At times like these, we would do well to remember the real heroes in the whole sorry business. Not the little people – men and women such as Alan Bates and the other operators who have pursued the Post Office and Fujitsu relentlessly for the best part of 25 years. Nor the lawyers who fought their cases through the courts. But the MPs who have managed to convince themselves that they are the ones who have made the difference, without whom justice would still be denied.
We’re not talking of the few genuine MPs here. The former Conservative MP Lord Arbuthnot, who appeared rather bemused as he followed Wednesday’s prime minister’s questions and the subsequent urgent question from the gallery. Nor Labour’s Kevan Jones and Darren Jones, who have also tenaciously got stuck in. Rather we’re thinking of the vast majority who have only newly remembered just how much they always cared. The unsung legends of the Horizon scandal.
Take Priti Patel. She had taken her place on the back row of the government benches ready to receive the undying gratitude of her colleagues. Since last week’s ITV drama, she has rather invented herself as the champion of the underdog. While it’s true she was one of the first to mention the miscarriage of justice in parliament back in 2010, she has gone rather quiet since. She never used her position as home secretary to the post office operators’ advantage and she did accept an invitation to speak at a Fujitsu conference. Amnesia, I guess.
Then we have Nadhim Zahawi, fresh from playing himself in ITV’s Mr Bates vs The Post Office. He too was in the Commons to take a victory lap for all his hard work. To see his call for a group pardon granted. Mmm. Just remember this was the former chancellor who was sacked for breaking the ministerial code after being found to have tried to pay less tax than he owed. Get your head round that. A tax dodger speaking out on behalf of people falsely accused of being on the take. Only in Westminster.
These are just a couple. There are many – oh so many – of others to be found in all parties and in all corners of the Commons. The quiet ones. The ones who could never be arsed to turn up to any of the UQs or ministerial statements. Who never quite saw what the fuss was all about, nor worried that efforts to overturn convictions and award compensation were taking place at glacial speed. Until last week. At which point they morphed into dogged pursuers of the truth.
There were also some in-betweeners. Step forward Lee Anderson’s favourite Tory MP, Lee Anderson. Back in February 2022, Lee spoke for 20 seconds during a UQ about a wrongly accused post office operator in his Ashfield constituency. Since then, according to the official record of parliamentary debates, he has said nothing on the subject. Nor was he inclined to remain in the Commons after PMQs for the UQ in which the junior business minister, Kevin Hollinrake, would update the house on overturning convictions en masse. Poor Lee. Suffering from compassion fatigue. Again. It happens so much to him. He just can’t stop caring.
But all this is more than enough for Anderson to be recognised as a total legend in Westminster. A member of the ranks of the “tireless campaigners” who have spoken at least once during the 25-year scandal. Where would the post office operators have been without him? So Lee took it upon himself to make one last effort at the start of PMQs. To speak on behalf of all the other tireless campaigners in the Tory ranks.
What Anderson wanted. No. What Anderson demanded was that Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader who remarkably hadn’t been able to make it to this week’s PMQs – so, so sorry, absolutely gutted – to resign. Or be made to resign. To clear off. He could never be forgiven for the way he had treated the post office operators during his two-year stint as Post Office minister during the early days of the coalition.
Lee should be careful what he wishes for. Politicising Horizon is a zero sum game. Because for all the “tireless campaigners” there are dozens of other MPs – most of whom are in his own party – who also have their guilty secrets. Ranging from those whose mere lack of interest and inertia enabled the saga to drag on for years longer than it should have, to those more actively involved and compromised. Their culpability over exposed.
Rishi Sunak had clearly decided discretion was the better part of valour. He ignored the calls for Davey’s resignation, choosing instead to leak Hollinrake’s announcement half an hour early and to lament the situation in general. Just as well, perhaps. As prime minister he had never shown any interest in the scandal and as chancellor he had given Fujitsu a further £4.9bn in contracts. That’s after Fujitsu were found to have actively concealed the faults in their own software and had shifted the blame to the innocent. Nice work for Fujitsu if you can get it.
After his own hymn to Horizon, Keir Starmer also dropped the subject. He too is facing questions as to why he didn’t intervene in the handful of prosecutions brought by the CPS. But in any case, there was much more fun to be had by him tormenting Sunak with his general levels of hopelessness. Starting with the recent revelation that Rish! had wanted to scrap the Rwanda scheme during his leadership bid in 2022. Not from a moral point of view – obvs, Sunak doesn’t have principles – but because it wasn’t value for money. It didn’t work.
Rish! burbled and got tetchy, pretending not to listen while Starmer mocked him with phrases like “Mr Nobody”. Of course he did. Because that’s what he always does. He didn’t deny the claims, just insisted they must have happened to another Rishi Sunak, before going on to say the country had never been in better shape. Everything was going terribly well, thanks to him. My Thousand-Year Plan.
Labour had nothing but empty slogans, he insisted, before mindlessly repeating his own slogan about Starmer returning the country to square one. Please! Bring it on. Square one is dreamland compared to where we are now. Sunak just looked beaten. Being humiliated is getting to be a habit. Even his most loyal colleagues can barely bring themselves to look him in the eye.
That just left time for the SNP’s Stephen Flynn to insist that Horizon couldn’t have happened north of the border if Scotland had voted for independence. Those with glass motorhomes shouldn’t throw stones … Still, at least everyone could agree that they had all done their best. Repressed self-congratulation was the order of the day. Alan Bates might see it differently.
John Crace’s book Depraved New World (Guardian Faber, £16.99) is out now. To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy and save 18% at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
