Strayside Sunday: Low rent politics stinks

Last updated Apr 17, 2021

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

It’s good to be back.

Now then, what’s happening? Ah yes, it seems that the British political establishment stinks from root to branch. It turns out, that while our attention was distracted by the exigencies of Covid-19 – not least the awarding of millions of pounds worth of PPE contracts to the Boris Chumocracy – our former Prime Minister David Cameron was up to no good. Working for Greensill Capital, a purveyor of ‘supply chain financing solutions’ (purchasing the accounts payable debt of others and taking a hefty fee for the pleasure), including to Her Majesty’s Government, Dave Cam was bombarding his mates in high office, Chancellor Dishy Rishi for example, with telephone calls, texts and emails on behalf of his Australian employer. That he stood to make millions through a stonking equity consideration in Greensill, were it to continue to succeed, is no excuse. As it is, Greensill has gone spectacularly bust leaving Dave both with egg on his face and a significant reduction in future earnings.

Frankly, although it looks cheap, I am less concerned about a former Prime Minister being in close contact with friends and ex-senior colleagues than I am about the revelation that the founder of Greensill, the eponymous Lex, was given a desk at the Cabinet Office. He was also given a government business card and license to roam across 11 government departments; all with a brief to create a new financial product. Am I alone in thinking that this can’t be right? Of course government needs to work closely with business, but surely it ought not give business unfettered access to create its own opportunities to benefit from the public purse (otherwise known as your money and mine). That Mr. Cameron gave a 2010 speech in which he presaged that “lobbying was the next big scandal” awaiting government fills my schadenfreude goblet to the brim. For, in the immortal words of the great Gore Vidal; “every time a friend succeeds, a little piece of me dies.”

The new Cabinet Secretary Simon Case is on the warpath. It seems that Greensills tendrils penetrated deep into the Civil Service. One Bill Crothers, the founder of the Crown Commercial Service, was double dipping, being paid both as a public servant and as a Greensill employee (before he crossed to the dark side completely and joined Greensill full-time; swapping, as it were, his Anakin Skywalker for his Darth Vadar). In fact, there is deep suspicion that Mr. Crothers is not the only civil servant moonlighting in the private sector, so this is a story that will likely run and run, further undermining our brittle faith and trust in our government.

Closer to home, here in the great parliamentary constituency of Harrogate and Knaresborough (including Boroughbridge) we can be assured, can we not, of the probity, straight talking and all-around excellence of MP Andrew Jones? Or so we thought. Much ado this week over the quality news organ and website “Community News.” It turns out that the MP’s office is publishing a digital news alternative; a platform for Conservative politicians to report their own activities and campaigns in the Conservative interest, Community News though states it is committed to providing news in a “non-political way.”

One has to dig pretty deep to uncover the origins of the website’s publishing in the office of the sitting Conservative MP; the office, by the way, that is run by the sitting Conservative Leader of Harrogate Borough Council; the office too that employs another leading Conservative councillor; the office, in fact, that employs the current Conservative candidate for the pending Bilton Ward by election. Let’s generously call the lack of the Conservative logo an attempt at subtle branding; a desire perhaps to have the ‘issues’ front and centre. Come on, who am I kidding? Community News has a blue banner, ‘reports’ exclusively blue mouthpieces and offers no counter opinions. If that’s “non-poilitical” I’ll bare my bottom on James Street.

The News Media Association, the voice of national, regional and local news media in the UK, has unleashed a campaign calling for an end to such fake newspapers (which is to say an end to the practice of political leaflets not-so-craftily disguising themselves as anything but). The campaign is called “Don’t Be Duped.” Don’t let mendacious pols pull the wool over your eyes. The thing is, that whether it is fake Community News, civil servants on the make and take, or hustling former Prime Ministers (and by the way DC is far from the only one), it’s all a bit low rent. We need to rise up and demand better, or we will continue to get the politics and politicians we deserve.

Finally this week, how great it is that society is opening up again. Whatever its faults (and boy does it have them), the government has played a blinder with its vaccination programme. Sunny skies have seen people flood to outdoor spaces and places and, wrapped up against the wind, begin again to feel the benefit and glow of precious human connection. We can eat and drink outdoors, non-essential shops are open again, the hirsute are being shorn and the energetic are returning to gyms, swimming pools and leisure centres. Well, except, that is, in Knaresborough, Ripon and Starbeck, where, for reasons various, the town’s swimming pools remain closed. What a pity that the council hasn’t been able to deliver an essential service at such an important moment in our national reopening. This wasn’t covered in Harrogate, Knaresborough and Boroughbridge Community News; and I suspect it won’t be. Denied the masking whiff of chlorine, the awful smell of politics carries on the wind and tickles the nostrils.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.