Every Cabinet has its weasel. Weasels are shy yet aggressive. They bite heads off voles and songbirds. Weasels have whiskers. They slink.
The Starmer Cabinet’s weasel is Steve Reed, 62, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government.
On Monday night he was expected at a Jewish vigil to mark the Bondi Beach killings but somehow his diary became ‘busy’ and an unfortunate underling was sent in his place.
She was duly heckled by protesters angry with the Government’s position on Israel and anti-Semitism. How shrewd of Mr Reed to dodge that embarrassment. Yesterday the furry little fellow – he wears designer stubble, even worse than Prince William’s – came skittering to the Commons for an appointment more to his liking.
He was to make a statement entitled ‘electoral resilience’. No one quite knew what that meant. Soon it became apparent that the statement should really have been called ‘having a swipe at Nigel Farage’s Reform’.
Mr Reed announced an inquiry into foreign interference in our politics. Basically by Russia. Basically in Reform UK, whose former Welsh leader, Nathan Gill, was recently sentenced to ten years in prison for taking Russian bribes. Such sedition was an affront to our electoral system, averred Mr Reed, defender of democracy.
As any headless vole will tell you, weasels are not subtle. Ditto Reed. You could tell from his over-emphatic delivery that a certain whiffiness was in the air. The consonants were struck hard, the vowels were given plenty of wind and he kept pointing with a finger and glaring at the bench where Reform’s contingent of MPs sits. Three of them were there for this event: Richard Tice, Lee Anderson and Sarah Pochin. Brother Farage was absent. Lunchtime.
Mr Reed was slagging off the convicted Gill within a sentence or two. We heard much of the convicted man’s wickedness. Russia, meanwhile, was a country which had launched the Novichok attack in Salisbury, killing ‘a British citizen on British soil’. Those uses of ‘British’ were stressed.
Housing Secretary Steve Reed speaking in the House of Commons about ‘electoral resilience’
Reform UK’s former Wales leader, Nathan Gill, was jailed for ten-and-a-half years last month
The review announced by Mr Reed would be ‘independent’ and it would be led by a one-time mandarin, Philip Rycroft. He was one of those Whitehall poohbahs caught up in the attempted obstruction – sorry, I mean the dutiful enaction – of Brexit when Theresa May was Prime Minister. Just the man to polish democracy’s bonnet.
Mr Reed straightened himself to his full 5ft 6in or so and announced that the Rycroft review would ‘work to remove the stain’ of the Gill affair. It would, furthermore, deliver its conclusions to Mr Reed by March. Handily, that should be just in time to ensure more anti-Reform publicity before the local elections (those that the Government has not already cancelled, seemingly out of fear that Reform might do rather well in them).
Labour MPs queued up to deplore both Gill and Reform. Mr Reed, in his anxiety to demonstrate his disgust, inserted an extra syllable into ‘counter-interference’, making it ‘counter-interferience’. He was biting down on his lip with primness. He glared. He was piety in a suit. An archbishop of cant.
This same Steve Reed was involved with that Labour Together group that hit trouble with £730,000 of ‘hidden’ donations a few months ago. Oops. He helped run the group with his friend Morgan McSweeney, chief poisoner at 10 Downing Street. Let there be no doubts, please, about the probity of these souls. Mr Reed is also the sainted ascetic who allowed Lord Alli to thrust a £400 pair of posh Wellington boots on him when he was Environment Secretary.
And yet this same ill-shaven runt was now filling his lungs, fluting on about ‘the weight of responsibility that each of us in this House should bear’ and how the people’s wishes should be ‘the guiding star for our nation’. ‘We carry on one shoulder the duty to represent our constituents and on the other to protect this democracy’.
Nathan Gill was, without doubt, a v. bad hat. But Steve Reed is a weasel.
