No Answer Andy’s £431 Billion Circus, Where Democracy Disappears, Brussels Calls the Tune and the Clowns Keep Spending.
Welcome back, dear readers, to another riotous week beneath Westminster’s Big Top of Blunders, where No Answer Andy is back in the spotlight, the Treasury jugglers are tossing billions into the air, the Cabinet contortionists are bending over backwards for Brussels, and the Labour circus has somehow managed to combine a £431 billion welfare bill, a migrant camp nobody locally appears to want, and £86,000 worth of Spanish benches into one gloriously expensive national freak show.
Seventeen weeks into this increasingly shambolic production, the tent is sagging, the clowns are multiplying, and the ringmaster is still promising that everything is under control. Unfortunately, the audience has noticed that the only thing growing faster than the Government’s ambitions is the bill.
This week’s star attraction belongs to Chancellor John Healey, who has abandoned plans for additional checks on Universal Credit applicants’ savings before benefits are paid. The original proposal was expected to save around £200 million by 2030, although ministers insist their alternative bank verification system will be more effective and could save £1.2 billion by 2030/31. Meanwhile, official forecasts suggest total welfare expenditure, including state pensions, will reach approximately £431 billion by 2031/32. It is an extraordinary spectacle. The welfare elephant is growing so enormous that it has swallowed the trapeze, flattened the Treasury accountant and is now demanding a larger tent.
No Answer Andy’s response? Apparently, meaningful reductions in the benefits bill are still several years away. Roll up, roll up, for the amazing disappearing savings, a trick in which the money leaves your pocket today and the promised reform arrives sometime after the elephant has retired.
Then comes Angela Rayner, who has performed a particularly impressive disappearing act with local democracy. Ministers have approved plans to accommodate up to 1,256 male asylum seekers at a former military site near Piddington in Oxfordshire, using an exceptional Crown planning procedure rather than the normal local authority decision-making process. Residents have objected, local representatives have protested, and the Government has pressed ahead. Labour talks endlessly about listening to communities, but when a community says no, the Westminster circus apparently turns up the music until nobody can hear it. Perhaps Rayner’s next trick will involve making the entire village disappear beneath a giant red planning notice.
And if you thought Labour’s approach to human rights could not become more contorted, consider the Chagos Islands. More than half a century after a Labour Government began the forced removal of the Chagossian people from their ancestral homeland, another Labour Government has won an appeal overturning a judgment that had offered returning islanders a measure of legal protection. Six Chagossians on Île du Coin now face renewed uncertainty, while further legal action is being prepared. The Government maintains that its actions comply with the territory’s legal framework, but the moral contradiction is impossible to ignore. Labour Ministers who rarely miss an opportunity to lecture the country about human rights are fighting in court over whether people displaced from their homeland can remain there. This is not a circus joke. It is a national disgrace, and no amount of diplomatic balloon modelling can disguise the suffering involved. Who is getting backhanders? How can this be happening? Something dodgy is afoot mark my words.
Back beneath the big top, Labour has discovered another group apparently requiring urgent bureaucratic supervision: teenagers hoping to earn a few pounds on a Saturday. Government proposals would require employers to obtain council approval before school-age children begin part-time work, replacing the more flexible arrangements currently operating in some areas. Ministers argue that consistent safeguards will protect young workers. But critics fear the additional paperwork could discourage small businesses from offering first jobs. Imagine being sixteen, eager to learn responsibility, earn your own money and gain some independence, only to discover that Whitehall has sent in a clipboard-wielding clown to inspect the paperwork before you can stack a shelf. Easy to get some cash on benefits right? This Labour lot haven’t a clue what they’re doing.
Meanwhile, Britain’s Special Forces are facing concerns of an altogether more serious nature. Reports that some experienced SAS personnel are becoming reluctant to volunteer for high-risk missions because of fears surrounding prolonged legal investigations have prompted warnings about operational effectiveness. Allegations of wrongdoing must be investigated properly, but the Government also has a duty to provide fair, workable legal arrangements for those serving their country. The same Westminster circus that cannot organise a teenager’s Saturday job without additional forms must somehow convince elite soldiers that it understands the realities of combat. One suspects the men of the SAS would prefer fewer political acrobats and rather more certainty.
Over in the Brexit ring, the contortionists have achieved a feat previously thought anatomically impossible. A House of Lords committee has warned that proposed arrangements for aligning British regulations dynamically with European Union rules could fundamentally alter the country’s post-Brexit relationship with Brussels. Under the proposed food and farming agreement, Britain could be required to follow changes to relevant EU rules without having a formal vote in making them. Supporters argue that alignment would reduce trade barriers, but the implications for parliamentary scrutiny and regulatory independence are substantial. No Answer Andy calls it closer cooperation. Critics call it rule-taking. The Brexit clown calls it a magnificent achievement, although he appears to have tied himself into the shape of an EU flag and can no longer locate the exit.
British farmers may also be forgiven for feeling particularly unimpressed. A draft food agreement has reportedly been circulated among EU governments before its full contents and impact assessment have been published for British parliamentary scrutiny. Farmers face the prospect of following future Brussels regulations while having no direct say in their creation. Labour promises to support British agriculture, then invites the European Commission to help write the rulebook. The circus balloon modeller has produced a beautiful inflatable tractor labelled BRITISH SOVEREIGNTY. Unfortunately, the steering wheel appears to be in Belgium.
And speaking of British enterprise, London’s Labour Mayor has supplied perhaps the week’s most gloriously absurd supporting act. Oxford Street is receiving benches manufactured in Spain, with the reported order worth at least £86,000. Each bench costs around £1,540 before shipping, installation and maintenance, while the precise procurement details have not been fully published. Durable seating for shoppers is perfectly sensible, but one might reasonably ask why a project intended to celebrate one of Britain’s most famous shopping streets has apparently found its furniture overseas without publicly demonstrating the value of the decision. The Treasury clown is delighted. At last, a Government-backed project where taxpayers can sit down and contemplate how much money has been spent.
The hypocrisy does not stop there. Labour has announced plans this week to examine stronger protections against powerful individuals using legal proceedings to silence journalists, a welcome objective in principle. Yet ministers continue to face questions about their own record on transparency and access to information. A free press is apparently a wonderful institution when investigating somebody else. When journalists start asking awkward questions of Whitehall, the Labour Government’s enthusiasm seems rather less theatrical. No Answer Andy’s latest attraction is the Amazing Invisible Answer, available for inspection just as soon as the communications department has approved its disappearance.
Elsewhere, Labour’s proposed legislation on conversion practices is attracting criticism from detransitioners and parents who fear their experiences and concerns are being overlooked. The draft legislation is intended to address abusive and coercive conduct, but its wording and safeguards deserve careful examination. Critics have questioned whether parents, professionals and people who regret transitioning are receiving sufficient consideration during parliamentary scrutiny. These are serious matters involving vulnerable people and competing rights, and they demand proper debate rather than another round of political slogan-juggling.
The Government is also pressing ahead with plans for alternative student finance designed to accommodate students whose religious beliefs prevent them from taking conventional interest-bearing loans. There is a legitimate argument for widening access to higher education, but critics are questioning the fairness, administration and public underwriting of a separate financing structure. If ministers want the arrangement to command public confidence, they must explain how it works and whether students using different systems will be treated equivalently. Unfortunately, explaining the small print has never been the Labour circus’s most celebrated act.
Then comes defence, where the Government’s grand promises look particularly shabby beside the conditions in which some service personnel are living. An independent review has identified approximately £603 million of unfunded repairs to single living accommodation, with around four in ten personnel occupying rooms in the lowest accommodation grades. Britain asks its Armed Forces to defend the country, deploy overseas and face extraordinary dangers, yet cannot guarantee decent accommodation for all those serving. The defence acrobats are promising magnificent new capabilities while some of the people expected to operate them are living in deteriorating barracks. Perhaps the next military procurement announcement should include a functioning shower.
Foreign policy has also produced another spectacular high-wire act. Thirteen American state attorneys general have warned that British sanctions connected with Israeli settlements could expose British businesses to economic countermeasures in parts of the United States. These are threats rather than confirmed financial losses, but they illustrate the commercial complications that can accompany diplomatic decisions. Meanwhile, ministers have confirmed that only one Russian shadow fleet tanker has been interdicted since new boarding powers were announced in March. The Government insists it is ready to act when necessary, but the contrast between the announcements and the recorded action is striking. The naval clown has been given a magnificent new boarding ladder, although he appears to have used it only once.
And so ends Week Seventeen beneath Westminster’s Big Top of Blunders. A welfare bill heading towards £431 billion, an asylum camp approved over local objections, Chagossians fighting for their ancestral homeland, farmers facing possible EU rule-taking, teenagers facing additional employment bureaucracy, military personnel living in substandard accommodation, and a Government still struggling to answer some of the most basic questions about its own decisions.
No Answer Andy remains in the centre ring, naturally, wearing his enormous red nose and assuring the audience that Britain has never been in safer hands. Behind him, the Treasury jugglers are attempting to catch £431 billion, the immigration magician is making local planning powers disappear, the Brexit contortionists are performing their famous Brussels backflip, and the defence clown is trying to repair a barracks roof with a balloon animal.
Angela Rayner is waving an enormous planning notice, the Oxford Street clown is polishing an imported Spanish bench, and the welfare elephant has grown so large that the entire circus tent is beginning to lift off the ground.
Seventeen weeks into this extraordinary Labour production, the promises are endless, the spending is spectacular, and the ringmaster is still insisting that the next act will explain everything.
The audience has heard enough.
It wants its country governed, its borders controlled, its Armed Forces supported, its democratic decisions respected and its money spent with something approaching common sense.
Instead, it has been given another week of contortionists, disappearing answers and very expensive balloon animals.
Same circus. Bigger bills. Fewer answers.
And No Answer Andy is still charging admission.
READ ALL ABOUT IT: Links to this week’s top Labour circus acts below:
