Banham: the mystery deepens

The shambles over Sir John Banham’s fleeting role as Cornwall’s economic guru and chair of the LEP rolls on. Cornwall Council leader, Tory Alec Robertson, claimed this week in the local press that ‘County [sic] Hall had no involvement in the appointment of Sir John Banham as interim chairman’, despite agreeing to pick up the £2,000 a day tab for his services.

Something is very strange here. The lugubrious Cllr Robertson claims the appointment ‘was made by the private sector’. Yet the December meeting at Redruth’s Penventon Hotel that rubber-stamped Banham’s appointment involved an invited (by whom?) group of merely 16 people. Dissension from within the Cornish business community was soon apparent and it became crystal clear that no ‘consultation’ worth the name had occurred.

While no councillors are reported to have been present at the December meeting the Council’s Chief Executive Kevin Lavery most certainly was. Indeed, those who were there report that they were subjected to ‘one hour of sustained badgering’ from Lavery to accept Banham and his plan. Tory MP George Eustice is also reported to have suggested Banham in the first place. But suggested to whom?

The Council claims there was an earlier meeting in November, convened by George, and involving ‘private sector representatives’. Others have alleged that this meeting included Eustice and Lavery but no business leaders at all. Even the date of this November meeting remains shrouded in mystery, while the identity of the ‘private sector representatives’ flits ghost-like and insubstantially through the shadows. Meanwhile, George remains silent on the issue.

So if Cornwall Council really ‘had no involvement’ then who was Lavery representing at the December and possibly the November meeting? And why did Sir John himself state that

he had been offered the role of interim chairman of the shadow board of the new LEP by Cornwall Council.

And who agreed to fork out the £2,000 a day? And when? The deal seems to have been cut well before the Council’s press release of the 22nd December announcing the appointment. And why before the appointment was made was there apparently a protracted period of negotiation between Banham and the Council involving the quality of their planning department?

But not to worry. In the warped world of the management class Robertson assures us that Banham’s services should actually have cost £4,000 a day. (Which makes his weekly worth almost equivalent to the average Cornish annual wage). Cheap at half the price then.

The Lib Dem legacy: deference and Devonwall

So that’s it then. What began with a roar of defiance has ended with a pathetic whimper. Earlier this week a bunch of unelected peers tottered their way through the antiquated mummery and mystification that passes for British democracy and passed the report stage of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. In doing so, this mixture of superannuated party hacks and self-important has-beens, with a sprinkling of toffs and bishops thrown in, voted by 250 to 221 to reject an amendment that would have exempted Cornwall from the lunatic five per cent divergence from the norm constituency size rule.

The initial outrage at the ConLib Government’s hybrid bastard progeny, the Devonwall Bill that sells out Cornish integrity in return for a referendum on a variant of the globally derided first past the post system, has seemingly trickled away in the sands of confusion produced by Liberal Democrat tactical blundering. Full marks to Robin Teverson, former Lib Dem MEP and Cornwall councillor, for moving this amendment. Less than full marks to the rest of the Lib Dem lords. A paltry 15% of them could summon up enough interest to support Cornwall’s case. A massive 63 voted with their Tory colleagues to oppose and defeat it.

This bill only survived the Commons because of the support of Lib Dem MPs – all our Cornish MPs voting for it despite meaningless pledges to oppose the Devonwall aspect. If only half of the Liberal Democrats in the Lords had voted for Teverson’s amendment it would have passed.

The whole parliamentary campaign to get Cornwall exempted from the Tories’ clever little gerrymandering scheme has been a shambles from the start. Under pressure from Lib Dem MPs, the Keep Cornwall Whole campaign, which seems this week to have been shocked into total silence, jettisoned the argument that the Cornish, as one of the four indigenous peoples of the British Isles, have a clear claim to equal treatment with Scotland or Wales. They were assured by the MPs and their local apologists that it would be more ‘realistic’ and ‘persuasive’ to claim exemption on geographical grounds.

In fact, wilfully casting national claims away allowed opponents to portray the campaign as merely arising from a concern about Cornish identity and the administrative border. As they correctly point out, the Cornish identity will survive the issue of constituency boundaries. And the eastern boundary of the unit called Cornwall will remain at the Tamar. However, ignoring the border in this instance also symbolically snubs the Cornish case for special treatment, one based on its non-English origins and the ambiguities of its constitutional position. This reinforces the demeaning treatment of Cornwall as a bog-standard English county, on a par with Hertfordshire or Herefordshire.

This is why the Lords were allowed to get away with passing an amendment to exclude the Isle of Wight from the provisions of this bill but not Cornwall. To do the same for Cornwall must in no circumstances be allowed. It’s far too dangerous, opening up a constitutional can of worms that this government, like its predecessor, clearly wants to keep a very firm lid on.

And in all this the Lib Dems have acted either as witting collaborators or unwitting and gormless dupes. This applies from the unctuous and mendacious Clegg right down to their disingenuous and dissembling foot soldiers in the council chambers. Of course, why should we expect anything different? Since the 1980s the Liberal Democrats have racked up an appalling record of incompetence. They have colluded with Devonwall at every turn, spurned each opportunity to put a case for Cornish distinctiveness and lumbered us with huge, fat white elephants such as Newquay airport. Not content with destroying the level of democracy closest to the people they now eagerly join the half-baked schemes of the wretched Clegg for constitutional ‘reform’.

What will our Lib Dem MPs do now, having promised to fight this erosion of Cornish representation? Let’s take a look at Andrew George, the man of ‘principled abstentions’, and his St Ives Lib Dem blog. Well, he’s been busy this week meeting with apprentices, supporting good causes and opposing his own government’s plans to privatise search and rescue and flog off the forests. But of the Devonwall bill oddly not a word.

Go to Dan Rogerson’s website. Mute silence on this issue. And remember what Steve Gilbert said back on that warm day in early October when hundreds gathered on the banks of the Tamar to show their opposition to Devonwall. Oh yes ...

My job is to vote against the government to keep Cornwall intact

Well, not quite perhaps. Along with his sheep-like chums he voted for the Bill in the Commons and, like the others, his website echoes to a deathlike hush when it comes to this week’s news.

So what will George et al do when the Bill returns to the Commons? Because now it’s clear. As it always was. Support this bill and you support Devonwall. Now is a chance to put Cornwall’s long-term interests before party. Who will grasp it? Don’t hold your breath.

It’s a similar story from our local Lib Dem bloggers. Lots of pavement politics and localism but on the Devonwall constituency? Rien, zilch, nada, traveth. It doesn’t matter which language. It’s still no comment.

After 30 years of being sold down the river, or up the Amazon, by a generation of Lib Dem promises of fairness to come which oddly gets transformed into unfairness when it comes, it’s all too easy to sneer at their two-faced utter ineptitude. The Lib Dem legacy has now left Cornwall to the tender mercies of the mad privatisers, hatchet-faced cutters and slashers and complacent millionaires who run the Conservative Party, not to mention their mates who line their pockets from ripping off Cornwall, its people and its resources.

So what do we do now? As the Cornish Republican pointed out earlier this week the Devonwall bill is hardly the biggest issue facing us at this time of needless attacks on the living standards of the poor, global unsustainability and the rest. But it still requires a response. Unfortunately, MK seems to have lost it on this issue, calling for a yes vote in May’s plebiscite on the reform in a selfish but no doubt fruitless quest for party gain.

This sell-out demands a much more principled stand. The 500 or so who spent a sunny autumn’s afternoon on the banks of the Tamar deserve better. Get real. The referendum on the alternative vote is part of a bill that includes a Devonwall constituency or constituencies. If they are separate issues then why didn’t Lib Dem MPs press Clegg to split the bill into two last summer? They didn’t. Therefore anyone who opposes a Devonwall constituency cannot in all conscience vote yes in the referendum.

As I’ve argued before, we can’t vote no either, as that implies support for the neanderthals who labour under the delusion that our current voting system is the best in the world and that anything more demanding than putting a cross on a piece of paper is ‘too complex’ for the average British voter.

So there’s only one thing left to do. Join me and spoil your paper. This would seem to call for a Facebook campaign. The experience of the last six months has shown that we don’t need leaders, and certainly not Lib Dem leaders. MK has decided to throw away the chance to channel the general disgust at this tawdry measure. So who’s going to kick it off? And what do we write on our voting papers?