The riots across the UK in consequence of the murder of three children in Southport have two direct implications for politics and policy. The first is that the riots reflect a widespread, and not blameworthy, concern across society with the pace and scale of immigration. The second is that lawlessness is unacceptable, the rioters have no excuse, and they should be properly punished.
I am concerned when I hear politicians, especially ministers, say the second thing without the first. The second point - that we strongly deprecate rioting and especially rioting with a racist flavour - is vital but it is easy to say. The first is harder, but just as necessary. Across the West, mainstream opinion is increasingly aware of the tensions created by mass migration, including of people from war-torn countries who bring with them trauma and the memory of violence. And when people don’t think the Government understands this, there is trouble.
I trust that the Government will indeed, as promised, ensure the rioters face the full force of the law. I don’t believe (as some have suggested) that we need to change the law to give the state greater powers to stop the riots or the people supposed to incite them. And I also hope ministers take seriously the imperative to stop illegal immigration, reduce legal migration, and ensure proper integration of immigrants into British society.
Onto news closer to home: the Stonehenge Tunnel has been cancelled. I want to be constructive with the new Government and I’m sure that Labour ministers will, like their predecessors, try to help opposition MPs with issues affecting their areas. In that spirit, in the Commons last week, I asked Rachel Reeves to consider what the Government will now do to address the chronic traffic congestion around the A303 - and I have written to the Transport Secretary requesting a meeting to discuss the matter.
I had my doubts about the scheme - the costs seemed a wild underestimate and we didn’t have the clarity we needed on the timetable or the plans to minimise disruption - but I absolutely know we need significant investment in our roads. The effect of the roundabouts and single carriageway at Stonehenge is misery for the towns and villages hereabout - Shrewton, Winterbourne Stoke and Larkhill most of all - which become rat-runs. And perhaps even more significantly than the A303, the north-south routes through the county are frequently gridlocked with lorries grunting their way up from the coast to the M4, through village streets designed for wagons and sheep-carts.
I will try to be non-partisan. But it hasn’t been a good start for Labour. The blatant misrepresentation of the public finances that was used to justify the cancellation of the tunnel - and the far more impactful cuts to pensioners’ incomes - are intended to soften us up for the tax rises which, during the election campaign, they denied planning. I’m also deeply concerned that they are proposing to scrap the Act we passed protecting free speech in universities; that they are pushing ahead with a ban on so-called ‘conversion practices’ which will directly inhibit both freedom of religion and the work which therapists do with people distressed about gender and sexuality; and that they still won’t commit to a timetable to raise defence spending to the minimum we need, namely 2.5% of GDP (we need more than that, but let’s start somewhere).
The most egregious step the new Government has taken is to undo the work that I and other Wiltshire MPs successfully lobbied the last Government to do, namely prevent developers gaming the planning system to impose large, ugly, inappropriate developments on green fields against the wishes of local communities. We need more houses (and Wiltshire is building more than our national target requires) but mostly we need more houses in the cities, where the work and the demand is. Labour have ripped up the planning system and will now impose far more housing on rural communities than the local economy, or local people, require. Wiltshire Council have described the situation well here.
All this aside - and while my Party and I continue to process the drubbing we received at the election - I’ve been getting used to turning right as I enter the Commons chamber and sitting in the bank behind the opposition front bench (and occasionally actually on the front bench, as I’m now a shadow minister for defence). To our left are the massed ranks of Liberal Democrats looking rather surprised to find themselves there, the diminished band of SNP members, the five solid-looking citizens representing Reform UK, the heroes of the DUP and the motley crowd of Welsh and Irish nationalists and assorted radical independents. Across us, spilling over their two banks of seats, is the pullulating organism of the Labour Party. They look lovely, really. And the ones I’ve spoken to in the coffee queue are perfectly nice. The problem is that they belong to a party committed both to the worst of the status quo - big government, quangos, a high-immigration and high-tax economy, European human rights law and the rest of it - and to a radical agenda of social change which will deepen social divisions and harm the most vulnerable.
I must do better at the non-partisan newsletters. I’ll try harder next time. Meanwhile I hope you are having a lovely summer.
