It’s an ill wind, and all that. For most of the last week, the political agenda has been hijacked by a billionaire coming down from a ketamine high who had just discovered a child sexual abuse case that had been widely reported in this country for the past 12 years. Cue rightwing politicians indulging in competitive brown-nosing as they pretended they had always been interested in grooming gangs while the government tried to point out there had already been an inquiry and it was probably better to implement its recommendations rather than waste time and money with another one.
This may have been an unwanted problem for Keir Starmer and the home secretary, who took the brunt of the unedifying shitshow, but for every other minister it came as something of a relief. They could all ease themselves back into the new year, secure in the knowledge that for once no one was paying them any attention. Their screw-ups and local difficulties could slide under the radar. In government, that is known as living the dream.
Steve Reed is almost certainly wishing that Muskmania could have gone on for just one more day. Why hadn’t the world’s weirdest SpaceX cadet gone one further than threatening to invade the UK and launch one of his rockets against us? Come friendly bombs … As it was, Elon had moved on to the LA fires, so everyone in Westminster had emerged from their echo chamber. Which meant that Steve was in the spotlight as he faced one of his toughest gigs of the year: a keynote speech at the Oxford Farming Conference.
What a difference a year makes. This time last year, Reed had gone down a storm at the conference. They couldn’t get enough of him. They didn’t even mind that he so clearly wasn’t one of them. Not even when he put on wellies. Steve is a city boy through and through. The closest he comes to the great outdoors is a half-hour walk in Crystal Palace Park – stick to the paths, the grass is rather muddy – before nipping in to Gail’s for a croissant and cortado. No, the farmers forgave all that because they were as fed up with the Tories as he was. So when he had spent the entire speech trashing the Conservatives, they lapped it up.
Now … not so much. In just six months as environment secretary, Steve has sped through the first four stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression: he’s been there and got the T-shirt. Tried explaining that none of this has been his fault with the farmers. He only got to find out about the changes to inheritance tax the night before the budget. No one had consulted him. He was just the sucker who had to deal with the fallout. Now he was out the other side and into acceptance. The farmers were never going to forgive him. All he could do was sit tight and pray for another job in the next reshuffle.
Needless to say there had been protests outside the conference hall. There always were these days. His entire speech was punctuated by blasts on tractor horns. But he had no choice. Just get the thing done ASAP and get out of there alive. That was the summit of his ambition. But you could see the defeat etched on his face even as he made his way to the stage. Normally Reed is engaging. Now he was just reduced to a crushed monotone. Reading out words to a hostile audience. Even the podium was too small for the ring binder containing his script. It was that sort of day.
Steve began with a brief history of farming since the 1930s. He wasn’t sure why. To fill the time, he supposed. Then to the hard bit. He knew the farmers were angry about inheritance tax. He felt their pain. Ish. Only, he wanted to tell them that they weren’t really protesting about inheritance tax. They were fed up with the neglect of the last Tory government that had reduced many of them to near-bankruptcy. It’s always good to remind people of what they are actually doing, as you can’t rely on them to understand for themselves. Though he might have stopped to wonder why – if the government knew the farmers were already on their knees – Rachel Reeves had come up with a plan to finish some of them off.
There was a brief smattering of applause when Reed moved on to precision breeding. Steve looked genuinely astonished – almost moved – by a single friendly face. “Thanks,” he stammered. Then onward. He wanted to make farms more profitable. Build flood defences. Improve the environment. More farm shops. That should please Jeremy Clarkson. Build chicken sheds. Pollute the water supply. Er … scrub that bit. Steve never said he was going to make sense. The End. Take a few questions, one heckle of “rubbish” and he was out of there. Not his finest hour. Then again, he was just the monkey, not the organ grinder. He and the farmers knew that.
Still, Reed wasn’t the only one having a bad day. It’s finally come to the attention of the Tories, several days after the event, that the cost of government borrowing has climbed so high that the chancellor’s fiscal rules are in danger. So Mel Stride came out of his Musk coma to call for an urgent question. Sure enough, Reeves made herself unavailable and left Darren Jones, her second in command at the Treasury, to face the Tories in the Commons.
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Usually, Jones is an accomplished performer, in command of his brief and dripping with disdain. On Thursday, he was breathless. Garbled. Borderline panicky. He said all the right stuff – everything was under control, gilt movements were normal, Tories had wrecked the economy, the fiscal rules were not in danger – but didn’t sound altogether convincing. As if he wasn’t quite as sure of this as he would like. We haven’t heard the end of this particular economic mini-crisis.
Good humour was restored when the Liberal Democrat Max Wilkinson asked Jones about the “cease and desist” letter Liz Truss had sent to the prime minister. It turns out the Trusster is upset that Starmer keeps reminding people that she crashed the economy and may take legal action to get him to stop. Even the Tories could see the funny side of that. Thank God for the Trusster. Where would we be without her? Carry On and Keep Laughing.
