In the wake of the Trump state visit and as the British political party conference season takes hold, there’s no shortage of concerning news, much of it subjected to mendacious massage by the right wing media including the BBC. (Private Eye got it in one with their ‘fake news’ about Chris Mason, the much criticised BBC Political Editor, defecting to Reform). The BBC has been on a mission to bring this government down ever since it was elected and it was alarming that a senior staffer, Deborah Turness, is on record saying they were making their content more sympathetic to Reform. Of course this could never happen if our regulators did their jobs, in this case Ofcom, but Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has never tackled the relentless right wing bias across the entire mainstream media. While there’s no doubt that dark forces outside the UK are behind some of these campaigns to attack our government, particularly via the manipulation of social media, the numerous mistakes and missteps made by Keir Starmer and his colleagues are mounting up and it seems likely there will be a leadership challenge. Starmer is accused of having no real direction or vision and, sadly, that’s increasingly looking the case. And we have to wonder about the under the radar role of shadowy fixers like Morgan McSweeney- some believe that it was he who chose Starmer, not the other way round.
But we have to remind ourselves how the cult of political personality has mushroomed up in recent years and how vacuous this has proved in the case of Boris Johnson, Farage and others. With ever shortening attention spans, too many are taken in by unsubstantiated sound bites which don’t pass muster when these big personalities are subjected to proper scrutiny. Although Starmer has won plaudits (mostly) for his performance on the international stage, the opposite of the embarrassing grandstanding we’ve seen from some of his predecessors, there’s an increasing fissure opening up between Right and Left within the Labour Party and I was taken aback to hear one MP say he’d never met the party leader. Surely, on becoming PM or before, he should havearranged to meet every single Labour MP, even if it tookseveral receptions to do so. This really shows what some have complained of – the gap between the parliamentary party and the leadership, seen as remote in some quarters.
Numerous commentators have now opined about the worrying state of the government and leadership and this is a key topic in the run up to the November Budget and the rising threat of Reform UK. Starmer is expected to tell discontented party members that now isn’t the time for infighting andthat it is in a ‘fight for the soul of the nation.. that history will not forgive them if it fails to confront and defeat Reform UK and the populist right’. He came up with a good label for their tactics: cultivating an ‘industrialised infrastructure of grievance’ – gallingly swallowed by so many supporters when the Reform leadership actually consists of public school educated tax dodging billionaires not genuinely caring about ‘working people’. But both Left and Right are divided, making for ‘interesting times’: the far right split between Reform and Advance and the left with the entry of the Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana Your Party.
The Guardian’s Political Editor quoted a senior aide: ‘The prime minister’s allies admit he has a tough task ahead but insist he is determined to press on. “It’s a big, historic moment, Keir understands that. It’s a crossroads for the country. Lots of people think the UK is in fundamental decline, and the populist right only ever do well in those conditions. But there are ripples of hope, signs that things can and will get better. The country is facing some big structural problems but it doesn’t mean that progress can’t succeed. The summer, with all the protests and anger about immigration, made him realise he has to make the case for the sort of country he wants this to be.” We should also remember what challenges this government has been up against which the preceding administration wasn’t: the ‘second coming’ of unreliable Trump with his lies, damaging tariffs policy and partial abandonment of NATO; the intensification of the Gaza and Ukraine invasions and the aforesaid rise of Reform. The already strong pressure on public finances has also been exacerbated by Trump’s demands for NATO members to spend if not 5% at least 3% of GDP on defence.
Nevertheless, a bit late for Keir Starmer to realise the need for a clear vision, some would say. Meanwhile left-leaning Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham is simultaneously saying MPs have encouraged him to mount a leadership challenge and also that it’s not his intention and that he just wants the party to succeed and stick to its agenda. It sounds as if there are plans to lift the two child benefit cap but many of us wish the government had introduced a proper wealth tax on entering office instead of bending over backwards to (as some would see it) target the vulnerable. Starmer’s conference speech on Tuesday will be widely anticipated.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives are looking increasingly irrelevant, bleating from the sidelines, often opposing interventions which aim to rectify problems caused by their 14 years of misrule. We have Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride still trying to pretend that they are the party of ‘fiscal responsibility’ when they wrecked the economy, Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp obsessed with ‘small boats’ and the cancellation by Labour of their unworkable Rwanda scheme (he even gets fishermen to call him when they spot migrant boats so he can leap onto TikTok) and party leader Kemi Badenoch condemning the latest digital ID policy as a ‘desperate gimmick’ when they themselves are the party of gimmickry. Serious blows to the Conservatives come in the form of numerous defections of senior Tories to Reform, the ITV documentary Covid Contracts, which portrayed in fine detail the billions blown on often unusable PPE via the corrupt VIP lane and now the ITV drama series starring David Tennant and Toby Jones (Hack) about the phone hacking scandal. It’s genuinely hard to see how the Tories could ever be trusted again, though they still talk about ‘regaining the public’s trust’.
The topic du jour we should certainly be interested in is the digital ID debate but not for the Luddite conspiracy theory specious arguments often wheeled out. It’s indeed doubtful that this would reduce small boat crossings but we in the UK are way behind other countries with this technology, which is useful in many circumstances and helping prevent fraud and other forms of criminality. It constantly goes under the radar (probably because both Labour and Conservative governments have had links with this company) but it’s very worrying that the US IT systems provider Palantir could well be involved. It’s good news that someone has submitted an FOI request to the Home Office to ascertain the extent of Palantir’s likely role, since they’re already too well embedded in UK infrastructure including the NHS and security and surveillance systems for the police, Ministry of Defence, Cabinet Office and local government. The CEO, Peter Thiel, is a right wing democracy sceptic, big Trump donor with links to Elon Musk and other powerful public figures. And, along with Musk, he’s just emerged in the latest release of Epstein files. The whole process, if progressed, needs to be more transparent as it’s well known that corporate America has long been keen to access the markets facilitated via UK data harvesting.
Named in this latest Epstein files release is Prince Andrew again, and this, combined with the latest disgrace of the Duchess of York, the posthumous publication of Giuffre’s book and the calls of her family for the Yorks to have their titles removed, points up even more clearly the cowardice and passivity of King Charles for not properly excluding these two before. But a key question is why Prince Andrew is constantly protected from scrutiny – he should have been investigated by the police long ago but as we know in this country the elites somehow manage to evade what the rest of us could not. None of those listed in these Epstein files could have foreseen these repeating and tightening toxic tentacles resulting from their ill-advised association with him: Epstein has posthumously proved himself the poisoned chalice ‘gift’ that keeps on giving.
It was useful timing that Alan Rusbridger’s article in The Independent drew attention to politicians ‘wading in’ on all the important issues of the day, with the ‘glaring omission’ of the royal family. ‘It’s time for the royals to face the same scrutiny as the rest of society’. The reason they don’t is to be found in what’s regarded as the bible of parliamentary procedure – Erskine May, oft quoted by the pompous Rees-Mogg – which states that ‘the conduct of the Sovereign, the Heir to the Throne, and other members of the Royal Family must not be debated except where it is part of a substantive motion’. It’s a ridiculous situation when ‘the monarchy is treated as if it were a piece of delicate porcelain that might shatter under the weight of parliamentary scrutiny. Thus, we have a modern(ish) democracy in which the elected representatives of the people cannot properly interrogate how the unelected head of state and his extended family are funded, what they do, or with whom they associate. Unless there is a substantive motion, and it’s difficult to think of the last time an MP tabled such a thing’.
Yet support for ending the monarchy has been at least 24% of the population for some time and now, thanks to Channel 4, the Sunday Times and the Guardian (the Cost of the Crown series) we know much more than we did about the opaque and unjust royal finances. What’s often not understood is that besides the Sovereign Grant and paying very little tax of any kind Charles and William benefit from the massive incomes of, respectively, the Duchy of Lancaster and the Duchy of Cornwall: besides exploiting tenants these ‘private estates’ don’t fall within the Crown Estate, which surely they should. And when their haughty managers were called before the Commons Public Accounts Committee one actually had the nerve to ask what these estates had to do with the Committee. It’s appalling to see such luxurious royal lifestyles and millions spent on their 19 homes, travel, clothes and absurdly arcane ceremonies when public services and finances are so stretched. Another myth that gets trotted out is that the royals bring in the tourists: in fact there’s no evidence to support this and Versailles gets many more visitors than Buckingham Palace when the French haven’t had a monarchy for centuries.
‘It seems to me that the royal family have become rather assertive – if opaque – in answering criticism. Among them, they employ numerous communications advisers (precise number unknown) to ensure the best possible coverage and to neutralise the worst. The royals have occasionally resorted to law to protect their reputations – the Queen twice sued The Sun over copyright, and Prince Harry has shown how it’s really done’. On a daily basis we’re subjected to a barrage of misleading propaganda from the royal industry, consisting of the media and the numerous ‘royal correspondents’ who work with them, whose parasitic livings depend on the monarchy. Some vested interests. Rusbridger poses some very good questions which MPs could be asking, such as whether it’s right for him to pocket £30m a year from the Duchy of Lancaster with what tax being paid, if any, and whether he could be more forthcoming about the private income from investments, inherited wealth and the revenue stream from estates such as Sandringham, where he owns some 300 houses, and Balmoral. A key question is the one about the ‘slimmed down monarchy’, a term bandied about for some time but which hasn’t translated to anything yet. Numerous royals are still supported. But the dual disgrace of the Duke and Duchess of York now poses questions about the roles of Beatrice and Eugenie.
‘A democracy that cannot talk about its head of state is still partially in thrall to the old order. The monarchy may have Instagram accounts, transparency reports and diversity initiatives, but in the corridors of power it remains a sacred cow – majestic, costly, and conspicuously beyond question’.
The number of organisations and retailers falling prey to cyber attacks – Jaguar Landrover, M&S, the Co-op, airports, the British Library, the Kido nursery chain and now Harrods again – surely shows that there needs to be legislation requiring them to have proper cyber security systems. It’s often found that organisations invest too little in their tech, making it easier for hackers to infiltrate them and while this is difficult for the cash strapped including public sector organisations, there needs to be a sense of responsibility. It’s not ‘just’ these organisations affected; it’s the wider supply chains and other dependent organisations, as we’ve seen with JLR, especially when the result is calls for government assistance. With public finances as they are, the government can ill afford to bail out these often wealthy organisations like Tata, but it could be argued that there’s a case for the smaller dependents. We can expect cyber attacks to continue. The decision for the government to underwrite a £1.5bn bank loan guarantee to JLR (to be repaid over 5 years) has been ‘cautiously welcomed’ and the company expects to recommence manufacturing engines by October. Given the number of jobs at stake in this company and wider supply chain (about 120,000 people), this is maybe the best outcome of a difficult situation but it still exposes the government to financial risk. I hope it’s not ominous that JLR has ‘declined to comment’.
Remember all the scandal about abuse that emerged around last December, which enveloped the then Archbishop of Canterbury (Justin Welby) and to some extent the Archbishop of York (Stephen Cottrell)? Back then I thought the Church of England would deliver yet another own goal by delaying the appointment of a replacement until the autumn and now it seems a poll has confirmed this. These people in their grand regalia take themselves so seriously (you might recall media interviews at the time with clerics both defending the Church’s status and integrity and those feeling seriously led down by the Church leadership) and their pretentious pomposity does them no favours. A new Ipsos polling for the PA news agency suggested 74% of the 1,100 British people surveyed do not care who is appointed. ‘Out of the 505 people who identified as Christian – not necessarily only those from a Church of England background – 62% also felt this way…More than half of those surveyed said the archbishop should speak out about homelessness and poverty, and a third said they should promote charitable causes and challenges facing the country more than predecessors’. This is also another reminder that, besides the removal of hereditary peers from the House of Lords, many feel that the bishops should also go.
Now there’s a different kind of Levelling Up about to target 330 areas of the country to help repair broken communities – very different from the Tories’ version which was more a sound bite than actuality and which unhelpfully set communities in competition with each other as they had to bid for funds. ‘Deprived communities to be given tens of millions to patch up derelict shops, pubs and libraries and ‘restore pride’…The fund forms a central plank of Labour’s policy response to the rise of Reform, which the prime minister believes is thriving in part because of voters’ discontent over the poor state of their local communities…. Unlike the levelling up funds, local authorities will be given the freedom to decide where the money will be spent, as well as extra powers to help them regenerate their high streets. Experts warn, however, that the money will need to be allocated and spent quickly to make a difference on either an economic or political level’. It will be interesting to see which areas are chosen and how quickly any difference can be felt including the mental health angle because mental wellbeing is undermined by living in a run-down area without any feeling of hope around it. And surely another good thing is focusing on regions as politicians are so often accused of a metrocentric focus.
https://tinyurl.com/ydjubevz Finally, I probably won’t have been the only one taken aback by English Heritage’s recent lament about the decline of traditional puddings in the UK diet. They’re talking about things many of us might have suffered unpalatable versions of at school like jam roly poly, Spotted Dick and the like, all served then with lumpy custard. It didn’t seem to occur to English Heritage (or a journalist who’s written about it since) that there at least three major disincentives to the preparation of these traditional puds: the need to eat healthily and watch one’s weight (puds are full of fat and sugar, of course) the time taken to make them and laziness, unfortunately – the rise of ready meals etc has led to expectations of quick or instant results. Our mothers and grandmothers might have hovered over a steaming saucepan for hours (also no mention of the pressure cooker) but the closest we might get these days is in restaurants (a twee little portion of sticky toffee pudding, for example) or with the little pots from supermarkets. But some of thesthese puds cited are in a superior league, like Queen of Puddings, a right hassle to make (from personal experience years ago) but absolutely delicious. It would be interesting to know if these laments and articles have made any difference!
Politics and mental health - the missing link? 