Lighting My Fire

 

This photo and heading BEFORE Rushi Sunak
became Prime Minister.

 That is, the fires of silent indignation! Mostly, unlit it must be said, but hearing that Jacob Rees-Mogg [whose father I saw described recently as “an establishment grandee”] is planning to repeal all E.U. laws on British books, then smoke starts to rise.

Theresa Villiers, a leading Brexit supporter no less, is quoted as saying that the proposals, if enacted, would take up a huge and disproportionate amount of Civil Service time, bringing the country to a virtual standstill. There are approximately 2,400 of these laws and many of them are broadly popular with the population. Jonathon Jones who headed the Government’s legal service from 2014 to 2020 and dealt with the complex legal challenges of Brexit said, “I think it is absolutely ideological and symbolic rather than about real policy."

This image is intended to give a slight clue as to the complexity
of the interwoven E.U. law and the U.K. law.

Damien Green M.P.

A Government spokesman denied there would be any major change to the bill, despite Whitehall sources declaring that there were signs of a rethink underway. Former Cabinet Minister, Damian Green, who opposed Brexit, said there were real questions about what would be put in place of legislation that would be scrapped and how quickly that could be done. “My fear is a practical one. These regulations will need to be replaced in a very short space of time otherwise there will be laws with big holes in them" he said. “I hope someone in government has thought through the practicalities of this."

Wendy Morton, former Chief Whip [left]
Gavin Williamson, Minister without Portfolio [right]

And in the meantime, another jarring storm in a teacup! Gavin Williamson, the Cabinet Office minister, lashed out at Wendy Morton, the Conservative Party’s first female chief whip, on September 13, amid unfounded claims that she excluded him from attending the Queen’s funeral at Westminster Abbey. Via What’s App he wrote, “There is a price for everything - your conduct was absolutely disgusting” and added that she had chosen to “fuck us all over.” When challenged, he replied that “it looks shit and perception becomes reality,” accusing her of exploiting the Queen’s death for political gain. Before Ms Morton resigned as chief whip on October 24, she made a formal complaint about Williamson’s behaviour. Sir Jake Berry, former Conservative Party Chairman, alerted the Prime Minister to the content of the messages before Ms Morton’s resignation. The ensuing brouhaha in Parliament and media underline the extent to which the revelations are problematic for both Williamson and Sunak who promised “integrity, professionalism and accountability” in his government and who now refuses to express confidence in Sir Gavin Williamson.

Matt Hancock in
Celebrity.

And one other Conservative M.P. renegade to add to this current list of deplorables: Matt Hancock, M.P. for West Suffolk and former Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, who has been left on the backbench by Rishi Sunak after his affair with a senior aide during Lockdown, was exposed. Strong rumours that he, Matt, had also channelled PPE contracts to influential friends, did not help his case. Matt has just gone to Australia to join I’m A Celebrity; Get Me Out of Here for which he will be paid $400,000, in addition to his Parliamentary salary of £84,000 which he will not be earning during his three -week Celebrity run. Local electors are angry to say the least, ‘let down’ being one of the more printable reactions, with a petition for his removal as M.P. currently under construction. though he clearly must be feeling that his political career is over anyway. Certainly, the three individuals described here seem representative of a political party which has lost its way. Merely to mention the names of Liz Truss or Suella Braverman, causes one to recoil in disbelief while Boris, still unaccountably beloved by thousands of enchanted elderly Party members, displays a cavalier disregard for normal standards of truth and morality, and trots off on a number of holidays, paid for by others, while he is supposed to be representing his constituents as Parliament continues to sit. It is said that he dropped out of the latest leadership jostling after he had been warned that, should he lose to Sunak, his extra-Parliamentary earnings would have halved from the anticipated £20 million.

B. Johnson.

As William Waldegrave observes in this week’s New Statesman, after lamenting the present state of the Tory party, "How on earth have British Conservatives, inheritors of the immensely pragmatic intellectual tradition, borrowed out of date, business-school speak and paraded themselves as ‘disruptors’ – a word representing everything they should oppose?” He laments the “self-inflicted destruction” and the loss of the Party’s habit of self-discipline; he longs for the return of the majority of the Conservative Party whose instincts derived “from habits of civility, decency, respect for tradition and for the middle way.” Waldegrave served for 16 years continuously in the Thatcher and Major governments.

William Waldegrave
Politician and Provost, Eton College.