Ian Botham is now a member of the House of Lords.
The sporting legend renowned for barely believable feats on the cricket pitch and a combination of buffoonery and charity work off it, joined the upper house this week.
Quite how Botham’s knowledge of how to play a googly improves the governance of the nation is unexplained. But people who excel at cricket can now rest easy that their interests will no longer go unheard in Westminster.
The pictures of “Lord Beefy” in his ermine robes distilled this particular moment in British politics.
It wasn’t Botham’s expertise that got him the gig, it’s what he represents. It’s hard to get away from the feeling that some bright sparks in Downing Street or Conservative HQ have boiled their new supporters across the north of England down to two facets – Brexit and sport.
Botham encapsulates both.
He was a vocal supporter of leaving the EU. And these days that’s the main qualification for government.
And of course he’s regarded by many as England’s greatest-ever sporting hero. His single-handed demolition of the Aussies in 1981 is a cracking tale. But it’s hardly the basis for making the laws of the land.
If that’s the way forward can Archie Gemmill expect to be named as ambassador to Argentina in the near future?
One of the many reasons that isn’t going to happen is that Gemmill was a footballer. The brains in Downing Street are more familiar with the weirdness of the Eton wall game. While their new northern voters are more likely to be football fans – and Botham did make a few appearances for Scunthorpe United – the two can compromise on cricket.
Plus Gemmill is the scorer of Scotland’s greatest-ever goal (Sorry James McFadden, it’s true). The elevation of Botham is another sign that this Westminster administration is increasingly focused on England alone.
Douglas Ross gave an excellent speech to the Tories virtual conference at the weekend. There’s little in his analysis to argue with – that an SNP majority next May or Scottish independence are not inevitable. But it says something when the Conservatives’ Scottish leader has to remind his own party that they are supposed to be Unionists. Every ounce of energy he spends trying to convince his party to help him save the Union is time and energy diverted from the cause itself. And ironically that makes the outcomes the SNP seek more likely.
Worth noting in passing that the speech was an impressive step up for Ross. He has an engaging back story to share if he gets the chance. The frequency and ferocity of SNP attacks on him since he became leader of the Scottish Tories indicates that they’ve noticed he represents a threat if he can bring things together successfully. Speak to SNP MPs and you’ll hear far warmer words about Douglas Ross than you will about Margaret Ferrier. And that was the case even before the Rutherglen MP’s litany of stupidity last week.
The most depressing element of the arrival of Lord Botham is that it represents the end of this government’s noblest aim.
Back in February, before 2020 fell off its axis, one of the 2019 intake of Tories, Danny Kruger, wrote a fascinating column about what this government hoped to achieve. The column appeared in the New Statesman, a left wing magazine. So that was hopeful. A Tory trying to get an audience beyond obvious supporters hinted a genuine desire to bury the extreme divisiveness unleashed by Brexit.
Kruger is notable in the first instance because his mum is Prue Leith, the lower league version of Mary Berry, now judging The Great British Bake Off.
From a political point of view he’s interesting because he’s been in and around the higher echelons of the Tory party ever since his privileged education at Eton, Edinburgh and Oxford. His article explained that the new Conservative government was determined to return politics to its rightful place in national life.
Ever since the expenses scandal, politics and politicians have been degraded. The referendums of the last decade and the influence of social media have polluted the pot further with stark division and casual untruths. That makes for an unhappy public realm.
Given his role in shaping that environment, it’s moot if Boris Johnson was ever the man to put it right.
But the aim was laudable and the end vital.
The pandemic actually played into that agenda. A consensual, cross-party, competent approach to the coronavirus crisis would’ve turned around public attitudes towards Westminster at a stroke. That path was spurned.
And now we have a prime minister unable to remember his own public health guidelines, giving the impression he’s not taking the upending of everyday life as seriously as he ought. And the House of Lords has a cricketer on the red benches because he backed Brexit and might appeal to the sorts of people Boris Johnson, Danny Kruger and all their Eton set seek to please but do not understand.
Maybe rehabilitating politics is just another part of the government’s programme mothballed in the face of coronavirus. Once Covid is quelled perhaps Downing Street policy units will turn their attention to bettering the public realm.
We have to hope so. The frayed edges of the public response to coronavirus – the suspicion of government motives, the soup of conspiracy theories supped so widely –have been fuelled by cynicism and bad faith in politics.
Back in 1981 Ian Botham was the man to rescue a lost cause. Nearly 40 years later he’s not the solution, his elevation to the Lords is part of the problem.
James Millar is a political commentator and author and a former Westminster correspondent for The Sunday Post.
