You can only conclude that some politicians are simply untreatable. Their egotism and self-delusion so deeply engrained that reality never gets a look-in. I give you Robert Jenrick. Exhibit A. He is a worthy successor to Liz Truss as one of the dimmest solipsists you could hope to meet.
After trailing in a distant second in last week’s televised Q&A, you’d have thought Honest Bob might have taken a day or two to regroup. After all, if the most Tory-friendly audience imaginable at GB News doesn’t much like you then most people would reasonably conclude they had a problem. If you can’t connect with the few remaining diehard Tory members, then your chances of appealing to the rest of the country are vanishingly small.
But not our Bob. He just carries on doing what Honest Bob always does. Never a backward step for self-reflection. Rather he assumes that the only reason why people don’t like him is because they haven’t had enough of him. If he shouts the same things a bit louder, everyone will eventually come round to his way of thinking. Not for a second does it occur to him that people have taken a dislike to him precisely because they know him all too well.
So Jenrick has been at it again. Out and about giving interviews to anyone who will give him airspace. This weekend he was on Radio 4’s Westminster Hour, where he insisted that were he to become leader of the Conservative party, he would expect all his MPs to sign up to his commitment to leave the European convention on human rights. Anyone who refused would no longer be able to stand as Tory MPs.
This is a very special kind of genius. You’ve got a Tory party of just 121 MPs who are ideologically split, with the centrists wondering whether there is any point in living now that James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat have been eliminated from the contest. But rather than trying to reach out to MPs and members who feel disfranchised, Honest Bob has chosen to double down. He won’t sleep until everyone recognises he’s the maddest person in the room.
To be fair, that’s a tough shout when you’re up against Kemi Badenoch. The thing with Honest Bob is that he’s riddled with inauthenticity. Whatever he says, whatever he does, there’s always the suspicion he doesn’t really mean it. But with KemiKaze, you know she’s the real deal. Even when she’s saying and doing nothing, she radiates madness. There’s that detachment in her eyes. A woman with no limits. Always ready to go one step beyond anyone else in the room.
Not that Kemi would be disqualified from Jenrick’s New Model Army, should Honest Bob end up winning the Tory leadership. Even though she has declared that leaving the ECHR would be an act of stupidity, she has never hesitated to do something stupid when necessary.
Kemi takes a very pragmatic attitude towards her own idiocy. She can go there when necessary. But for the time being, Kemi has been under orders from her minders to do and say as little possible. Try to smile and not look too hostile. She will never be a natural sweet talker, but this is as good as she can get.
Also on a charm offensive is Keir Starmer. After weeks of bad press about free suits and specs, Taylor Swift tickets and the winter fuel allowance that has overshadowed the positive things his government has done, the prime minister is anxious to make a fresh start.
So Monday morning found him out and about in east London with Wes Streeting to announce a new NHS consultation process. The health service was in intensive care and needed to reform or die. The days of just pumping more and more cash into a failing system were over. We were now looking at a new digitised service that places as much emphasis on prevention as on care.
But there are times when you have to be careful what you wish for. Within hours, members of the public had responded by taking the piss. Among the suggestions emailed in to the consultation document was mandatory euthanasia to clear out all those terminally ill people who were taking up hospital beds by refusing to die on time. Also up for grabs was a scheme to make use of empty cinemas in the afternoon by offering patients free tickets, rather than letters for appointments that were out of date by the time they arrived.
My preference would be for a league table of surgeons based on speed rather than outcomes. Surely it’s far better to have a surgeon capable of doing a heart transplant in a couple of hours – even if she has a mortality rate of 50% – rather than one who takes eight hours and always gets it right.
What we really need is to free up more operating theatre time. That’s the only way we are going to clear the waiting list backlog. After all, it must be worth the risk to have a rushed operation rather than die on the waiting list. Just a thought.
Over in the Commons, a junior foreign minister, Stephen Doughty, was answering an urgent question on the government’s new scheme to deport anyone arriving in the Chagos Islands to St Helena. This proved to be one of the more surreal moments in the week’s parliamentary calendar.
It was like this, he said. Remember the Rwanda plan – the £600m or so that was spent sending just four people, who were actually willing to be deported, to Kigali? Well, Labour had also seen the benefits of forking out for a scheme in which no people were actually sent anywhere.
So the government was giving Saint Helena £6.5m in the expectation that the island would take precisely no one. In the past two years, not a single person claiming to be Chagossian has pitched up on Diego Garcia. Nor was anyone expected in the 18 months before all things Chagos became the problem of Mauritius. Though if someone did show up, St Helena would get paid substantially more.
Labour’s Meg Hillier did wonder how the government was planning to transport people from Chagos to St Helena, given the fact that the newly renovated airport is unusable. Doughty gave her a quizzical look. What was the problem? When you’re offshoring no one, then transportation is a doddle. At which point, I realised I should have applied for the £6.5m to do nothing.
Taking the Lead by John Crace is published by Little, Brown (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
A year in Westminster: John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar. On 3 December, join Crace, Hyde and Crerar as they look back at a political year like no other, live at Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at guardian.live.
