Clumsy Keir could’ve put ‘suitgate’ to bed (Image: Benjamin Cremel – Pool/Getty Images))
How to make a crisis out of a drama! The breathtaking and seemingly never-ending ineptitude of the way the government has handled the “Free Gear Keir” scandal leaves you wondering if Gerald Ratner* is in charge of communications at Number 10.
Or the “drip, drip,drip” of stories could suggest it was being handled by Thames Water, or United Utilities, Yorkshire or Wessex Water – or just about every last one of them.
If you adhere to the line echoed by most political communications managers, the damage – sometimes irreparable – is done if a story is allowed to run for ten days. If that’s so, this row is to the new government what the iceberg was to the Titanic.
Ask yourself the following.
Why would a respected barrister with supposedly forensic style skills not see the danger of taking tens of thousands of pounds worth of freebies ranging from tickets to football and concerts to suits and spectacles? (By the way, if that pair really did cost around £2,500, he was robbed!)
Having been exposed, Sir told me after his speech at the Labour conference, “I’ve done nothing wrong.” Really?
If so, why have you announced you will stop doing it? And, even more puzzlingly, why have you decided to pay back the costs of some of the gifts, again, if you’ve not done anything wrong?
Even the way he announced he was to foot the bill for some of the donations was appallingly mishandled. Firstly, he’s ready to write a cheque for £6,000, but around £40,000 worth of suits, clothes for his wife and glasses remain in their respective wardrobes.
Secondly, he allowed this to become part of the press conference he gave after his first visit as PM to Brussels, where he would have hoped to focus on a new and improved deal.
And lastly, he said “we need some principles” while still asserting he had broken no rules. This simply doesn’t add up.
Even the attempt by Labour to point to all the Conservative sleaze – and there was no shortage – sounds increasingly hollow as we learn, among others, that Labour MP and son of chief of staff Sue Gray, Liam Conlon, was given Taylor Swift tickets by the , and Deputy Prime Minister picked up £836 towards her trip to Ibiza.
It is said that tensions are close to boiling point within parts of the Labour communications teams as they struggle to understand the toxic mix of fury and bewilderment this saga has unleashed.
When the story first broke, they needed to declare every ticket, suit, frock and loan of an apartment in one go. While this will be forgotten come the next general election, there are some local elections looming and this is likely to linger. But for now, the hits just keep on coming for the government – and they’re playing a tune that doesn’t “suit” them whatsoever.
*Ratner’s was the world’s largest jewellery retailer with sales of £1.2billion, but after then boss Gerald Ratner described one product as “total c**p”, business collapsed and he was turfed out.
■ If the chilling prediction from Olli Heinonen, the former deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, that Iran could have up to ten nuclear warheads “in six months” is correct, the world needs to be very nervous.
It also needs to temper that grave warning with their continual calls for to pause or de-escalate the conflict. Loss of lives on all sides is horrific.
But, do you want a world where the restrictive, backward, intemperate Tehran region has the capacity for nuclear warfare?
■ The words “all you can eat buffet” are some of the most abused in the English language. How many times have you seen plates piled high with food by diners with eyes larger than their stomachs, which is often then left untouched and discarded.
Credit then to the Star Inn near Redruth in Cornwall for levying a £2.40 charge on customers who have “excess leftovers” on their plates.
This is an abuse and costly for everyone involved. Remember that old adage: waste not, want not.
■ It was Eric Morecambe who used to ask famously : “What do you think of it so far?”
So, what might your answer be about a government that, in three months, has nicked cash from the pensioners, helped themselves to tens of thousands of pounds worth of freebies, failed to make a decision over the multi-billion pound white elephant that is HS2 and given away our sovereignty of the key militarily strategic Chagos Islands?
All together now: Rubbish!
■ You know how the migration industry likes to lecture us that conflicts elsewhere on the planet result in hordes of displaced poor people trekking across Europe to find sanctuary in the UK? This picture of someone loading their luxury yacht in the port at Beirut seems to tell a rather different story.