John Redwood was once dubbed ‘Spock’ by The Times columnist Matthew Parris, after Star Trek’s Vulcan science officer who famously couldn’t understand human emotions or empathise. The handle stuck. And rightly or wrongly, he is not known for showing compassion in the face of poverty. But who is Redwood, and why does what he has recently said hint at division in the Tory ranks?
A crack in the façade?
Prime Minister Liz Truss’s heroine – Margaret Thatcher – appointed Redwood director of the No 10 policy unit 1982–87, and minister for corporate affairs 1989–92. Her successor, John Major, made him minister of state for local government in 1992, eventually promoting him to secretary of state for Wales until 1995. When Tony Blair’s New Labour spectacularly ejected the Tory government in 1997, William Hague appointed him shadow secretary for trade and industry and he took his seat on the opposition benches.
An Oxford graduate, Redwood lost to Labour’s Harriet Harman in the 1982 Peckham by-election. He’s been MP for Wokingham since 1987 and has built up a reputation for right-wing proclivities. He voted against same-sex marriage, and against Section 28 on homosexuality. He wanted to re-introduce capital punishment. He is also a climate denier who has lost arguments with Greta Thunberg on UK climate emissions.
He had a career in investment analysis with NM Rothschild and later founded his own company. He is currently chief global strategist at Charles Stanley & Co.
A lifelong Eurosceptic, he staunchly backed Brexit while allegedly advising clients to “look further afield”, a phrase interpreted to mean advice to move their investments out of the UK leading some to accuse him of promoting disaster capitalism.
So, when Redwood uncharacteristically displayed something approaching empathy, the wags stepped forward. On 12 September, John Redwood tweeted :
“After mourning a much loved Queen and the state funeral Parliament should meet. The current plan for a long conference recess means a delayed return on 17 October. We need to tackle the cost-of-living crisis and energy shortage before then.”
A moral epiphany or something else?
This sudden concern with the state of parliamentary democracy and the energy shortage could be interpreted in many ways.
Could his concern at the energy crisis be informed by fears over fracking being uneconomic? Or is he perhaps persuaded that fracking swathes of Yorkshire and Sussex around freeports would be an environmental disaster?
As for the cost-of-living crisis, is he worried about the impact on the poor? Or the possible resumption of strike action by the workers, nurses included?
Could Redwood, who wrote his DPhil at Oxford on atheism in England from the Restoration to the publication of Alciphron by George Berkeley in 1732, effectively discouraging the notion of independent thought, be shaken? He may be part of the old guard, but his views have traditionally resonated with the anti-trade union, right-wing, anti-European ERG, now de facto leaders of the party. For example, the new secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy Jacob Rees-Mogg, a Catholic whose fund invests in abortion pills, thinks raising the minimum wage to be ‘unwise’. He favours flexible, local pay, and opined recently that “it is very hard to believe that the right to paid holiday is an absolute moral right”.
Hard to square that with Redwood’s remark on the long parliamentary holidays, leaving MPs with only around 26 weeks per year to deal with parliamentary business. Is he really signalling disquiet in the ranks, or embarking on a moral crusade to exercise effectual parliamentary debate to address the worst cost-of-living crisis in living memory?
A free-thinking conference season
It is all rather puzzling. The Tory party conference provides an opportunity to whip up fervour among the party faithful, to inform, direct and get warm fuzzies from them. It also provides the media and opposition a chance to publicise the great failings of 12 years of Conservative government.
Chris Bryant, MP for Rhondda, lists them, inside the Commons and outside. Showing how shamefully and deceitfully Tory ministers misuse government statistics, he rejected the government’s usual excuses attributing recession, NHS crises, poverty and the crises besetting us all to the pandemic. And scorned the idea of Tory unity based on MPs voting as directed by the whips.
“They’re not even very good at being conservatives these days”, he stated. “Tearing up conventions and the constitution like student revolutionaries.”
While Redwood might not be a typical student revolutionary, perhaps his intervention has touched a raw nerve. The Tory look is not a good look but delivers more copy than any journalist could wish for.
Over the last few days, the potential authoritarian right-wing tendencies of the Public Order Act have been exposed: peaceful dissent has led to arrest. Even the sight of a plain sheet of paper led to one protester being warned to behave by the police.
It’s not just people protesting their republicanism or distress at the plight of ordinary people that is beginning to shake the party faithful. Taking the UK out of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) – much praised by Queen Elizabeth II as part of our democratic cultural heritage – has been trailed by Conservative MPs and ministers for a long time now. Do we want to copy Russia when it exits the ECHR on 16 September?
The arrogant deceits over tearing up the Northern Irish protocol were exposed this week for what they are by a gentle reminder from the EU’s Maroš Šefčovič that April 2023 marks the 25th anniversary of the historic Good Friday Agreement.
And as the destructive costs of Brexit across the social fabric and economy of the UK are exposed, the new chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng shook the party faithful by sacking the Treasury’s popular and highly experienced permanent secretary Tom Scholar. This signalled not only that Truss’s demand to ditch “abacus economics” would cement ever grimmer recession, according to the Financial Times (5 August), but that this new administration is willing to politicise a civil service that constitutionally has been highly effective because of its impartiality.
Bowing to reality?
As the realities of austerity, Brexit, under-investment in the NHS, and the energy crisis bite the party faithful, Redwood’s remarks may be a plea to soften the cost-of-living blow in the shires, or a rallying cry to slide ever-more to the right. Evidentially, his intention in making them, if taken within the context of his long-gestated hard-right politics, is difficult to discern.
Is he (virtue) signalling to his home county constituents, genuinely calling for rigorous parliamentary debate to tackle the cost-of-living crisis before it exerts an even icier grip, or eager to press ahead with an ideologically hard right-wing agenda that will secure Truss’ tenure as an imitation of the ‘iron lady’? All will become clear when this protracted period of national mourning ends and we are propelled toward a winter the like of which many might never have known.
