Strayside Sunday: I don’t accept that Britain has chosen the right path

Strayside Sunday is our weekly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party. 

Although I worked closely with Iain Duncan Smith in his brief time as leader of the Conservative Party, I did not share his politics.  As long ago as the Maastricht Treaty when he was one of John Major’s infamous ‘illegitimates,’ IDS was steadfast in his distaste for the European Union and all its wares.  I respect his consistency and principle, even though I’ve always thought he was wrong on the merits and that the arguments he and his fellow ‘ultra’ travellers in the European Research Group pedalled smacked of sentimental nostalgia for a Britain long since lost.

Later, when Ken Clarke ran for the Tory leadership for the third and final time in 2005 (having failed in 1997 and 2001), I played a minor part in his campaign.  On the day of his announcement I and another member of his team were to meet the great man in the lobby of Portcullis House before meeting his parliamentary supporters in his office upstairs.

True to form, he was late. And when Ken did arrive, ducking in from a torrential downpour, he did so in a grossly oversized hooded puffer jacket dripping with the elements.

Knowingly oblivious to the presentational requirements of the political age, the back of his jacket adorned a huge logo advertising Lucky Strike cigarettes, a brand owned by British American Tobacco (on whose board Ken served).  His shoes, brown and suede, handmade – not Hush Puppy – were soaked.  His boosters were already assembled in his office when we arrived; and a motley crew they made.  Gathered were MPs Ann Widdecombe (before she was dragged across the Strictly dance floor like a sack of spuds), Tim Yeo (the doyenne of the extra-marital affairs), the former speaker John “I’m not a Bully” Bercow and Ken’s trusty lieutenant Andrew Tyrie.  The crew was neither pretty nor effective.

That said, Ken Clarke remains one of the giants of contemporary British politics and, so far as I’m concerned, one of the greatest Prime Ministers the country never had.  That he ended his 49 years in service to the Conservative Party and the country with the whip withdrawn for voting with his conscience against the European Union withdrawal bill, was scandalous. A demonstration of just how far from grace our politics and public discourse has fallen.

During his political career Ken was variously Chancellor of the Exchequer, Justice Secretary, Home Secretary, Health Secretary and Education Secretary.  Throughout, he remained (no pun intended) a passionate supporter of, and advocate for, the European Union, a position that caused him little trouble even when serving in the Thatcher cabinet.  He can now enjoy his retirement, shrouded in swirling pungent cigar smoke, listening to jazz and watching Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club; safe in the knowledge that he did his bit as Rome was falling.

And it has come to this.  It seems likely that at the end of this month we will crash out of the European Union without a post-Brexit agreement deal with our “European friends and partners” (as BoJo calls them… with his usual sincerity).  This on the strength of a 52%-48% vote 40 years after the British people joined Europe through a referendum margin of two to one.  As talks between the two parties founder, the Royal Navy has been put on alert with four of our remaining fleet slated to patrol our coastal waters to protect our fish from those dreadful Gallic marauders across the channel.  Am I alone in feeling that this is all a bit, well, small?

The problems and attendant search for solutions that will consume humanity in the immediate decades to come – climate change; endemic inequalities of health and wealth; water, food and energy security; migration; and of course pandemic – are by definition shared and international.  For me, these things trump the relative pettifogging of institutional bureaucracy, judicial subsidiarity, and free movement across borders.  The neo-liberal economic orthodoxy that belies the appeal of sovereignty to those who chose our current divergent path has not, and will not, save the world.

I am not an advocate for overturning our decision to leave.  I accept the decision taken by the people and affirmed in Parliament.  However, I wish it were otherwise and I don’t accept that Britain has chosen the right path.  At this last, I can only hope that, under the blinding arc lights of media scrutiny, the threat of a no-deal Brexit feels greater than the actual prospect of it.  The political theatre played out between Britain and Europe demands posturing and brinksmanship it seems.  I am sure however that neither side can emerge from these negotiations with any great merit or with their dignity intact.  We will all be the poorer if an agreement can’t be reached.

I sincerely hope that the fears of thousands of lorries backed up at our borders, of never-ending queues at passport control, of food shortages and inflated food prices, of new tariffs on our goods and services and other social and economic disadvantages all prove unfounded.  Sadly I don’t think they will; Ken is right and IDS is wrong.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

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Strayside Sunday: the inconsistencies, anomalies and inequities of a tier

Strayside Sunday is our weekly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party. 

The Covid-19 limitations we have all had to live with these past 10 months are really starting to grind.  As the country emerges from its second national lockdown we have to contend again with the inconsistencies, anomalies and inequities of a tiered system of restrictions that have been placed on our liberties.  Unsurprisingly, compliance fatigue is setting in.

Pubs and restaurants are open again, albeit if only for patrons of the same family or support bubble.  As local establishments returned to business this week they and their diners had to contend with the presence of Big Brother, in the form of North Yorkshire Police and Harrogate Borough Council staff, checking that those present were practising safe social distancing and that table guests were support bubble appropriate.  Three of Harrogate’s best restaurants, William and Victoria’s, The Fat Badger and The Tannin Level had the pleasure of entertaining the state’s loyal foot soldiers, tiptoeing table to table, encroaching on the privacy and relaxation of their guests.  Enforcement activities smack of a lack of trust, both in the individual and the establishment. As far as we know Winston Smith wasn’t among those present.

Being of solid Yorkshire stock, most of the diners would no doubt pass Environment Secretary George Eustace’s “Scotch Egg test,” namely consuming a ‘substantial’ meal to accompany their libations.  I don’t know about you but I think a scotch egg is a snack, consumed guiltily, either at a motorway service station, or (secretly, so your partner doesn’t notice) on the way home from doing the weekly shop.  And am I alone in feeling a little irked about the selection of a Scotch Egg as the people’s meal?  Surely a vol-au-vent would be more suitable for genteel Harrogate.

As with all government public pronouncements of late, this was quickly contradicted by Michael Gove, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who, between the Brexit negotiation skirmishes he is coordinating to no great effect, seems to be acting as if he, rather than Bojo, is the one in charge.  Wherever one looks at the top of government for leadership and consistency, despair sets in.

This seems to be the view of a great many of the Conservative Party’s MPs who this week rebelled en masse when asked to rubber stamp the latest tiered lockdown regulations in parliament.  55 Tories rebelled, another 16 abstained or failed to vote at all.  All the other parties, including Labour largely abstained.  So too the Liberal Democrats, without irony, notwithstanding that ‘liberal’ is actually in their name.  Little wonder then that they remain an irrelevance.  If we can’t rely on Ed Davey’s tribe to stand up and put the case for freedom, dignity and the well-being of individuals, then who will?  Given that is what is written in the Liberal Democrat’s constitution, one could be forgiven puzzled disappointment.

Residents of Pateley Bridge and the Nidd Valley in particular will be wondering who is in their corner?  There hasn’t been a single case of Covid in the locality for ten days and yet they find themselves dealing with the blanket restrictions of Tier 2 lockdown.  Smaller, independent hospitality businesses in the area, operating without the advantages offered by large national ownership, see no way to open profitably.  This can’t be fair.  Small businesses are struggling on, having invested in making their venues Covid-secure, but unless circumstances change soon they will become financially unviable and we will lose them.  Our communities will be all the poorer for it.

One Lib Dem who spoke up this week is Lord Newby of Rothwell, leader of the yellows in the Lords.  He argues that the time has arrived for the NHS to hand back Harrogate’s Convention Centre to the council.  Press ganged into action as a Nightingale Hospital, the building is yet to receive a single Covid-related patient.  While we of course have to be thankful that the hospital lay dormant through two case number peaks, there remains lingering doubt about whether and how the NHS would have been able to adequately staff the hospital had it been necessary.  It’s time for Harrogate Borough Council to take back the centre and get on with building back better .

The news that vaccines are now in the country brings some solace at least and at last.  We know that healthcare workers and care home residents and staff are to be vaccinated first.  This has to be the right thing to do.  Not least because frontline NHS staff have shown their usual dedication to providing care in the face of considerable risk to their health and emotional wellbeing.  The government now needs to break with its recent history of staccato do’s and don’ts and communicate clearly how the rest of vaccination programme will be rolled out across the population as a whole.  By providing clarity about who will be vaccinated when, we can each inform our own behaviour accordingly.  In the end the government is going to have to trust us to decide what is best for ourselves and our families.  It’s called

Freedom.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

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Strayside Sunday: Petitions, Planning and Politics

Strayside Sunday is our weekly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party. 

Handbags this week between Harrogate’s Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties.  It seems that one of the Liberal Democrats favourite campaign tricks – using petitions to raise awareness of this, that and the other – has been called into question.  Richard Cooper, Conservative leader of Harrogate Borough Council, has written to the Information Commissioners Office to allege that the Lib Dems have been using petitions nefariously; harvesting the public’s data; information volunteered for the specific purpose of supporting the cause in question, and putting it in the bank for reaching people in future for as yet unnamed uses.  Conor Mackenzie, the Lib Dem’s local spokesperson, has strenuously denied the accusation that, wait for it, four petitions have been taken but not all submitted.

I don’t know how many names were taken in total, but I’m guessing not very many.  In fact the Lib Dem’s did submit a list of names protesting the demise of Stray FM to new owners Bauer Media and claim the act of publicising the other petitions led to the result they wanted and obviated the need to submit them.  The only thing about this which does not ring true is that it suggests Harrogate’s Lib Dems ran three successful political campaigns.  If they did I must have missed it, but in common with most of the nation, I don’t lately pay much attention to what is, by a long way now, very much the third party in our politics.

Given the enormous volume and nature of our personal data harvested both explicitly and secretly every day as we use our smartphones, our computers, social media, online retailers et al, the idea that putting our name, (and sometimes) address and contact details on a petition poses a threat to our privacy holds little water.  I suspect the Information Commissioner, Canadian Elizabeth Denham, has much better things to spend her time on.  I know that Richard Cooper does, not least on sorting out Harrogate Council’s dismal record on planning.

From Pannal Ash to Harlow Carr, from Killinghall to Green Hammerton, to Claro Road, from Whinney Lane, one can’t help but notice the relentless development of our formerly green spaces.  I understand of course that we need to build more homes, including affordable homes for key workers and others working hard on stretched-to-the-limit salaries.  However, driving past new estates does not fill the aesthete’s heart with any sort of joy.  These brick palaces are clearly built with function and cost efficiency in the ascendency, with form and wellbeing relegated from the imagination.  No Charles Windsor Poundbury (with its varied architecture, colourful dwellings and carefully planned green spaces) these.  Rather, they are a densely packed, mass produced homogeneity, with little space for the human soul of community congregation and leisure.

David Howarth worked for Harrogate Borough Council in its planning department for five years in the 1980’s. He subsequently acted as a consultant to the council for a further thirty years, so he should know a thing or two about planning.  And, if he doesn’t, then we have to seriously ask ourselves why the council paid him his consideration for such a long time.  So, when Mr. Howarth says that planning in the district was in ‘disarray,’ the result of ‘weak’ practice, then we should pay attention.

The Stray Ferret team this week reported the findings of their in-depth housing investigation on planning between 2014 and 2020:  The urban sprawl and concreting of our countryside has covered an area that would accommodate a breath-taking 700 football pitches.  There seems to have been no Local Plan guiding this development (and I use the term guiding just about as loosely as I can).  All this sprawl is estimated to put another 26,500 cars on Harrogate’s already crowded highways and byways.  Meanwhile “it’s all gone quiet over there” with respect to building a link road that might alleviate some of the traffic pressure in town.

Developers have so far managed to avoid having to pay for the infrastructure needed to make a newbuild home not just a place to dwell, but a place to live.  Accordingly, the provision of sufficient schools places, GP surgeries, dentists and essential infrastructure have all been neglected.  The taxpayer, as ever it seems, is footing the bill to right the ship.  If and when regional devolution brings the curtain down on Harrogate Borough Council and its ever growing and sorry record, what it will do about its 2020 Local Plan – yes, after 6 years of waiting we finally have one – is anybody’s guess.  I’d be tempted to rip it up and start again.

I note with interest this week that the Harrogate and Knaresborough Conservative Association had benefitted from a £10,000 government grant, to help it through the Covid crisis and address a financial shortfall caused by its inability to conduct fundraising and other activities.  It is a matter of individual choice to subscribe to a party membership or participate, hoping for the top prize of a bottle of Bells blended whisky, in the tombola.  However, I don’t feel that any political organisation should receive the same treatment as a small business from the public purse.  Maybe I’ll start a petition.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

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Strayside Sunday: politics isn’t Priti…

Strayside Sunday is our weekly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party. 

Great news for the residents of Spofforth; the relentless encroachment of concrete on countryside has been stopped, or at least paused.  Harrogate Borough Council planning committee made what sounds like a good decision this week to reject a planning application to build 72 homes in the village.

Having given outline approval for the scheme in March 2019, sight of final detailed plans for the development clearly spooked the council horse, with the planning committee voting it down 6-3 in the face of a council report recommending the application be granted.  Hurray.  Local residents had described the development as “a carbuncle of urban sprawl” and had mobilised an effective campaign to block it.  Historic England, Natural England, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, the council’s principal ecologist, North Yorkshire’s highways, the Lead Local Flood Authority and Spofforth Parish Council joined 300 residents in raising concerns about the scheme.  This is local democracy in action and is why we need more of it.  It demonstrates that politicians can do the right thing, if we pay enough attention, get organised and fight for a just cause.

Meanwhile, up the road on Long Lands Common, People Power has also won out.  A campaign to raise funds for the creation of a community forest, community owned and to be accessible for all, reached a key milestone of £300k.  This means the land can be bought, ensure we can enjoy verdant space and, of course, protect our environment. This is just brilliant news and further demonstrates what people can achieve when they act together for the common good.

One politician whom it seems can be guaranteed not to do the right thing is Priti Patel.  It turns out our hectoring, reactionary Home Secretary is a bully, so says Sir Alex Allan, the government’s independent advisors on standards.  It seems that in her dealings with her civil servants, including toward her Permanent Secretary Sir Philip Rutman, Ms. Patel’s behaviour (allegedly harassing and belittling) broke the ministerial code.  Sir Philip resigned (very publicly) in a huff and is now suing for wrongful dismissal.

Although I wish he wouldn’t, Boris will stand by her I suspect.  The Prime Minister is fast running out of political friends and allies, particularly those Brexiteer fellow travellers primarily responsible for his elevation.  Friends he chose at the very last when he wrote two versions of his referendum coming out article, one Remain, one Brexit, before sniffing the wind and throwing in with the Little Englanders.  With Cummings and Cain gone he can’t afford to lose Patel in close succession.  If Patel had any honour she would resign.  She doesn’t and she won’t.

(While writing I have just received a news notification on my mobile phone to report that Sir Alex Allan has resigned following Boris Johnson’s ruling that the Home Secretary had, in his view, not broken the ministerial code. The Prime Minister has, in effect, officially sanctioned bullying in his government.  It really is a world gone mad. Black is white. Up is down. White slacks after November 1st.  Red wine with fish.  It’s sickening). 

It isn’t as if the the Home Secretary doesn’t have form.  She had to resign her previous cabinet post as International Development Secretary in 2017, having been caught out freelancing in Israel with the Conservative Friends thereof (the CFI).  Forced to fly home in disgrace, on arrival she was photographed grinning like a Cheshire Cat from the front seat of a Jag.  Shameless.

Patel claimed she had been on a private holiday, although she had been accompanied on the trip by Lord Stuart Polak, the Chair of CFI.  They held upwards of a dozen meetings with Israeli government officials and political leaders.  Some holiday.  An even if you buy her version of events, what of her judgment?

This week’s further revelations of the way the government procured PPE equipment during the panic created by the advent of Covid are shocking.  A Spanish businessman, Gabriel Gonzalez Andersson, was paid a £21m commission by a Floridian Jeweller, Michael Saiger, to secure contracts worth a staggering quarter of a billion pounds for providing PPE at the height of the crisis.

I can forgive not buying British, what mattered then (as now) was saving lives.  I can forgive too using emergency powers, rather than the usual strangled, extended and often painful procurement processes.  What I can’t forgive is awarding contracts to suppliers with no prior experience in manufacturing essential medical equipment.  Saiger is a jewellery designer and owns a fashion brand for goodness sake.  Although the makers of novelty face coverings might beg to differ, looking good is not top priority during a pandemic.

Saiger is now reportedly suing Andersson for his middle-man money back.  Here at home The Good Law Group is on the case and is set to challenge the legality of the deal with the Department of Health and Social Care.  I hope the case succeeds, exposing as it does a total breakdown in good governance, a blithe disregard for the way taxpayers (yours and mine) money is spent and a supine acceptance of the worst consequences of the untrammelled market economy.  It drains the last reserves of my support for the Conservative supply-side ‘ideals’.  I’m currently reading a book called by Paul Collier and John Kay called “Greed is Dead; Politics After Individualism.”  All evidence to the contrary it seems.  Freedom should not be this expensive.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

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The Stray Ferret has been investigating the unprecedented amount of housing development in the district and examining the impact of Harrogate Borough Council’s failure to have a Local Development Plan up to March 2020. 
In a series of special reports each morning from tomorrow we will be asking: 
Building Boom or Housing Crisis– have the wrong homes been built, in the wrong places at the wrong price? 
Strayside Sunday: bailing out Welcome to Yorkshire was the right thing to do

Strayside Sunday is our weekly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party. 

Gary Verity once bestrode the Yorkshire scene. Chief Executive of Welcome to Yorkshire, God’s own county’s tourism promotion body, Verity succeeded in bringing the 2014 Grand Depart of the Tour de France to Leeds. Glorious weather bathed riders in sunshine as they rode through our unmatched scenery, watched by spectators ten and twenty deep.  Such was its success that Verity was knighted for his efforts and the subsequent Tour de Yorkshire became a permanent fixture on our calendar, ensuring an annual pay day for the local economy (although Covid-19’s long shadow has caused its postponement to 2022).

All was not as it seemed.  Behind the scenes, the mercurial Mr Verity was accused of creating a culture of bullying, had to attend behavioural management counselling and eventually left Welcome to Yorkshire on health grounds under the darkest of clouds, facing, among other things, allegations of misuse of funds.  To spend more time with his sheep, no doubt.

In the aftermath, two investigations into the management of the body cost almost £500,000, a financial shock that would have been hard to bear even in good times.  On top of this came Covid-19 and a consequent £1m collapse in the business rate and membership fee income upon which it ordinarily relies.  All of this required the body to ask for a £1.4m bailout from contributing councils across the county.  Harrogate Borough Council is the latest to help, pitching in £31,000  to enable Welcome to Yorkshire to continue to “support tourism in Yorkshire and the Harrogate district at a time when it is needed the most.”

We are blessed to live in this beautiful county and it is important to bring its joys to the world.  Bailing out Welcome to Yorkshire is the right thing to do, but let’s hope that the money from Harrogate and other councils across the ridings (and South Yorkshire) comes with the oversight and governance that public money warrants and which, sadly, was so lacking during Verity’s tenure.  Yorkshire is a brilliant brand, the challenge for Welcome to Yorkshire now is to rebuild its own reputation to match.

Another mercurial bully on his way out this week is Dominic “Barnard Castle” Cummings.  Back in the day Cummings worked as Director of Strategy for Iain Duncan Smith.  His volatility was legend in Conservative Party circles and, during his five months in post he managed to offend almost every member of shadow cabinet.  During his brief tenure he introduced IDS to the plight of those in our inner city sink estates.  His “help the vulnerable” campaign exposed Duncan Smith and the Conservatives to the horrible reality of life for some in Gallowgate and elsewhere in contemporary Britain.  It made a lasting impression on IDS and informed his desire to reform the welfare state while Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.  Now lost in the mists of time we should remember that the reforms were initially welcomed and praised by civic society organisations and even the Labour opposition.

Cummings left the party having told Michael Howard to go forth and multiply during a typically foul mouthed and shouty display around the shadow cabinet table.  Dominic was then and remains a disruptor in the fullest sense of the word.  In fairness, Michael Howard didn’t much like advisors, nor did he in any way agree with those of us who felt that fairness needed to become a central pillar of party policy in the post-Thatcher era.  A point he made crystal clear when he fired me a day or two after becoming leader when IDS was ousted.

Cummings is a formidable campaigner, as his Vote Leave triumph demonstrated.  But he is simply not temperamentally suited to government.  In his time in government (can it only be a year?) he wanted to focus on three things only; getting Brexit done, the levelling up agenda and reforming the civil service.  Like the rest of us he hadn’t bargained on what Harold Macmillan called “events dear boy, events.”  Covid-19 has so consumed affairs of state that winning the Brexit peace, balancing our economy and transforming Whitehall have become secondary.  The pandemic has robbed this government of the time and space it needs to pursue its agenda and, by definition, is so unpredictable that it makes it lays waste to the relevance and longevity of government by slogan.

In my experience many MPs have a pathological need to be loved, or at the very least to feel they are needed.  Warm and cuddly our Dom is not.  Contempt and disdain are more his style.  Given that and the manoeuvring and jealousy inherent in the political game, he is no doubt responsible at least in part for the growing sense of disquiet among parliamentary Conservatives.  Backbench Conservative MP’s are delighted he is going and his scalp may well buy the Prime Minister more time with the restive.  The irony of course is that for at least one faction, Jake Berry’s Northern Research Group, Cummings was the driving intellectual force behind the levelling up agenda in which they believe, and upon which, their parliamentary futures rest.  His departure damages their cause.  Be careful, they say, what you wish for.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

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Strayside Sunday: Conservative MPs paying a high price for loyalty

Strayside Sunday is our weekly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party. 

A Russian, an Englishman and an American.  No, not the first line of a bad joke but rather friends with whom I have discussed our current predicaments during the last 7 days.

The Russian reminded me of a saying of which her family in the Urals are fond.  “The cow that moo’s loudest”, they say, “bares no milk.” This in the midst of a discussion about the merits of political leadership here at home and across the pond.  Boris Johnson and Donald Trump being the most vocal bovines in their respective cow stalls.

Boris has always had a lot to say, and of course he says it with an almost unmatched elan and a vocabulary matched only in its breadth by its intermittent obscurity.  For some though, Boris is no more than a highbinder, an empleomaniac, a fustilarian snollygoster, in short, a bit of cockalorum.  Or at least that’s how we talk about him, round our way.  The thing is, what we actually need now is sensible political leadership and prosaic policy.  Less show; more go.  A steady hand on the tiller from which we can all draw confidence and succour.

And confidence, it seems, is a commodity in short supply in the parliamentary Conservative Party at the moment.  For months now the government has been unable to get out ahead of the exigencies created by Covid-19.  It has lurched from one panic policy announcement to the next, led by the science, which is itself modelling the unknowable.  For Conservative MP’s not in government, they must follow the party whip into the voting lobbies and are then left to explain their flip-floppery to angry, frustrated and frightened constituents.  Collective responsibility breaks down when contradictory changes of direction happen too often and expose those bound by it to the charge of hypocrisy.

So for once I find myself in sympathy with Harrogate MP Andrew Jones, who this week voted with the government to support a national lockdown, having declared at the end of October, again in support of the government, that local measures were now needed and that a national lockdown would be “wrong.”  The discomfort Mr. Jones may feel at his public change of mind is the price he pays for his loyalty to party, an unfashionable virtue in modern politics, especially in a tribe noted, at the best of times, for behaving like ‘ferrets in a sack’.

Is a second national lockdown actually the right thing to do?  Steve Russell, the Chief Executive of Harrogate Hospital believes so.  In an interview in these pages this week Mr Russell pointed out that the existing (local tiered) lockdowns were not “slowing the pressure enough” under which Covid-19 infections are placing our hospitals.  Indeed, the one consistent part of government policy and communication throughout the crisis has been its protection of the NHS and its bed capacity.  NHS staff face the coming months with real anxiety, aware as they are of the dangers of what policy makers call “winter pressures.”  The only way for us to help is to do our bit and comply with the inconveniences of lockdown.

Is there any other way?  Perhaps, but it would involve targeting specific groups – the clinically vulnerable and those over the age of 65 – and imposing differential measures upon them.  There is precedent.  During the Second World War 1.5m children were separated from their families and evacuated, for their safety and the national good, from our major cities.  An Englishman I know, a highly successful septuagenarian, undeniably an establishment figure, is of the opinion that he and his peers should be locked down to enable the rest of the economy to function freely and give young people a better chance of getting employment. Is that feasible? I’d be interested to know what you think.

Notwithstanding the current maelstrom at home, I thank my lucky stars and stripes that I live in Britain, rather than the United States.   This week I have been exchanging transatlantic emails with my distraught American university roommate, a Delaware native and lifelong follower and booster of Sleepy Joe.  John was four years old when Mr. Biden was first elected to the Senate from his home state, so he grew up watching him closely, voting for him early and often and, like Joe, he believes passionately in consensus, moderation, dialogue and tolerance.

As legal firearms and ammunition flew off the shelves during the last weeks of the US election campaign, and the sitting President, through force of personality from the bully pulpit was advocating the uniquely American proclivity for litigation to undo the same democratic process through which he was elected four short years ago, my friend and I communed in angst.  We worry that the world is becoming ungovernable, that our challenges are so acute and our divisions are so deep rooted that reason and compromise are falling out of reach, and that we are seeing a world in which to say something untrue frequently enough and with sufficient gusto will transform the lie to factual truth.

For my part I believe now is the time to double down on the collectivist spirit and to cherish community. Division needs no excuse to take root in difference, from whichever land you hail. We really are all in this together and that is never more true on this day, above all others, when we remember the fallen and their act of sacrifice for all of us.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

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Strayside Sunday: It’s all a matter of leadership

Strayside Sunday is our weekly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party. 

A revelation: 31% of the public now think of the Labour Party as the “nasty party,” as opposed to 34% of the public who apply that particular sobriquet to the Conservative Party.  So say pollsters ComRes and, in the week during which only Labour’s washing in public of its dirty anti-semitic laundry could draw the eye from the Conservative’s face-off over school dinners with the sainted multi-millionaire man of the people Marcus Rashford, who can blame them?

The independent Equalities and Human Rights Commission, in its report into anti-Semitism found, that under the stellar leadership of Comrade Corbyn, the Labour Party was guilty of committing “unlawful acts.”  Corbyn and his cronies, Abbott, Lansman, McDonnell, McCluskey and the rest of the brothers and sisters grim, have reacted with predictable fury and gifted Sir Keir Starmer with the opportunity for his own ‘Clause Four’ moment, namely sticking it to the horrible lefties for their sickening bigotry and hypocrisy.

First Neil Kinnock versus Militant, “the grotesque chaos of a Labour council – a Labour council – hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers.”  Then Tony Blair and Clause 4.  Now, in releasing the EHRC report, Keir became the latest Labour leader to pick a fight at home.  At his press conference he added a flash of steel and glimpse of passion to his usual forensic use of language.  It was impressive and will give succour to those of us who are Jewish and/or care about having a strong opposition to buttress the walls of our democracy.  Let’s hope Conservative Central Office notice the threat and up their game.

Closer to home, local devolution is in the news again, with the projected costs and savings of the rival North Yorkshire County Council (North/South) and Harrogate (7 districts East/West) bids published.  In yet further evidence that the country is actually being run by large management consultancies raking in taxpayer monies by the bucketload (NHS Test & Trace has so far spent a staggering £12b on McKinsey, Bain, Deloitte, KPMG, Serco, CapGemini, among others), the devolution studies were prepared respectively, by PWC and KPMG. The rest of the covid economy may well be in meltdown but I suspect next year’s graduate milk round will be recruiting a bumper crop of management consultants.  Broadly speaking both bids will cost the same to realise, close to £40m.  And, broadly speaking, both will realise the same savings over a five-year term, about £250m.  Whichever shall we choose?  Frankly, neither give me goosegogs.

The real question ought to be should we choose devolution at all?  Some Harrogate voices have been heard to say that now is not the time to proceed.  National crisis and all that.  I beg to differ, if not now, when?  If the total write-off car crash of our, ahem, “world-beating” Test & Trace system has taught us anything, it is that national government programmes should be about the provision of the funds for services, not the delivery.  Now that councils across the land are taking control of tracing those of us exposed to the dread bug, we are starting to see real improvements in the number and proportion of contacts reached.  That’s because council’s know their own patch, have and are using established relationships with community groups and charities that are known and trusted by local residents and (ought to have) a developed sense of the socio-cultural norms and needs of the people they serve.

Let me put it this way, an English speaking 20-year-old male, with four hours PowerPoint training by Zoom, a face covering, a clipboard and script, is not likely to be understood, let alone well received, by a Pakistani Grandmother in a multi-generational household who doesn’t speak English.  Obvious I suppose, but not to NHS Test & Trace apparently.  Councils know the cultures to which they have to be sensitive and we have to harness that.  Yes, some councils are rubbish (and if you’ve read this column before you’ll know my opinion of Harrogate Borough Council can best be described as low) but they are a self-fulfilling mediocrity.

We need our leaders nearer to us, in plain sight, with actual power to dispense.  That way we can watch them closely, demand better, make them accountable for the things they do in our name.  If we do that, then perhaps we have a hope of attracting a new, more talented generation of municipal leaders to lead us, if not to the promised land, then at least to devolved competence.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

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Strayside Sunday: Labour is winning the “good guys” image battle

Strayside Sunday is our weekly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party. 

Almost twenty years ago, I was fit (and silly) enough to be able to kick a football around the muddy playing fields of South London as Number 10 for a team called The Westminster Wanderers.  The Wanderers brought together political hacks, lobbyists and journos from across the political spectrum, united both by our desire to spend Sunday mornings in the cold and damp, and Monday mornings spent stiff and sore.

One of my teammates was the former President of the radical Federation of Conservative Students, a body so libertarian in its views that it proposed, while Mrs T was Prime Minister no less, that drugs ought to be legalised, along with free migration.  The FCS became known as “Maggie’s Militant Tendency” and was eventually broken up by Conservative Party Chairman Stormin’ Norman Tebbit, to avoid further disrepute.

By the time we met, the activist in question was a senior player in James Goldsmith’s Referendum Party, parent to UKIP and grandparent to the Brexit Party, as well as a leggy and robust centre-half for the Wanderers.  One fateful day in 2001, the man in question asked whether, given I knew a thing or two about communication (at the time I thought I did, although now I know I didn’t), I would write him a paper on how to turn around the reputation of the Conservative Party.  I obliged with a missive entitled “Rebranding the Nasty Party” and, within a month, was appointed Director of Communication for the Tories.  It didn’t end well.

I recount this horrible history because, if Labour have their way, and if the Conservatives aren’t careful, this week may mark the return of the nasty party into the popular consciousness.  Wednesday saw a Labour motion in parliament to extend provision of £15-a-week food vouchers to 1.4m disadvantaged children in England during school holidays until Easter 2021.  Who could possibly argue with that?  And, of course, that’s the point; Labour’s single-issue party managers know that there is no way to answer the question without self-incrimination.  Support it and the Conservatives concede the problem statement – the existence of so many disadvantaged children in need of a meal – oppose it and appear mean and, well, nasty.  Indeed a Liberal Democrat supporting friend of mine (not of this parish, for the avoidance of doubt) WhatsApped me on the day of the debate with a link to how individual members voted on the motion, with the accompanying text “milk snatchers are back.”  This a reference of course to 1971 and the Blessed Margaret, when Education Secretary.

As loyal party men, local MPs Messrs Adams, Smith and Jones voted against the motion.  No surprise there, sadly.  Labour isn’t a presence in these parts so no real need for a demonstrable show of compassion or principle from the Big 3.  But the point is this: the motion was designed by Labour to cast the Conservatives in the role of villain; and Labour’s juice has certainly been worth the squeeze.  Coinciding nicely with Boris Johnson’s refusal to bung Andy Burnham an extra ‘five mil for the workers’ in return for imposing Tier 3 restrictions, one feels an uncomfortable sensation in the pit of one’s stomach about the direction of travel.

At a time when any reputation the Conservative government might have had for competence is, in any view, in tatters (see also Test and Trace), they surely need to take utmost care not to allow long and deeply held perceptions about their lack of humanity resurface.  I don’t know about you but I can’t go through another Tory re-branding round of “hug a hoodie” and dog sleds; it’s just too painful.  And, although Labour’s Deputy Leader, the dreadful foghorn Angela Rayner, seriously overplayed her hand when calling us “Tory Scum” in Parliament this week, aged alarm bells are ringing.  Labour is giving the impression that, in our much diminished Covid circumstances, some good old-fashioned class warfare is just around the corner.

Calling all Conservatives nasty, as if no other political party has such a characteristic, has never been accurate.  I’ve had the displeasure to know and work with quite a few nasty people over the years in politics and beyond and, if pressed, I’d say that they are evenly distributed across the political spectrum.  As the brakes are put on Covid spending, as inevitably they must be, we should remember that what this government has done to respond to the crisis so far has been remarkable, in the worst of circumstances.  But it should extend that response to free school dinners.  Not only does this risk a return of the nasty party label, it is both politically and morally wrong.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

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Strayside Sunday: “Levelling Up” means acting now to help the North

Strayside Sunday is our weekly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party. 

Try as I might, my rudimentary internet research skills have not yet uncovered the criteria for Harrogate currently residing in Covid-19 Medium Tier Alert.  With some application I can discern the do’s and don’ts of the category: 10pm curfew, the Rule of 6, non-attendance at the monthly swingers club, that sort of thing.  It’s just that, for the life of me, I can’t uncover the triggers that would mean Harrogate might be promoted to High Alert, alongside near neighbours Leeds, or even catapulted into Very High Alert, there to rub shoulders with Liverpool.

I think the alert level might be something to do with the R-rate, the number of positive Covid-19 tests, the size of the city or town’s student population, relative levels of social deprivation, areas of health inequality, the proportion of people over the age of 60, ethnicity and pre-existing and underlying health conditions.  No one is able to say for sure.  In fact the alert level decision is of course about all of these things and more.  Myriad factors discussed and negotiated between a national government (the authority of which has lost its wax and found its wane) and local government leaders, in full voice, newly ‘bold as Beauchamp.’  Or, should I say, given I write this in Yorkshire about the North’s crop of elected Mayors, ‘bold as brass.’

What’s going on?  The Conservative government is, of course, in a terrible stew.  The decisions it faces hour-by-hour must balance the ongoing threat to our health with further damage to our already grievously wounded economy.  It is making life or death decisions, affecting health or wealth, in real-time, with only instinct and imperfect information as a guide.  But, as the number of clangers, screeching hand-break turns and misfires mounts up, even those, like me, sympathetically minded toward the government, are beginning to lose patience.  It’s not only about poor decision making and obvious political incompetence, it’s about the glaring lack of a guiding principle, a north star, so to speak.

By backing Brexit (opportunistically and at the last moment) and, through the good offices of Dominic “The Brainiac” Cummins, by turning it into a conversation about immigration, Boris earned a hearing from the white working-class north of Watford Gap.  So, when Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson won his stonking parliamentary majority in December 2019, he did so with what seemed a strong, if, from Boris, counterintuitive promise to “level up” the North.  No longer the posh London metropolitan  ‘hug-a-hoodie’ Tory party of Dave and Sam Cam, the Conservatives were striking out beyond the M25, prioritising the forgotten industrial waste lands of post-post-Thatcherite Britain and, BBC-like, placing new emphasis on regional accents.  Man of the people BoJo promised us investment in jobs, skills, infrastructure, a brave and bold future grown rich on newly minted international trade deals.  But, then, Covid, only Covid.

We know that people in the North of England went into this crisis earning, owning and saving less than those in the South.  Nothing new to see here.  We also know now that Covid hits hardest in densely populated urban areas with high levels of social deprivation.  And we know that Covid seeks out and punishes those in ill health.  We know too that Covid disproportionately impacts BAME nationals.  All these matter more in the urban multi-cultural north.

The northern mayors have a point; Covid, and the government’s developing economic response to it, are widening the gap between north and south.  Its hitting hardest those who can least afford it, whether they are working in low paid jobs, or not working at all.  Yes, the mayors are being politically partisan, they scent a real opportunity to regain lost ground and build again in red brick.  But they are most certainly representing the feelings of their constituents, secondary modern kids snubbed once more by their betters in gowns and mortarboards.

It was announced during the Conservatives’ virtual conference last week that it was going to open a northern party headquarters in Leeds.  This the better to emphasise its un-swingeing commitment to the region.  But unless the Conservative Party genuinely hears and urgently acts upon the grievances being aired now by mayors like Andy Burnham from Greater Manchester, Steve Rotheram from the Liverpool City Region and Jamie Driscoll from North Tyne, it won’t just receive a cool welcome when it opens for business in Leeds (Labour Leader Judith Blake is said to be spitting at the prospect), it will surely lose the north at the next election.

So I propose that Boris doubles down on levelling up, to counterpoint my metaphors.  If he doesn’t, he leaves the Conservatives open to the easy charge that they don’t care about the north after all.  It’s not too late for him to tack and change course.  As St. Augustine said, “repentant tears wash out the stain of guilt.”

 

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

Strayside Sunday: A whole new meaning to “keeping up with the Jones”…

Strayside Sunday is our weekly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party. 

We all need a break every now and again. In my case I managed to convince my editor to grant me a Sunday away last week. It was most welcome and I return refreshed, if not renewed.

During my time away, Harrogate MP Andrew Jones has been uncharacteristically visible in the Mother of Parliaments; first during the Covid debate in the last week of September and, this week, popping up at PMQ’s to ask BoJo for a recovery bung for the Harrogate Convention Centre and other constituency exhibitors. It’s hard to keep pace with this newly Whirling Dervish of a pol – it brings a whole new meaning to “keeping up with the Jones’.”

As the Covid era grinds on – we are now well into the eighth successive month of restrictions upon our lives and liberty – the effects on our individual and collective health and wellbeing, especially our mental health, are beginning to weigh heavily upon us. Being told with whom we can or cannot socialise, foreshortened and proscribed hospitality hours (a curfew in all but name), masks and hand sanitiser, interminable Zoom meetings, interminable Zoom drinks and, worst of all, enforced separation from loved ones. This is now spoilt fruit.

Harrogate is famously home to a significant number of the reasonably well to do blue-rinse set. What demographers call an ageing population, or what AJ might consider his core vote. Many of whom reside in care homes across the constituency, isolated from loved ones by the government’s insistence on the restriction of visits by relatives. Mr. Jones was absolutely right to say in debate that “balancing wellbeing and isolation is very difficult but the emotional consequences of no visits are absolutely profound.”

When I eventually meet my maker I hope I will be able to say that I arrived at the pearly gates (whether St. Peter lets me in or not) with the touch and caress of those who are dear to me fresh in my memory. That’s the stuff of living. A few extra days of life achieved by quarantining myself from loved ones or, worse still, being quarantined by my government, is not a bargain I would make. Surely this has to be a family decision, made in possession of the knowledge of who and what is important, enabled of course by full information, skilled and professional care home staff, protective equipment, sensible hygiene measures and visitor scheduling. The visitor screens suggested by our MP feel somehow cold and distancing, reminiscent of prison visits or a transaction at a high street bank branch (if you can still find one). And anyway people are already improvising and attempting to wave to their relatives through windows, but this is scant substitute for human contact. Hugs are what is needed, you might say, rather than mugs.

In the end, what jars for me about current care home visitor policy is that it is illiberal, runs counter to the claim made by the Conservative Party that it is freedom loving, that it celebrates personal responsibility and, worst of all, that it is simply inhumane. I know of course that Covid cut a swathe through care home populations and I hear the ongoing policy rationale for standing in the way of long overdue reunions. I just happen to think it’s wrong. Ideologically, politically and practically. I’m with Andrew on that.

Those merry few who have read these columns in the past twenty weeks will know that ‘hens teeth’ best describes the compliments I’ve heretofore felt able to offer the Honourable Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough. I don’t consider myself generally bilious in nature, so my criticism is offered (mostly) in the spirit of sorrow rather than in the flush of anger. It is in this dejected vain that I refer to Wednesday’s “questions to the Prime Minister” during which our duly elected asked, cap in hand, for a not so modest consideration for the town’s conference and exhibition businesses.

This must be a tale of two halves; one the Harrogate Convention Centre, the other, the Great Yorkshire Showground. The HCC, like the errant and spendthrift heir to the family fortune, in need of a bailout for council mismanagement sins far predating the current effects of the Covid crisis. The second, the more deserving and always well behaved second child, a perennial success now fallen on hard times, through no fault of its own.

The state has, so far, stepped in admirably with vast sums of financial support for both the public and private sectors. In his 2019 general election debate with Jeremy Corbyn, Boris Johnson accused Labour’s erstwhile leader of being in possession of a forest of magic money trees, if he were to fund his extravagant policy promises. In office, Johnson has been forced by tragic circumstance on a spending spree worthy of Viv Nicholson. The time has surely come to make tough decisions about on what we spend our dwindling resources. All claims are not equal and should not be treated as such. To do so risks propping up enterprises that were failing long before the effects of Covid took hold.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.