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

It's time for change..

That’s the political slogan that long-standing governments fear most.  It captures that moment when the remarkable patience and forbearance of the electorate finally falters.  It marks the time when a multitude of major sins and minor indiscretions catches up with those in power as the electorate undergoes one of its periodic mood swings.

The Conservative Party has now been in government for eleven long years, first in coalition with the Liberal Democrats (remember them) and, since 2015, on its own.  The economic crisis of the 2010’s, endless resulting austerity, the never-ending Brexit psychodrama and two long years of Covid-19; first (now) “Dodgy” Dave Cameron, then Theresa May(bot) and now Boris “the clown” Johnson; even the act of writing it down serves to sap ones energy.  And that’s before considering the impact of what by any measure has been a disastrous month of November for government.

It used to be said that when Labour politicians got in trouble it was about money and that when Conservative politicians got in trouble it was about sex.  All evidence to the contrary of late as another generation of Tories have been fending off allegations of sleaze.  I say allegations because the facts are as follows: MP’s are perfectly entitled to hold positions outside parliament, provided they declare them; consultancies delivered through personal companies to minimise tax (provided its paid) are allowed under parliamentary rules and, by the way, are entirely legal.  Barristers such as former Attorney General Geoffrey Cox (the Brian Blessed of British politics) are allowed to continue their practice, as are physicians.

This all kicked off in the wake of one Conservative MP, former Northern Ireland Secretary Owen Paterson, being found guilty of breaking parliamentary rules on lobbying. He trousered £140,000 per year (on top of his MP’s salary) to lobby for 2 agricultural companies which, as a conscientious and, in my experience professional soul (Owen was one of IDS’s inner circle when I worked for the former leader), he duly did.  By all accounts he crossed the line of propriety, fell foul, and was suspended from parliament.  Then, in what can only be described as a monumental cock-up, based on what seems a total and tone-deaf lack of judgement in Downing Street, the government attempted to whip its own MP’s to vote for a motion to change parliamentary lobbying rules, such that Mr. Paterson, one of its own, would be spared his sentence.  Cue outrage, not least among the 2019 “Red Wall” Conservative intake from those working-class seats in which constituents will likely take a dim view of well-paid second jobbing.  In the face of this and a media feeding frenzy, on went the brakes and Boris executed a screeching, rubber burning U-turn.  The motion was dropped and Paterson was sacrificed.  Broken, having also lost his wife Rose to suicide last year, he resigned his seat forthwith.  Politics is a brutal business.

Following hot on the heels of the Coronavirus PPE contracts scandal, the Test & Trace contracts and spending scandal and the Cameron/Greensill lobbying scandal, the last thing this government needed was any more evidence of a startling collision of avarice and incompetence at its heart; this government is beginning to feel, well, grubby.  Its ham-fisted handling of the Paterson affair was both inept and staggeringly out of touch.

Perhaps that explains why and how the government felt able to cancel the HS2 rail link between Birmingham and Leeds and (as important for Stray Ferret readers) cancel the HS3 link connecting Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle.  I honestly can’t fathom it.  It seems to me to be the antithesis of the spirit of “levelling up.”  The promise of a series of replacement investments in rail (with, the government says, a faster return on investment in economic benefits than might have been on HS2/3 offer) butters very few parsnips. The regions elected Mayors held a virtual press conference the same day in which they individually and severally went bananas about the slight.

Beyond that the government has been casting around for ways to make levelling up real, to give it some substance and demonstrate to the voters - whom Boris understood only lent him their 2019 vote – that this is a real commitment rather than political posturing.  Nothing has been delivered to the region so far and so the cancelling of such a major project designed specifically to benefit the North and its people is politically illiterate.  DOING BIG THINGS matters because of the innate messages of ambition and commitment it sends and delivering HS2 and 3 would have signalled that the government was serious about its commitment to levelling up.  Instead, denying ‘something big’ to those suffering injustice and inequality in Red Wall seats isn’t likely to win Boris Johnson any friends at all.  When considered with the litany of charges against it of late it just adds to an overall sense of decay and diminution in government.

Perhaps it’s time for a change?

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

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