Reality Show Politik - November 2022
The old refrain was politics is show business for ugly people. Today, politics is show business for psychopaths.
Four MPs have been under the microscope this month. Matt Hancock, Suella Braverman, Gavin Williamson and Dominic Raab. All of them have highlighted the deep personal dysfunction in our elected representatives and politics in general.
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I’m A Constituent Get Me Out Of Here!
On the 1st of November, former Health Secretary Matt Hancock had the Tory Whip suspended after it emerged he was taking part in ITV’s I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here.
Hancock was to be the 12th contestant to enter the jungle in this year’s show and faced the prospect of undergoing such trials as being smothered in insects or eating marsupial penis.
The reaction was a mix of delight and dismay. Delight at the horrors Handcock was about to endure. Dismay at what the decision said about our politics. Hancock as the MP for West Suffolk faced a backlash from Conservative MPs and his constituency party over his taking part and will now sit as an independent.
Hancock also pulled out of the running to chair the Treasury select committee and announced a new book, Pandemic Diaries, on his experiences as health secretary during the Covid crisis and is understood to have already filmed another reality TV show this year – Channel 4’s Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins.
Hancock’s defenders said politicians “must go to where the people are – particularly those who are politically disengaged … Matt’s of the view that we must embrace popular culture. Rather than looking down on reality TV, we should see it for what it is – a powerful tool to get our message heard by younger generations”.
Lobby Akinnola, from the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice campaign, said: “Matt Hancock isn’t a ‘celebrity’; he’s the former health secretary who oversaw the UK having one of the highest death tolls in the world from Covid-19 while breaking his own lockdown rules.
“The fact that he is trying to cash in on his terrible legacy, rather than showing some humility or seeking to reflect on the appalling consequences of his time in government, says it all about the sort of person he is.”
Hancock faced frequent “Bushtucker Trials” as the public and perhaps colleagues voted week after week to ensure he stayed in the jungle - all the way to the season finale. Hancock would bow out in third place with a familiar pose… his reputation apparently somewhat restored…
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Particularly galling for this platform, was the realisation that a mobile voting app is a key component of the I’m a Celebrity… process. Rumours swirled of Tory MPs signing up in order to vote to keep Handcock in the jungle and suffer further indignities.
A cornerstone of Direct Democracy UK’s project is maximum enfranchisement via a digital voting app and online voting platform. Our barriers to achieve this are financial and technical expertise - barriers easily overcome by the UK’s oldest commercial television network.
While our voting app would start as a means to poll citizen’s preferences on Westminster bills, with mass adoption our voting app would gauge the True Will™ of the people on matters of everyday importance - building what’s known as dual power and a digital democracy.
Cruella de Buddhist
Early in the month, Suella Braverman was under pressure, defending her use of the word “invasion” to describe the situation regarding small boats of migrants crossing the Channel.
Braverman was also defending her position as Home Secretary after a suicidal fire-bomb attack on the Western Jet Foil migrant processing centre in Kent and daming headlines regarding the conditions at Manston processing centre, as cases of diphtheria were reported in the overcrowded facility.
The number of people waiting for an initial decision on their asylum claim has been rising year on year since 2010 to more than 100,000 - a consequence of long-term under-resourcing, insufficient caseworkers in place and poor systems and processes.
A year ago, concerted action was taken to recruit more caseworkers. But it takes at least a year from recruitment to training for a caseworker to be up to speed to do the job well. Unbelievably, there hasn’t been a functional IT casework system. Decision-makers have been using spreadsheets!
The picture that emerges is of a government operation that has been systematically neglected and under-resourced for many years, with any attempt to improve it only happening once it was already deep in crisis.
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The situation with migrants being housed in hotels is also a consequence of that long-term neglect. Two years ago, the House of Commons public accounts committee investigated the use of hotel accommodation and said it was very concerned people were not being placed in more appropriate housing.
Fast forward to the present and Braverman has been accused of deciding not to book sufficient hotel accommodation to ensure men, women and children were not sleeping on makeshift mats for days on end in Manston (she denies blocking the bookings).
What has been driving these failures? Some argue that the political driver has been the belief, held by the Conservative government, that those seeking sanctuary in this country are not only undeserving but are breaking the law – even though there is nothing illegal about applying for asylum in any country, and three-quarters of those who seek asylum in the UK are granted refugee protection. The view is they should be treated with hostility, then expelled to Rwanda.
The asylum system therefore is deliberately neglected and made worse in the hope that it will act as a deterrent. But there isn’t a deterrent effect and instead, regardless of the best efforts of hard-working government officials, we are left with a dysfunctional system that is far from fit for purpose. An Iraqi migrant would later die at Manston, before the entire centre was reported to be emptied out on the 22nd.
Roger Gale, the Conservative MP for North Thanet, who has Manston migrant centre in his constituency, has said that he does not trust the home secretary and that she is playing to the right wing of her party - of whom she is the most prominent member.
The Burning Issue
Gavin Williamson quit the cabinet on November 8th after it was revealed he sent “vile” and “threatening” messages to former Conservative chief whip Wendy Morton, raising questions over Rishi Sunak’s decision to reappoint the twice-sacked Tory.
A source told Tortoise Media that Morton had passed on “vile and threatening messages” she had received during the time she was chief whip, which she considered had a misogynistic undertone.
In the messages, Williamson complained it was “very poor” that privy councillors – senior politicians who formally advise the monarch – who “aren’t favoured” had been excluded from the Queen’s funeral at Westminster Abbey.
Morton repeatedly insisted that his claims were unfounded and that the government had been allocated an “extremely limited” number of tickets, most of which went to members of the cabinet.
Williamson retorted: “It’s very clear how you are going to treat a number of us which is very stupid and you are showing fuck all interest in pulling things together.
“Also this shows exactly how you have rigged it - it is disgusting you are using her death to punish people who are just supportive, absolutely disgusting. Well let’s see how many more times you fuck us all over. There is a price for everything.”
Sir Gav paid the higher price by resigning the day after a senior civil servant claimed Williamson told them to “slit your throat” in what they felt was a sustained campaign of bullying while he was defence secretary.
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Gaff prone Williamson was sacked first as defence secretary by Theresa May after it was alleged he leaked details of a national security council meeting – an allegation he has always denied; and later as education secretary by Boris Johnson over the Covid 19 A-levels debacle.
Williamson as the Private Pike of the whips office exposed the supposed “Dark Arts” as the sham they are. A system of petit bullying and blackmail in a toxic workplace of fear and intimidation. Who would want to work in Westminster?
Williamson deserves all the opprobrium that’s been heaped upon him. But at the same time, the stench of hypocrisy emanating from his colleagues on either side of the House of Commons is overpowering. The idea that Williamson is merely a bad apple is self-evidently absurd; there have been so many bad apples on the Westminster benches - on both sides of the Commons - in recent years alone that at some point, you have no alternative but to conclude that there’s something fundamentally wrong with the barrel and the orchard itself.
Rabb-ing Bull
On Remembrance Day it emerged that senior civil servants at the Ministry of Justice were offered “respite or a route out” of the department when Dominic Raab was reappointed last month, amid concerns that some were still traumatised by his behaviour during a previous stint there.
Dominic Raab’s refusal to speak to some Foreign Office staff he considered “time-wasters” led to “blockages” during the Afghanistan evacuation, with staff at two departments he ran forced to take sick leave because of his alleged behaviour.
Whitehall sources said the deputy prime minister had acted “so badly and inappropriately” at a high-level meeting earlier this year that the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) was forced to call senior officials of the then home secretary, Priti Patel, to express regret.
Day after day, further allegations dripped out, forcing Rishi Sunak to appoint a top employment barrister to investigate the three formal complaints. “There are a series of allegations that appear to be coming across a number of departments where Dominic Raab has worked, each one is going to have to be approved by the prime minister for investigation,” Dave Penman, the general secretary FDA union, said.
Downing Street said the lawyer, Adam Tolley KC, who has been tasked with investigating the complaints, will be able to widen his investigation to look into other complaints if the prime minister agrees.
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Rich and poor
Above all these MPs is of course the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak. There have been three Tory Cabinets this year and the Tory talent gene pool is so obviously shallow that the same old single cell amoebas have managed to float around more than one cabinet.
When Sunak addressed the nation outside Downing Street he spoke of the importance of showing compassion and fairness with “integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level”. Sunak had promised to appoint an independent adviser on ministerial interests but none has been put in place yet.
To believe that Sunak didn’t know perfectly well who (and what) Williamson, Braverman and Raab was would stretch credulity well beyond breaking point. Oliver Dowden, a senior Sunak ally, admitted as much when he confirmed that the Prime Minister had already been informed of the bullying allegations surrounding Williamson when he reappointed him to the cabinet. But with Williamson having been a Tory chief whip, it’s safe to assume he knows precisely which skeletons are rattling around whose closets.
I wish I had space to write about Twitter and Elon Musk, Lady Michelle Mone and that £29 million pound PPE deal and Nicola Sturgeon as the torch bearer for democracy. Perhaps I should publish weekly… Let me know in the comments.