Our Post-Political Age - May 2022
Local elections, Keir's Beergate, Police investigations, Arrested MPs, Partygate. Just another month in the hellscape of the United Kingdom
On the 6th May 2022, we entered the post-political age. It was the day after the local elections and most results had been called.
Elections were held in 200 councils. England held elections in 146, while all 32 councils in Scotland and 22 Welsh councils were up for election. Across England, Wales and Scotland, elections were held for 6,863 seats. There were also elections for six mayors and the second election of a metro-mayor in South Yorkshire.
The morning after, all political parties were spinning their various gains and losses. The Tories, having already strongly signposted a mid-term kicking, promised to learn lessons, before anyone would be brave enough to call for Johnson to resign. They won or retained control of 35 councils in England, including winning the new North Yorkshire county council. This is seven fewer than in 2018.
Labour won or retained control of 65 of the councils with elections, including 21 of the 32 London Boroughs. This is eight fewer than it controlled when these seats were last up for election in 2018. Not “quite as well as under Jeremy Corbyn” noted polling mage John Curtice. Labour celebrated their successes in London and tried to ignore the troubling results elsewhere.
The Liberal Democrats won or retained control of 16 councils, eight more than in 2018. The Greens and Independents had strong results across the country. The Aspire party of come-back king and re-elected mayor Lutfur Rahman, became the first party other than Labour, Conservatives or Liberal Democrats to control a council in London, taking Tower Hamlets from Labour. The Green Party, while not controlling any councils, won 116 seats, compared to 39 in 2018, equivalent to 3% of seats up for election in 2022.
Quickly the discourse sought to understand how the leader of the Conservatives, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, could survive such a drubbing, for which most defeated and some re-elected representatives blamed Partygate. The loss of seats was beyond The Mail’s disaster rating, but no candidate stepped up to offer to replace Johnson. With inflation rising and the cost of living crisis reaching “apocalyptic” levels, only a madman or Liz Truss would want to be Tory leader in the next 2 years.
For Labour, Keir Starmer’s day of “victory” turned as dark as Anjum Anand's black masala chicken curry. By midday, Durham constabulary said they had received “significant new information” about the Curry and Beergate gathering and following significant pressure from some newspapers and Conservative MPs to look again at events in Durham, the force said in a statement it had opened an inquiry.
Our post-political age was born - being led by a Prime Minister who refused to stand down over receiving a police fine and a leader of the opposition, who had put his face in the hands of a new police investigation. Quite where the citizens of the United Kingdom figure in all this is anyone’s guess. Perhaps we are the revellers at the casino as local man Keith goes “all-in on red” on a final roulette spin, while the casino owner, an obese blonde villain, watches the action via CCTV.
Scotland and Wales quietly cemented their status as one party states. Meanwhile, in Northern Ireland another post-political scene unfolded. Following poor election results, the DUP, having been run over by Boris’ Brexit bus, and now utterly spent as a political force, signalled it would not participate in power sharing at Stormont. In a historic first, Sinn Féin became the biggest party and Michelle O'Neill would assume the role of First Minister.
The DUP, despite offering no vision for the future or plans to address the many crises the country faces, blamed the Northern Ireland Protocol for its election woes.Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the Democratic Unionist party leader, told the Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, that the DUP will not nominate ministers to the Stormont executive unless Downing Street takes “decisive action” on the Brexit protocol.
Downing Street gleefully took the bait and started the latest round of its favourite sport “Blame Brussels”. Soon enough the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, had decided to ditch the protocol after giving up on talks with the EU. Officials working for Truss have reportedly drawn up draft legislation that would unilaterally remove the need for all checks on goods being sent from Britain for use in Northern Ireland. The legislation would also allow businesses in the province to disregard EU rules and regulations and take away the power of the European court of justice to rule on issues relating to Northern Ireland.
O’Neill said the DUP should not try to “punish the public” for its mistakes on Brexit. “Brinkmanship will not be tolerated where the north of Ireland becomes collateral damage in a game of chicken with the European Commission. Make no mistake, we and our business community here will not be held to ransom.”
Johnson flew to Belfast and said all five of the parties he spoke to (Sinn Féin, the DUP, the Alliance party, the UUP and the SDLP) agreed the Northern Ireland protocol needed to be reformed. Channel 4 news’ Paul McNamara said it best as he put it to the PM; “You must be furious with whoever signed up to a deal this bad…”
On the 17th May the Metropolitan police announced that they have arrested a Conservative MP on suspicion of “indecent assault, sexual assault, rape, abuse of position of trust and misconduct in public office,” according to a force spokesman.
It used to be that if an MP was arrested, the Commons Speaker would have to tell the House – either in an oral statement or by “laying” a letter in the House of Commons Library. This meant the arrested member’s identity quickly became public knowledge.
But in 2016, the rules changed at the recommendation of the House of Commons Standards Committee. The Speaker is no longer obliged to tell the House of a member’s arrest, and can only do so if the MP agrees.
The Committee’s rationale was that the previous arrangements were incompatible with a person’s right to privacy under the European Convention on Human Rights and other elements of UK law.
They said they wanted to bring the rules around naming an arrested MP in line with standard practice for naming an ordinary member of the public in such circumstances. Official guidelines say that police will only name an arrested person if there’s an exceptional reason to do so, like a threat to life.
On the 19th May came the news 10 Bullingdon Street had been waiting for/assured of. That the Met had concluded all Partygate investigation with 126 fixed-penalty notices were issued covering 12 events. No further fines would be issued to Johnson or his dancing queen.
Johnson’s strategy of “wait for the x” had paid off, with a public now more concerned with the rapidly accelerating cost of living crisis. The drip, drip of revelations for five months had weakened the shock and outrage factor. So that even when Downing Street photos leaked on the 24th May, Johnson was able to survive another bullet that would have felled all his predecessors.
Then, finally, after months of delays and cover ups and secret deals the Sue Gray Report landed… like a damp squib on our post-political landscape. A charred battlefield of culture wars, creeping authoritarianism, unaccountability and farcical defences of the current system by vested interests. Best depicted by the Hogarth of current hellscape, Cold War Steve.
HAVE A GREAT SUMMER. WE WILL RETURN IN SEPTEMBER. DIRECT DEMOCRACY UK.
