Milestones

Raise a glass on this tenth anniversary of the death of Telegraph Blogs. How different history might have been if that had published my last copy, which was based on a charming telephone interview with Sir Jeremy Bagge, 7th Baronet, and Mullah Omar of the Turnip Taliban. This year, his brother, James Bagge, was an Independent candidate, backed by figures such as David Gauke and Dominic Grieve. He came fourth with 6,282 votes, ahead of the Liberal Democrat and the Green, and his 14.2 per cent of the vote easily saved his deposit, while of course Liz Truss lost the seat by only 630 votes, one tenth of Bagge's total. Those who had disliked her in South West Norfolk had done so far longer than anyone else, but eventually the country caught up.

Not that matters have improved. We are on the eve of the relaunch of Keir Starmer's Government a mere five months into its existence. Only in the last couple of days, among numerous other things, Liz Kendall is having her £350 monthly energy bill paid out of the public purse while the Winter Fuel Payment has been withdrawn from 10 million pensioners, Henry Tufnell's parents have been found to have transferred a farm worth more than two million pounds to his 22-year-old brother 20 days before the Budget, and World Central Kitchen has had to pause its operations in Gaza after three more of its aid workers had been killed in an Israeli airstrike. At no expense to the Israelis, 47 per cent of their reconnaissance missions over Gaza are flown by the RAF, more than Israel and the United States combined. There is a one in two chance that the RAF identified those aid workers as targets.

The Armed Forces do as they are told, so if the State wanted to kill people, then it should call in the people whom it employed for that task. Those are not the doctors. It could take an horrific length of time to die by the means proposed for assisted suicide. A crack marksman could do the job in seconds, and at vastly less expense. This is not a joke. Those are the State's killers. If you are repulsed at this proposal, then you are repulsed at this suggested form of state killing.

Only 28 MPs would need to change sides in order to defeat assisted suicide at Third Reading, and at present there is talk of 36 waverers, mostly Labour, with the Liberal Democrats accounting for most of the rest. There is all to work for; "play" would not be the right word here. But that assumes that the Conservative opponents held firm. The part of the country that is most opposed to this Bill is ultra-diverse London, while the deep countryside, though no longer anything like as white as it was even 10 years ago, is still vastly more so, and the bastion of support for this measure. Anyone who seriously wanted to re-Christianise this country would need to think about first immigration and then dispersal on a scale that had never previously been contemplated. The healthy crop of rural Labour MPs may well be cut down by the farm tax, but it will not be cut down by this.

As few as 23 Conservative MPs voted in favour of assisted suicide, but ignore the breadth and feel the depth. The party's most recent Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Health Secretary (whereas the present Health Secretary voted against), and Work and Pensions Secretary. A former Chief Whip who went on to function as Foreign Secretary in the Commons as deputy to Lord Cameron. The present Shadow Chancellor, Shadow Home Secretary, Shadow Defence Secretary, and Shadow Education Secretary, as well as the Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and the Shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government. Several more Shadow Ministers, one of whom used to chair the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. The Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee. A man who had already been knighted before he entered Parliament this year. And so on. Complete with Cameron, alongside Rishi Sunak is the machine that effortlessly installed him as Prime Minister without a vote's being cast and a mere seven weeks after he had lost a Leadership Election.

Three out of five Reform UK MPs voted for assisted suicide, and if there were no negative consequence of that from Mar-a-Lago, mostly obviously if there were still a large donation to Reform from Elon Musk, then who knows how many Conservative MPs might feel it safe to curry favour with the people whom they know perfectly well to be their party's permanent ultimate authority, by adopting a position that was far closer to their own instincts, which these days are fiercely libertarian, and no less secular than the country at large?

Reform is a party with problems across the board. Ben Habib has gone, Richard Tice has disowned Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and "all of that lot", Nigel Farage is close to the Priti Patel who as Boris Johnson's Home Secretary presided over the highest immigration ever, and he says that 50 per cent of Conservative MPs ought to join Reform. The party is dancing with joy at having recruited Andrea Jenkyns, an undying fangirl of Johnson, the Prime Minister of Net Zero. Johnson was a very big spender long before Covid-19. He even lifted the requirement that jobs in Britain be advertised first in Britain, making him, as has been said, the most pro-immigration Prime Minister ever, although admittedly only because Liz Truss never got into her stride. Johnson was closer to Stonewall than any Prime Minister before or since. The lockdowns were Johnson's. The Northern Ireland Protocol was Johnson's. The war in Ukraine was Johnson's. If Reform UK is now the party of Jenkyns, then it is the party of all of that.

Even if it were not, then while there are easily 326 wannabe Donald Trumps in this country, there are not 326 constituencies in which each of them would be the First Past the Post. Using the far more favourable Single Transferrable Vote and having uncharacteristically managed their candidates to avoid cannibalisation, those broadly in that vein have made only limited progress, if any, in Ireland, while the hard core has been humiliated. Kneecap should now challenge Philip Dwyer to a rap battle in Irish. Mind you, Kemi Badenoch should challenge Kneecap to a rap battle, and Kneecap should reply that they would rap against her in Yoruba, if she would rap against them in Irish. But I digress. Dwyer's sort got nowhere under STV, so what chance would the Gregg Wallace Tendency have here? And has no hack tracked down Wallace's aunts and asked them, well, you know? Come on, fingers out.