The ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office has generated political and social quakes not seen since the 1966 BBC TV play about homelessness, Cathy Come Home, written by Jeremy Sandford and directed by the inimitable Ken Loach. That film provoked surging public outrage and impelled state authorities to take the issue seriously.
The Post Office accounting scandal has been in the public domain for years. Private Eye magazine, the journalist and author Nick Wallis and the BBC have been covering the story. But most Britons were not that bothered. Now, thanks to this mini-series, everyone cares and wants action. Better late than never, I guess.
More than a million people signed a petition calling for Paula Vennells, the Post Office chief executive at the time, to be stripped of her CBE (she handed it back yesterday).
The is also growing fury about Fujitsu, the Japanese IT firm which designed the faulty Horizon accounting software, and arguments are raging about whether there is a way of quashing all of the convictions and compensating victims fast.
This being election year, alarm is now sweeping into the corridors of political power. Like kids in the playground of a particularly dysfunctional school, they accuse each other. The babble is unbearable; the absence of honesty or awareness of antecedence even more so.
The Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey, who served as postal affairs minister in the coalition government between 2010 and 2012, has been severely castigated. He has now hit back and accused the Tories of trying to “weaponise” his role to win seats where the Lib Dems are gaining support.
Others are being dragged into the boiling pot of blame. But have you noticed that few mention Lord Cameron, who was the Tory prime minister at the time, or his deputy Nick Clegg, the smooth-talking Liberal Democrat leader during the coalition years?
This nation suffers from alarming short-term memory loss. Those poor sub-postmasters and mistresses were failed by the coalition government, made up of arrogant Tories like Cameron and George Osborne, and Lib Dem chaps who lost their heads when they got bit-parts in government. Swanning about self-importantly with their Tory colleagues, they imagined they were equals. Beyond their dreams, that was.
I had a fierce argument with the late Paddy Ashdown, whom I knew, about the coalition deal. When I said that the Tories were using and playing Clegg and co, his riposte was magisterial: the Lib Dems had finally made it. Power mattered. I was just a yapping, moaning journalist.
In a 2013 interview with Andrew Rawnsley of The Observer, Ashdown opined: “Broadly speaking, [the coalition] has been a success. It’s held together better than expected. We’ve made the thing work.” That thing they made work led to a mountain of woes.
Had Clegg not signed up to the coalition deal we would have been spared much pain. Cameron’s minority government would never have got through its ideologically driven legislation. One of the first of those was the Postal Services Act 2011, enabling 90 per cent of Royal Mail to be privatised. Think about that.
Next indictment: the Liberal Democrats did not question fanatical deregulation, even though, according to the New Economic Foundation, “good regulation… can drive innovation and create new markets. Many enlightened businesses recognise that regulation is essential to tackle economic threats such as climate change”.
Additionally, slashing red tape is also bad for society and democracy, because “it explicitly prioritises the interests of business – and the most short-term, socially irresponsible businesses at that – over those of workers, consumers and the environment”. And ordinary citizens too, inevitably.
Austerity was also the coalition’s big and dreadful idea. The exceedingly rich Rishi Sunak and his ilk are hellbent on reducing taxes for those well able to pay them and cutting back on welfare costs. Been there, done that. Shattered lives. Nothing learnt. More planned misery coming our way.
Remember Cameron saying in 2010 that we were all in it together? It was fluff and flummery. Labour’s highly effective measures had lifted underprivileged kids through welfare, improved education and parenting via Sure Start centres.
In 2010, the Child Poverty Act was passed with cross-party support. Yet Oxfam analysts have found that between 2010 and 2014 the poorest lost out most, while higher earners were far less affected. That was because from 2012, working-age benefits were cut in real terms. Children’s services, including Sure Start, were decimated. The coalition described the state of UK housing as “dysfunctional” in 2010 – and then pushed a 35 per cent cut in housing investment.
In sum, then, the coalition government was a disaster for the nation. The Tories must be held responsible for that. But they were aided and abetted by the very obliging Liberal Democrats. It is time for them all – most of all Cameron and Davey – to own the Post Office calamity and admit other massive failures.
We are still paying for Cameron and Clegg's disastrous coalition
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10.01.2024
The ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office has generated political and social quakes not seen since the 1966 BBC TV play about homelessness, Cathy Come Home, written by Jeremy Sandford and directed by the inimitable Ken Loach. That film provoked surging public outrage and impelled state authorities to take the issue seriously.
The Post Office accounting scandal has been in the public domain for years. Private Eye magazine, the journalist and author Nick Wallis and the BBC have been covering the story. But most Britons were not that bothered. Now, thanks to this mini-series, everyone cares and wants action. Better late than never, I guess.
More than a million people signed a petition calling for Paula Vennells, the Post Office chief executive at the time, to be stripped of her CBE (she handed it back yesterday).
The is also growing fury about Fujitsu, the Japanese IT firm which designed the faulty Horizon accounting software, and arguments are raging about whether there is a way of quashing all of the convictions and compensating victims fast.
This being election year, alarm is now sweeping into the corridors of political power. Like kids in the playground of a particularly dysfunctional school, they accuse........
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