4th March 2023
The Patriarch of Jerusalem – oiling the wheels of British aristocracy
Mendacity and infighting are never far from the surface in the Conservative Party but this week has been something of a jamboree for those taking delight in seeing the party of the British ruling class turn itself inside out.
Headlines have been dominated by the farrago of the WhatsApp messages between former Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, and his various cohorts around decision making during the Covid 19 pandemic. Hancock shared the messages, which amounted to 100,000 in total, with journalist, Isabel Oakeshott, whom he loaned a pen in order to script his memoirs, Pandemic Diaries, aimed at getting him off the hook for the thousands of unnecessary Covid deaths on his watch.
As a Daily Telegraph journalist, it is fairly safe to assume where Oakeshott’s political sympathies will lie. She was presumably chosen by Hancock as someone who would give his version of events the best spin. However, a mere two months after publication, hardly time for Hancock’s book to hit the remaindered bins, Oakeshott, who probably has not donated her fee to any NHS Strike Fund, has decided to release the messages and tell all to a national newspaper. No surprises, that would be the Daily Telegraph!
Whether Oakeshott has received a further fee for spilling the beans, and giving the Telegraph an exclusive, may come out in due course but suffice to say she is unlikely to be winning any awards for journalistic integrity.
In the scheme of things Oakeshott’s actions are mere misdemeanours compared to the crimes of Matt Hancock who, quite apart from presiding over the highest Covid death rate in Western Europe, has continued to pocket cash since he left office. For his television stint on I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here Hancock is said to have added £320,000 to his bank balance, while at the same time claiming his salary as an MP, even though he was not there to do the job! Presumably his memoirs came with a healthy advance too, so it is unlikely that Hancock will be visiting his local food bank any time soon.
Hancock has made the headlines because of his high profile role during the pandemic and the disastrous consequence of poor decision making on his watch. The fact is however, that Hancock is not an exception but the rule when it comes to money grabbing amongst Tory MPs. Boris Johnson is estimated to have made in the region of £5m since being forced from office, the latest payment being a £2.49m advance from one agency alone.
Johnson has resurfaced in the news this week as the Partygate inquiry prepares to get underway. The interim report from the House of Commons Privileges Committee has already cast doubt on Johnson’s defence, indicating that his own communications chief admitted that there was a “great gaping hole” in Johnson’s account of Partygate; that a colleague was “worried about leaks of PM having a piss-up and to be fair I don’t think it’s unwarranted”; and that there was reluctance from the government to provide the committee with unredacted evidence when Johnson was still prime minister, which held up its inquiry.
In spite of his recent earnings bonanza, the government has signed off tax payer funded legal support worth £222,000 to Johnson during the privileges committee investigation. For his part Johnson regards the committee’s report as a vindication of his position and has instead suggested that it was,
“…surreal to discover that the committee proposes to rely on evidence culled and orchestrated by Sue Gray, who has just been appointed chief of staff to the leader of the Labour Party.”
Johnson has been joined by the usual suspects in the European Research Group, Jacob Rees-Mogg et al, in condemning Gray’s original report as a left wing whitewash, given the post that she has been offered by Starmer.
The timing of Starmer’s announcement will not be helpful to the work of the privileges committee in the short term, as Johnson and his cronies will use every lever they can to cast doubt on Gray’s original report on the breeching of Covid regulations on Johnson’s watch. Whether it will be enough in itself to shift the weight of evidence against Johnson is unlikely.
The appointment of Gray is perhaps more important for what it says about Starmer’s intentions, should he be elected Prime Minister, namely that British capitalism is safe in his hands. As a career civil servant and dyed in the wool establishment figure, the appointment of Gray is Starmer saying loudly and clearly that the boat will not be rocked. Apologists for the Labour right have called the move astute, others see it as yet another sign of Starmer’s efforts to engineer a rightward shift in Labour policy.
In a further effort to normalise the absurdities of the British class system one of the lead stories on the BBC this weekend has concerned the consecration of the oil to be used in the coronation of King Charles III. The oil has been created using olives from two groves on the Mount of Olives, using a formula dating back centuries. Ruling class lackey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, enthused that,
“This demonstrates the deep historic link between the coronation, the Bible and the Holy Land. From ancient kings through to the present day, monarchs have been anointed with oil from this sacred place. As we prepare to anoint the king and the queen consort, I pray that they would be guided and strengthened by the Holy Spirit.”
That anyone in full possession of their faculties in the twenty first century would give any credence to the notion of the divine right of kings is hard to believe. That the BBC should report it as credible rather than credulous, sadly is not.
It is certainly true that the realities of the temporal world are such that what the government plans to spend on the coronation could be better spent on the wage demands of rail workers, posties, nurses, teachers and junior doctors, all desperate to make ends meet. Such are the priorities of the British ruling class. Yet another indication that they have more than outstayed their welcome.
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