Westminster View January 2025

Westminster View

January 2025

It has become custom and practice for the capitals of the world to send, across the time zones as the clocks strike midnight, millions of pounds up in smoke in the form of what are now highly competitive “mine are bigger than yours” firework displays. Where London Mayor Khan`s unsubtle political messages contained within his expensive sparklers rank in this array I will leave others to judge.

Perhaps, however, the most poignant message emanated from Edinburgh where the display of pyrotechnics had to be cancelled due to very high winds and inclement conditions. At the start of a month during which the House of Commons debated the Private Member`s Climate and Nature bill, and wildfires raged through Los Angeles, of which more later, there is perhaps a significant message that needs to be learned by a human race that is busy demonstrating that it is not ‘Masters of the Universe’.

It has been clearly and very publicly acknowledged - not least by the Leader of the Conservative Party and of The Opposition, Kemi Badenoch - that post 2019 the last Government made, under three successive Prime Ministers, a number of mistakes for which we paid a terrible price at the polls and for which the nation is still paying in many other ways.

I do not propose to offer a litany of our failures or a list of our successes, but over our fourteen years there were many of the latter. Perhaps one of the greatest and most important, was the reforms to the education system initiated and turned into policy and reality by Michael Gove.

It seems to me that sadly the present government is busying itself under the direction of the Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, in embarking upon acts of wanton educational vandalism. Ms. Phillipson cannot, though, be held responsible for the assault on private education via the fiscal measures taken by the administration. Responsibility for that and the consequences likely to flow from it - which we have already discussed in these columns - lie fairly and squarely with `Rachel from Accounts’ as The Chancellor of the Exchequer has become unkindly but possibly not unfairly known. No, it is the assault on the excellent, educationally highly successful network of Academies that Gove created that Ms Phillipson’s department has unleashed and is likely to do such great damage to the aspirations and achievements of so many of the young people of this country.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it” is sound advice but, as with the action against Public Schools, so now with Academies it seems that political doctrine bordering on malice is being imposed.

As with the ongoing hostility to the cuts in Winter Fuel Allowance, now being more keenly felt as mild temperatures gave way to January snow and ice and the imposition of the “Family Farm Tax”, so with education. This will be another black mark upon the record of a Government and a Prime Minister tanking in public opinion. People care about their children; they care about the way that they are taught; they care about exam results and future prospects. They will not take kindly to young lives being sacrificed upon the altar of partisan obsession.

We were, for a few days at the start of the January session of Parliament, consumed with the subject of `grooming gangs`. The abuse of juvenile, usually white, girls by gangs of adult males who have systematically prepared these young women for sexual exploitation has been very well documented and is horrific. Many of the perpetrators, frequently men of foreign origin, are now and rightly serving long sentences behind bars. However, it is a system of policing, social care and local authority neglect that, in the face of overwhelming evidence, failed to protect these children. This surely now warrants a full judge-led public inquiry with evidence taken under oath? Not so, say the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary.

I have always thought highly of Yvette Cooper as a person and as a parliamentary colleague and friend. She has a lot of common sense and is not lacking in political courage. On this occasion however, the Home Secretary has bought into the narrative that an inquiry (“because the Judge has to set the terms”) will take “about seven years” and that therefore, a series of localised evaluations and re-examination of the evidence taken by the former Dame (now Baroness) Louise Casey will provide the answers that we need to prevent a recurrence of these appalling crimes.

I do not doubt the ability or the intellect of Baroness Casey but she already has another inquiry on her plate. Surely it should be possible to find another to undertake the task swiftly and efficiently? Why is it the Judge in charge - rather than the Government instigating the inquiry - that has to be allowed to set the rules? Independence is important of course, but not a free rein to take as long as you like with no delivery date.

Second, why should an inquiry, when there is so much that is already a matter of record, have to take seven years? Third, are we afraid that a thorough investigation into grooming might reveal not only the involvement of immigrants, but also of other groups of men and women, involving both girls and boys, that could come uncomfortably close to home?

We all want this job to be done, of course, but the path that the Prime Minister has, I suspect, imposed upon his Home Secretary, is unlikely to offer either satisfaction to those who have suffered or protection to the vulnerable teenagers of the future. I hope that I am wrong.

And talking of exploitation, which we were, I received a less than satisfactory response to my query of `Sir Starmer’ at Prime Minister’s Question Time last month. There are, it is revealed, dozens- possibly hundreds – of women who were raped or sexually abused while employed by the late former owner of Harrods of Knightsbridge, one Mohamed Fayed. (No, he had no right to use the pre-fix `Al` before his family name).

I asked the Prime Minister, who from the despatch box has acquired a habit of extolling his own virtues as the former head of the Crown Prosecution Service, (CPS) why he did not, during his tenure of office, instigate a prosecution against Mr. Fayed for the latter’s alleged crimes. “It did not cross my desk” was the Prime Minister`s reply.

Now I, and members of the `Fayed Survivors Group’ who have made contact with me since my question, want to know precisely what information was submitted by the Metropolitan Police to the CPS and when. There are people still alive and at large, you see, who facilitated Fayed’s gross abuse of wealth and corporate power and we would rather like to see them brought to book.

While in the neo-Soviet Union Comrade Putin is `celebrating’ his twenty-fifth year as the Supreme Leader and Commander-in- War Crime, on the other side of the Atlantic Mr. Trump has - in case you have just arrived from Mars or turned off the TV for life – been sworn in and sworn at again as the President of the United States. Having signed zillions of Executive Orders in the first thirty-five minutes after taking office he has sought to annex Greenland; (upon which we British might, apparently, have a greater claim than Denmark or America) and the Panama Canal, re-named the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America; secured a ceasefire of sorts in the Middle East ; threatened to turn Canada into yet another United State; and pardoned some 1500 MAGA rioters sentenced and gaoled after the January 6th 2021 riots for which he was not, of course remotely responsible. The Leader of The Free World then found time to spend the best part of an hour chatting to the Premier of the United Kingdom on the Bell telephone.

As if King Charles and Queen Camilla have not got enough on their plates at present, we sense another State Visit in the offing. However, in the light of some rather unfortunate remarks about Mr Trump made before the Presidential election by the man who, for the time being at least, is our illustrious Foreign Secretary , we probably have more than a few diplomatic fences to mend if we are to deliver a tariff-free trade treaty with our partners in the `special relationship’.

There is also the small matter of the ratification of Lord Foy of That Persuasion, or Peter Mandelson, if you remember him, as His Majesty’s Ambassador at the Court of King Trump. With revelations about contact between the Prince of Darkness and the Chinese emerging, that ratification might involve a little more than a rubber stamp - although his grovelling appearance on Fox news might just be enough to get his desire to occupy the Ambassador’s rather comfortable residence in Washington over the line.

What the releatives and friends of those policemen killed or injured in the January 6th riots will have made of the release of fifteen hundred demonstrators, I do not know - and is probably not repeatable in polite company - but at least one game old bird declined the `pardon’ on the grounds that she had committed a crime and was being properly punished.

There can be small doubt, however, that it was the return of The Tramp to the White House , coupled with the support and efforts of departing President Joe Biden, that concentrated minds in Tel Aviv that has precipitated at least a temporary ceasefire and the welcome release of some Israeli hostages in exchange for scores of Palestinian prisoners. Whether that ceasefire will metamorphose into a longer term and lasting peace settlement and agreement only time will tell but if I were a gambler I would not be betting my house on it.

The arrival of the Retread in the White House also coincided with, but had little to do with the spread of the wildfires on the West Coast of America, that indiscriminatedly devastated an area of Los Angeles that is close to the size of Central London and came within a stone’s throw of incinerating the famous Hollywood sign.

While one of course has sympathy for the loss of the first or second or third residences of some of the film industry`s A-list glitterati it is also worth remembering that it is the loss of the homes of their cooks, gardners and chauffeurs, and about a quarter of a million less glamorous people who are now left with no Caribbean boltholes to run to, and only temporary accommodation for the foreseeable future for whom we ought, surely, to be feeling sorrow.

That side of the story, which has long faded from the television screens and the front pages, warranted scant attention on this side of the Atlantic and very probably in the USA as well. Glamour sells. Poverty does not.

Like recent floods throughout Europe, that the LA wildfires were exacerbated by climate change would appear to be a matter of scientific fact. Climate change deniers may, as they refuse to recognise global warming and the consequent melting of the polar icecaps, decline to acknowledge links to `weather events’ that are too readily put down to `natural cycles’, but that these `events’ - fires and floods and fierce storms with consequent loss of crops, livelihoods and lives - are no longer ``natural’ has to be beyond doubt. These `events` are in large part the result of global warming caused by CO2 emissions that are man-made. Which is in a roundabout way to explain why I chose to sponsor the Climate and Nature Private Member’s Bill introduced by Dr. Roz Savage with cross-party support.

As a result of my support for the principles that underpin this bill, I have been described as “ a supporter of the seizure of private property’, `an advocate of the infringement of individual rights` and ` a Marxist’. I conceded immediately when speaking in support of the bill that – how can I put this kindly? – the measure was imperfectly drafted. It is an inevitable consequence of parliamentary life that, without the benefit of highly paid government lawyers (and even they have been known to get it horribly wrong!) backbenchers have to resort to the less-than-experienced good offices of such as, in this case , Zero Hour, for support. Inevitably the NGOs have their own axes to grind and their own supporters to appeal to and, therefore, these bills, addressing whatever subject, always leave a certain amount to be desired and sometimes tilt towards the extreme.

The potential extinction of the human race is, however, not a matter that can or should readily be ignored.

This is not hyperbole. As a child growing up in rural Dorset I enjoyed, in my grandparents’ back garden, a lilac tree that when in flower was smothered in Red Admirals, Tortoiseshells, Peacock and many other butterflies while at night the sky was full of moths. These days you would be lucky to see a Cabbage White.

My younger friends have never seen a stag beetle in the wild and few have even seen a hedgehog. The country lanes where I used to walk with my Father alongside Cerne Abbas, seeing foxes and deer, rabbits and hares, stoats and weasels, badgers and mice and, up above in the sky the birds pf prey that would feed upon them are depleted of the creatures that once occupied those fields and hedgerows. We have, we are told, lost seventy-five per cent of the wildlife that fifty years ago was commonplace.

I am blessed with five beautiful grandchildren, a further five surrogate Ukrainian grandchildren and the infant daughter of two of my dearest young friends and I would like them all to be able to enjoy at least some of the remaining natural assets that were so readily available to me. Is that too much to ask?

I have a friend who is a brilliant young artist in sculpture and glass and lighting. He has to date created, amongst other exhibits, the crystal skeletons of the Dodo and the Polar Bear. He showed me, recently, the terrifying facsimile of part of the jawbone of Tyrannosaurus Rex, a beast that he is working on and whose presence dominated the planet many millions of years ago before the dinosaurs became extinct. T-Rex is now ashes to ashes, dust to dust and only to be found in the mudflats of the Jurassic Coast and the like.

Are we not supremely arrogant if we believe other than that Homo Sapiens are the mere custodians of this earth and will, as a species, prematurely precipitate our own demise? We are, surely, headed in the same direction as Ozymandias, King of Kings – but at an accelerating pace.

In the meantime, we have a Labour Government that has promised us change and delivering it. For the worst.

Rachel From Accounts started with the raid on the Winter Fuel Allowance, beat up the farmers and small businesses with the imposition of the Family Farm Tax and a hike in National Insurance Contributions, trashed business confidence and has taken a wrecking ball to the economy in a style that makes the economics of the madhouse that was the Liz Truss budget seem like timidity and is now, following a brief foray to Davos where she was seemingly regarded as at best an eccentric aberration and at worst a laughing stock, setting the United Kingdom on a road that is so long-term as to be wholly unconvincing. More akin to the primrose path to the everlasting fiscal bonfire.

Sir Starmer’s problem is that he is saddled with his Chancellor for, seemingly, the duration. In less than six months Mr Boring-but-Clean has already lost two Ministers under unfortunate circumstances, is facing probable defeat in a likely by-election arising from an alcohol-fuelled altercation in the North, and cannot afford to cut loose from the albatross perched on the roof of Number Eleven Downing Street. Meanwhile the lady who spent her first few months in office talking down and trampling all over the green shoots of a Conservative recovery is now trying to breathe the kiss of life into an entrepreneurial parrot of her own making that is palpably gone over, decreased and passed away!

To keep myself occupied and to detract my attention from the woes of those that I am privileged to represent, I have taken a hand in the chairing of Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill (Assisted Dying) bill - that I voted against at Second Reading - but now have to remain very strictly impartial upon, and I have also been sharing the chairmanship of the Government’s Tobacco and Vaping Bill which may or may not have the desired effect of preventing young people from acquiring an addiction to nicotine while allowing adults access to a device to wean themselves off the still-more-harmful cigarettes.

In my constituency we have celebrated the Feast of the Epiphany or the Blessing of the Waters by hurling a young Greek Cypriot boy into the icy North Sea while once again failing to drown him. I have met the Speaker of the Indian House of Parliament and the Speaker of the Australian Parliament, have joined forces with the Helping Rhinos organisation in the hope that we may ourselves be extinct before we have slaughtered the last of that species , and I have mourned the passing of a much under-rated but equally highly respected oldest President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, who I had the brief privilege of working with as an election observer in Mozambique many years ago.

I have watched in shock and awe as the United States’ President-in-Waiting, Mr Elon Musk, has denounced Mr Farridge of Clacton as a man who `does not have what it takes to lead` and have seen Justin Trudeau, sometime Leader of the United State of Canada, throw in his towel in tears. Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the Far Right in France and father of his torch-bearing daughter Marine Le Pen has shuffled off this mortal coil at ninety-six.

And after fifty years on the ice the Winter Olympic ice-dance champions (Sarajevo, 1984) Torvill and Dean are hanging up their skates. The world as we knew it is indeed coming to an end.

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This column was written prior to the loss of the American Airlines plane, carrying an ice-skating squad amongst its passengers, and a Black Hawk military helicopter that collided at Reagan Airport in Washington.

Following that tragic event and a subsequent news conference addressed by Mr. Trump I issues a statement saying:

“My own thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of those whose bodies have been recovered or are still lying in the waters of the Potomac River following the crash.”

Am I alone in believing that the as yet ill-informed and partisan comments issued by the President of the United States are untimely, ill-judged and revolting? This story is not about him. It is about those who died and those who loved them deserve dignity, support and the truth – not crass political exploitation”

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Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean have issued a statement expressing their condolences for the young skaters and their families and all others who lost their lives.