Category Archives: In the News

A Note on the Leadership Race

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As Boris Johnson’s premiership draws to an undignified conclusion, a new leader of the Conservative & Unionist Party is to be elected for the third time in just over six years.

When last that happened, Professor Norton blogged about about four different types of Prime Ministers: Innovators who want to implement specific and ambitious goals of their own design (e.g. Thatcher), reformers who want to implement the goals of the party overall (Attlee), egoists who are in it for their own fame (Eden, Wilson, Johnson) and balancers who are concerned with keeping the peace between rival factions (Macmillan, May). He has not claimed these to be definitive or exclusive, but merely the labels he finds most useful. Recently he has revisited the idea.

In my view the roles of innovator and reformer are a little difficult to distinguish, as political ideas are often credited to the prime minister who enacted them even when their invention was owed to another (e.g. much of Thatcherite thinking was actually the product of Sir Keith Joseph). It might be better to merge them into one category of ideologue.That of balancer more obviously stands apart as someone less ambitious about specific goals and more concerned about overall stability. Egoist, of course, is something that few politicians would admit of themselves and which often comes across as a slur (not that it is untrue).

At present the nomination window has yet to formally open let alone close, so the field is still prone to change, but let us take a look at those declaring so far:

  • Kemi Badenoch (Saffron Walden), lately a junior local government minister
  • Suella Braverman (Fareham), current Attorney General
  • Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey), current health committee chair
  • Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove), lately health secretary
  • Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North), a junior trade minister
  • Grant Shapps (Welwyn Hatfield), current transport secretary
  • Rishi Sunak (Richmond Yorks), lately Chancellor of the Exchequer
  • Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk), current foreign secretary
  • Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge & Malling), current foreign affairs committee chair
  • Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon), current Chancellor of the Exchequer

At present Sunak and Truss are perceived as most likely to make the final ballot. Sunak seems to be positioning himself as a balancer. He wants to be perceived as a safe pair of hands and broadly popular among the public. Truss is going more for the ideologue side, particularly those who had favoured a harder departure from the European Union. Both are obviously egoists at heart, given that both appear to have registered their campaign websites some time before there was any hint of Johnson’s resignation. Concerns have long been raised about Truss spending government money on her own publicity, while Sunak seems to have hired a social media specialist to improve his personal brand.

Among the other candidates, Mordaunt and Tugendhat might be considered together. Their support (and that for defence secretary Ben Wallace, who was the front-runner before he ruled himself out) seems to come from the same source – a desire to clean up the party’s image and get politics back to normal. The quest for them is less about any specific policy goals and more about cleaning up the party’s image. They are seen to have demonstrated competence in their roles so far (a rare treat in modern politics) and avoided the scandals plaguing those at the top. Their military backgrounds are likely a large part of their appeal.

Javid and Hunt are somewhere in between. Hunt was the runner up in 2019 and has stayed out of Johnson’s government, so is a champion for the opposing faction (especially Remainers). Javid is more closely associated with Johnson but not seen as a lackey to the extent that Sunak or Truss are. Both are well-established within the parliamentary party so probably seek the same safe-hands image, as well as leaning on their reputations as businessmen.

Badenoch and Braverman both have fairly low national profiles which they are probably hoping to raise. They are unlikely to win but may be securing higher offers in the new cabinet or the next leadership election, whenever that may be. The former is well regarded for her chamber and studio performance, and promoted as a competent officeholder, whereas the latter seems to be favoured more as a stalking horse for an economic sect of the party.

That leaves Shapps and Zahawi, whose analysis must be very carefully phrased. Like Hunt and Javid they both have business backgrounds, but these may prove more a hindrance than a help. Shapps has several times attracted controversey over the conduct of his companies as well as denial of operating them under pseudonyms while serving in the Commons. In late 2015 he had to resign from the government due to alleged negligence in handling bullying claims within the party. He’s even been caught editing his own Wikipedia page to remove inconvenient details. Zahawi is distrusted by some in the party for having accepted a great office of state from Boris Johnson immediately before demanding he step down. There have also been numerous concerns raised about his private business interests, and flags raised by HMRC over his tax affairs.

Without commenting on the veracity of these particular claims, it raises the prospect of another category of leader – the featherer. Like egoists, no candidate would outright admit to being one, but unlike them the goal is less to acquire personal fame and more to protect one’s personal interests – or those of a different person supporting them. This would be hard to use in an academic textbook though, since such nest-feathering typically does not become known until many years after the accession has taken place.

UPDATE (12th July)

Shapps and Javid have withdrawn, Rehman Chisti dipped his toe but shortly withdrew again. Badenoch, Braverman, Hunt, Mordaunt, Sunak, Truss, Tugendhat and Zahawi have qualified for the first round.

York and Swinfen

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Late last night Professor Norton blogged about the decease of his noble friend Roger Swinfen Eady, 3rd Baron Swinfen. The photograph he used in his post was a screenshot of him in the upper chamber on 1st February 2018, taken from parliamentlive.tv, and displayed on his Wikipedia page. I know because I put it there.

Swinfen was not photographed for an official parliamentary portrait, nor in any other setting that resulted in an image released with a Wiki-compatible licence, so I had to resort to a Fair Use screenshot, as with so many other deceased parliamentarians, in order to illustrate his page. Thankfully the fact that both houses (and indeed the devolved legislatures) have recently gotten into the habit of publishing high-quality portraits under CC-BY-3.0 or similar means that such a trick will likely be needed less often in the future.

Of course, I also illustrated his coat of arms a year ago, and being the copyright owner for that graphic I released it under the same.

Last month Norton blogged on a different topic – the repeated floating by the government of plans to move the House of Lords to York. Not, to be clear, moving Parliament as a whole along with the royal households, the senior courts and the departmental headquarters of the executive, but just moving the upper house while leaving everything else in London. On Thursday he secured a lengthy debate in the chamber on that topic. The peers who spoke were unanimous in their savaging of their proposal. Many of the issues I commented on Norton’s post regarding the practical absurdities of a separation and the apparent powerlessness of ministers in the upper house to influence their Commons colleagues were repeated by members in their speeches. My favourite contribution was by the Lord Addington: Michael Gove’s comment was the sort that usually comes up halfway through the third round in a pub, that should be forgotten by the end of the fourth, and certainly not remembered the next morning.

The Deep Breath Before The Plunge

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File:2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine animated.gif

Almost two years ago, it was becoming clear in Britain and most other countries that the coronavirus was a global problem and not merely a regional one. There were cases identified in the UK in January 2020, through February its news coverage slowly outgrew that of Brexit, with stories of panic buying and rising case rates, but much of ordinary life went on. By mid-March the crisis had become unavoidable – the government was giving daily press conferences and many public places (including universities) were shutting down. Hand sanitiser dispensers and social distance signs popped up all over. Then, on 23rd, the entire country went into the first lockdown. The Britain at the end of that month felt like a wholly different world from what it had been at the beginning. For other countries the exact dates vary but the overall phenomenon is very much the same. In retrospect, there was something particularly surreal about the week of 17th-23rd, where for many it may have felt like an unplanned holiday, the full weight of the disaster looming but having yet to hit.

Now, after twenty-three months of on-and-off disease control, much of the developed world is transitioning from “pandemic” to “endemic” and returning to something like normality. In Scotland and Wales, all remaining COVID-induced restrictions are set to be lifted by the end of next month. In Northern Ireland they were lifted on 15th of this one. In England they went on Thursday. By superb coincidence, that was the same day the Vladimir Putin launched a full-on invasion of Ukraine.

Compared to the virus, this is neither as surprising nor as sudden – Russia has been in a state of war with its western neighbour for just over eight years, and diplomatic relations with other countries have been tense throughout that time, including many accusations of election meddling, political bribery and even assassination. Over the last few months the pressure could be seen rising. It was generally understood that war would properly break out at some point, but not exactly when. I remember Lucy Worsley’s Empire of the Tsars airing in early 2016, with quite a few online quips that the BBC wanted to get the filming done quickly in case war was imminent. Now, at the time of typing, it looks as if momentum has gathered – countries are, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, freezing (soon it could even be seizing) the financial assets of Russian businessmen and officials, as well as banning such people from their airspace. Sporting organisations look to ban Russia from their games. Britain is even sending troops to Eastern Europe. Other countries are doing likewise, or at least supplying equipment to the Ukranians themselves.

All that being said, we are not yet actually at war. British and Russian embassies to each other remain open, as do those in most other countries. It remains to be seen how long that lasts. The situation of the tens of thousands of Russian people living in Britain is perilous, as is that of Russian businesses trading here, or vice versa. This week’s invasion has been dubbed the largest conventional warfare operation in Europe since World War 2, and cries of World War 3 are widespread – and they are not meant jokingly this time. In the books that my late grandmother bought for me about the first two, it was mentioned that before the United States’s involvement, British and German ambassadors in Washington DC were competing with each other for American military contracts, and that private businesses within the allied and axis territories continued trading with each other (including weapons) right up until the declarations of war took effect. It will be interesting to see how much of that is repeated with Russia Today.

Speaking of Russia Today, RT continues to broadcast in this country. Suffice to say, its coverage of the invasion differs sharply from that of most other networks. The channel has been under review by Ofcom, and the leaders of the Labour and Scottish National parties have called for its termination. This has already been done in Poland and Germany, though the latter’s own public broadcasting service was reciprocally banned in Russia and there are fears that the BBC would suffer the same fate. I discovered RT in late 2012, at the same time as I was covering the Soviet Union for GCSE history. I appreciated the level of attention it gave to topics other channels thought less important, such as SOPA/PIPA/CISPA/ACTA and the Snowden revelations, as well as its documentaries on a variety of topics. If nothing else, it was good for checking the aspect ratio settings on one’s television, being for the time one of very few networks still airing in 4:3. All that being said, as a state-controlled news outlet it was never entirely trustworthy, and one could always sense that it was going out of its way to depict western democracies – and indeed “The West” as a concept – in the worst possible light and to encourage any kind of crankery that would undermine Russia’s strategic rivals.

As many are now pointing out, the true strength of Russian propaganda is online rather than on television, and that will be much trickier to sort out. The powers, rights and obligations of the large social media sites to intervene on political matters has long been controversial, as have measures to restrict the digital activity of Russia in particular. If the situation continues to escalate we may well see YouTube channels and Twitter accounts being suspended en-masse, as well as purges of suspicious users from message boards. As far as the pandemic comparison goes, we must currently be at least at the second or third week of March. I dread to think what the fourth looks like.

OTHER ANALYSES

  • Putin’s Power and Western Impotence by David Starkey. He says that Putin seeks to revive Tsarism not Stalinism, and that he understands that all authority derives from force whereas Western nations have forgotten this. Starkey condemns Angela Merkel for shutting down Germany’s nuclear plants in favour of Russian gas, as well as all European nations for letting their militaries wither. This being Starkey, he also takes potshots at 16-year-old girls.

UPDATE (2nd March)

RT’s television channel is off air and YouTube, along with other platforms, has hidden all of its videos.

Another Day, Another Death

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James Brokenshire was not the most high-profile of British politicians. Overall he spent sixteen years in the House of Commons, including seven years as a junior minister in a senior department and three as the senior minister in two junior departments, twice having to resign from the government due to the lung cancer which ultimately ended his life earlier this month. Even so, the fact that he had been a cabinet minister, the relatively low age at which he passed and the level of public fear surrounding cancer, one would reasonably have thought it unlikely that his demise could be outdone in the eleven days before the house was to meet again. Then, to the shock of the nation and world, Sir David Amess was stabbed to death. MPs were already due to return from the conference recess today, but scheduled business in both chambers was abandoned in favour of tributes to Amess, with a service following in St Margaret’s Church. Brokenshire’s tributes have been postponed to Wednesday.

Something similar happened during the Easter recess – the death of Dame Cheryl Gillan on 4th April and of the Baroness Williams of Crosby* on 11th would have been the principal concern of their respective houses, had not the Duke of Edinburgh died on 9th. In that instance it was the social and constitutional rank of the departed that determined priority of mourning rather than the manner of death.

The most obvious comparison, made frequently by those who have spoken publicly in the last few days, is to the murder of Jo Cox a week before the EU referendum. There has even been a move to design a shield of arms for Sir David and place it on the chamber wall next to hers. Of course, the two victims had very different profiles – Cox was a Labour woman who supported remaining in the EU, Amess a Conservative man who favoured leaving. This is reflected in the different profiles of their killers – Thomas Mair was a white supremacist with links to the English Defence League, Ali Hari Ali is said to be of Somalian heritage and a suspected Islamist.**

Also distinguishing the two victims is the time they had spent in politics. As I mentioned before, Jo Cox was not well-known to the general public, having only begun her tenure in the House of Commons thirteen months prior. She could well have joined the shadow cabinet in the mass reshuffle later that month, and by this point she might even have been a contender for the party leadership, but back then she was a much a footnote as most of the other MPs from the 2015 intake. Part of what made her death so tragic was precisely that she died so young and so early in her political career, with so much potential thereby wasted. Amess, by contrast, had been an MP for almost long as the average Brit has been alive. Though never a minister, he was a creature of the house, serving on many important if low-profile committees as well as being involved in numerous campaigns and publications. Most in the political sphere knew his reputation, in contrast to Cox who was something of a cipher.

More broadly, the country must acknowledge the worrying frequency with which politicians and their entourages have been attacked (whether or not the attack succeeded in killing the victim) in recent decades, and consider how this can be rectified, both in terms of personal security to defend from those with evil motivations, and in the public attitude to politics that would encourage such evil in the first place. As the pandemic has shown this year and last, the kind of openness and accessibility required of parliamentarians can also be very dangerous to them in person, yet to abandon it can be very damaging to democracy as a whole.

EXTERNAL LINKS

*The speaker mentioned on 13th April that four other former MPs had died during the recess – Peter Ainsworth, Ian Gibson, Robert Howarth, Paul Marland.

**Almost immediately upon the announcement of the attack and the description of the attacker as a “British national” there were people denouncing immigration policy and calling for border closure.

To Be Then Here Holden

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Dissolution day has arrived for the Welsh Parliament with just a week to go before the election. The documentation I found on the matter did not specify a precise time, so my default assumption was that it took place at midnight. Since the Senedd only has sixty members it took under an hour to delete the “MS” post-nominals from all of their pages. For good measure I also created a box that could be slapped on the top of each article removing any doubt over the nature of events. I hope that in time the politically-oriented communities of Wikipedians will adopt something similar for all elections of this kind (preferably with a dedicated bot) as I think it is far more efficient than laboriously removing each and every reference to incumbency from each and every page. Also today the UK Parliament would be closing down, though not for an election.

Having been in session since 17th December 2019, Parliament was prorogued this afternoon, to re-open on Tuesday 11th May. As expected, the ceremony was much modified to meet the requirements of social distancing. The Lords Newby (Liberal Democrat) and Judge (Crossbench) were still named in the letters patent – along with Welby and Buckland, of course – but it was only Fowler, Evans and Smith who physically took part. Unlike in the abortive attempt of September 2019 the three commissioners were not huddled together but spaced apart, and it is clear now that the temporary bench between the woolsack and the throne is in fact three smaller stools which, until this occasion, were always pushed together. Black Rod summoned the Commons as before (reciting her command in a robotic fashion that suggested some very determined memorisation), but instead of walking in two columns with government members adjacent to their shadows the MPs had to shuffle awkwardly in single file. Upon reaching the Lords’ bar, Mr Speaker and Black Rod stood at the far ends of the panel behind the crossbench with the Clerk of the House of Commons in the middle some way back, while the Serjeant-at-Arms did not appear to be there at all. The nodding and doffing between Commons and Commission only occurred once each on entry and departure instead of the usual three times. A doorkeeper could be seen in the archway directing MPs to stand on the steps either side as they came in. The Reading Clerk (Jake Vaughan) read the patent as before, but for a while I wondered where the other two clerks were – given that since the start of the pandemic there has only been one chair at the table instead of three. For a moment I feared that Vaughan was going to have to do both parts of the Royal Assent maneuver himself – perhaps darting either side of the table – or that another clerk would be participating virtually. Instead the Clerk of the Parliaments (Simon Burton) and the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery (Antonia Romeo) strode into the chamber from either side behind the commissioners, did their part as usual, then swiftly exited the same way.

When Her Majesty’s Most Gracious Speech had been read aloud and the MPs dismissed, Fowler stood up and stepped ahead of the woolsack while Evans and Smith sidled out to his right – in contrast to the normal procedure in which Evans would have moved first and thus brushed in front of him – then went out of the chamber behind the mace-bearer as normal. As this was to be his last sitting day as Lord Speaker I had wondered if there would be any cheering – let alone applause or other gesture of celebration – from the peers spectating, but instead the procession was as solemn as any. Upon returning to their own chamber MPs again had to arrange themselves in a distanced fashion while Sir Lindsay recited the list of acts granted assent. Handshaking was against regulations, so members merely bumped elbows or exchanged nods with the speaker either side of the perspex screen as they departed past his chair.

The timetable published some weeks back for the election of a new lord speaker would have had the winner (The Lord McFall of Alcluith, Senior Deputy Speaker since 2016) assuming office this Saturday and presiding for the first time next Tuesday, but the government’s decision to seek prorogation this week instead of next means that the new speaker’s debut will in fact be at the state opening. Exactly what role he will play there is still uncertain, for little more information has been revealed about the changes that ceremony will undergo to remain COVID-compliant.

What I often notice about royal commissions in Parliament is that the cameras and microphones are left running even when nothing is formally happening. In the upper chamber I heard Lady Smith converse with the backbenchers. I couldn’t make out the whole conversation

Smith: If you make me laugh you’ll be in trouble.

Unknown: The ~~~~* know how you feel.

Smith: Every sympathy.

Unknown: It’s nice to have some other people dressed.

Smith: You haven’t got to wear a hat though, have you?

Unknown: Well they do – he has a mitre!

Smith: I think it would fit better now I’ve got so much hair.

Unknown: The first law of politics is Don’t Wear A Funny Hat.

Smith: Don’t wear a subtle one either.

Unknown: As long as you don’t break into song.

Smith: My mates from school are all watching.

Unknown: Is the Lord Speaker allowed to keep his?

Smith: I’d hate to see what they’re saying on WhatsApp at the moment.

The rest of the conversation was insufficiently intelligible to transcribe, but I think one of the unknowns joked about Smith having her hair cut around the hat and somehow being electrocuted.

Also emerging today was the last of the Lord Speaker’s lectures from Fowler’s tenure, involving the Lords Mandelson and Clarke of Nottingham. For some reason it is unlisted.

EXTERNAL LINKS

*It sounded like “conventioners” or “adventurers” but in context it clearly referred to the bishops, and indeed Archbishop Welby was probably one of those replying.

And Ever Shall Be

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It was always difficult to work out the exact year in which a given episode of Victoria was taking place, given the series’ sloppiness with chronology. Series 2 ended with “Luxury & Conscience” in which Sir Robert Peel resigns as prime minister following the murder of his personal secretary Edward Drummond – events which actually took place three years apart. Series 3 picks up with “Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears the Crown”, which covers the revolutions of 1848 and features Lord John Russell in charge. Dialogue indicates that the return of the Whigs to government is a recent development. In between these installments is the 2017 Christmas special “Comfort & Joy”, set in 1846 and showing, among other things, the adoption of Sarah Forbes Bonetta (which happened in 1850). The curious thing about the Christmas special is the absence of the political side of things. In real life Russell’s ministry had already been in place for six months but, in the series’ uncertain timeline, the political situation is simply ignored. This is almost certainly deliberate, as the intention is for the holiday special to be a purely family affair. Plus, with more than a year’s gap between the series it’s entirely possible that the later story arcs hadn’t yet been planned out, nor the relevant characters cast.

Flash forward to 2021: The Duke of Edinburgh had wished for a low-key funeral (well, by royal standards at any rate), and the pandemic meant that something on the scale of the Queen Mother’s funeral in 2002 or even Lady Thatcher’s in 2013 would not be possible. Instead Philip’s coffin was driven a short distance within the bounds of Windsor Castle and then lowered into the vault. Hundreds of soldiers were still present outside, but COVID regulations forbade more than thirty attendees. Ordinarily it would be expected that prime ministers and other senior officials would attend, but Boris Johnson (and, presumably, any others concerned) relinquished his place to make room for more of the deceased’s family. The resulting guest list included eighteen descendants of King George V, eight spouses thereof, three other descendants of Queen Victoria and one spouse thereof. I had wondered if the family or the press would have sought to orchestrate a photograph of Prince George of Cambridge saluting the coffin à la John Kennedy, but it was decided that the great-grandchildren were too young to be involved.

While the masks and social distancing ought to be obvious giveaways, I actually found that the reduced attendance gave the ceremony a strangely timeless quality – it was effectively a bottle show. Other than Mssrs Mozzia and Brooksbank all the people there were the same people one would have expected to see there at had this happened at any point in the last ten years – admittedly Viscount Severn and Lady Louise would have been smaller. Justin Welby might be considered a semi-political figure and he took office in 2013, but as St George’s Chapel is a royal peculiar he played a minor role compared to David Conner, who has been Dean since 1998. Thomas Woodcock as Garter King of Arms could also be considered vaguely political given his role introducing new members of the House of Lords, with that office the public tend to remember the uniform rather than the face. The sounds of the past week, too, were those you’d expect to hear: steady footsteps, military orders, cannon blasts, church bells, and, from the studio, the interminable wittering of Gyles Brandreth. Now the burbling of a Land Rover TD5 has been added to the mix. Even that adds to the timeless effect, since the Defender was in production for a third of a century and without a number plate even I – a subscriber to Land Rover Enthusiast for a few years – could not guess at a glance the decade in which this one was constructed.

Those who have studied British political history know that long ago the House of Commons met in St Stephen’s Chapel, with the Speaker’s chair on the altar steps and the members facing each other in the choir stalls – an arrangement which has been maintained in subsequent legislative chambers in Britain and around the world. As a consequence today’s proceedings – with only a few dozen people carefully spaced apart – resembled a session of the hybrid house, or perhaps even the failed 1am prorogation in 2019. Hopefully on this occasion the ceremony won’t have to be repeated a month later.

Having already done a piece about television scheduling in light of COVID, it would be pertinent to review it in relation to the royal death. Of course major newspapers and broadcasters have documentaries and obituaries prepared years in advance of the event – not just for the Duke of Edinburgh but for a wide range of prominent public figures. Eye 1545 page 18 notes how, in the build up to his centenary on 10th June, contributors often had to do each interview twice – the first speaking in present tense wearing light suits, the second in past tense wearing black ones. It was also noted that, in addition to different networks’ documentaries often – and unavoidably – using the same stock footage and delivering the same story as each other, there were some instances of companies recycling interview footage from their own documentaries in 2011 or even 2007, with talking heads who nowadays are visibly much older or even who themselves have died in the intervening years.

On other occasions this temporal tangle would be cause for disdain, but to commemorate a man who has been “a constant” for longer than most of the world can remember, somehow it feels oddly appropriate.

UPDATE (20th April)

The video I originally embedded (from the firm’s own YouTube channel) has now been set to private. The BBC’s has also disappeared. I have replaced it with the Teletrece version.

UPDATE (1st May)

That one has gone as well. I’m now using the one from 6abc Philadelphia.

The Bus Law of By-Elections

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Portraits by Richard Townshend, 12th January 2020 (CC-BY-3.0)

It has been nearly two years since the last by-election to the UK House of Commons – in Brecon & Radfordshire, where Jane Dodds unseated Chris Davies. This is said to be the longest gap since the end of World War Two, though I suspect you could look a lot further back than that and not find one. It is quite remarkable that over the course of 2020 no MPs died despite several testing positive and one having to be put on a ventilator.*

Things got moving again on 16th March when Mike Hill, facing an employment tribunal, took the Chiltern Hundreds. A by-election for his constituency of Hartlepool is scheduled to take place on 6th May, alongside the many local elections across the country. Already eleven candidates have been put forward. The list is rather fascinating in that three former Labour MPs will be competing against each other for different parties: Paul Williams (Stockton South 2017-19) is still fighting for the red rose but Hilton Dawson (Lancaster & Wyre 1997-2005) is now secretary of the North East Party which seeks a devolved parliament for the region similar to those in Scotland and Wales and Thelma Walker (Colne Valley, 2017-19) has defected to the Northern Independence Party which seeks to revive the ancient kingdom of Northumbria as a democratic socialist republic. The Conservative candidate Jill Mortimer is a farmer and Hambleton (North Yorkshire) District Councillor. Reform UK (formerly the Brexit Party) is putting forward businessman John Prescott (not the former Labour MP) and the Liberal Democrats have chosen Andy Hagon, a teacher who also stood there in 2017 and 2019. It has cause some controversy (and mirth) to note that so few of the candidates are actually from Hartlepool. Once the domain of Peter Mandelson, this constituency is part of the so-called “Red Wall” of traditional Labour seats that has swung towards the Conservatives after voting to leave the European Union. You might reasonably think that any seat which stayed red in 2019 couldn’t possibly go blue now, but a recent Survation poll gave the Conservatives a seven-point lead. Obviously it’s too early to call at this stage, but the prospect of the government gaining a seat from the opposition again in just over four years would be seriously humiliating for the latter, although we can hope that on this occasion the prime minister will not be tempted to go for a snap general election as a consequence.

On 23rd March Neil Gray took the Manor of Northstead, vacating the constituency of Airdrie & Shotts in order to contest the same seat for the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood**. In this instance the returning officer has decided that it would be safer not to have the two polls on one day, so instead the by-election will take place a week later on 13th May. The candidate list for this election is not yet as long, nor as amusing. Notable here is that there has not been a Commons by-election in Scotland since Inverclyde in 2011 and never at all where the National Party was defending.

On 4th April Dame Cheryl Gillan died at the age of 68 following “a long illness“. She had been MP for Chesham & Amersham since 1992 and was the twenty-fourth most senior by continuous service. No candidates have yet been announced for this by-election and neither has the writ been moved when the others were. Partly this is because she died when the Commons had already risen for the Easter recess, and partly it is because of the convention to delay political machinations until after the late member’s funeral.

*The other place was less lucky, with Lord Gordon of Strathblane succumbing to COVID on 31st of last March. A few hereditary peers have retired or died of other causes in that time but their by-elections have been repeatedly postponed.

**This is required by the party’s rules, rather than those of either legislature.

When I Looked North

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BBC Yorkshire & Lincolnshire at Queen’s Court, photographed in July 2017.

It is often remarked that one cannot appreciate what one has until it is gone. The twenty-tweens are a good example of this in that few people at the time would have thought them a golden age, yet they can appear as such by comparison to 2016-19, let alone the pandemic era. Aesthetically that period is a little strange as well, being part of the transition from an analogue world to a fully digital one. Most of the major social media were well-established by then by then but had not yet achieved their current level of cultural dominance. High Definition video was widely available but still far from universally receivable, and web design was a few steps away from its current incarnation – photographs and videos shown online were much fewer in number and lower in resolution compared to 2014-ish and onwards when multiple large graphics can be chucked into every page with little care for data capacity.

The particular event to be covered in this article is BBC School Report 2011. Preparations at our school began weeks in advance when we were shown a promotional video by Huw Edwards. A letter was also sent out to parents on 15th February announcing a BBC Hull project called “Life on the Docks – The People’s Archive” for which they wanted pupils to look through old newspapers and interview elderly acquaintances. Most pupils would be completing the project at school, but four delegates would be picked to visit the BBC in person. News and journalism became the topic of our English lessons for most of that month. We were set a homework task on 9th March of watching and taking notes on that night’s broadcast news to then discuss in the lesson the next day. On 16th March my parents received another letter telling them that I had been picked as one of the four delegates.

That morning I was driven from school in a minibus with the three other pupils who were chosen. Along the way the conversation turned to television more generally and somehow we wound up singing the Family Guy theme song. We parked the van in an area of the city where the buildings were in a state of decay and the tarmac rather worn. I remarked on the general dinginess of the place only for one of my comrades to tell me I would get myself shot. When we arrived at the BBC building we were reshuffled into groups with pupils from other schools who had come. I was put into the television group because it was otherwise all-female. The two girls who had come with me were put into the online team and would stay at the office all day. The other boy was put in the radio team who would be walking around with the TV team for most of the morning.

From the way this has been set up you would be forgiven for thinking that we then devised a television segment for ourselves. Certainly that is what we thought going in, but we were a little disappointed to find that the script had already been written and the stock montages composed before we arrived – we were just going through the motions.

The location shoots were fairly close by so the groups traveled on foot. In what I think was the Hull Maritime Museum we interviewed an old man (called Jim in the script) about what the elder days. Amusingly there was a bit of a mix-up at this point and Jim was interviewed by one of the pupils assigned to the radio group, who didn’t realise until later that day that she was on television as well.

We also had to record short teaser sections, including one standing by the railings on the marina. I recall a couple of interesting moments during this time – one was that we were supposed to reference the Cod Wars of the 1970s only to find that the script had said 19070s instead, another was a discussion between our guides as to whether it would cause continuity problems if I took off my blue coat between shots. Early in the day I asked about the technical details of the production and was surprised to be told that news footage was still captured on videotape rather than digital cameras.

After we had finished the shoot we returned to the centre for lunch. It happened also to be the birthday of someone in the office and we enjoyed an excess of chocolate cake in addition to the packed lunches we had brought, which made it a little difficult to move around that afternoon. I also remember at this point getting a little lost on the way back from the toilet. It was also at this point in the day that I realised I had left a bundle of papers on a side table. These were the research notes than I and my classmates had been assembling over the past few weeks to take on the excursion, only for me to completely forget about them. Obviously my group didn’t actually need them, though the online team probably would have appreciated their availability.

All of thus were subsequently treated to a tour of the complex, including the Look North studio itself where I briefly sat in Peter Levy’s chair. My recollections of the end of that day’s events are a little hazy. I think I and some other children – not the ones who had been with me earlier – were seated around a boardroom table strewn with recent newspaper cuttings and we had a group discussion on journalistic ethics. The only piece of conversation I retain now is one woman – not sure if teacher or BBC staff – bringing up an anecdote of a struggling mother being interviewed for the news and saying she sometimes thought her children were worse off than third world kids. This was used an example of where reporters have to tread sensitively around things which their interviewees sincerely believe but which objectively are absurd – oddly prescient of the Brexit era.

We went back to school grabbing as many freebies as possible (I even stuffed post-it notes into my socks.) and arrived just in time for the big bus home. My segment was on local news later that night though my mother complains to this day that she was out at the time and never saw it.

Ten years later it is hard to find much record of our contribution online as even now iPlayer tends not to retain local news very long. The BBC even has a webpage listing all of the schools taking part in the event from which mine is mysteriously omitted. I didn’t take a personal camera with me and nor, to my memory, did any of the others. Until late last year I still had the flimsily-laminated BBC pass hanging on my bedroom wall, but now even that has disappeared. Happily I have been able to find the script we used for that day as well as many of the notes and research from the preceding weeks. I do not have any of them in digital form so will need to scan or photograph them (or, God forbid, type them out again) to show them here. Perhaps the bulk of the material would be better suited to the remit of Homework Direct, but recent experience with Monty on the Green has reminded me what a pain it is to update Wix, so I am reluctant to add anything more to that site without a major redesign.

I was a little amused, five years later, when ITV Calendar came to Wilberforce for a debate about the EU Referendum and once again I was scripted to ask about Hull’s fishing industry. Not wanting to be caught out by follow-up questions, I did a lot of hurried online research for that one as well, but that also proved entirely redundant.

On What Authority

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A sign welcoming drivers to Humberside, defaced by black and white splatters.

By Adpopulum, 1992 (CC-BY-SA-3.0)

The people of Yorkshire have an unusually strong local identity compared to those of other English regions, and Kingston-upon-Hull a greater notability (or perhaps notoriety?) compared to other cities.

Around 208 CE York was established by Emperor Septimius Severus as the provincial capital of Lower Britain. A reorganisation in 296 made it the probable capital of Second Britain. From around 450 to 654 it was the capital of the Anglian Kingdom of Deira, which then became the southern half of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria. From 867 to 954 it was known as Jórvík and was under Danish rule. It was during this period that the North, West and East Ridings* were established to subdivide the area. The territory was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 954, then from 966 to 1055 an Earl of York was appointed to govern on the monarch’s behalf.

Prior to the Norman conquest the earls of England had each ruled multiple shires and considered themselves of equal stature to continental dukes, but William of Normandy did not want to be outranked and so diminished them to one shire each, putting the earls level with European counts and so leading to their administrations being called counties. The county system emerging from this time remained fairly stable until Victoria’s reign.

Parts of Cumberland, Lancashire of Westmorland were split off from Yorkshire in the twelfth century, but by the time of the 1831 census it was still by far the largest of England’s forty then-counties, having more than more than twice the acreage of Lincolnshire or Devon and nearly thrice of Norfolk. The Local Government Act 1888 removed many administrative duties from the courts of quarter sessions and invented county councils to take them on instead. The three ridings, already given separate sessions, also had their own separate councils. The next big reform was the Local Government Act 1972, which sought to radically alter the county map of England and Wales so that the borders corresponded to the modern – rather than medieval – population distribution. Yorkshire’s three ridings were abandoned. A few smaller parts around the edges were given to other neigbouring counties, and the rest reconstituted as four entities – North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, and Humberside.

The non-metropolitan county of Humberside mainly replaced the East Riding, but also incorporated parts of the West Riding and northern Lincolnshire. It was subdivided into nine districts, all of which obtained borough status: North Wolds, Holderness, Kingston-upon-Hull, Beverley, Boothferry, Scunthorpe, Glanford, Grimsby and Cleethorpes. Although the government had used the term Humberside in planning since 1964 and the BBC had launched Radio Humberside in 1971, the creation of a county by that name was strongly disliked by a significant proportion of its residents. In 1981 North Wolds renamed itself East Yorkshire and Beverley became the East Yorkshire Borough of Beverley. Already by the 1990s it was clear that the county could not last. With effect from 1996 the area was reformed yet again. Those parts which had been in Lincolnshire were returned, while the Yorkshire part was made into the new ceremonial county (also called a lieutenancy area) called East Riding of Yorkshire. The governance of the new county was split between two unitary authorities – Kingston-upon-Hull became one, while Beverley, Boothferry, Holderness and North Wolds were merged into the other, which confusingly was also called East Riding of Yorkshire.

Even though Humberside has now been dead longer than it was ever alive (as well as longer than I have been) the name continues to haunt us in the aforementioned radio station, the fire service, the airport, the scouts and the police force. There was even a Humberside Police & Crime Commissioner created in 2012. A lot of junk mail continues to put Humberside in our address, and many official notices put up by the former borough councils are still in place.

Hull itself has a place in the national consciousness – particularly in comedy – long before its designation as City of Culture. By the end of the thirteenth century the King’s town upon the River Hull had an active market, a travelling funfair, a seat in the House of Commons and a royal charter. From 1331 the burgesses had the power to elect a mayor. Another charter in 1440 created the municipal corporation and made Hull a county of itself (an early version of the same idea that a unitary authority today expresses). Seven years later the county’s boundaries were widened to include some nearby villages, which were sometimes called Hullshire. These were removed in 1835. The 1888 act made Hull a county borough. Victoria bestowed city status on the town to commemorate her diamond jubilee. George V upgraded the mayor to lord mayor after opening King George Dock. The city council replaced the corporation in 1972.

Readers may be wondering why I have bothered to tell them all of this. Well, in Eye 1540 I came across this passage in the Rotten Boroughs section:

HOW DEMOCRACY WORKS (1): Labour Hull city council is keen to get into bed with Tory East Riding of Yorkshire Council to set up a combined authority. Jumping on the devolution bandwagon with an elected mayor and all could bring in a hoped-for £1.6bn in Whitehall funding.
Under the planned timetable for the creation of the combined authority, a deal will be signed off by 31 March. But public “consultation” on any agreement will not start until late June at the earliest. How might the (meaningless) public consultation go?
Back in 2014, Hull wanted to extend its boundary to take over part of East Riding, so a referendum was held. Fewer than 2,000 voters were in favour, with more than 51,000 against, so the plan was ditched. But this time the public may not have any effective say in the matter.

Looking back I found a story about the plan in the Hull Daily Mail from October, with other hints still earlier but public interest only really seems to have picked up a few days ago. The gist of the plan seems to be that the existing councils will remain, but they will pool their resources to form a combined authority similar to that used by metropolitan counties, and on top will be a directly-elected “metro mayor”. It is not clear if the mayor will absorb the role of the existing Police & Crime Commissioner, as has been the case in other regions. It will also be interesting to see what name the combined authority will take – most have been named after the counties in which their constituent districts are situated, and indeed the county councils which used to be there before 1986, but in this case one of the districts has the same name as the overall county, so most likely the combination will be called something like “Hull & East Riding”, a redundancy akin to saying “Parliament and the Lords” or “Europeans and the French”.

The existence of directly-elected executives is a new development in Britain, and one at odds with the traditions of our constitution. This has long been a nation of parliamentary government, not presidential. The scramble for local and regional devolution has not been without controversy, especially the PCCs. The cost of and confusing of so many reorganisations in local administration also tends to provoke public anger. Many mock the patchwork of differing political structures across the United Kingdom, but attempts to standardise them never really seem to work. In particular it is noted that local personal identity tends to align more with the pre-Heath counties than with the modern ones, which were designed around administrative efficiency rather than emotional allegiance.

In this instance any controversy over the merits of the plans themselves is accompanied by anger at the secretive manner in which negotiations were carried out, and in the apparent intention of both central and local government to impose the new system without public consent. Two items arrived in my postbox today: Issue 39 of Your East Riding, and a campaign leaflet. The first is keen to announce that East Riding won Council of the Year 2020, but makes no mention of the new combined authority, merely having a brief segment about the Humber Local Enterprise Partnership on page 5. The second is credited to Matthew Grove, who was Conservative PCC from 2012 to 2016 but has since defected to the Liberal Democrats. Half of the front page is dedicated to a large-lettered condemnation of the deal and its negotiation process.

There is also a partisan component to consider here, which the Eye briefly mentioned. Generally it is observed that urban voters lean to the left and rural voters to the right. This is clear in recent election results for the two districts.

Hull City Council, 2018: Labour 31, Liberal Democrats 24, Conservatives 2.
East Riding Council, 2019: Conservative 49**, Liberal Democrat 8, Yorkshire Party 2.

The latter result is particularly impressive given that the UK-wide results were disastrous for the Conservative party. While there have been times when the Liberal Democrats gained significant footholds, the norm has been for Labour to have a majority within City of Hull and the Conservatives an ascendancy without. By contrast, the metro mayoral elections across the combined county would be very tight races. I wonder if, without the promise of such a large payment, the existing council leaders would have been more reluctant to relinquish such secure areas of control.

As this blog is so often about heraldry, I will end with some of the arms of the authorities I have been discussing.

Kingston-upon-Hull: Azure three ducal coronets in pale Or. Certified in 1879 but seen in use as early as the fifteenth century.

York: Argent on a Cross Gules five Lions passant guardant Or. Recorded in the 1584 visitation but in use as early as Edward III’s reign.

On 11th February 2004 Hull was also granted a badge of Three coronets in pale Or without the blue background.

The creation of county councils in the nineteenth century led to a proliferation of county heraldry, which previously had been inapplicable. In medieval times it was considered that helmets and crests were appropriate only for human men not impersonal corporations, so older grants of arms are of just a shield, though York obtained semi-official permission to ornament its arms with sword, mace and cap of maintenance in 1396. By Victoria’s reign this principle had been abandoned and so later civic grants of arms frequently include crests, supporters and mottoes. In contrast to the city arms which have been carried through multiple reconstitutions, the county arms have been designed anew as often as the counties themselves.

East Riding County Council (1889-1974): Escutcheon Per chevron Argent and Or in chief two garbs Proper and in base an eagle displayed Azure on a chief Sable three Roses of the first barbed and seeded Proper; crest On a wreath of the colours on a garb fessewise Or an eagle displayed Azure; motto Solis Ortum Conspicere. Granted 28th February 1945.

Humberside County Council (1974-1996): Escutcheon Per fess Sable and Gules on a fess wavy Argent between in chief a coronet Or between two roses Argent barbed and seeded Proper and in base two fleurs de lis Or a bar wavy Azure; crest On a wreath Or and Gules rising from flames Proper a demi-eagle Azure goutté d’Or armed also Gold holding in the beak a sword point downwards Proper hilt and pommel Or; supporters On the dexter a dolphin Argent finned Or charged on the shoulder with a terrestrial globe Azure the land masses Or supporting an anchor Proper and on the sinister a female figure habited representing Ceres with cornucopia all Proper upon a compartment per pale water barry wavy Azure and Argent and a grassy field Proper; motto United We Flourish. Granted 28th July 1976.

Holderness Borough Council (1974-1996): Escutcheon Per saltire the chief Azure charged with a sun in splendour Or the base barry wavy Argent and Azure the dexter flaunch per fess Vert and Sable the sinister flaunch per fess Sable and Vert each charged with a rose Argent barbed and seeded Proper; crest On a wreath Or Vert and Sable within a mural crown Argent charged with a saltire Gules an ancient ship with one mast and two sails set standing on the poop a man with cocked hat and telescope beneath his sinister arm Sable mantled parted Vert and Sable doubled Or.; supporters On the dexter side a mermaid on her head a Roman helm proper and holding in her exterior hand a trident Or and on the sinister side a Triton on his head a horned Danish helm Proper and brandishing with his exterior hand a sword Argent pommel and hilt Or; motto Think Right Do Right; badge A Viking ship with sail and pennon flying within an annulet compony Or and Argent. Granted 30th March 1978.

East Riding of Yorkshire District Council (1996-present): Escutcheon Barry Vert and Or on a chevron engrailed plain cotised Gules three roses Argent barbed and seeded Proper; crest Issuing from a mural crown Argent an eagle displayed Gules armed and langued Azure supporting with the dexter talons a sword hilt upwards and with the sinister talons a crozier in saltire Or mantled Gules doubled Argent.; supporters On the dexter a lion Azure guardant armed and langued Gules gorged with a wreath of barley supporting between the forelegs a trident Or on the sinister a demi-horse Argent langued Gules maned Or the feet webbed Vert conjoined to the lower half of a hippocampus Vert supporting between the forelegs set upon a staff a cross fleury Gules.; motto Tradition and Progress. Granted August 1996.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Choosing_the_Red_and_White_Roses.jpgFinally a note about the roses: while the white rose was indeed a badge used by many heads of the House of York, and the red rose a badge used by many heads of the House of Lancaster, the status of each as the badge of its respective faction was imposed retroactively by Henry VII’s creation of the Tudor rose upon his marriage to Elizabeth of York, then bolstered by William Shakespeare’s writing of the Temple Gardens scene in Henry VI, Part 1. The name “Wars of the Roses” came into common use after 1829 in reference to said scene. Their use of symbols for the counties of Yorkshire and Lancashire emerged still later. Notably the roses appear frequently in municipal grants of arms since the 1888 reforms but not in earlier ones. In spite of what some may claim today, the conflict was not a petty rivalry between two northern counties.

EXTERNAL LINKS

UPDATE (13th September)

The latest episode of Jay Foreman’s Map Men covers many of the same topics I have done in this article. Indeed, the resemblance is almost suspicious…

UPDATE (1st November)

For those interested in the region’s past more broadly, I have just found the channel Hull History Nerd. Most of the videos are focused on transport and infrastructure rather than governance.

*The term riding literally means one third (in contrast to the farthings used prominently by a different famous shire) so one of the compass directions had to be left out. Much like the Diocese of Sodor and Man, the name was eventually adopted for a fictional location in Winifred Holtby’s novel. The BBC adapted the novel in 2011 for a miniseries, some parts of which were filmed close to my house.
**Two of them, Leo Hammond and Benjamin Weeks, were at university with me at the time of the election.