Robert Jenrick has come a long way in the 11 years since he entered Parliament on Labour and Liberal Democrat tactical votes to keep out the old UKIP (the Labour candidate finally became an MP last year), and even in the nine years since he campaigned vigorously for Remain. Not very long ago, his remarks about skin colour, and that was explicitly what they were about, would have been career-ending. And with his hit list of "dozens of judges" to be removed for their politics, to the horror of Lord Sumption, what does Jenrick have to do to be struck off as a solicitor? Last month, he was criticised from the Bench for risking the collapse of a murder trial. Yesterday, in quite possibly defaming the Attorney General, he made far from his first demonstration of the fact that he did not understand the cab-rank rule.
The 20 Conservative Councillors who have just joined Reform UK include a former CCHQ Press Officer, and a former Chief of Staff to Richard Holden when he was Chairman of the Conservative Party. Still, it is good to welcome anyone's conversion to lifting the two-child benefit cap while renationalising British Steel. Do you think that the 20 believe that? Or that Keith Prince, a Conservative for 49 years, does? Or that Maria Caulfield does? Or that Danny Kruger does? Or that Nadine Dorries does? Or that Andrea Jenkyns does? Or that Jake Berry does? Or that Tim Montgomerie does? Or that Ann Widdecombe does?
How is that really a new party? And have they joined it to take orders from someone who had entered Parliament for the first time in 2024, never mind from people who had done so only in 2029? Meanwhile, Jacob Rees-Mogg continues to bang on about an electoral pact, only for Alex Wilson to slap him down ever so politely to the effect that Reform had no reason to want anything to do with Rees-Mogg's party as such.
On the contrary, Rees-Mogg is now a partisan of Matthew Syed, who has become a Conservative specifically because that was the present vehicle for the New Labour of 2001, for which he yesterday told the adoring Conservative Party Conference that he was "proud" to have been a parliamentary candidate, and from which all parties except the Conservatives had "moved wildly to the left". The 2001 Labour manifesto, he asserted, "was miles to the right of almost anything you see in British politics today", hence his pride. He called Nigel Farage "a Socialist, way to the left economically of the Corbyn-McDonnell manifesto of 2017", and he stated that that was why he had joined the Conservative Party, which gave him a standing ovation. Think on.
The Conservative party is in such a state of confusion and panic that Robert Jenrick, whom I do not regard as a racist, is now pretending to be one.
ReplyDeleteBut is he? Opportunistically indulging in this sort of thing bespeaks an attitude to the people being talked about, and that in itself is racist.
DeleteIn the words of Diane Abbott, “I went to Copeland in Cumbria the other day to do a video on litter and it was absolutely appalling. It’s as close as I’ve come to a slum in this country. But the other thing I noticed there was that it was one of the worst integrated places I’ve ever been to. In fact, in the hour and a half I was filming news there I didn’t see another black face.
ReplyDelete“That’s not the kind of country I want to live in. I want to live in a country where people are properly integrated. It’s not about the colour of your skin or your faith – of course it isn’t. But I want people to be living alongside each other, not parallel lives. That’s not the right way we want to live as a country.”
Oh, that really is very good.
DeleteJenrick was beaten by Kemi Badenoch, and he has since Shadowed, but merely Shadowed, first Shabana Mahmood and now David Lammy. It is obvious what his problem is. Diddums.
Matthew Syed should stick to table tennis as he plainly knows absolutely nothing about politics. New Labour was to the Left of Jeremy Corbyn (look how many of his once-radical policies it implemented from the Good Friday Surrender, the opening of our borders and the abolition of hereditary peers to the Climate Change Act and the Equality Act). Its genius was to recognise, as Phillip Gould did in America, that very leftwing parties can only win office in Britain if they pretend not to be leftwing.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the Conservatives have now pledged to scrap the Climate Change Act first introduced by Ed Miliband, which represents a marked departure from New Labour's radical left project.
Bless.
DeleteWho are you going to vote for now?
Well, on scrapping the Climate Change Act as with leaving the ECHR, the Conservatives are just playing catch-up with my party Reform UK.
ReplyDeleteAh, yes, the Socialists. They are not, of course. But by the definition enforced in British public discourse over the last 40 years, they are.
DeleteNo they are not by anybody’s definition except yours. And your branch of “socialism” has no MPs and no party.
ReplyDeleteThe definition is the Official Opposition's.
DeleteThe Tories are finally saying "Yes we're Blairites and proud" but the people who've been calling them Blairites for 28 years refuse to take any pleasure in it.
DeleteThey refuse to take any pleasure in anything. That is their thing.
DeleteMeanwhile, Reform UK makes Hitchens-like noises, but when told that, in Telegraph terms, that was "Socialism", they do not like it. If those policies were advanced by anyone else, then what would they call them?