TAKE YOUR PICK

Whichever way one looks at it, the past fortnight has not been great when it comes to highlighting the ‘moral fibre’ of our elected representatives. Across the Irish Sea in that outpost of Albion known as Ulster, DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has been forced to resign after being charged with rape and other ‘historical sex offences’, despite the fact the latter charge always sounds like something that should be levelled at a dead Viking. On the mainland, Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner has been caught in Fleet Street’s headlights due to a property she sold back in 2015; accused of not paying the correct amount of capital gains tax on the house during the sale, the question of breaking the law or submitting false information depends upon whether or not the house was her principal residence at the time; most of us have to settle for just the one, but there you go. Anyway, this old news was primarily stirred-up by former Conservative Party chairman Lord Ashcroft, who incidentally avoided paying £112m in UK tax from 2000 to 2010 on account of his non-dom status. The theory previously aired by our old friend Mudplugger that most Labour scandals stem from financial affairs whilst most Tory ones tend to concern ‘Ugandan discussions’ appears to ring true with regards to the current woes of Conservative MP and vice-chairman of the 1922 Committee, William Wragg.

Wragg is the nondescript backbencher who has recently come clean about the fact he passed on the personal phone numbers of fellow MPs to a stranger he engaged with on gay dating app Grindr, a man to whom he’d already sent what one presumes were ‘dick pics’. Displaying a staggeringly naive approach to his own vulnerability as a public servant – an approach that even Huw Edwards would probably view as a tad foolish – Wragg claims that once this shadowy individual was in possession of said compromising images he then began demanding the numbers of other MPs; fearing exposure, the MP for the Greater Manchester seat of Hazel Grove capitulated and consented to the request because he was ‘scared’. Upwards of a dozen unnamed men believed to include a Government Minister as well as the odd SPAD and a few journalists embedded in Westminster Village life were then allegedly contacted by the same man, with some apparently flattered enough by the attention to respond with a few dick pics of their own. Do these fools never learn? ‘I got chatting to a guy on an app and we exchanged pictures,’ said Wragg. ‘We were meant to meet up for drinks, then didn’t. Then he started asking for numbers of people. I was worried because he had stuff on me…I’ve hurt people by being weak. I was scared. I’m mortified. I’m so sorry that my weakness has caused other people hurt.’

It’s probably just as well Wragg is standing down as an MP at the next General Election, for his actions have served to further reinforce the ongoing image of the Tories as a political party in an irreversible state of decay. No doubt he’s already blaming his lapse of judgement on ‘mental health issues’, the chic get-out-of-jail card for absolving public figures of responsibility for their actions. Richard Tice, leader of Reform UK yesterday referred to the Tories as having ‘a bunch of sexual weirdos permeating’ in a bid to deflect negative attention away from his own party, which has dropped a dozen of its intended candidates for the Election. Their alleged crimes were not being caught with their hands in the till or their trousers round their ankles, but offensive posts on social media, apparently of a racist nature. Tice also threw in references to the Labour Party’s anti-Semitism issue as a further way of pointing out neither of the two major parties can adopt a holier-than-thou stance as they paint Reform as the latest home for all the loony right-wingers the Conservative Party is no longer welcoming to.

When asked if he felt Reform’s vetting system needed a thorough going-over, Tice emphasised the problems faced by the limited budgets of the smaller parties in comparison to the money Labour or the Tories can pour into a campaign – of which the vetting process for candidates is a casualty. ‘It’s more difficult for a small, entrepreneurial party,’ he said. ‘We haven’t got £30-40m a year like the Tory Party and the Labour Party have got to do their vetting. We operate on a fraction of that. That’s why we welcome the extra scrutiny.’ Tice declared Reform was ‘the fastest party to get rid of candidates’ in the event of inappropriate behaviour, and considering the time it took Labour to wake-up to their intended man in Rochdale, he could have a fair point – though so many candidates being given the boot doesn’t do much for Reform’s reputation. Amodio Amato had been selected for Stevenage until he claimed Sadiq Khan would be running a Muslim army should Labour win the Election; Pete Addis was chosen for South Shropshire before he was found to have made sexist and racial remarks on social media; north of the border, Iris Leask was earmarked for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine until she opined that ex-Defence Secretary Ben Wallace ‘should be left to die in Afghanistan’. Richard Tice’s response was that ‘every party has its fair share of muppets and morons.’ Quite.

Whatever its politics, Reform faces the same uphill struggle as any small party in a first-past-the-post system; not only that, but whenever any small party appealing to disillusioned voters from either Left or Right begins to gain traction, the Tories or Labour then attempt to woo such voters back by stealing some of the policies that had tempted these voters away in the first place. It’s not unlike the way in which a newly-promoted club to the Premier League takes everyone by surprise, finishes in the top half of the table and then, come the close-season, sees the big guns swoop in and scoop up the team’s best players and – in some cases – their manager. Despite being in existence since evolving from the old Brexit Party in 2020, Reform has yet to acquire a presence in Westminster and only six of its hundreds of candidates won a seat in last year’s local elections. One might say Reform – like the Brexit Party before it – is still seen by many as a single issue party; it was virtually the sole dissenting political voice during the pandemic and in some respects remains portrayed as the anti-lockdown party, despite broadening its agenda post-Covid to include opposition to Net Zero and illegal immigration – issues that have a far more negative impact on a vast swathe of the electorate than any of the major parties will acknowledge.

Perhaps Reform also suffers from the absence of arguably its greatest asset in getting its message across to the people, i.e. Nigel Farage, who remains a household name and – regardless of his Marmite qualities – a figure many will listen to when he speaks; Reform’s founder and honorary president has access to platforms no other character on the Right bereft of a seat in Parliament can boast of, yet has refused to commit to any sort of frontline role during the General Election. The Tories must be heaving a sigh of relief at this, but they’re still anxious that Reform will contribute towards the loss of Conservative-held seats, chiselling away at the Tory vote till it splits, thus potentially handing these seats to either Labour or the Lib Dems, depending on the constituency. There’s no doubt the deep discontent many voters feel about the state of the nation is not being satisfied by the major parties, so the pull of an alternative is understandable; but when the only headlines a party like Reform receives concerns candidates being ejected for racist tweets, its enemies can simply say, ‘told you so’, and many may simply write off Reform as merely another collection of ex-UKIP ‘fruitcakes’ (© David Cameron), left to reluctantly opt for the usual suspects instead. And what a morally-upstanding bunch they are.

© The Editor

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