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A Dismal Spectacle

23 February 20240Comments

35 years ago – on 14 February 1989 – Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie was issued. A foreign leader instructed members of his religion world-wide to murder him because he had written a book which that leader claimed insulted his religion. After the initial outrage, some Labour politicians started rowing back, claiming that the reaction of Muslims here who supported the fatwa was understandable. It was an unprincipled, craven stance influenced by a desire not to offend Labour voters. Threatening the life and safety of a British citizen could be justified, if there were votes in it.

Politicians have usually been a bit more principled – or self-interested – when it comes to their own safety. When Stephen Timms was attacked by an Al Qaeda supporter, when Jo Cox was murdered by a man with links to far-right organisations strongly influenced by Nazi ideology, when David Amess was murdered by an Islamic State sympathiser, there was no attempt to try and appease their murderers and those thinking like them. There were endless expressions of how violence must not be allowed to influence our politics or our politicians. Rightly so. When Rosie Duffield spoke of intimidation she faced, leaving her afraid to attend Labour Conference, the Commons Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, said this:

“Parliamentarians, who have been elected to speak up for their constituents, should be able to attend their own party conference without fear of harm. Too many people have been targeted for their opinion or the office they hold. In order to protect democracy, we need to ensure those participating can do so without threats of intimidation.“

Indeed. A pity he forgot this when messing around on Wednesday night with Opposition amendments. The procedural niceties are irrelevant. What matters is that he chose to change Parliamentary procedures because of worries about threats, intimidation and possible violence by people massed outside Parliament and others against MPs, mainly it seems Labour ones. Rather than stand up to this, he caved in. 

Starmer was silent about the intimidation of Rosie Duffield. Rather than condemn the intimidation his MPs have faced by those with pro-Palestinian views (death threats, damage to constituency offices, protests outside homes) he has left it to others – the Shadow Chancellor, the shadow crime prevention Minister, for instance. Starmer has limited himself to speaking about the fears for his family and the intense pressure on MPs.

There were claims that Labour had bullied the Speaker, though Starmer has now “categorically” denied this. What appears to have happened is that threats to MPs were used as emotional blackmail for political advantage, to improve his party’s standing with those making the threats. Starmer may have just wanted a motion allowing his MPs to vote with the party and their conscience. But by ignoring the threats of violence, by Hoyle admitting that these were a factor, a terrible signal has been sent out. Threats of violence work. This week, Parliament’s representatives made themselves complicit in terrorism directed at themselves, treating it as if it’s normal, as if it’s justified. There is a word for this: appeasement.

Threats of violence to obtain political change are not justified in a democracy. They should not be normal. They have been – for months now – out of cowardice, out of fear of being on the wrong side of an emotional argument over an issue about which this country can do little or nothing, out of a desire for votes. But no decent political party should want the votes of those who threaten our political representatives. It does not matter whether you are pro-Israel or anti-Zionist; it does not matter if you passionately dislike Netanyahu or think Hamas should be eliminated, no matter what; it does not matter if you simply worry about the human cost of Israel’s actions, how this will help the hostages and where this will all end; it does not matter if you don’t care about the issue at all. There has been little regard – and even less effective action – for members of the public made fearful, worried about their safety or targeted because of their religion. It should shame us as a country that in Britain in 2024 Jews should have to hide their identity in public or be told by the police to do so to avoid trouble, that they should have to pay for extra security, that there should be guards outside schools or places of worship or social centres.

What matters is that on Wednesday threats of violence were used to derail Parliament. The Labour MP, Ben Bradshaw stated the following day that MPs’ fears about violent retribution were a “perfectly legitimate” factor for the Speaker to take into account. If this really is Labour’s view, if Labour cannot see that threats and thuggery are the issue, Labour has a problem. We have a problem if Labour forms the next government.

On Thursday we learnt that Ministers have failed to take seriously advice they’ve received about tackling Islamist extremism, including clamping down on a Hamas support network in this country, thus putting the public at risk. Ministers ignoring advice and doing little about the matters they’re responsible for is hardly news. It would be a welcome surprise to learn that they have done something effective. Last week we learnt that anti-Semitic attacks in this country had risen to a 40-year high. An MP has said he won’t stand again because of threats by Islamists against him, his family and arson at his office. Even the recently elected Labour MP for Kingswood has been offered extra security because pro-Palestinian extremists abused him over his Israeli-born husband. Perhaps all these are related? Perhaps Parliament might turn its mind to these matters rather than childish arguments about procedural shenanigans over motions which will have no practical effect whatsoever? Perhaps Parliament might realise that appeasing the violent is neither an effective strategy nor a morally decent one?

This week has shown our political class at its worst. On Monday, a Business Minister whose aggrieved belligerence is only ever deployed in her defence and not for the victims of a miscarriage of justice by an organisation she is ultimately responsible for, got involved in a public spat – not just with its former Chair – but with one of the few MPs (Kevan Jones) who has been fighting hard for the subpostmasters for longer than she has been an MP. A former PM, whose only claim to fame will be her disastrous 49-day Premiership, decided to blame it on trans activists and green extremists, thus proving that life on the backbenches has not improved her grasp on reality. And the Defence Secretary has realised that this is a damp country which might explain why our missiles cannot launch from a submarine, which … er … spends its life in water. Maybe it was his idea of a joke.

It’s only Friday.

Photo by Jacob Diehl on Unsplash

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Questions The Business Select Committee Should Be Asking

18 February 20241Comment

Of the sloping-shouldered former Post Office Chairman, Henry Staunton, whose interview is the lead story in today’s Sunday Times. There is much of interest in it, but this detail stuck out:

“Early on, I was told by a fairly senior person to stall on spending on compensation and on the replacement of Horizon, and to limp, in quotation marks – I did a file note on it – limp into the election,” he said. “It was not an anti-postmaster thing, it was just straight financials.”

Something marvellously catty about the reference to a “fairly” senior person. Who’d now want to out themselves as only “fairly senior” in order to disprove this, on the face of it, damning allegation?

Worth reading the whole interview as an example of someone trying to present themselves as a heroic whistleblower, ground down by the CEO, the Business Department, UKGI, everyone who should have behaved better and then summarily sacked as a scapegoat by a Minister he had not even met. It makes one want to weep – with laughter really – when one remembers that he was a well-paid Chairman of the Post Office, not some hapless passer-by wringing his hands at the scene of an accident wondering why no-one was doing anything.

He says he was approached by headhunters to do this job. (Where do they get them from? A list on a pinboard in David Cameron’s shepherds’ hut?) Despite his claim that he heroically gave up his golf, tennis and “place in Cornwall” (the oh so predictable hobbies of the over-monied English classes) wanting to “give something back” having “just trousered all this money”, in fact he only gave two days a week to this job, even after discovering that governance was “shocking”. Not that he seems to have done much about even this, telling the Business Select Committee last June: “No Board member is going to read every page of a 200 page report.” What? Not even when the directors are legally responsible for that report’s contents? Remember that when reading his complaints about poor governance of a company he chaired.

That Committee reconvenes on 28 February. It should invite Mr Staunton to answer some questions on oath. Here are a few to start them off.

  1. Who was the “fairly senior” person who told him to stall on compensation? In which department? 
  2. When did the conversation happen? Who else was present? What else was said?
  3. Where was his file note put? Was it copied to anyone? If so, whom?
  4. What did he do in response? Did he raise it with anyone? If so, full details please.
  5. Did he raise with this “fairly senior” person the legal liability arising if someone acts as a shadow director?
  6. Did he ask to meet with the Business Secretary to discuss his concerns about compensation? Or any of the other problems he now describes?
  7. How exactly was the CEO, Nick Read, able to write a letter to the Justice Minister seeking to undermine the proposal to overturn subpostmasters’ convictions despite Staunton’s view and that of “at least half of the board” being against this. Is he saying that the CEO defied the Board?
  8. If it was UKGI which instructed Read to do this – as Staunton claims – did he or the Board consider resigning given that such behaviour would seem to undermine not just the Board (“terrible terrible governance” in Staunton’s words) but also what the Prime Minister and Justice Minister had stated on the record in Parliament? 
  9. What other evidence does he have that UKGI appears to oppose blanket exoneration of the subpostmasters?
  10. What steps did Staunton take to improve or change the compensation schemes the Post Office was managing, schemes he now describes as terribly “bureaucratic”, “pedantic”, “unhelpful” and “unsympathetic” in the year between his appointment and the TV drama. Perhaps he was obstructed at every turn. Perhaps he was not very good at his job. Which one was it? If the former, did he consider resigning? If not, why not? 
  11. What did he or Nick Read do about the investigators Read described as “the untouchables”? What was his relationship with the General Counsel, Ben Foat, to whom these “untouchable” investigators report?
  12. Who is the “Whitehall insider” the government wanted as the new senior independent director instead of the Board’s choice, the casus belli apparently for Mr Staunton’s sacking?

And finally – 

  1. What was the conduct which led to an investigation (as described in the article it seems to have been triggered by a whistleblower) which he sought to block – at least according to the Business Department?

Plenty more questions, no doubt. Not just for Staunton but Nick Read, the UKGI director, Lorna Gratton, Kevin Hollinrake, Kemi Badenoch, the General Counsel, Ben Foat and the as yet unnamed “fairly senior” civil servant. 

There is much to be enjoyed when the circular firing squad starts. It’s worth remembering that those blowing the whistle are often up to their necks in whatever wrong they are now speaking about. Speaking up is not always done for noble motives: revenging oneself, getting in early to earn some credit and diverting attention away from their own failings are pretty common motives. More than a whiff of these here.

Spare a thought for poor Kemi. Her MO on this has been to have a last minute announcement made just before some high profile appearances: an offer of £600,000 at 5 pm the day before her first appearance before the Business Select Committee and a few days before her first speech as Cabinet Minister to the Tory Conference. She was conspicuously absent from the front bench when the PM made his announcement on 10 January. Who’ll now remember that 9 February puff piece in the Times (“I’m on top of my brief. I will not be tripped up.”) with this thinly disguised attack on her department’s competence and integrity?

Photo by Monty Allen on Unsplash

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