Fireworks or a Damp Squib?
PMQues 5th November 2025, PMQs comment and insight
So, what’s in the news this week? The Chagosians deliver a last plea for justice over a territory that is rightfully theirs and should revert to them but has been given away to someone else by someone else. A quick read of the book Bury my heart at Wounded Knee will provide some idea of the sense of betrayal they must feel. But, wait, the vote in the Lords pulled. A change of heart or just a change of tactic?
What else? Knives and crime out of control. Indicative of a breakdown in society and arguably the triumph of barbarism and decadence in a joint effort to finally unravel the last vestiges of civilisation in the UK? In the year ending March 2025 there were 53,047 offences involving knives or sharp objects. Stabbings have increased by 81% in the last decade. Between 2012/13 and 2019/20 there was a 90% increase in knife crime. A staggering increase. There was a time when a message like, ‘only cowards carry knives’, might have had an impact, but are there enough strong and sensible role models left to reinforce such a message on the streets?
Andrew (whatever crumb of identity he has left this week) Mountbatten-Windsor has also been in the news. He had a house with a long lease under contract and now he hasn’t. He was a royal duke and now he is not, HRH and a prince by birthright as the second son of a sovereign, a vice admiral, but now just plain Mr Windsor. York a distant memory. Continued association with someone like Epstein was at very least ill advised, but should that cost him a title if others who are alleged to have done likewise retain theirs? One wonders what penalty he could incur now were he actually to be charged with or found guilty of any actual offence rather than just being accused of falling in with a bad crowd and earning the soubriquet ‘Randy Andy’ to unpleasant extremes? Strange how all those vilified for their association with Epstein are all British (Maxwell, Mandelson and Mr M-W) and none American.
There are implications when the public turn lupine, circle their victim and then tear them apart. A latter day Emanuel Goldstein figure (AKA Andrew Egalite) has lost property, titles and inheritance to which he was entitled, the deprivation of which which potentially undermines British rights of property and inheritance, which underpinned the traditional liberties of us all. The rights of property and inheritance were revived only a couple of generations following the feudal experiment of William of Falaise, the conquerer. In Inheritance and property depended representation and the evolution of constitutional democracy. If a prince can be deprived of property, titles and inheritance, we all can. Shouldn’t the Government be concerned about the wider implications affecting the nation as well as how oversight of those in public life is conducted?
The Chancellor has delivered her pre-budget spin and pitch rolling. It seemed less about economics and more about the optics. An example of PR eclipsing or concealing policy rather than revealing it. Just what was it about? Was there a message in there somewhere? Nothing to do with me guv, it was them, they did it. So, she points at the previous government as the source of all the problems that beset her and us, with the usual black hole, 14 years, mini budget, crashed the economy, Brexit - rhetoric. A quick, aren’t we doing well considering aside, before the difficult decisions and fiscal responsibility messages. As PR goes, it wasn’t good, but that was all it was. Face saving crisis management more about public image than the national interest. Saying one puts country before party doesn’t work in the middle of a speech clearly designed to make the government look good despite what is likely to be a manifesto pledge broken, for which the speech seems to have been a preparation. Maybe not, but surprise us.
Modern politics seems to have missed the point lately. Ultimately, people will respond to a workable idea as in a coherent national cause and roadmap solution better than a demagogue or spin.
PR has taken the place of politics to a larger extent than is healthy. Blair was a master of spin, PR and party marketing, but the current Prime Minister seemed to have made it a means of governing the country once it had succeeded in putting him in Downing Street. Could he have just moved the PR people and marketeers into the government departments and told them to just get on with it? Any problems and they would know how to make them go away, as far as the public were concerned anyway.
Demagoguery (PR made flesh) is cultish and can only lead to disappointment and possibly ruin. Blair and Corbyn were both that and we don’t need any others. The electorate must be disabused of any notion that demagoguery is a viable national salvation (any more than government by PR), and be presented with a higher and more noble alternative that can end the division we have witnessed rather than contribute to it.
Perhaps it is time to return to real world politics undertaken by real world representatives of the electorate in Parliament without interference by unelected officials or quangos. Wanting one’s country back is one thing, but wanting representatives in parliament who can do our bidding and actually do it would be a good idea.
The Context news magazine is now out. View here www.the-context com/context