Someone else found themselves high and dry: the crooked member for North Shropshire himself. Reportedly out shopping in the supermarket when he heard, before the kids were home from school his resignation letter was in and zipping around the newsrooms and socials. Having blown up the standards committee to defend Paterson's non-existent honour, the screeching 180 meant Wednesday's theatrics were for nothing. He'd have to go through the humiliation of the suspension, and very probably the rigmarole of a by-election where his "integrity" would have had issues washing with local constituents.
The letter itself is as grubby a resignation note you're ever likely to see. He attacks unspecified MPs for mocking his late wife, Rose Paterson, and using the standards committee findings to "belittle our pain". This is news to anyone closely following proceedings. Hansard will show no MP has made light of the tragic circumstances surrounding her death - not that it stopped Paterson's Salopian confederate, Lucy Allen, from jumping in with her size nines. What a bit of diligent searching might find is how the official inquest found no evidence the standards investigation was a contributing factor, a position backed up by Paterson's own statements at the time. It's only since he was found guilty that the committee were retrospectively held responsible. Grotesque is the appropriate word for this situation, but is it any wonder when we consider the petty point scoring uses the murder of a fellow Tory MP was put to? There's sleaze, there's corruption, and then there are great black holes of moral vacuity.
After expending political capital and riling up backbenchers who cling to parliamentary mores, why did Boris Johnson pedal his bike into reverse? Quite obviously, painful headlines and a knock to the Tories could have been avoided had Paterson served his 30 days without a fuss. And the by-election, which was by no means a dead cert, might have passed without much excitement or attention from national media. As many have observed, the "solidarity" with Paterson - the sentiments that motivated the dread Andrea Leadsom in crafting her amendment - were utilised to eviscerate parliamentary accountability ahead of more standard hearings involving the poltroon-in-chief. Given that they won, why tip the fruits of their victory onto the compost heap?
The first is pain. Unlike the other awful things the Tories have done recently, like the raw sewage scandal and the Universal Credit cut, the wronged party, for most people the Tories want to influence, is not an abstract, unrelatable entity. It's them. As the MPs expenses scandal catalysed public antipathy and ran, and ran, and ran as the Telegraph drip fed the revelations, keeping Paterson around makes it look like Johnson went out on a limb to shield him from the consequences of corrupt dealings, and therefore could invite further scrutiny into the lobbying undertaken by other honourable members. Second, the manner of Wednesday's disgraceful spectacle so comprehensively irked the opposition that the cover was not there for a new standards system. Even the Daily Express would have had a difficult time selling a scrutiny system designed and staffed by the government to hold the government to account, to its gullible readers. Johnson and the chief whip were not expecting Labour and the SNP to boycott their "cross party" committee, and so were left with little choice to abandon their enterprise.
And then there is hubris. Politicians miscalculate, especially if they have an overinflated sense of their power and the depth of their support in the country. The persistent Tory leads in the wake of repeated failures and the growing pile of Covid dead has emboldened Johnson to Sun King levels of self-delusion. With an 80 strong majority, an opposition that won't say boo to a goose, and his own blue wall of black and white news print and broadcast journalism, Johnson is inflated by the bubble they puff up around him. Add to this the Tories' commitment to authoritarian statecraft in which the executive has the divine right to act with impunity, we have a social, political, and institutional context gravid with disasters. The inept handling of the Paterson episode probably won't matter a year from now, but it serves to remind us that, again, the Tories aren't infallible because they make the right calls. It shows that focused, determined opposition, even from a position of relative weakness, can help push the Tories into reverse and make political weather. And perhaps, just perhaps, if this is done more often maybe the political climate can change too.
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6 comments:
«It shows that focused, determined opposition, even from a position of relative weakness, can help push the Tories into reverse and make political weather. And perhaps, just perhaps, if this is done more often maybe the political climate can change too.»
As that guy said, pessimism of the reason, optimism of the will. But the reason suggests that tory voters already believe that all politicians are on the take and while they rant about it, when they vote they only care about how much their corrupt politicians can pump the cost of their properties. The political climate will change only when the material interests that motivate many voters change too (another property crash).
BTW reading the comments here and on some newspapers, most notably "The Guardian", it seems to me that most political commentary is from the point of view of a property owner with a good pension fixed income, or a steady and decently paid job, whose secure and fine situation makes them oblivious to material interests considerations, and therefore end up arguing like wykehamists about issues of principle very far away from the concerns of most voters in less comfortable circumstances. As a strong example a commenter on "The Guardian" recently wrote:
“If by 'uppermiddle' you mean something significantly more than three quarters of the population”
where they fantasized that the upper middle class (the core constituency of New Labour, Conservatives, LibDems) includes the overwhelming majority of the UK population, I guess just like in their own neighbourhood of period 3-bedroom semis with a big garden.
Our blogger is a rare exception and often injects into the debate some elements of realistic sociology about the pensioners, the white collar working class, and class interests.
But I still think that it is too optimistic to expect of New Labour, representing John Lewis and Waitrose shoppers, to give "focused, determined opposition" to a government that is doing so well the interests of those shoppers.
Surprised you didn't mention Angela Rayner's role in Wednesday's events. Her skewering of Johnson at PMQs set the tone for the debate that followed. In their early coverage of Wednesday's antics the media had to include part of her performance at PMQs and as every word was a dagger to the heart of the Tory corruption the scene was set for the Tory debacle that followed. I don't think, even if he said exactly the same words, Starmer would have had the same effect.
Surely most normal people can detect the self pity, entitlement and sheer crass bad taste of his resignation letter. We don't know why his wife ended her life, but for the Tories to weaponise her death to try and get Patterson off leaves me sick to the stomach. If they honestly thought they could defend this soulless sad sack, who knows what horrors a determined investigation might uncover?
For the political climate to change the Labour Party would need to change, and up their game significantly.
«For the political climate to change the Labour Party would need to change, and up their game significantly.»
That "their game" is a bit ambiguous, and to me it can mean two things:
* Their skill at doing opposition.
* The type of opposition politics they do.
The "skill" interpretation usually is based on the "Westminster bubble" idea that the fight between government and opposition parties is a wykehamist debate, or a marketing campaign competition, among alternative teams for running the same politics, so the best debating or marketing team may win; then the "game" is to look competent, even forensic, as to managing the widely agreed politics.
The other interpretation is that there are (or should be) strong political differences among the parties, reflecting those they represent, and winning elections is not about winning the debate, or even doing the best marketing campaign, but about putting together a larger coalition of interests that are like minded or not incompatible; then the "game" is to communicate the position of the party and organize the people who support them to motivate them to vote, which includes a "turnout" strategy.
The problem with the "skill" strategy is that voters given a choice among parties that pursue the same politics don't switch their vote based on secondary issues, but on whether their "vote moving" interests are being satisfied by the governing party. If they are being satisfied, they won't risk voting for the opposition just because they look better debaters or slicker marketers.
“it seems to me that most political commentary is from the point of view of a property owner with a good pension fixed income, or a steady and decently paid job, whose secure and fine situation makes them oblivious to material interests considerations, and therefore end up arguing like wykehamists about issues of principle very far away from the concerns of most voters in less comfortable circumstances.”
Mmmmmmm, since when does Blissex even pay lip service to Britain’s place in the world market? The Guardian reader might well be under the illusion that everyone enjoys foie gras on their toasted toasted brioche but Blissex appears to have illusions of his own.
Living in Britain can produce such illusions, which Blissex seems to possess. Living in Britain can make one imagine that the relatively lavish lifestyles enjoyed by many many Britons, all based on Western ideas of ‘freedon’, ‘democracy’, ‘progress’, is reproduced by green fairies living in neverland, powered by solar and wind.
But let us turn to one of the fairies, the not so green Coal Fairy to illustrate the point.
Coal production has increased 70% since the year 2000. This, I think, hints at the illusions Blissex possesses.
This lavish lifestyle of many many Britons, it turns out, is killing the very planet we live on, and will immediately threaten those that contributed a minuscule amount to creating the problem, i.e. the British working class, no not Tiffany the nail salon worker or Ahmed the Pizza delivery guy or Gemina the data analyst, but the garment worker in Bangladesh, the fishermen in Somalia, the coffee farmer in Guatemala etc etc etc
Britain is the court of Versailles, there is the nobility, the hangers on and the domestic servants and outside Britain lays a whole army of labourers making the whole thing possible.
Any change inside Britain will be forced onto it by the outside, watch out Britons the coal fairy is going to wreak merry havoc.
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