Political events, literally at home and abroad, prompted a series of remarkable memories this week, giving plenty of food for thought. Animals featured too, which I always like.
First, home. An email dropped into my inbox from our MP, Danny Chambers, who took Winchester from the Tories for the Liberal Democrats in 2024.
Danny is a retired veterinary surgeon who has become a friend since his election. He and I have also discussed mental health, an area in which he leads for his party.
He wanted to know who to contact at GB News, as he hoped to raise concerns about animal welfare. These have been brought into sharp focus by recent Labour proposals, including the foolish, tokenistic and frankly spiteful ban on drag hunting.
My own family is divided on the wider issue of hunting. Alex feels it is not something that the central government needs to get involved with.
My daughter, Clem, loves it; the riders look wonderful, and it involves terrific horsemanship. We have many friends who were involved when hunting was legal and who still enjoy drag hunting, in which foxes are rarely harmed or even seen. I happily obliged with Danny’s request and hope he succeeds.
Abroad, Japan returned its remaining pandas to their Chinese homeland this week. This reminded me of the boom time for “panda diplomacy”, when efforts were made to ease the stand-off between China and the West. Two Marmite figures of modern politics were central to this: Richard Nixon and our own Ted Heath.
Both were gifted a breeding pair of pandas, creatures that had become popular around the world as the symbol of the World Wide Fund for Nature, but which few people outside China had ever seen.
Alastair Stewart: Keir Starmer’s days are surely numbered after this shameless spectacle
| GB NEWSThese diplomatic gifts became instant stars at zoos in New York and London. As relations once again sour between China and the West, Sir Keir Starmer became the latest Western leader to visit China this week. There has been no talk yet of pandas, but watch this space.
Other creatures on the move this week were Conservatives heading to Reform UK, including Hampshire’s Suella Braverman, who said it felt like coming home.
She is a former Home Secretary and leadership contender, so a big gun. She follows Robert Jenrick, about whom I wrote last week.
This all reminded me of the period after Michael Foot’s mayhem in Labour, which prompted the “Gang of Four” to leave and form the SDP, ultimately merging with the Liberals.
If it didn’t entirely break the mould of British politics, it certainly re-crafted it. The big difference is that the SDP began with a critical mass of former Cabinet ministers.
Reform is only now getting there, but I believe they will be just as significant, and, as the SDP did to Labour under Blair, may change the Tories and the democratic British right forever.
Modern Labour still shows no signs of learning. The move to block the popular and effective Andy Burnham from running in a by-election on the grounds of cost looked both mechanistic and, as Thatcher might have said, “frit”. He might have mounted a challenge to Starmer had he won.
A real leader would have let him run and then seen him off. Neither Burnham nor the ever-hovering Wes Streeting has gone away, and Starmer’s days are surely numbered.
His only good news this week was that, while he was in China, his place at Prime Minister’s Questions was taken by the lacklustre, self-satisfied David Lammy, who was so poor that he made Starmer, in absentia, look good.
Andrew Griffith for the Tories, however, impressed on business rates and foreign affairs. Now there is a man with a future, if Kemi Badenoch is brave enough.