‘vision for the country’ many Labour backbenchers have been feeling marginalized and I was surprised to hear that some haven’t even met him. I find that very odd: wouldn’t you have thought that with a Labour government finally being elected after years of Tory maladministration the leader would make some effort to meet and engage with every one of them, even if this took a while? Also, two policy areas many voters find unpalatable if not downright unacceptable are the ongoing support for Netanyahu and the failure to implement a wealth tax. But major achievements have included Starmer’s success on the world stage, which eluded his Tory predecessors, especially given the huge challenges the Tories didn’t have to contend with such as dealing with a new Trump presidency, and navigating the Scylla and Charybdis of the tariffs yoyo; intensification of Putin’s war in Ukraine and the ferment in much of the Middle East.
In addition, NHS waiting lists are coming down, 750 school breakfast clubs have been rolled out, the minimum wage has been raised, planning rules have been liberalized which should enable more housing projects and although there’s much further to go there’s been progress in tackling the corrupt and polluting water companies. Of course there remains much to do and serious concerns remain (not least with the migration policy) such as creeping privatization within the NHS (not acknowledged but facilitated by the Health Secretary) and slow progress with compensating the victims of the contaminated blood and Post Office scandals (despite that duty in the first example having been shirked for years by the Conservatives). In any case, though, there needs to be longer than a year to deliver a verdict on a new government – the time for commentators to start sharpening their quills would be 18 months or two years, perhaps.
But the government really should acknowledge and addres the Tory induced inequality which dogs this country and is the opposite of what Labour is supposed to stand for. We have children living in Dickensian poverty and in other areas ‘packed restaurants, pavements lined with new Range Rovers and rows of smoothly renovated home exteriors…
Creating a more egalitarian society and politics – which by definition means redistribution from the powerful – was Labour’s original purpose…. Yet the current Labour government, like others before it, has struggled to devise and promote policies that substantially redistribute wealth. It has proposed or enacted welcome but modest redistributive reforms: removing the tax privileges of non-doms, imposing VAT on private schools, ending the inheritance tax exemption for farmers, removing the winter fuel allowance from wealthier pensioners and reducing the power imbalance between landlords and tenants. But amid the huge controversy these policies have caused – itself a sign of better-off citizens’ sense of entitlement – Labour has either made the argument for greater equality too quietly and tentatively, or not at all’.
This hesitancy has been partly attributed to Harold Wilson’s much maligned hike of income and investment tax to 98% on the highest earners during the 1970s, but although this did a lot to level out inequality, the party was still roundly defeated by Margaret Thatcher’s anti-egalitarian Conservatives in 1979. It’s suggested that this led to the next Labour government adopting an almost timid and stealthy stance regarding redistributive measures, for example presenting them as advantageous to the economy and work ethic rather than for their real purpose. This stealth strategy worked well when incomes and tax takes were growing but not when crises hit, such as the massive 2008 financial crisis. With the latest consideration of a wealth tax, it seems that the party is divided, not surprisingly. ‘Some in Labour favour one; others believe that openly egalitarian policies are never wise in what they see as a naturally deferential, hierarchical country’. But surely the country is now far less deferential and hierarchical than it was: there’s clearly some way to go and politicians need to courageously take on this challenge and not collude with it.
This last week we’ve seen the announcement of the government’s migrant processing pilot project (labeled ‘one in, one out’) which, together with the French is perhaps the biggest act of cooperation with former EU allies since Brexit, aims to tackle the smuggling gangs’ business model… because only those deemed not to have arrived via irregular routes will be considered for asylum. ‘Under the “one in, one out” pilot scheme, British officials will detain some of those who cross the Channel and send them back to France, in return taking an asylum seeker in France who can show they have family connections in Britain.The scheme is uncertain in scale and timing, but is nevertheless the first time such an agreement has been struck between the two countries. It is also the first time the government has increased the number of safe routes through which asylum seekers are able to reach Britain’.
Some Brexiteers, who still can’t bring themselves to admit that Brexit has been disastrous, were furious that Macron called out the lies we were told back in 2016. ‘Many people explained that Brexit would make it more possible to fight effectively against illegal migration. But since Brexit the UK has no illegal migration agreement with the EU … That creates an incentive to make the crossing, the precise opposite of what Brexit promised.The British people were sold a lie, which was that migration was a problem with Europe. With your government, we’re pragmatic, and for the first time in nine years we are providing a response’.
Numerous commentators have said this scheme won’t work but they don’t have a viable alternative and it has to be given a chance. It’s been so transparent that the Tories, still very bitter about the cancellation of the unworkable Rwanda Plan, and Reform UK, are determined to undermine it. Of course this is because they want to keep the anti-migrant culture war going for their own cynical political purposes. But neither politicians nor media want to sufficiently acknowledge and discuss the ‘pull’ and ‘push’ factors encouraging migrants to make the journey here as this would be politically embarrassing for them. Of course Western nations have contributed substantially (directly or indirectly eg through the arms trade) to the wars and civil unrest resulting in more being desperate to flee and the lack of ID cards and the size of our black economy are cited as major ‘pull’ factors. Some say making ID cards compulsory would make no difference but this can’t be known till it’s tried, taking years to implement, but the irregular economy could surely be tackled – with determination and with the right resources.
A significant news generator was the accompanying state visit of President Macron and his wife, Brigitte, and although the government must have felt the need to pull out the stops post Brexit, the involvement of the royals, all the pomp and ceremony and huge banquet at Windsor would have come at considerable expense – obscene to some at £300,000 by some estimates, £500,000 by others. The BBC told us: ‘Across the three-day visit, there will be a message of building relations between the two allies, in diplomacy, defence and trade, at a time of uncertainty in international relations. The UK government has spoken of wanting to “reset” post-Brexit relations with European neighbours with the French state visit part of that process’. Of course this had some well-known Brexiteers like ‘Lord’ David Frost absolutely spitting, but not into the ‘special cocktail called “l’entente”, which combined British gin with lemon curd and French pastis, decorated with French cornflowers and English roses’ specially designed for the banquet’s 160 guests. At least at these ‘soft power’ gigs the expensive and luxurious royals can be put to some real work for a change.
Besides the ongoing and well-justified criticism of Kemi Badenoch as Conservative Party leader, focus on the Party has intensified this week as a result of the defection to Reform UK of their erstwhile chair – ‘Sir’ Jake Berry, hot on the heels of another former Cabinet minister, David Jones. Note the naivety we so often hear in Reform supporters – simplistically seeking a saviour. ‘Millions of people, just like me, want a country they can be proud of again. The only way we get that is with Reform in government. That’s why I’ve resigned from the Conservative party. I’m now backing Reform UK and working to make them the next party of government’. Of course the ever arrogant Badenoch dismissed this as merely the loss of someone who wanted to ‘play’ at politics. But two important points have been made which should cause the Tories to reflect further on the damage this inflicts, especially if more follow suit.
‘First, as a former party chair he has significant organising experience, which has always been a weakness in the Reform party because of the relative lack of experience among the grassroots. The more experienced Tories defect, including local association chairs and party agents, the more Reform gains vital ground game knowledge – mostly at the expense of the Tories. Second, and perhaps even more damagingly, it sends a signal that there are many ambitious Tory ex-MPs who do not feel ready to be put out to pasture – and they do not see the Conservative party as their route back to relevance any time soon’. As we know Kemi tried to dismiss this as opportunism but that wouldn’t be the whole story. It will be interesting to see how this inter-party shapeshifting goes over the coming months, especially as Reform UK seems to lose MPs and councillors as quickly as it gains them.
Of course it was to be expected but Badenoch’s lionizing of the recently deceased Sir Norman Tebbit is another example of her defensiveness. To hear the eulogies of people like Badenoch, Boris Johnson and others you’d think Tebbit had been some kind of saint rather than the Thatcherite, racist and combative neoliberal enforcer that he actually was. Yes, he did indeed care devotedly for his wife badly injured during the Brighton hotel bombing but in the eyes of many that doesn’t redeem him from the damage which he, as part of that regime, inflicted on this country.
Boris Johnson, who certainly didn’t follow the example of rejecting ‘a culture of easy entitlement’, was responsible for this heavily biased piece of irony bypass: the opposite of how many will remember this man. ‘Norman Tebbit was a hero of modern Conservatism. In the early 1980s he liberated the British workforce from the socialist tyranny of the closed shop. He tamed the union bosses, and in so doing he helped pave the way for this country’s revival in the 1980s and 1990s. At a time when the Labour government is now disastrously reversing those crucial reforms we need to remember what he did and why. In his single most famous phrase he once said that in the 1930s his unemployed father had got on his bike and looked for work. That wasn’t a heartless thing to say – as the Labour Party claimed. It was because he believed in thrift and energy and self-reliance. It was because he rejected a culture of easy entitlement. We mourn the passing of a great patriot, a great Conservative – and today more than ever we need to restore the values of Norman Tebbit to our politics’.
Media coverage of the ongoing Covid 19 Inquiry has been appallingly minimal and you could almost think that right wing media were trying to protect their beloved Tories from scrutiny. Yes, of course we can watch the Inquiry live via YouTube but many don’t have the time for that and we should be getting updates via our media. Broadcasting coverage should be at key time slots guaranteed to supply the largest audience numbers, not squashed into an obscure early bulletin. My news has mainly come via the tweets of Covid Bereaved Families for Justice and it was through them that I learned that discredited former Health Secretary Matt Hancock was now giving evidence for the 9th time. He displayed the usual denial and arrogance we saw at earlier appearances and it was totally astonishing when he claimed that only a campaign group had taken issue with his dishonest insistence that they had ‘thrown a protective ring around care homes’ despite previously admitting to the inquiry that it was not an ‘unbroken circle’ and that releasing untested hospital patients into care homes had been the ‘least worst option’.
‘Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, a group of nearly 7,000 people, said Hancock’s evidence ‘was full of excuses and completely devoid of accountability’…Almost 46,000 care home residents died with Covid in England and Wales between March 2020 and January 2022, many of them in the early weeks of the pandemic. The decision to rapidly discharge hospital patients to care homes in order to free up beds, when testing and isolation facilities were not yet widely available, has been strongly criticised for causing rapid spread of the disease in care homes’. So many like Hancock are resorting to blustering denial (even trying to undermine the cross-examining barrister) and buck passing (eg blaming Public Health England) rather than admitting their responsibility for the disastrous management of the pandemic.
Having been suppressed for years it’s lately been the opposite with the contaminated blood and Post Office scandals, the inquiry chairmen both highly critical of the cover-ups and extreme tardiness of politicians in expediting compensation payments. It’s unfair to pin this onto the current government, though: the former Conservative administrations have been culpable for the delays. But the money needs to be found and promptly.
Although it’s been used for more media manipulation, ie blaming the employer NI and minimum wage hike, it was dismaying to learn that the National Trust is to cut at least 550 jobs in efforts to save £26m. Volunteers are already widely used and the 550 could mean the loss of vital curatorial and other essential roles. The Trust looks after 500 historic houses, castles, parks and gardens, 780 miles of coastline and 250,000 hectares of land and is the largest UK charity but now they say the £10m cost of wage and NI rises has outstripped visitor income. There will be no doubt that this is an issue for many organisations but I also wonder about the very high senior staff salaries we often see in such cases. The Trust has a board of governors boasting a very wide range of expertise and skills so let’s hope the forced redundancies can be kept to a minimum and that they can find a way through.
Many have been shocked and upset at the Observer’s exposee of the alleged false narrative of the 2018 The Salt Path, by Raynor Winn, which tells the story of her and her husband’s 630 mile walk around the South West coastal path after their house was repossessed and the husband was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Besides the recently released film, the author wrote two further books and was commissioned to produce a fourth, now paused by the publisher, Penguin. Last weekend, the Observer published an investigation alleging that Winn had lied about being made homeless and about the circumstances under which she and her husband lost their home. It also questioned the legitimacy of Moth’s diagnosis. The journalist alleged that they didn’t lose their home due to an unwise investment but that Raynor Winn had previously embezzled money from an employer, their house having been collateral on the loan to repay this money and the couple defaulted; that the husband’s much improved health was not consistent with the illness described and that the couple also had a property in France. Winn subsequently published a lengthy denial, declaring the article ‘highly misleading’ and that she would be saying nothing more at present, pending legal advice.
There’s now been quite a bit of media coverage and it’s shocking to learn that publishing companies don’t have fact checking departments and leave this to the author. We know that publishing is run on a shoestring but this is surely absurd. I wondered how on earth it was that neither the publishing nor film industries had carried out due diligence and had the wool pulled over their eyes in this way. But one commentator said that because of lack of regulation of these industries there are no costly repercussions for lies told in memoirs. One article drew attention to previous publishing scandals based on misrepresentations and also what seems a rather disingenuous kind of fudging – when a ‘memoir’ isn’t expected to be 100% ‘truthful’ but where to draw the line?
Some authors have handled this by categorising their work as ‘autobiographical fiction’, but this apparently is less attractive to readers. ‘…we’re all familiar with the strength of desire for real stories…Autofiction isn’t as well-established a genre as memoir so marketing teams face discrete challenges in framing and taking these stories to the public. A ‘true story’ has historically proved easier to build a campaign around’. What adds to the suspicion is why this couple felt the need to change their names – the real names are Sally and Tim Walker – and their expectation that this would never be found out. A bid to reinvent themselves? Another commentator said: ‘Memories are fallible and selective; we always remember half-truths, and the story an author chooses to tell is only ever one story of a particular situation. But what any reader wants to believe is that the story they have put their faith in is closest to the writer’s truth, that they have not been deliberately misled, that they have not been manipulated. This is essential’. Sounds like the debate has opened this particular Pandora’s Box to a wider public and the story will run for a while. It will be riveting to hear what Walker/Winn says when she’s reflected on the legal advice.
Finally it was cheering to hear that the long established Beamish Museum (County Durham) had won the Art Fund Museum of the Year award, worth £180,000 and a lot of publicity, of course. Beamish describes itself as ‘a world famous open air museum, telling the story of life in North East England during the 1820s, 1900s, 1940s and 1950s’, so it tells the story of industrial and farming life, has shopping streets, vintage trams and a large collection of artefacts. I visited many years ago and would like to return since there have been significant additions since then. Judges called Beamish a ‘joyous, immersive and unique place shaped by the stories and experiences of its community’ – long may it thrive, especially in these difficult days for cultural institutions!
Politics and mental health - the missing link? 