Are you, like me, struggling to get a handle on the current government’s approach to empathy? It increasingly seems to be a commodity that many Conservative MPs believe should be available to Conservative MPs only. A few weeks ago the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, described William Wragg – fellow Tory MP and then-chair of the public administration and constitutional affairs committee – as “courageous”. By way of a reminder, “courageous” is the sort of word we would typically reserve for people who’ve singlehandedly held a bridge for the Allies against the Germans despite being wounded/posted a picture on social media of themselves without makeup; whereas Mr Wragg had simply shared MPs’ private phone numbers with a blackmailer in the current security environment. Is that brave? If it is, can the no-makeup girls please get a VC?
Further bravery seems to have been on show during yesterday’s local elections, which took place under electoral law changed by the Tories in 2022. All voters are now required to present an approved form of photo ID, which even Jacob Rees-Mogg last year implied was an attempt to “gerrymander” and “upset a system that worked perfectly well”. Flash-forward to the eve of this week’s polls, and the Ipswich MP Tom Hunt – who, naturally, voted in favour of voter ID – could be found informing a WhatsApp group of local party members that it “turns out I have no appropriate ID to vote tomorrow”, and requesting someone to “do the honours” and assist him in getting an emergency proxy vote. Unclear which lucky local did “the honours”, but Ipswich Labour used a screenshot of his APB in their own ad to remind people that they need voter ID, warning: “Don’t be like Tom.”
Alas, Tom Hunt was having none of this, posting in response a searingly brave no-makeup selfie. No, hang on – that’s not right. Hunt in fact posted an X thread in which he explained: “I do tend to be bad at losing stuff. I’m also very dyspraxic. Though I don’t want to blame this on everything it does make things challenging for me and I do my best but I do lose things and today it was my passport.” Of Labour’s decision to mention his failure to have the requisite ID, Hunt made something of an Olympian logical leap. “I find it shocking how Labour figures locally have sought to exploit this situation,” he bleated. “Saying ‘don’t be like Tom Hunt’, kind of like ‘don’t be dyspraxic’. They claim to want a more inclusive Parliament then pile on when I make a genuine human error.”
Erm … no. Forgive the interruption of such bravery, but if that logical leap can be made then we are well within the margin of error to suggest that Tom voting in favour of voter ID in the first place was also “kind of like ‘don’t be dyspraxic’”. Certainly he seems to have voted for something despite the apparently reasonable assumption that it could disfranchise other people with dyspraxia. What does he want, a medal? Because I’m afraid William Wragg’s already taken the DSO.
We seem to be at the stage of this particular administration in which its parliamentary supporters are asking for empathy for their inability to comply with its own policies, which they voted for, even as they crack down on the idea that empathy might be deserved by anyone else. Furthermore, these requests are cloaked in the sort of bleeding-heart language to which they seem performatively opposed in almost all other arenas. At this rate we could be mere weeks out from a backbencher claiming to have been diagnosed with PTSD for being the perpetrator in a sexual misconduct scandal. The idea that Tom Hunt’s defensive sob-story should be floated in the very week that the government previewed a draconian overhaul of the disability benefits system feels a little tin-eared. What’s the approved form of words in this situation? Something along the lines of: buck up, Mr Hunt. I think you’ll find it could be a lot worse.
And with that, we can avoid the daddy of them all no longer. To South Oxfordshire, then, where Boris Johnson left his moated mansion on Thursday in order to vote, only to discover when he tried to do so that he himself was without the requisite voter ID that his own legislation had demanded. Stop me if you’ve had this vibe off Johnson before, but it seems he said one thing at a press conference during the pandemic, which was then undermined by events directly involving him. Back in 2021, Johnson was challenged that introducing voter ID would prevent some people from voting, a possibility he dismissed as “complete nonsense”. He had – of course – previously written that if any representative of the state ever asked him for an ID card he would “take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it”. Unclear whether that kind of consumption occurred in South Oxfordshire yesterday, when he returned to the polling station for a second time. (After Johnson’s Ozempic experiment failed, he may well be back to eating anything.)
So as far as we know currently, two people out of the 365 Tory MPs elected back at the last general election made the voter ID mistake – a very high incidence of error/bravery, which, if replicated across the country, would see tens of thousands of people turned away from polling stations. We don’t yet know if those heights/depths were reached at yesterday’s polls.
But anecdotally speaking – yes, I am about to tell you an anecdote – I did see two people turned away when I was trying to vote. Or three, if you count me. I don’t drive, and my passport is in my maiden name (I think we still call it that), while I’m on the electoral roll in my married name. Fortunately I was able to locate my almost 25-year-old marriage certificate for the second trip to the polling station, thus returning armed with a document that could verify my verification document. Were things like this predictable? Yes. Predicted? Also yes. Absolutely bally heroic? I fear not. Like so much else, it seems rule-breaking is heroic only if you’re one of the rulemakers.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
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