Strayside Sunday: Thank God he’s gone. Now who’s for the top job?

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

So, he’s gone. To coin a phrase “thems the breaks.” What a remarkable week it’s been in our national life. The man who delivered an 80-seat majority for the Conservative Party less than three years ago, the man who “got Brexit done” and the man who led the country (many, including me, say successfully) through the pandemic and vaccination rollout was dragged, kicking and screaming, from Downing Street. In my piece following the recent vote of confidence which Boris Johnson won I concluded that we were probably stuck with him for another year. I could not have been more wrong. A woeful Number 10 mishandling of the ‘Pincher by name, Pincher by nature’ affair brought the Prime Minister low – in brief, more lies and dissembling from the boss and his team about what was known of the sex pest’s historic misdemeanours before he was appointed Deputy Chief Whip.

In the end the Prime Minister lost the regard and trust of a staggering number of his ministers (over 50 of whom resigned within 48 hours) and he had to go. I’m glad. Boris Johnson was doing lasting damage to government, infusing it with his own Walter Mitty-like lack of integrity, lack of grip and inattention to detail. In the end he was indeed unfit for office. His colleagues knew it and finally grew the pair required to commit regicide. Fitting for the man-child who, as a boy, proclaimed he wanted to become World King.

The keen-eyed amongst you will have spotted Nigel Adams, MP for Selby and Ainsty, among those in Downing Street, supporting Prime Minister Boris Johnson as he gave his “resignation” speech from the government lectern. Mr Adams has been a staunch supporter of BoJo throughout his tenure, serving latterly as a Cabinet Office Minister. At one point Mr Adams reached across to the PM’s wife Carrie, offering his hand in sympathy. Having already announced his intention to stand down at the next election, Adams will thus be spared the verdict of the electorate on the wisdom of his choice in political friends. That verdict is likely to be damning indeed.

Ripon MP Julian Smith (sitting on a majority better weighed than counted) was, on the other hand, in no way supportive of the Johnsons. In an interview on the Today programme on Wednesday Mr Smith said the Prime Minister had suffered a “catastrophic loss of confidence” among Tory MPs, that his behaviour was Trumpian and, by refusing to step down, that he was causing a “constitutional crisis.” Smith, a former Northern Ireland Secretary, will no doubt be hopeful of renewed ministerial preferment under the next leader, whoever that may be…

Since the Brexit referendum British politics has seen one of the most turbulent periods in modern political life. Boris Johnson is now the third leader despatched by the Tory party in six years. Notwithstanding the poison in the chalice, at time of writing there seem to be no shortage of contenders-manque willing to vie for the crown.

It is often said that those who wield the dagger don’t inherit. If that’s true then neither Sajid Javid nor Rishi Sunak will win the leadership, even though arguably they both acted with principle in leading this week’s tidal waves of resignations from the Johnson government. Both are serious minded and would represent a significant upgrade on their predecessor. Other contenders have less to recommend them. Liz Truss is mad as a March Hare and thinks herself a latter-day Mrs Thatcher. Nadhim Zahawi still looks like a decent bet, although his contortions this week in accepting the position of Chancellor from Johnson one day, going on the media rounds to support the PM the next morning, before telling him to resign the following evening made Houdini look like a cheap carnival act.

The googly eyed Brexiteer Steve Baker was one of the first to declare (please God no; I don’t want government as yet another sinister “research group”), along with Attorney-General Suella Braverman (who’s that??). Grant Shapps has declared his intention, although he might well be too tarred by the Johnson brush for comfort – no one has been on the airwaves more in the past year defending the increasingly indefensible.  Jeremy Hunt, who came second last time around will no doubt be in the running. Another serious person who should warrant serious consideration. Penny Mordaunt and Tom Tugendhat round out the field. Both are eminently presentable, full of personality and would represent a generational fresh start that might well benefit the Conservatives come the next election. I want Rishi Sunak.

One man who will most certainly not be standing for the leadership is Harrogate’s own Andrew Jones MP. Having finally and belatedly come out against Boris Johnson he popped up again this week to support a Harrogate Borough Council bid for levelling up cash to fund the proposed redevelopment of the town’s white elephant Convention Centre. The council is understood to have bid for £20m from the government’s (no longer Boris Johnson’s) Levelling Up Fund. This would certainly take a useful bite out of the reported redevelopment budget of a staggering £47m, the costs for which will otherwise fall squarely on local taxpayers. Whether the project would, as Mr Jones says, “help provide a platform for Yorkshire and the Humber businesses domestically and for export, help to drive inward investment and support extensive employment opportunities” is open to conjecture. That Harrogate and surrounds is the type of place for which levelling up is designed, is not. This is a relatively wealthy place, so one admires Mr Jones’ chutzpah in making a public claim on a fund designed to address national inequalities.  With the Tories trailing in the polls and the Liberal Democrats resurgent locally it might not be a coincidence that our local MP has found his campaigning voice. Like his Conservative colleagues in government, better late than never.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

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Strayside Sunday: Was it Boris or was it local failure?

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

In the wake of last week’s local elections, Councillor Richard Cooper, the Leader of Harrogate Borough Council, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that the Conservatives poor showing could be put down to dissatisfaction with Boris Johnson’s national government. 

And what a poor showing it was for the blues, with 10 of 21 Harrogate district seats turning yellow.  The Lib Dems ended the evening as the largest group in the Harrogate district and with the most seats (8/13) on the Harrogate and Knaresborough Area Constituency Committee.  

 I do, however, have some sympathy with Mr. Cooper’s view that national issues predominated.  My household and our area relatives voted Liberal Democrat en masse, in some cases voting that way for the first time in their lives. 

We simply could not bring ourselves to vote Conservative because of the shambles in Westminster.  Shambles both singular (…Boris Johnson,) and shambles plural (…his cabinet).   

I felt compelled to vote against the interests of a man with no integrity, no honour and no shame.  I didn’t try, nor did I need to, persuade others in my circle to do the same. As with millions of people around the country they came to the view that Boris is not to be trusted.  Nor, increasingly, is he to be liked. 

We know he lied and lied again about Partygate and his role in it.  We know too that whatever his role he presided over a 10 Downing Street with a work culture that would make any self-respecting American frat house blush.  A culture lacking appropriate sobriety. Worse yet a culture lacking appropriate accountability. 

The question that gurgles out of the Downing Street cess pit is precisely what, these days, represents a resigning issue?   

I don’t contest that Boris had a half-decent coronavirus and lockdown.  I think too that he has been almost exemplary in his handling of British interests and leadership in respect of Ukraine. 

But these issues, and the consequential negative economic and cost of living crisis effects are going to severely test the nation in the months ahead and to navigate that needs the government to reach into a now non-existent goodwill bank account. 

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Boris is responsible for that penury, along with Rishi’s wealth and wife’s non-dom status, Priti’s ghastly and shaming “send them back to Rwanda” policy, and pretty much anything to do with Jacob Rees-Mogg. 

This government’s juice is not worth the squeeze:  As a result councils like Westminster, Wandsworth, Barnet and Southampton slipped from Tory grasp last week and the North Yorkshire almost did.

 Andrew Jones MP must now be in fear of his seat, bless him.  Harrogate has a solid Liberal Democrat base again and a recent tradition of its parliamentary representation. 

When approached for comment by the Ferret on local elections night he waved our intrepid journo away.  Not for him it seems to speak to local residents through, by some margin, the most read news outlet in the district. 

Prideful nose bitten to save fearful face? Silly man.  He may well come to regret his stance come the night of the next General Election, if indeed he stands – some think that he may give way to a Richard Cooper candidacy. 

If so, Stray Ferret readers can no doubt look forward to continuing ghosting from the local Conservative Party during the next couple of years.  This kind of behaviour goes beyond the obviously misguided view in some local Tory circles that the Ferret is a Liberal Democrat organ and becomes a democratic insult to local constituents.   

Which brings me back to the local election results.  Whatever the national picture Harrogate Borough Council has not covered itself in glory these past few years.  Expensive (vanity?) projects like the Knapping Mount council HQ, Appy Parking, and now the Station Gateway development substituting for a concerted and sustained effort to get the planning and economic development knitting right. 

The town centre of Harrogate is a sorry mess; with empty shop fronts and discount outlets wherever you look.  Oxford Street’s concrete desert lacks any sort of charm. 

This was meant to sorted out through the town plan, a plan which was never used as the means to bring people together in share municipal endeavour. Instead, multiple outsourced and bought consultations led to division, stasis and, as we can see, inaction.   

National issues were important last Thursday, but don’t kid yourselves that local issues didn’t matter at all, Messrs Jones and Cooper. 

Your tenure has been marked by arrogance and a lack of focus on issues that matter a great deal to local people.  And, notwithstanding that responsibility for highways rests with North Yorkshire County Council, the landmine like potholes and crazy pavements of the district matter too. 

If indeed Double Devolution happens as Leader of NYCC Councillor Les Carl says it still will, the newly formed Harrogate Town Council will need to get a grip and quickly.  If not, the local Liberal Democrat ascendency might very well continue. 

That’s my Strayside Sunday.      

PS Love the Stray Ferret’s royal bunting!

Strayside Sunday: We are treating the homeless as human cargo, fit only for containment

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

The housing and homelessness charity Shelter has been in the news this week.  They have gathered data that shows that 253,000 people in the UK will pass this Christmas season without secure housing.

During the first lockdown, swift and decisive government action virtually eradicated homelessness in our country by housing people in utilising otherwise deserted hotels, boarding houses and vacant rental properties.  As a result of the “Everyone In” initiative, many of the most vulnerable in our society could at least face the threat presented by Covid-19 certain in the knowledge that they could do so with a roof over their heads and have beds on which to sleep.  An issue that has taxed and stumped policymakers for years was solved with an alacrity that betrayed the repugnant and rank inaction of successive and previous governments of all political persuasions.

Last week, the Stray Ferret reported that Harrogate Borough Council has provided emergency accommodation for local homeless people for the ‘festive’ season.  This under the Severe Weather Emergency Protocol (SWEP) that obligates councils to provide cover and shelter during the inclement weather conditions of the winter months.  So they should.

However, in their infinite wisdom Harrogate Borough Council has installed 3 bright yellow (“look everybody, homeless people!”) shipping containers in the Tower Street Carpark.  They are chain-link fenced in and, unless alterations are to be made to them, are windowless and appear ill-ventilated.  This is truly shameful.  The idea that in a wealthy, albeit resource constrained, Covid-stymied civilised society, that we should think shipping containers provide appropriate shelter for anyone at any time of the year passes understanding.

What of compassion?  What of humanity?  What of simple human decency?  As the occupants exit their steel, aluminium or fibre-reinforced polymer (which are the materials from which shipping containers are apparently made) billet, they will look across the street at the local Travelodge; now open for business, as our national government seeks balance the need to keep the economy moving, with the possible health risks posed by Covid.  I doubt very much that it, or indeed any hotel in Harrogate is currently operating at full occupancy.  But surely it is not beyond the wit of man or woman to manage occupancy across the borough to meet both private demand and the needs of those living on the streets.  Especially in circumstances in which private enterprise has benefitted hugely this year from the wonton largesse of (taxpayer, our children and our grandchildren) funded loans, grants, furlough schemes

All housing developments these days come with a requirement for an element of social housing.  Or they should – it turns out the North Yorkshire County Council’s housebuilding company Brierley Homes is under criticism for avoiding having to build affordable dwellings at their developments in Bilton and Pateley Bridge.  None the less, perhaps we could ask the same of larger hotels; that they provide a small number of rooms for the socially disadvantaged?

The uncomfortable truth of course is that business does not want to co-mingle the homeless with paying guests.  The even more uncomfortable truth is that you and I would think more than once about patronising a hotel in which we might bump into the homeless in the corridor.  We’re alright jack and anyway our consciences, pricked as they are by this and other injustices, don’t tend to compensate for any compromise of our own comfort or hotel “experience.”  Our fear-fuelled prejudices of the smelly, drunk and drug addled dispossessed don’t add to the ambience of a stay away.

Harrogate is often named as one of the most desirable places to live in Britain.  It’s a reputation of which our council is rightly proud.  If an appeal to HBC on the merits won’t make them do better by the homeless then how about this?  Harrogate risks damaging it’s reputation.  It will become known as the kind of affluent and selfish place that wants to hide the fact that it has the same knotty and mucky problems and challenges that inner cities face.  It is in danger of becoming known for hiding its homeless in plain sight, for thinking so little of its least fortunate charges that it seeks to make them human cargo, fit only for containment.  It doesn’t make me proud to live in a borough whose council would do this.

At our holidays and high-days visits to church in the days to come we will bask in the warm and sentimental candle-lit glow of self-satisfaction that follows.  They tell us that this is the time of year for peace and goodwill for ALL men (and women and children).  We will all agree with that and likely walk swiftly by the Tower Street Carpark on the way home, heads down.  Let’s demand better of each other, of our local authority and of national government.

Bottom line, we should get our homeless inside, in real accommodation, for Christmas – and make sure they can stay there

That’s my Strayside Sunday.  I wish you all a very Happy Christmas.

Paul is taking a break over the Christmas period. Strayside Sunday will be back on January 3 2021.

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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: Whatever happened to the Nolan Principles?

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

Am I alone is reaching a state of desperation about the current state of our politics? Specifically, politicians who refuse blithely to accept accountability for the decisions and actions of their department and instead sacrifice the careers of civil servants tasked with implementing the policies born from politicians themselves.  Politicians who say or do, either that or what, which would have been indefensible just a few short years ago.  Politicians who seek visibility but hide when they become visible for the wrong reasons.  Politicians who do not measure up to standards set by Anthony Nolan’s “Seven Principles of Public Life.”

This week, two long-serving and, as far as we know, previously high achieving public servant lifers – Sally Collier, Chief Executive of Ofqual, the exams regulator, and Jonathan Slater, permanent secretary at the Department of Education – both lost their jobs in the aftermath of the exam grades fiasco.  The imposition of an untested grading algorithm on a cohort of lesson-hungry students stuck at home because of covid lockdown regulations was never going to end well.  But the decision to proceed with the dreaded algorithm was policy, which is always the result of a political decision and a political direction.  In short, the decision to proceed was made by some combination of the Secretary of State for Education, Gavin Williamson, “Gav” as his aides call him – it seems to fit somehow – and the School’s Standards Minister Nick Gibb.  They both remain firmly in post, backed by Prime Minister BoJo for reasons surely passing understanding, while Ms Collier and Mr. Slater are dispatched to spend more time with their pensions.

Gone are the days, much lamented, when politicians resigned their posts as a matter of honour if they presided over a total horlicks in their department, or if they dropped a clanger that affected the public’s confidence – think Edwina Currie, a dozen eggs and salmonella, John Gummer stuffing burgers in his young daughter’s mouth during the Mad Cow crisis, or even Lord Lambton, caught smoking a joint in bed with a prostitute, filmed by a secret camera hidden in a Teddy Bear.  For reasons of competence, confidence or perception they all had to go.  And, looking back at them now, their crimes seem comically small when compared with the chaos precipitated by Mr. Williamson in England and (let’s not let the SNP off the hook) by John Swinney north of the border.  In 2002, Labour Education Secretary Estelle Morris resigned because “I judge my performance as not quite good enough.”  Such candour and humility feels quaintly out of step with the shameless norms of today’s politics.  But it shouldn’t be.

And at what point does the responsibility that comes with election to public office end?  Can a politician ever be considered “off duty” in respect of what they say and what they do?  I do believe politicians are entitled to a private life – their families, loves and lives outside politics should be of no interest to the public and, in my opinion, strictly “off limits” to the press.  However, assuming public office ought to bring with it the requirement of certain, higher standards of behaviour.  For example, racism, hate speech and sexism are never ok, in any circumstance.  Ergo, politicians of any party, elected to any office, can’t be afforded the luxury of drawing their own lines of distinction between the public and private realms of discourse when discussing these topics.  Whether they like it or not, in today’s hyper-connected ‘internet of things’ social media obsessed world, they are “always on.”

I’ve written in this column before about the case of Darley Parish Councillor Ernest Butler, whose unreconstructed personal views on immigration created a froideur (think tumbleweed…) among Harrogate’s chattering classes.  I won’t rehash the specifics, save to mention that his views were nonetheless deemed to fall outside the purview of the local Councillors code of conduct.  Which is to say that no means exists to make the public servant  man accountable for the unacceptable private views he expresses.  Saying you have no charter to punish the culprit simply becomes the means to inaction.  It seems to me that the answer is a radical overhaul of the code of conduct, this to recognise the contemporary realities of public life, conducted as it is, in full and transparent view for all to see and hear.

The issue here is that modern politics is as much about perception as it is about reality.  I wish this were not so but it’s not my call, nor is it the call of politicians, drawn to publicity, like moth to flame.  Our own Andrew Jones MP had a great photo op when, in December 2018, he visited Porsche specialist second-hand car dealer Gmund Cars Ltd and hailed “an amazing business.”  What he did not know is that six Porsche owners who talked to the Stray Ferret and who had placed their cars with Gmund for sale

allege that their vehicle’s ownership had been transferred without permission and did not receive a penny for the sale of cars worth over fifty grand apiece.  Gmund went into administration 6 months later in July 2019, with more than £1 million worth of cars missing.  A police investigation followed.  An “amazing” business indeed.

In his photo op, Mr Jones was pictured standing next to Gmund owner Andrew Mearns and his wife Samantha, a significant Gmund shareholder and company secretary until December 2018. Mrs Mearns is a Harrogate Borough Councillor and a case worker in Mr. Jones’ constituency office.  Not quite a Lord Lambton moment, but none too reassuring.  Councillor Mearns has made it clear she has not been questioned by the police.  Andrew Jones has kept his counsel, neither supporting publicly his Conservative colleague and office employee, nor commenting on the alleged irregularities in Gmund Cars Ltd. He does, however, have an irate constituent or two, each light to the tune both of tens of thousands of pounds and their cherished Porsche motor cars.

 

However we look at all of this, it makes a mockery of The Nolan Principles, to which public office holders are meant to adhere.  For the record the seven principles of public life are Selflessness, Integrity, Objectivity, Accountability, Openness, Honesty and Leadership.  Whether in Westminster or Knapping Mount, these standards seem absent lately; to the point of depressing irrelevance.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

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Strayside Sunday: Harrogate’s economy too reliant on hospitality

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

Not too long ago, in the early days of Boris Johnson’s recovery from Covid, our chastened PM admitted that the width of his seat was a contributory factor to the severity of his brush with the dread virus.  Brought low by the bug, he ‘for one’, was going to lose weight, and, in so doing, provide an example to the rest of us.  Echoing his Tory forebear Stormin’ Norman Tebbit, Boris implored us to get on our bikes, this time for the worthy purpose of exercise, (and greener transport) rather than in pursuit of scarce work.  Heart healthy you might say, rather than heart-less.

This week, Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced that he is going to be paying us (or, more accurately, paying the hospitality industry for us) to dine.  We have been asked to “eat out to help out,” this an eye-catching part of his £30b emergency stimulus package for our covid-ravaged economy.  Rish the Dish has found Dosh for Nosh; up to a discount limit of £10 per head.  This does of course mean that the world has officially gone mad; we can now boast a Conservative Government so interventionist it is promoting a basic bodily function.  Whatever next; red wine with fish? White jeans after November 1st? Where will it end?

To my mind however there are serious policy issues here: Obesity and public health; and the over-reliance of the UK economy on services (and particularly hospitality).  As a nation we rank 6th in the global obesity rankings.  As such, obesity isn’t just a risk factor for covid symptom severity, it also costs the NHS almost £10b every year to treat its deleterious health effects.  I don’t blame people for being overweight, indeed, to my chagrin, I’m carrying a few extra pounds myself.  Nor do I accept that a focus on reducing obesity is, by definition, a class-based attack on those at the bottom end of the social scale, more often caught in possession of a high Body Mass Index than the rest of us.  We simply all have to get thinner, improve our health, avoid hospitals and leave the NHS free to treat serious illnesses, seasonal flu’s and future pandemics.

On the subject of food, Harrogate’s hospitality business owners let out a huge collective sigh of relief when allowed finally to open last weekend, albeit with social distancing regimens in place alongside ersatz “be wise, sanitise!” signs.  With fingers crossed tightly that we avoid a covid second wave, I for one hope that Harrogate’s residents feel able to turn out and support our local and independent hospitality businesses.  As with hospitality venues around the UK, venues in Harrogate are at risk, and the town can ill afford to lose them.  But as we move past covid response, we must build a newly diverse and resilient local economy, one in which the current over-reliance on hospitality is addressed directly in the council town plan.

The Anglo-Irish philosopher Edmund Burke said of being an MP that “your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serves you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”  And I agree with that.  It’s my belief that by creating a public discourse in which our MP’s are expected to act simply as a megaphone for local views (nothing enrages me more than to hear the lazy “what I hear on the doorstep is…”) we diminish the quality of our national politics and impose constraints and limits on our local politics.  As such we get the mediocre politics and politicians we deserve. Rather than thinking statesmen and woman of character in parliament, and outstanding municipal leaders closer to home, we get neither.  Instead, in our apathy, we must resign ourselves to obsequious lobby fodder in Westminster and to unchecked incompetence in our councils.  We should demand more of ourselves – intellectually and practically – and of our representatives.

To that end The Stray Ferret makes a point of reporting on the activities of our two local MPs, Andrew Jones in Harrogate and Julian Smith in Ripon.  In the month of June, for example, our parliamentary representatives voted against weekly covid testing for NHS staff members and voted against legal protections and the provision of help for migrant victims of domestic abuse.  But it’s so much less interesting to know how the MPs voted than it would be to know why they did so.

Try as we might, and we have asked repeatedly, we have yet to receive any explanation of why our MPs cast their vote in the manner they did.  Were they to engage with their electorate (you, me, us), whether directly, or through this and other media outlets, in order to explain their intellectual and principled positions, then two beneficial consequences would follow;  first, we would understand better the judgements they make in our name, and, second, we would support better the decisions they make in the face of our opinions.

Harrogate Council made a decision this week when it gave final approval to its overhaul of leisure service provision, with the opposition Lib Dems voting in favour.  Their 7 votes were secured because they tabled successful amendments to the motion supporting “affordable pricing, accountability and worker’s rights.”  Who can argue with that?  And I’m all in favour of constructive opposition and pragmatism, however, as a matter of bald politics, the Lib Dems always seem to get it wrong.  Come the reckoning Councillor Pat Marsh and her well-meaning team will not be able to say that they took a position of principle – against the privatisation of the leisure we should all be encouraged to take more of for the sake both of our waistlines and long-term health – and fought it to the last.  Instead they will be complicit in Harrogate Council’s decision to place leisure provision at arms-length, as the expression makes plain, away from the body and beating heart of government where it ought to be.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

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You can get in touch at paul@thestrayferret.co.uk