Two disconnected events, almost certainly entwined.
We start with Bernard Jenkin MP. If he were a creature, I’d see him as a snake.
Hissing-Sid, slithering through the undergrowth of Westminister.
A man, distinguished by his Tory Party Chairmanship, given to someone else and declining a front-bench job, implying it was beneath him.
In December 2019, Jenkin voted in favour of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement. In September 2020 he claimed it shouldn’t have been signed in the first place.
There’s nothing like decisive political leadership… and this is nothing like, decisive political leadership.
In May 2009, Jenkin was reported to have used £50,000 in expenses to pay his sister-in-law rent on the property he uses as his constituency home. He paid back £36,250.
He was a pain in the backside for John Major, David Cameron, Theresa May and my guess, will join the night-of-the-long-knives, that will do for BoJo, sometime in the spring of 2021.
Over the weekend Jenkin was on Sky News. Smarmy. Espousing; DiDo should be ‘given a well earned rest’.
Gutless. If he thinks she should be given the sack… say so.
Jenkin’s Plan B? He says he wants T&T run by the army. Perhaps he should be MP for Warminster-on-Sea.
I knew his father, Bernard Jenkin, a life peer and former cabinet minister. He was a fine man, patient and genuinely interested in people.
When he was Health Secretary I showed him the ‘tin-chapel’, Garrison Church of St Barbara, in Deepcut, Surrey. We planted a tree, at a care home, in my patch. He was hugely popular, very loyal. He sent me a handwritten note of thanks. We kept in touch.
School-meals, lockdown, Brexit brouhaha, indecision, rows with local government. Nothing’s going right for BoJo...
... and T&T?
It’s the lighting conductor for everything that is going wrong with HMG’s covid management strategy.
T&T is a tangle of Serco, Ikea, Boots, the Army, Lighthouse Labs, the NHS, call-centres, local authorities, Amazon,Yodel, the voluntary sector, hundreds of suppliers, Uncle Tom Cobley and all.
Whose tangle?
Downing St and DH who set it up. It was envisioned badly, thrown together in a rush and suffered 'target-creep'. The moment it got itself stable, in bounced No18 with another bundle of targets and political promises.
All made worse by BoJo’s hyperbole.
For hissing-Sid’s benefit; in six months T&T’s on the way to be bigger than most branches of government, bigger than the Army, with less than 80k regulars.
Bigger than any retailer and in terms of people and reach, bigger than any company on the Footsie. For good measure, bigger than any T&T organisation in Europe.
Is it working?
Logistics and supplies, interfaces between components, IT, recruitment and training… when were they ever not going to be an issue?
The legacy problems are gradually being overcome.
Plus, huge numbers of people ducking out of tracing because they have a living to earn. The self-isolation support packages are labyrinthine, clunky and slow. A straight forward Covid Wage, amalgamating all the benefits would be cheaper to administer and simpler to claim.
People don't trust the system because they don't trust BoJo.
Event number 2.
Enter David Davis MP, with no particular interest in the NHS, who lent his weight to an article in the £walled Sunday Times, of excoriating criticism of the NHS’ care of the elderly during Covid One.
He said;
'... the government's strategy had fatal consequences for thousands...'
In 40 years of NHS drama, I have never seen the NHS move so quickly to comprehensively demolish a story. Five system leaders denounced it as untrue, as well as Trusts and others picking it apart, line by line.
Jenkin and Davis share an interest in choral music and are hardline Brexiteers. It looks to me like the right-wing of the Tory party is on manoeuvres.
They realise electing BoJo was a mistake. They know HMG’s covid, muddle-through, whack-a-mole strategy is a fail and Brexit might end in a deal, which is the last thing they want.
They need people to blame, heads to role and BoJo gone. They’ll ignore the collateral damage.
When I was a boy I was told anyone could become an MP. Now I’m starting to believe it.
This is what I'm hearing; if you know different tell me, in confidence, here
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>>I'm hearing - There are plans for 'Tier 4' restrictions if current rules don't tackle second wave. Whitehall and councils discuss a Plan B to include potential local circuit breakers.
