NByNW Diary: Bidding Process to host EU Referendum Result "Mired in Secrecy"

10^th December

Manchester has the won the not-so-much coveted right to host the result of the EU referendum. The Electoral Commission announced the news this morning, but has attracted criticism for not holding a formal bidding process and there are even accusations of corruption.

No sooner had the EC announced the decision, then Cornwall announced that they were launching a probe into possible corruption, using a legal team drawn from their large French population.

“It is highly suspicious,” said the Mayor of Truro, who had led their David-versus-Goliath bid to host the result. “There’s been no transparency in this. What has Manchester got that Truro hasn’t?”

The Electoral Commission says that the decision was made after much consideration and has nothing to do with throwing yet another bone to the publicity machine behind the idea of a Northern Powerhouse.

The decision has drawn much interest from international figures. Seb Coe said that he was sure that the bids were considered properly, although there doesn’t seem to be much evidence supporting that view.

International expert on secretive bidding processes Sepp Blatter said “The Electoral Commission was in a battle between the devil and the angels, and I have no doubt that the authorities have sided with the angels. In this case, the angels of Manchester. If anything, their bidding process has not been secretive enough.”

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The North by North Westminster Diary: Cameron's Renegotiation Dragged from Obscurity to Vagueness

Tuesday 10^th November

The EU renegotiation has hitherto been something akin to David Cameron’s imaginary friend. But no longer, for today it came crashing into a nascent reality with the Prime Minister’s letter on the subject to the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk.

It opens with: “Thank you for inviting me to write setting out the areas where I am seeking reforms to address the concerns of the British people over our membership of the European Union.”

This broadly translates as: “You bastard. I was trying to keep this as vague as possible.”

He goes to highlight some key, vital and, most importantly of all, broadly achievable areas of reform, and it is that last point that has so upset the Tory Eurosceptics.

They are led by Sir William Cash – a man who appears to think that satisfaction is for lesser beings and that having something to complain about is a basic human right.

He doesn’t think that Cameron has gone anywhere near far enough, and he basically wanted half-a-century and more’s worth of European treaties to be torn up because one little island has one big party which can’t pull itself together.

Had he written the letter it would have gone broadly like this:

“What ho, foreigner!

May I just remind you of the following:

Agincourt, Trafalgar, Waterloo, Two World Wars, One World Cup.

So just piss off and leave us with our cod and stop giving it to bloody Spaniards.

Yours disgruntledly,

Bill”

It’s not that the Eurosecptics don’t have a point. It’s just that when they do, nobody cares.

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The North by North Westminster Diary: Cameron's Syria Plan Bombs

Tuesday 3^rd November

Bit of a mishmash today.

Firstly, David Cameron has received a bit of a setback to his plan to bomb Syria. The Foreign Affairs Select Committee has released a report on the issue which has come up with the controversial position that if you are going to drop explosives onto a foreign country then you really should know what your objective actually is. Bomber Harris would be turning in his grave.

Furthermore, the Committee raises questions about the legality of any military involvement. So the plans are possibly illegal and probably going to make things worse than: a combination which is known in Committee circles as “the Iraq diagnosis.”

Secondly, wounded-weasel and stunt double for an Imperial officer in Star Wars, George Osborne, has been in Germany doing some light-diplomacy and going out for an Italian. He’s so continental. We still have no idea which way he’s going to campaign in the EU referendum. If only there was some kind of clue.

Finally, there is the news that Jeremy Corbyn will not be addressing the CBI, thereby missing a chance to make his case to business leaders. Presumably that’s due to one of those prior commitments he so often has. A Republican rally perhaps? Or maybe the Stop the War coalition is having a smoothie night to celebrate the Foreign Affairs Select Committee’s report?

In fairness, Cameron doesn’t address the TUC Conference, but that’s probably for the best. Let me put it this way: you can’t imagine Corbyn getting literally lynched at the CBI, whereas the PM would probably be turned into porcine feed so that a pig might actually enjoy having bits of Cameron put into its mouth.

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The North by North Westminster Diary: If you U-turn when you're not going anywhere, does it make any difference?

Monday 12^th October

The campaign to stay in the EU launches today as Britain Stronger in Europe, led by Lord Rose, the former boss of M&S. It is packed with leading lights from the worlds of business (Lord Rose), politics (err… Caroline Lucas) and former presenters of T4 (June Sarpong). In fairness, all of them are passionate and effective campaigners and, no doubt, their numbers will be added to.

However, they face accusations that they are using fear to ward off people from changing the status quo. These accusations are dismissed, before the campaign describes leaving the EU as a “leap in the dark”.

Clearly, Lord Rose has enjoyed many relaxing, fearless leaps into the dark. I tend to associate them with falls, bruises and getting into regrettable situations in nightclubs.

Tuesday 13^th October

It was only a matter of time.

The leadership of the Labour party was always on a collision course with the parliamentary party, and at last night’s meeting of the PLP, it all kicked off. John McDonnell told MPs that he has u-turned on the Fiscal Charter; George Osborne’s attempt to bind governments into running a budget surplus.

Labour MPs are disbelieving, not because they necessarily dislike this stance, but rather because they cannot believe they’ve got to this point in the first place. It looks inept and this flip-flopping has sparked accusations of incompetence. Ben Bradshaw MP described it as a “total fucking shambles”.

The weird thing is that many backbench MPs are considering defying the party whip, despite the fact that they describe the charter as “non-credible” and “not a good idea”. It seems that some will abstain just to register discontent with the leadership.

It appears that the Labour Whips’ job is now to take a near-daily no confidence motion on Jeremy Corbyn.

Wednesday 14^th October

Rifts in the Labour Party are as obvious as the Grand Canyon, but those in the Conservative Party are a little more like the San Andreas Fault: very dangerous but seemingly ignored.

Today, there’s news that the Cabinet is split over the scrapping of a controversial £5.9 million contract to train Saudi prison officers. Michael Gove was against it. Philip Hammond was for it. As was Theresa May, whose interest in the Saudi penal system is concerning, given her recent hardline views on other issues.

With a high-profile human rights case in process, it appears that the PM has decided that this deal doesn’t look good. However, two similar contracts with a system which regularly lops people’s hands off are A-OK apparently, and so the government is maintaining those.

Supporters of the deal say engagement with such regimes is a way of achieving change, whilst disengagement achieves nothing. Perhaps, but it does seem curious that the theory of engagement meets with such absolute resistance from Corbynites. After all, what will his Middle Eastern “friends” think of that position?

Thursday 15^th October

Unsurprisingly, George Osborne passed his Fiscal Charter last night. The Commons debate was largely for show, but John McDonnell still managed to use it to make his face even redder than it was earlier in the week.

He did so by acknowledging that his U-turn had been “embarrassing”. Unfortunately, a Tory wag made a funny just before McDonnell said the word “embarrassing”, causing Conservatives to explode into hysterics. So, whilst waiting for the noise to die down, the Shadow Chancellor ended up mindlessly repeating the word “embarrassing” four times, on top of his initial use of the word “embarrassing”.

Which was embarrassing.

Friday 16^th October

The Fiscal Charter Fallout continues. The 21 Labour abstainers have been inundated with abusive e-mails from Corbyn supporters, demanding resignations and calling them “Tory lite” and a “waste of a space”. All for abstaining on a vote that the Labour leadership didn’t have a coherent position on. So much for the kinder politics.

Meanwhile, The Daily Telegraph has an anonymous quote from a Shadow Minister who said “Jeremy Corbyn has got no control over his party... It is only a matter of time before there's a resignation.” So much for party loyalty.

Infighting, division and accusations of incompetence and betrayal are serious – symptomatic of ineffective opposition, which was brought into sharp focus by the appearance of Michelle Dorrell on Question Time. She broke down whilst describing her forthcoming hardship in the face of the tax credit cuts, and the betrayal she feels given that she voted Tory in May, when they promised that child tax credit would not be cut.

Mr McDonnell said this week that he had not changed policy, but parliamentary tactics. Funny, because the policy changed, but the parliamentary tactics remained ineffective. Had he always avoided Osborne’s crude political trap, by abstaining from a vote on the stunt and asking how it helps people who are about to be vastly worse off, then this diary would have been very different this week, and the narrative would have been so too. 

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The North by North Westminster Diary: Tony Cameron Begins "New Tory" Project

Monday 5^th October

The Conservative Conference is under way in Manchester, and today it is the opportunity of real, living ventriloquist doll George Osborne to make his case to the nation. Painting a picture of the steady construction of a new Britain, he frequently repeated “We are the builders”. And who can deny that the Tories are? I mean, look at all the spare houses they’ve built.

Controversies remain over the changes to tax credits though. Jeremy Hunt lurches to George’s defence by saying that the new policies will encourage Britons to work hard “like the Chinese”. It is claimed that he has been wilfully misquoted, but he definitely drew the comparison. Pity the little children of the Hunt household, for theirs is a childhood of early starts, late finishes and homemade Nike trainers.

Tuesday 6^th October

This morning, the Prime Minister is spending time insisting that his “great team” are focussed on the job of governing, and not on who’s going to succeed him at the end of the Parliament. Though, with key members of his “great team” working together to suggest that they would be a great successor, currently DC is to team management what Stuart Lancaster is to team management.

Today, Theresa May is trying to get some momentum behind her in the party by performing her new Concerto for Dog-Whistles. In her Conference speech, the Home Secretary delivers a staggering rejection of the worth of immigration which flies in the face of her department’s own figures, dodging the complexities of the issue which it is her job to master. Oh, and she crowbars in a disparaging remark about Europe as well. Just to get some hard right juices really flowing.

Wednesday 7^th October

And so we come to David Cameron’s conference speech. It begins as one might expect with triumphalism and attacks on Labour, particularly their “security-threatening, terrorist sympathising. Britain-hating,” oft-misquoted, cycling, gardening, seems quite nice on the whole, leader.

Labour say this attack is a sign that Cameron is “rattled”. Which seems odd because he then calmly proceeded to move the Conservative Party to Blairite ground. Not just a little bit. Almost utterly.

This is "New Tory". The speech contained numerous liberal passages, delivered with apparent conviction, on issues such as discrimination, equality and prisons. Cameron even made proud mention of ministers who are the children of immigrants. To which Theresa May applauded, apparently with no sense of irony

This was the most lefty speech the Tory Conference had heard for… well, possibly ever. They applauded it several times, though there was no mention of the tax credit cuts (how’s that working for your “party that helps the poor”), and there was no mention of the environment, but I understand that that’s because those huskies got a restraining order.

Centre-left commentators on Twitter were in a full-blown identity crisis, whilst Corbynistas expressed outrage and heavy scepticism, arguing that his sweet words were betrayed by his harsh reality.

Cameron won’t mind though. His speech was very well-received. Even by Tony Blair, who sent him a short text simply saying: “You have done well, my apprentice.”

Thursday 8th October

One thing we can be sure of in this strange new age is that Jeremy Corbyn hates Britain. The Prime Minister told me so.

But, perhaps I was misinformed. So, I turn to the right-wing press, and I am told that he thinks he’s better than the Queen. The traitor.

He’s skipping today’s Privy Council meeting, where he would have to meet HMQ in what is largely a formality, because he has “prior commitments”. The Britain-despising bastard.

He’s not like David Cameron. When he became leader, he took three months to go to a PC meeting. Whereas Corbyn still hasn’t knelt before the hereditary Head of State, and he has been in the job for… less than a month.

Oh.

It occurs to me that…

perhaps…

this story is bollocks.

Friday 9th October

The Leave the EU camp, which Nigel Farage declared to be unified two weeks ago, has achieved ever closer unity with the creation of yet another rivalling campaign seeking the designation of official campaign to leave.

This is “Vote Leave”, a cross-party campaign with the support of, amongst others, UKIP’s only MP Douglas Carswell, because his party is so unified. They have millionaire donors, and a flashy ad where an economic case is made, but the key image is the spectre of St Thomas’ Hospital evaporating into the sky if we stay in. Which seems like an extravagant policy even for Brussels.

Surely we’re able to agree that forced vaporisation of healthcare facilities must be stopped?

Well, we are, but I’m not sure that the disparate Leave camps can. They appear to hate the European Union so much that they have taken against all forms of unity in general.

A new podcast is to be released on Tuesday.

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