QUENTIN LETTS: Spade-like hands sent up a machine-gun clatter of applause from the public seats
MPs were discussing the prosecution – persecution – of Northern Ireland veterans.
That can of maggots has been reopened by the Labour Government, thanks not least to Attorney General Lord Hermer KC, who once represented Gerry Adams. His lordship did not attend this debate.
I have not seen Westminster Hall so full or funereal. Facing the Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn was a phalanx of black suits and grim expressions.
Westminster debates are seldom like this, even when they deal in matters of life and death. There again, it is not often that a government proposes to make life a legal agony for soldiers who risked everything for the late Queen.
'The punishment,' as New Forest East's Julian Lewis (Con) put it, 'is the process.'
Some legalistic types argued that hardly anyone was at risk of actually being found guilty. MPs sympathetic to the veterans struggled not to shout their anger.
When you are a 70-year-old retired serviceman there is torment merely in the thought of some vexatious lawyer sauntering up your garden path with a letter of filthy proceedings.
A 'sordid, backstairs deal' between the Starmer government and Dublin was to blame, thought Mark Francois, shadow minister. And yet IRA killers had been handed 'On The Run letters' by Tony Blair. 'Throwing veterans to the wolves while doing Gerry Adams a favour,' said an incredulous Mr Francois.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Con, Chingford) spoke of his late friend Robert Nairac, an army hero who was tortured and murdered by the IRA. 'Talk about injustice, that's injustice!' roared Sir Iain. Sir David Davis (Con, Goole & Pocklington) argued that soldiers did more for human rights than any damn KC. Jesse Norman (Con, Hereford) simmered at a 'fundamentally dishonest' process that would chase ex-soldiers while leaving IRA killers undisturbed.
Louise Jones (Lab, NE Derbys) felt there was 'scaremongering by people who don't understand' the new law. Stuart Anderson (Con, S Shropshire), in a Herefordshire burr, asked if she was implying the SAS and others were 'naive'. It certainly sounded so. Ms Jones twisted her fingers.
Paul Foster (Lab, S Ribble), who had earlier been rolling his eyes while Sir David was describing IRA atrocities, alleged 'politicisation' of the issue by Conservative MPs. Mr Foster, in brown shoes, would not take interventions. That is never a good sign. You should have the courage to defend your argument. Douglas McAllister (Lab, W Dunbartonshire) also appeared to find some speeches amusing. A Whips' nark, possibly. He sloped off after a while.
Once or twice, from the public seats, spade-like hands sent up a machine-gun clatter of applause. The veterans also snorted with derision at super-ambitious Ms Jones.
Mr Benn, in his reply, cut a lean, silvery-topped figure, pinching the tips of his fingers and thumbs as he made clever points. He played niceties with the subtle difference between 'illegal' and 'unlawful'. He bounced on his toes as he spoke of the need for diligent worship of 'the rule of law'.
Again came the line that the number of veterans prosecuted in the past was 'very small'. It was a sort of 'we don't really mean it, honest' argument you will sometimes hear in school playgrounds. I am afraid it lacked the heft, the moral and emotional gravity that this matter needed.
Of the absent Lord Hermer it can no doubt be said, easily, that he is not a man with whom to enter the jungle, or more specifically the back streets of Newry.
But what about thoughtful, moderate Hilary? Surely he's OK, isn't he?
Alas, Mr Benn showed himself to be an attorney's lackey, twisting on Lord Hermer's rope, a senior minister more awed by our jot-and-tittle Attorney General than he is by mightier questions of political truth and our loyalty to fighting men who know this whole thing stinketh.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
24 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Storm brews over Nationwide chief executive's pay package worth up to £7m
It has been a career-defining summer for Debbie Crosbie. Three years after taking over as the chief executive of Nationwide Building Society, the straight-talking Glaswegian has become a darling of the Labour government: awarded a damehood, namechecked in the chancellor's Mansion House speech and hailed for furthering a Labour party manifesto pledge to double the size of the mutuals sector. But outside Westminster's warm embrace, a storm has been brewing. A 43% increase to Crosbie's maximum pay package, worth up to £7m per year, is due to be rubber-stamped without a binding vote by members, effectively sidelining any opposition at Nationwide's annual shareholder meeting on Friday. It has prompted outrage among campaigners who say it is the latest sign that the 140-year-old building society is losing its way. Those critics believe Nationwide, which was founded in 1884 in south London as the Southern Co-operative Permanent Building Society, has deviated from its roots. Although owned by its members, it bought Virgin Money for £2.9bn last year without asking for their approval and critics claim it is centralising power at the top while diluting the voice of its members. But the industry is backing Crosbie, recognising the 55-year-old former TSB boss's role in pulling the sector into the political limelight. 'The truth is that mutuals have often been seen as niche: a 'nice to have but not essential',' says Peter Hunt, the founder of UK-based mutuals consultancy Mutuo. Now industry bosses are hosted at No 10 summer garden parties and asked to join a government-run Mutual and Cooperative Sector Business Council. This autumn, ministers will launch a consultation on how to double the size of the sector, in line with Labour's manifesto pledge. This kind of state-level attention, Hunt says, 'has moved the dial'. It is a sign that the sector has finally recovered from a wave of demutualisations in the 1990s that turned the likes of Abbey National, Bradford & Bingley, Halifax and Northern Rock into shareholder-owned banks. It was a blow to the UK's building societies movement, which traces its history back to Birmingham in 1775 when a group of friends, desperate to get on the housing ladder, pooled their resources to buy land and building materials. But by the time the 2008 financial crisis erupted, most demutualised firms were either acquired or nationalised through state bailouts. It left survivors such as Nationwide proud of how their simpler, more risk-averse business models, focused on savings and home loans, survived the financial implosion. Seventeen years later, Nationwide is the jewel in the sector's crown, with 17 million members and £368bn in assets. It is the second largest mortgage provider behind Lloyds, with a 12.5% share of the market. 'Nationwide is a domestically systemic banking institution,' the Building Societies Association (BSA) chief executive, Robin Fieth, says. 'It gives scale and importance to the whole of our sector.' But some believe Nationwide's growth has come at the expense of its democratic roots. While building societies centre on the idea of 'one member, one vote', there has been 'a boiling frog problem', according to James Sherwin-Smith, a longtime Nationwide customer who has campaigned to join the board as a voice for members. He says Nationwide has been 'debasing … member rights … despite all the lovely positive PR that Nationwide puts out about having your say, and that they're a beacon for mutual good. When I scratch the surface of that, I do not find substance.' Fury erupted last year over Nationwide's decision to not hold a member vote over its takeover of Virgin Money, while the takeover target's own shareholders had a say. But there are other longstanding issues, including Nationwide's use of 'quick vote' options, which make it easier to back the board's recommendations rather than cast individual or dissenting votes at its annual general meeting. There are also concerns that Nationwide has retained online-only AGMs, even after Covid lockdowns were lifted, in a move that risks disenfranchising members without internet access. Meanwhile, some members say it can be difficult to get a resolution or election on the ballot, requiring 250 to 500 endorsements from members, whose contact details can be a challenge to access due to data rules. Their signatures only qualify under strict conditions and can be disqualified if their balances or loans fall below a certain level – £100 or £200 in most cases – over the preceding two years. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion Edwin Fisher of the Building Societies Members Association says that while Nationwide is the biggest of the mutuals sector, it is also the 'most controversial, and has, in our opinion, the lowest standards of corporate governance'. 'They regularly churn out the line that members are the owners, but we all know that members have no say in anything,' Fisher adds, noting that if the UK faced another wave of demutualisation, Nationwide 'would be ripe' to exit. Nationwide has not expressed any intention of demutualising. But its board says banker-level pay is necessary if it hopes to compete with the likes of Lloyds and NatWest. Fisher says members only want Nationwide to compete with banks on size, but not on pay or purpose. Furthermore, Nationwide's operations are far less complex than most banks: Crosbie does not have to manage an investment bank or international operations, nor relationships with shareholders. Even after the Virgin Money takeover, it remains a much simpler operation focused on mortgages. But Hunt says it would be inappropriate to measure Crosbie and her pay against bosses at much smaller building societies. 'She's the Lionel Messi of British building societies,' he said. 'And she could play for any of the banks, so this is how they keep her in the Nationwide shirt.' The problem for democratically minded members is that the Building Societies Act may not be fit for Nationwide's size. It means that, unlike its listed bank rivals, Nationwide is not required to hold binding votes on new pay proposals, like the one that could hand Crosbie up to £7m. While it could volunteer to hold a binding vote, Nationwide has refused. When asked whether the Building Societies Association would support reforming the act, Fieth said 'it's not a measure we'd oppose' but admitted it was not 'No 1 on our shopping list'. Hunt also questioned whether members were 'equipped' to have a binding say on pay. 'If I was a member of Nationwide, how would I be equipped to know what any executive should get paid? How would I know? Just because I didn't like the number? If you had a vote on MPs' pay, I guarantee you the vast majority of the public will want them to [be paid] less,' he said. (The basic salary for an MP is £93,904.) Fieth echoed that argument, saying some members 'found it difficult' to relate to the sums involved. 'When you've got a balance sheet that's £300bn, most people can't compute that at all.' He said members should still be asking questions, but needed to keep long-term performance and innovation in mind. 'Henry Ford said that if you'd asked people what they wanted at the beginning of the 20th century, they'd have said faster horses.' Sherwin-Smith said it was the board's burden to keep members informed. 'They should educate people and let them [hold a binding] vote, but to say you're too stupid to have a say is the wrong attitude.' Nationwide declined the Guardian's interview requests, but said it regularly engages with a panel of 6,500 members and surveys 500,000 members each year. It also said members have a chance to vote to re-elect board directors every year. 'From the extensive engagement that we have with our members, we cannot see any evidence that our leading customer service, support for first-time buyers, growing market shares and record member financial value is in any way controversial,' Nationwide said. It previously said pay proposals although advisory, 'always received overwhelming member support' and that Nationwide's strong performance was driven in part by its ability to 'attract, retain and motivate talented leaders.'
Telegraph
24 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Trump has every right to berate the technocrats
Knucklehead or numbskull? Donald Trump uses both terms to describe Jerome Powell, the chairman of the US Federal Reserve. It depends on which day of the week it is. His attacks on Powell are now so frequent they have lost the power to shock, but imagine the horror if Sir Keir Starmer started regularly describing Andrew Bailey, the Governor of the Bank of England, as a nitwit or a simpleton. Or if France's president, Emmanuel Macron, were to refer to Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, as a 'nigaud' or 'crétin'. Imagine also if they let it be known that they were examining ways of ridding themselves of their troublesome monetary priests, as Trump has done in the US. The entire political and economic establishment would be up in arms and there would be mayhem in the bond markets. Yet Trump is Trump and iconoclasm comes with the territory. Trump's bark may in practice turn out to be worse than his bite. It often does. It is none the less worth considering whether in this instance he might not have a point. Looked at objectively, the unwritten understanding that presiding governments should never criticise their central banks is one of the modern world's more absurd conventions. Of course, we all know how it came about. It was part of a much wider shift in which key parts of government were removed from direct political control and vested instead with independent technocrats. Free from the need to win elections, it was argued, these arms-length bodies would do a much better job than the politicians in keeping things on the straight and narrow. In Britain, granting the Bank of England independent control of monetary policy, was very much part of the then-Labour government's attempt to sanitise itself with markets and present the UK as a trusted and stable monetary regime that had finally put its post-war inflationary past behind it. As with most other central banks, independence has been buttressed by provisions that make it virtually impossible to sack the incumbent governor except in the case of madness or misfeasance. Much as he would like to dismiss Powell, even Trump has struggled to find a way around these guardrails. The ballooning costs of renovating the Federal Reserve's grandiose Washington headquarters may be evidence of public sector waste and incompetence but it is not, on the face of it, a case of outright fraud. All the same, the lavish nature of the Fed's refurbishment touches a chord that characterises central banks as out of control, unaccountable and often just plain wrong. And now they build themselves palaces and cathedrals as symbols of the once-ruling idolatry. Admittedly, Trump's own vulgar redecoration of the Oval Office in his trademark gold chintz is in some respects just as bad, even if far less expensive. But at least Trump is elected, while Powell is a mere appointee. This in itself is causing much amusement, for in this week describing Powell as a 'terrible' chairman, Trump added that he was 'surprised he was appointed', seeming to forget that it was he who originally chose him. He soon regretted it and, by the end of Trump's first presidency, the two were barely on speaking terms.
The Guardian
24 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Police warn of ‘inflammatory' online posts over clashes outside Essex asylum hotel
Police have warned they are seeing 'inflammatory' comments online, as a third man was arrested over violent clashes outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in Essex. The latest arrest came after eight officers were assaulted on Thursday and police vehicles were smashed after groups of men broke away from an earlier peaceful protest outside the hotel in Epping. A 33-year-old man from Loughton was arrested on Saturday on suspicion of violent disorder and criminal damage, according to Essex police. The force said several suspects who caused trouble had been identified and investigators were seeking to arrest them. Far-right activists associated with groups including Britain First were among those in the crowd that gathered outside the Bell hotel on Thursday, where local people including women and children peacefully protested. Clashes with police broke out as groups of men, some masked, attempted to reach a small anti-racism demonstration that started at Epping station and then walked through the town before it was hemmed in. In an apparent response to allegations that the police had taken a 'two-tier' approach that favoured the counter-demonstration, Ch Supt Simon Anslow said: 'Unfortunately, across social media we are seeing inflammatory comments which suggest we were supporting and enabling certain protesters. 'This is categorically not true. We police without fear or favour, remaining impartial at all times and have legal responsibilities to ensure peaceful protest is facilitated.' Tensions were high in Epping after the appearance in court on Thursday of an asylum seeker charged with three counts of sexual assault. Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, 38, from Ethiopia, who denies the offences, was remanded in custody before a two-day trial next month at Chelmsford magistrates court. Police remain on alert in the area and calls for a new protest outside the hotel on Sunday evening have been circulating online. Dean Walters, 65, from Harlow, has been charged with affray and will appear at court in September following a separate protest last Sunday near the hotel. A second man arrested over a breach of a dispersal order has been released on conditional bail. Neil Hudson, the local Conservative MP, has been calling on the Home Office to close the hotel and described the violence in the town on Thursday as 'completely unacceptable'. 'Police put themselves in harm's way to keep us safe. People have the right to peacefully protest but these violent scenes are not us, not Epping, not what we stand for,' he said in a post on X.
