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Press and Journal
04-05-2025
- Politics
- Press and Journal
David Knight: Torry Raac residents need concrete guarantees they will see meaningful compensation
Banging our heads against a brick wall is never a pastime which holds much hope of delivering satisfaction. But with a combination of dogged determination and unshakeable belief in justice on our side, eventual triumph is a possibility. We only have to look at the struggles of wrongly-jailed postmasters, the tainted blood scandal and the damaged babies in Corby, where many families of Scottish descent were trapped in a catastrophic chemical reclamation disaster. A new scandal is engulfing the 'Raac families' in Aberdeen with homes rendered inhabitable by a covering of dodgy sub-standard concrete. Will this prove to be on a similar scale to previous examples of bewildering actions by public officials causing outrage? Residents are also banging their heads against walls, but in this case real ones affected by a kind of concrete cancer. The 'newly-crowned' Lord Gove of Torry nailed his colours to the mast of the Aberdeen cause. Lord Gove, who grew up in Aberdeen before becoming a Cabinet minister, told the P&J that the finger-pointing of blame had to stop and a solution found at national and local government levels. He has strong family roots in Aberdeen and an obvious warmth towards the Granite City; hence his choice of title. Whether passionate Toryism has attracted reciprocal warmth from the city is debatable. But tangible support for the P&J Raac campaign might prove to be a turning point in this relationship: even a lasting legacy of respect for defending the interests of the worst-affected families in the Balnagask area of Torry. These are the private owners in Raac homes, whose property values have eroded far faster than the concrete itself – losing up to £50,000 each. Balnagask translates in Gaelic to 'village in the hollow'; village in the pit of despair now. The real test for Gove is how hard he applies himself with effective contributions from a new position of privilege; to talk the walk, as they say. The Raac families really are on the rack. The medieval torture rack tore people apart. Doctors in Torry report that many Raac owners facing financial ruin are turning to drink and anti-depressants to try to cope with their lives being ripped apart. We all have individual daily struggles on a personal level which help us empathise with those fighting the system on a much bigger scale. As the Fortunes (old 60s band) sang, 'You've got your troubles, I've got mine.' Have you ever felt helpless while challenging a powerful yet seemingly incompetent bureaucracy? Lately, I've been banging my head against a brick wall, too: an imaginary brick wall held together by a plastering of red tape. But it's the kind of personal anguish which often remains hidden from public view. My aged relative is one of the poorest pension-credit recipients Starmer and Reeves made such a show of protecting (in public at least) after their outrageous and ill-judged mugging of old people receiving winter energy payments. Her story begins with a discovery that weekly pension credit payments from the Department for Work and Pensions stopped inexplicably. She's stuck at the bottom of the pile: gripped by dementia in a care home and suffering at least two other of the biggest diseases we fear most. Yet she's still forced to cough up £5000 a month for care fees after being forced to sell her house; that pot is vanishing as fast as a brick thrown into a fast river. So her pension-credit support is a big deal; by the time we found out she was already £500 out of pocket. Endless phone calls to DWP. It seemed the 'system' didn't like a miniscule private pension she received from her late husband, which was about to increase by one pound to the grand total of £48 a month – yes, a month. The potential headlines ran through my head: 'Sick woman, 92, has pension credit axed by DWP for sake of 25p a week – so much for welfare state.' This explanation was soon jettisoned for something far more familiar to us all – the ubiquitous 'IT glitch'. Equanimity was restored by DWP, but only after 10 days of exasperating phone calls and helpless dread. Call handlers were friendly, but the system so cold. They never wrote to flag up the problem, so I doubt if there will ever be a proper explanation. We were stressed out for almost two weeks, so how much worse are the Raac families feeling with no sign of relief in sight? Natural justice points to some form of realistic compensation instead of what they have been offered so far. But how long could that take? Aberdeen City Council is in such a dire state that it makes you wonder where they would find the money. I'm not being flippant, but residents need something more concrete than that. David Knight is the long-serving former deputy editor of The Press and Journal
Times
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Times
Peter Taaffe obituary: old-school Labour agitator
Peter Taaffe believed that Margaret Thatcher was the best thing that ever happened to socialism. Thrusting forward and glaring out from thick-lensed spectacles, the co-founder and leader of the Trotskyite Militant Tendency predicted in 1986 that her dismantling of one-nation Toryism would 'lay bare the realities of the class society' and prompt a 'purist workers' revolution'. When Thatcher announced plans to introduce a poll tax of British adults, the Birkenhead-born revolutionary thought his time had come. He called for nationwide non-payment of the tax, organised workers' 'bill strikes' and was a key agitator of the poll tax riots in May 1990 that contributed to her downfall as prime minister five months later and the replacement of the poll tax with council tax. Taaffe declared: 'With
Spectator
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Spectator
Where should the Tories be worried about at the local elections?
Kemi Badenoch faces her first big electoral test in this week's local elections. The Conservative party has much to lose. Of the 1,642 council seats up for grabs, 940, accounting for boundary changes, were won by the Tories back in 2021. For Badenoch, the only path on Thursday is down. Four years ago, Boris Johnson was at the peak of his 'vaccine bounce'. Those were halcyon days, pre-Partygate, Trussonomics, and Toryism's worst defeat since James II's exile. In May 2021, the Conservatives poll ratings were at 45 per cent. Today, they barely top 20 per cent, falling back from last summer's defeat. Amongst party members, Badenoch's leadership is increasingly unpopular. Thursday's local elections should be inconsequential. Thanks to nine councils taking up Angela Rayner's offer of delaying facing the voters for a year, fewer councillors are up for election than at any set of council elections since 1975.
The Guardian
25-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Is one-nation Toryism dead? Not yet, but it can't let Reform and the right provide all the answers
This is not a happy time to be on the one-nation wing of the Conservative party. The final round of last year's leadership election was between two candidates from the right of the party, and since then it has been Robert Jenrick, the more rightwing of the two, who has emerged as the party's centre of gravity – a remarkable feat for a man who lost the race. His recently reported comments about a coalition with Reform UK (or perhaps, as sources close to him insist, its voters) have put the question of the Tories' future direction back in the spotlight. Is Nigel Farage the herald of a fundamental rightward shift? Is this, as one fellow journalist put it to me, 'the final death of one-nation Toryism'? The short answer is 'probably not' – at least not unless the Tory party dies its own final death. The 'one nation' label dates back to Benjamin Disraeli; it survived the reactionary hegemony of Lord Salisbury and the revolutionary one of Margaret Thatcher. So long as there is a Tory party, it will have a left wing and, historical labels being what they are, it will probably call itself one nation. Last year's contest would also seem, on the surface at least, to provide that wing with some bullish indicators. Broadly speaking (for personal loyalties and ambitions confound precise readings from such tallies), James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat had the support of about half the parliamentary party. It took a real feat of self-sabotage for neither to reach the final. Yet there can be no doubt that one-nation Conservatism is in trouble – and the root of that trouble is that it is intellectually exhausted. Consider last year's leadership election again. Many Cleverly supporters ended up rowing in behind Kemi Badenoch to stop Jenrick. They knew they didn't like the policy direction he was proposing. But the alternative was a candidate who made a virtue of having no policy direction at all and who, on issues such as immigration and the European court of human rights, is now inching towards his positions anyway. Badenoch was an opportunity to hit the snooze button on an intellectual reckoning with the past 14 years, and postponing that reckoning has been the sum of the Tory left's ambitions since the general election. Hence nonsensical arguments such as the Conservatives lost not because of any failure of doctrine, but on 'competence', two things that cannot in politics be so cleanly distinguished. Where was the incompetence on immigration, for example: promising to cut it to the tens of thousands, or failing (indeed, not really trying) to fulfil that promise? The unhappy truth that capital-S 'Sensible' Tory MPs must confront is that any 'lurch to the right' over the past few years was almost entirely rhetorical rather than substantive, and with the exception of Brexit – which, however important you think it is, is not the root cause of our housing and energy price crises – they got what they wanted most of the time. Perhaps that feels counterintuitive, but it's true. NHS spending increased by 25% in real terms between 2010 and 2023 without (post-Andrew Lansley) any serious effort at structural reform; more young people than ever were funnelled into higher education; immigration was allowed to rise to whatever level industry and sector lobby groups demanded; taxation levels soared. Yes, the Rwanda scheme was certainly very right-coded. But not only did Rishi Sunak bend over backwards to try – and fail – to implement it without fundamentally challenging our existing legal and treaty obligations, but the whole thing was in part a way to talk about immigration without talking about legal immigration, which Boris Johnson had casually doubled. This disconnect played a significant role in the Tories' shattering defeat last year by alienating voters on all fronts; Badenoch is right to point out that the party 'talked right, but governed left', even if she cannot or will not offer any compelling explanation as to why. Perhaps the most telling evidence of this intellectual aridity is the way the Tories responded to the rise of Ukip. Like Jenrick now, Nigel Farage was able for years to set the tempo of Conservative thinking – or at least Conservative language – on Europe and immigration; time and again, David Cameron either made promises he had no intention of keeping (net immigration to 'tens of thousands') or didn't expect to have to keep (an in/out referendum). Some one-nation MPs certainly criticised his 'pandering' in this way. But they never furnished him or his successors with an actual alternative solution to the problem of a party that came second in 100 seats in 2015 and was well positioned to walk away with a critical slice of the Tory vote. At root, the problem currently facing the one-nation Tories is, paradoxically, that they are the most small-c Conservative faction; often self-consciously non-ideological, and united around the principle that the status quo more or less works and requires only sensible adjustment to keep the ship of state on course. That is a healthy, conservative cast of mind, of course. But it can too easily ossify into a reflexive defence of the status quo, an instinctive distaste for radicalism mutating into the comforting belief that radical measures are never the answer, compounded in this case by the understandable reluctance on the part of former ministers to admit, even to themselves, to complacently presiding over systems that were slowly falling to pieces. Ultimately, the reason the right is making the policy running is that it is the only force on the field. What is the one-nation solution to mass immigration, save shoring up a Westminster consensus that allows public opinion to be safely ignored? To the looming financial apocalypses in higher education and local government? To the unsustainable trajectory of NHS and entitlement spending? I have no idea, and I write about the Conservative party for a living. It's not that there aren't ideas out there, intellectual threads that could be woven into a relevant one-nation philosophy and programme. But MPs have no right to grumble about their party gravitating towards Jenrick's answers, or Farage's, when for now they are the only people offering any. Henry Hill is deputy editor of ConservativeHome
Daily Record
23-04-2025
- Politics
- Daily Record
Nominations open for Hamilton by-election
Nominations are now open for the Hamilton, Larkhall & Stonehouse by-election on June 5, with candidates having until next Thursday, May 1, to submit their papers to appear on the ballot. Larkhall councillor Richard Nelson has now been named as the Conservative candidate, while the Scottish Socialist Party have also announced that they will take part in the constituency's Holyrood poll and will choose their representative later this week. Voters have until Monday, May 19 to ensure they are registered to vote in the election, which follows the death last month of popular and long-serving local MSP Christina McKelvie. The SNP and Labour named their candidates last week – with South Lanarkshire councillor Katy Loudon appearing on the ballot paper for the SNP who aim to hold the seat, and Labour being represented by David Russell, who grew up in Lanarkshire and is a depute lord lieutenant of Lanarkshire. Conservative candidate Councillor Nelson has represented the Larkhall ward since 2017 and says he is 'honoured' to be the by-election candidate for his party, who said: 'Richard is already a hard-working local councillor and would make a fantastic MSP.' He posted on Facebook: 'I will stand up for our communities and be [their] voice, whether it's fighting for our NHS, standing up for our schools, or calling out the misuse of taxpayers' money. I will always fight for what is right [and] I am looking forward to hearing first-hand how these big issues are affecting lives.' Scottish Socialist Party representatives are currently completing their candidate selection process. Election campaign organiser Richie Venton said: 'The local and national SSP has enthusiastically agreed to put up a socialist candidate in this by-election, after the tragically untimely death of Christina McKelvie." He added: 'The Scottish Socialist Party will advocate a package of measures to use the wealth of the nation for its people, not for the profits and privileges of a pampered handful. The people of Hamilton, Larkhall & Stonehouse won't have to choose between different brands of Toryism and austerity; they'll have a genuine socialist alternative.' The Alba party has confirmed it will not field a candidate in June's first-past-the-post constituency election, noting that their plans for next year's general election to Holyrood are focused on the regional list seats. A post from the party on X, formerly Twitter, said: 'Alba will stand only on the list at the next election. Therefore we will not contest the Hamilton, Larkhall & Stonehouse by-election. 'In addition, standing would be disrespectful to a former MSP who was respected locally and across our movement.' Councillor Loudon has said: 'I will work tirelessly to build on Christina's incredible legacy and, like Christina, I will always put the people of Hamilton, Larkhall & Stonehouse first. Times are tough for a lot of people right now, but this community has so much going for it, and I'm determined that we deliver a brighter future for everyone.' And Mr Russell said: 'This constituency is where I was brought up, where I have worked and where I have raised a family. I will campaign tirelessly to win the support of my neighbours and friends and will do all I can to deliver a new direction for Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse – the area I love and call home.' The full list of candidates will be confirmed after nominations close at 4pm on May 1, and polling cards are being sent out to registered voters in the constituency from this week. South Lanarkshire Council say: 'Eligible voters must be aged 16 or over and must be registered to vote by midnight on Monday, May 19. Applications to register to vote should be made to the Electoral Registration Officer at Lanarkshire Valuation Joint Board, David Dale House, 45 John Street, Blantyre G72 0AA, [and] can be made online at . 'Because this is a Scottish Parliament by-election, anyone aged 16 or older who is eligible and registered in the constituency can vote, and voter ID is not required. If you are already registered to vote and are on the electoral register in South Lanarkshire, you do not need to re-register.' Applications for a new postal votes or to amend existing postal or proxy votes must be received by 5pm on May 20 and applications for new proxy votes by the same time on May 28. Polling will take place between 7am and 10pm on June 5 and ballot boxes will then be immediately transported to South Lanarkshire Council's headquarters in Hamilton, with counting taking place overnight. *Don't miss the latest headlines from around Lanarkshire. Sign up to our newsletters here . And did you know Lanarkshire Live had its own app? Download yours for free here .
