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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

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Canada's privatised shadow civil service

PJ O’Rourke once quipped that “The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it.” But conservative parties have unlikely allies in the project to discredit public service: neoliberal “centrist” parties, like Canada’s Liberal Party.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/31/mckinsey-and-canada/#comment-dit-beltway-bandits-en-canadien

The Liberals have become embroiled in a series of scandals over the explosion of lucrative, secretive private contracts awarded to high-flying consultancy firms who charge hundreds of times more than public sector employees to do laughably bad work.

Front and centre in the scandal, is, of course, McKinsey, consligieri to opioid barons, murdering Saudi princes, and other unsavoury types. McKinsey was brought in to “consult” on strategy for the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), a Crown corporation that gives loans to Canadian businesses.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/business-development-bank-canada-hudon-mckinsey-1.6720914

While there, McKinsey performed as per usual, veering from the farcical to the grotesquely wasteful. Most visible was the decision to spend $320,000 on a livecast fireside chat between BDC president Isabelle Hudon and a former Muchmusic VJ that was transmitted to all BDC employees, which featured Hudon and the host discussing a shopping trip they’d taken together in Paris.

Meanwhile, BDC has been hemorrhaging top people, which leaving the organisation with many holes in its leadership — the kind of thing that would pose an impediment to its lofty goals of substantially increasing the support it gives to businesses run by women, First Nations people and people of color.

Hudon — a Trudeau appointee — vowed to “start from scratch” when she took over the organisation, but then went ahead and did what her predecessors had done: hired outside consultants who billed outrageous sums to repurpose anodyne slide-decks full of useless, generic advice, or unrealistic advice that no one could turn into actual policy. They also sucked up BDC employees’ time with endless interviews.

The BDC has (reluctantly) disclosed $4.9m in contracts to McKinsey. The CBC also learned that Hudon parachuted several cronies from her previous job at Sun Life into top roles in the organisation, and that BDC had reneged on promised promotions for many long-term staffers. Hudon also repeatedly flew a chauffeur across the country from Montreal to BC to drive her around.

In Quebec, premier François Legault hired an army of McKinsey consultants at $35,000 per day to advise him on covid strategy, for a total bill of $8.6m. McKinsey’s contract with the province stipulated that they wouldn’t have to disclose their other clients, even in the event that they had conflicts of interest:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/caq-legault-mckinsey-pandemic-consulting-1.6602374

The contract was kept secret, as was the long-running, $38m contract between McKinsey and the Hydro Quebec power authority:

https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1927738/mckinsey-hydro-quebec-consultants-barrages-affaires

Most of the bad press McKinsey gets revolves around the evil advice it gives — like when it advised opioid companies to pay cash bonuses to pharma distributors for every death-by-overdose in their territory (no, I’m not making this up):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/30/mckinsey-mafia/#everybody-must-get-stoned

But these rare moments of competence should be understood in the broader context in which McKinsey isn’t evil, they are merely utterly, totally fucking useless. The 2022 French Senate report on McKinsey really digs into this:

http://www.senat.fr/commission/enquete/2021_influence_des_cabinets_de_conseil_prives.html

They find that a quarter of the work McKinsey turned in was “unacceptable or barely acceptable in quality.” This is in line with the overall tenor of work performed by consultants. For example, when it came to giant Capgemini, the French Senate found that the work it provided was “of near-zero added value, indeed sometimes counterproductive.”

And yet, despite the expense and “near-zero added value,” hiring outside consultants is a reflex for neoliberal centrist leaders. Trudeau has presided over a massive expansion of the Canadian government’s reliance on outside consultants:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-liberals-spend-billions-more-on-outsourced-contracts-since-taking/

After campaigning on a promise to reduce outside consultancy, the Trudeau administration increased consultant spending by 40%, to $11.8 billion. This shadow civil service is not just more expensive and less competent that the real civil service — it is also far more opaque, able to fend off open records requests with vague gestures towards “trade secrecy.”

Since 2015, McKinsey has raked in $101.4m in federal contracts, even as the civil service has been starved of pay. Meanwhile, federal departments insist that they need to “protect Canada’s economic interests” by not disclosing outside contracts, and list their total spend at $0.00.

https://nationalpost.com/news/outsourcing-contracts-mckinsey-billions

The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada estimates that between 2011–21, the Canadian government squandered $18b on outside IT contracting that could have been performed by public servants. In 2022, the Government of Canada spent $2.3b on outsource IT contracts, while the wage bill for its own IT staff came in at $1.85b.

It’s not like these outside IT contractors are good at their jobs, either. The most notorious example is the ArriveCAN covid-tracking app for travellers, the contract for which was awarded to GCstrategies, a two-person shop in Ottawa, who promptly turned around and outsourced it to KPMG and other contractors, whom they billed to the government at $1,000–1,500/day, raking off 15–30% in commissions.

For months, the origins of the ArriveCAN app were a mystery, with the government insisting that the details of the contractors involved were “confidential.” But ArriveCAN was such a steaming pile of shit, and so many travellers (a population more likely to be well-off and politically connected than the median Canadian) had to deal with it, that eventually the truth came out.

The ArriveCAN scandal is ongoing — just last year, it cost the Canadian public $54m:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-arrivecan-subcontractors-multinationals/

Trudeau’s Liberals didn’t invent outsourcing high-stakes IT projects to incompetent grifters. Under Conservative PM Stephen Harper, Canada paid IBM to build Phoenix, an utterly defective payroll system for federal employees that stole millions from civil servants, bringing government to a virtual standstill. Thus far, the Government of Canada — which paid IBM $309m to develop Phoenix, as a “cost savings measure” — has paid $506m in damages to make good on Phoenix’s errors:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-ottawa-paid-out-400-million-in-phoenix-pay-compensation-to-federal/

The Liberals didn’t invent Phoenix — but they did deploy it, after campaigning on the wastefulness and incompetence of the Tories’ outsourcing bonanza. And after Phoenix crashed and burned, the Liberals increased outsourcing spending.

All of this is well-crystallized in last week’s Canadaland discussion between Jesse Brown and Nora Loreto:

https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/853-the-indulgent-consultant/

And on his Substack, Paul Wells proposes that the Senate — a largely ornamental institution in Canadian politics — is the unlikely check of last resort on the Liberals’ fetish for outsourcing:

There are former deputy ministers at the federal and provincial levels, secretaries to cabinet, a former Clerk of the Privy Council, a former chief of staff to a prime minister. A lot of them can remember the days when big decisions weren’t farmed out to firms that make their founders rich and are spared the rigours of accountability for their counsel. Surely some of them would like to shine a light?

https://paulwells.substack.com/p/shine-a-brighter-light-on-contract?

Image: Sam (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Canadian_House_of_Commons.jpg

Presidencia de la República Mexicana (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Justin_Trudeau_June_2016.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[Image ID: The legislative chamber of Canada's House of Commons; behind the speaker's chair, the back wall has been replaced by an enormous $100 bill. The portrait on the $100 bill has been replaced with an unflattering, braying picture of Justin Trudeau. The Bank of Canada legend across the top of the note has been replaced by the McKinsey and Company wordmark.]

#pluralistic #canada #cdnpoli #neoliberalism #consultancy #opacity #impunity #hollow government #mckinsey #justin trudeau #liberal party #covid #quebec #profiteers

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nando161mando · 3 months

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Liberal party in turmoil after six former ministers quit parliament

via @chaser

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coochiequeens · 1 year

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Advocates on the right side of history don’t punch horses.

An Australian politician is set to be expelled from the Liberal Party after she attended a pro-woman rally critical of gender ideology this week. Moira Deeming, who represents the Western Metropolitan Region in the Parliament of Victoria, is being scrutinized by her own party after attending a public Let Women Speak event in Melbourne on March 18.

The rally Deeming attended was part of the Australian “Let Women Speak” tour hosted by British women’s rights campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen, the founder of Standing for Women. Keen has hosted rallies across the UK, USA, and Australia encouraging women to use her platform to speak about how gender ideology has impacted their lives.

Keen’s events typically draw both counter-protesters and detractors, and the event in Melbourne this week was no different. The rally was faced down by trans activists and required a heavy police presence to keep the protesters at bay. Violent trans activists reportedly attacked police horses, punching them in the stomach, attempting to get at the female speakers.

During the rally, a trans activist rushed the stage and seized the microphone as one woman spoke about women’s suffrage in Australia and explained that Aboriginal women did not gain the right to vote until 1962. The activist, who was male and wearing a wig, was quickly restrained by private security.

Due to the threat of violence presented by the counter-protesters, police shut the rally down early.

Just after the rally concluded, Keen said in a YouTube livestream that the police appeared to be genuinely concerned about the rapidly escalating aggression during the event.

“We needed more police than I’ve ever seen to stop violent trans activists getting to us, who punched horses in the stomach,” Keen said in a video posted the next day.

A separate demonstration was held by a group of around 20 men who were reportedly members of the National Socialist Network, a neo-Nazi group. According to witnesses who were on the ground, the men had attempted to antagonize the trans activists, chanting “pedophile” and “communist” at the crowd while raising their arms in a Nazi salute.

Without any consultation from the women’s side, police onsite allegedly allowed the far-right group onto the steps of the Parliament building where they remained for around 15 minutes, posing with their hands in the air and holding a banner that read, “Destroy [Pedo] Freaks.”

Deeming appeared in a livestream with Keen after the rally where they discussed the day’s events. During the stream, Deeming spoke positively about the event, which she said allowed women to unite for their “basic human rights.” She also expressed concern about the police seemingly allowing the neo-Nazi group into the pro-woman area.

“There was a group of masked men who came in … we didn’t know who they were,” Deeming said during the livestream. “The police, for some reason that I do not understand, ushered them in and let them take photos on the steps next to us.” She went on to say she was horrified when she witnessed the men give a Nazi salute.

Following the event, Deeming took to her Twitter to condemn the far-right group and express disappointment in the police for allowing them to get so close the women’s rally.

Despite Deeming’s condemnation of the neo-Nazi detractors, John Pesutto, the Leader of the Australian Liberal Party, released a statement accusing Deeming of being part of the neo-Nazi demonstration.

“Yesterday afternoon, Victorians witnessed an abomination on the steps of the Victorian Parliament when neo-Nazi protesters engaged in an affront to the values we should all hold dear as Victorians,” Pesutto said in the statement.

“The violence, prejudice and hate that these protesters conveyed by their odious actions will never be acceptable in our State. I condemn them and commit to opposing such hate wherever it may exist.”

He then explained how he confronted Deeming about her involvement and was moving to expel her from the Liberal Party despite her repeatedly stating she had no involvement with the separate far-right demonstration.

The women attending the Let Women Speak event had also not committed any illegal acts and had formal permits for their rally. Many of the women also experienced violence and aggression from counter-protesters, including Deeming, who reported being kicked in the shin by a trans activist.

Later, Deeming released a further statement addressing the situation.

“I have been informed that there will be a vote in the Liberal Party room to determine whether I should be allowed to remain or be expelled from the Parliamentary Party. Let me be clear – I have done nothing wrong. Those who organized the Let Women Speak event on the weekend have done nothing wrong,” Deeming said in the opening of her statement published on Twitter.

She then went on to explain that Standing for Women is a reputable group supported by women around the world, from many different political backgrounds and religious orientations.

“I and the other attendees were horrified to see masked men all clad in black inside the buffer zone. We thought that we were going to be attacked. However, the police did not seem worried and were talking with them over at the edge of the line.”

Deeming continued: “After the event I was informed that these masked men had in fact mounted Parliament House steps outside of our view on the other end and performed a Nazi salute, and that members of the [Standing for Women] group asked the police to make them leave, but were informed that the Police had no powers to move them on due to Labor’s removal of those powers.”

She denied any assertions that the attendees or organizers were affiliated with the Nazi detractors, and condemned their actions.

“I completely reject the beliefs of National Socialists (Nazis) and I have seen first-hand the impact that the Holocaust had on a family member. None of those organising the event had any involvement with these men, as has been confirmed by Victoria Police, the Australian Jewish Association and all the organisers themselves.”

In addition to Deeming refuting any association with the neo-Nazi contingency, the group associated with the far-right similarly denied any involvement with the women’s rally.

During the rally, a member of the public confronted the group about their reasons for marching, one of the neo-Nazis expressed a lack of support for both the pro-trans side and the pro-women side. He called the pro-trans side “pedophiles” and “pedophile supporters.”

When asked what he thought of Let Women Speak, he said: “What rights don’t women have these days? We’re here for the little boys.” He then claimed that due to feminism, boys as young as 7 are forced to stand up in school and apologise for rape.

A member of the National Socialist Network, David Hiscox, published an article on his blog denying support for Kellie-Jay Keen, and calling her an “atheist radical feminist” who promotes “lesbianism.”

In an article published by XYZ, an influential propaganda outlet for the broader neo-Nazi movement in Australia, Hiscox claimed Keen’s intention was to reduce the white birth rate. Hiscox also stated his Neo-Nazi group’s goal for turning up at the rally was to hijack Keen’s fight against gender ideology as she was “misdirecting them to reinforce the progress of Liberalism and maintain support for Israel.”

Hiscox wrote: “Both the groomer ideology of ‘trans’ activists and the lesbianism promoted by Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull are forms of Liberalism directed by the Globohomo regime at White people in order to undermine white families, birthrates and social cohesion.”

On Hiscox’s Twitter account, he celebrated the National Socialist Network’s successful hijacking of the event saying: “The rightful pushback against groomer propaganda cannot be allowed to be dominated by radical feminist atheists who will merely reinforce the gains of cultural Marxism.”

Despite efforts by trans activists to link the neo-Nazis to Keen and her rally, the Australian Jewish Association (AJA) condemned the far-right men as invaders who “saw an opportunity to hijack the event for their own publicity.” The AJA also called out the police for allowing the men to access the steps of Parliament undeterred.

In a statement on their Facebook page, the AJA wrote: “Yesterday a ‘Let Women Speak’ rally was held in Melbourne featuring visiting British women’s advocate Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull (also known as Posie Parker) as well as local women. This movement is concerned that biological men are undermining the integrity of women’s sport and spaces such as bathrooms … AJA unreservedly condemns the Nazis who invaded the rally. These ugly thugs likely saw an opportunity to hijack the event for their own publicity.”

The statement continued: “There was some very odd policing. While the Victorian police held back the trans activists who arrived to disrupt the rally, they did not do the same to the Nazis.”

The AJA then slammed politicians for associating the women’s movement with the Nazis, saying Let Women Speak had nothing to do with them.

“The Nazis were condemned by the women’s rally organizers – one contacted AJA in distress explaining what had happened. The ‘Let Women Speak’ organizers had nothing to do with the Nazis. It is shameful that some politicians and media are now trying to smear this women’s movement with the false accusation of involvement with Nazis.”

Despite credible evidence to the contrary, many Australian politicians have continued to claim that the ‘Let Women Speak’ rally was associated with the neo-Nazis, particularly members of the Australian Green Party.

In a now-deleted tweet, party leader Adam Bandt wrote: “I’m disgusted by the anti-trans rally in Melbourne yesterday, protected by their allies: saluting neo-Nazis. The banners they march under and the hate they espouse have no place here or anywhere.”

In the wake of the public outcry over the presence of neo-Nazis close by the women’s rights event, it has come to light that the Australian Greens of Victoria recently investigated a transgender member of the party for statements that were reportedly supportive of pedophilia and Nazism.

Just days before the rally, Australian lawyer Nina Vallinscondemned the Greens for not adequately disciplining Bianca Haven, a trans-identified male who has held senior positions in the party, after he defended pedophilia and incest and expressed views sympathetic to the Nazis on his personal Twitter account. After an internal investigation, Haven was only censured, prompting anger from some who had called for suspension or expulsion.

Vallins was present at the rally and used her microphone time to explain that the Greens had failed to suspend Haven for his tweets, but had suspended her for 6 months after she tweeted that domestic violence survivors were entitled to single-sex resources.

Responding to the criticism, Keen has urged her followers to not get distracted.

“I promote women’s voices, without distraction, because contrary to popular belief women are enough,” Keen said on Twitter while sharing one of the speeches from a woman at her rally which went viral.

Speaking with NZ Herald, Keen stated, “They’re absolutely not associated with me whatsoever. I absolutely abhor anything to do with Nazis. It’s preposterous they even exist in 2023.”

She also expressed support for Deeming after it was announced the Liberal Party of Australia had expelled her.

Keen’s rallies have on several occasions drawn crowds of trans activists who have either threatened violence or physically harmed participants.In November 2022, two women were assaulted by a man at a London rally in Hyde Park.

In May 2022, another woman was assaulted by a black-clad trans activist in Manchester. After her rally in Bristol, a gang of men in all black, who were primarily members of Bristol Anarchist Federation, followed a group of women to a local pub and blocked them in.

During the US leg of her tour, at least nine people were arrested in Manhattan during protests that broke out in opposition to the Let Women Speak event.

#Australia #liberal party #Let women speak #Moira Deeming #Standing for Women #Australian Green Party #Adam Bandt just hates women speaking up #The Australian Jewish Association (AJA) saw right through the bs #Bianca Haven is a TIM with views sympathetic to Nazis #Nina Vallins spoke the truth

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sideshow-bob · 7 months

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Okay so I’ve just taken an edible and I’m grumpy so it’s time for a rant about drug use and Canadian politics.

So I’ve started seeing this terrible not-good very bad advertisement a lot lately, which means I’m likely not the only one:

I cropped part of his face out because I felt like it. Every time I see this stupid fucking ad I hate Pierre Poilievre and his stupid face even more. Unfortunately now it looks like he’s spying on me like a nosy neighbour from behind his fence (honestly, though, that feels kinda tonally appropriate.)

But wait! If you click on the ad, it gets worse!

It’s horrible, fear-mongering misinformation.

“woke policies” lmao fuck you, Pierre Poilievre.

Literally any political entity that uses “woke” in a derogatory manner is giving off Major Red Flags and should not be taken seriously.

Before we start, let’s get some things straight. People use drugs. It happens. Learn to be normal about it if you aren’t already. People are sometimes addicted to drugs. This can happen for a variety of reasons. Usually it’s some variety of “I am struggling with something in my life and have found that using this substance helps with that.” It can be related to mental health, like so many of my family members who turned to alcohol or cigarettes or cocaine and amphetamines to manage their depression, anxiety, adhd, ptsd, or sensory issues. A lot of the time it’s to deal with chronic pain. It can also be a way to cope with shitty life circumstances. Chronic issues like these don’t just go away, so expecting people to just magically become drug-free without addressing and solving the root causes is not feasible as a one-size-fits-all solution. And, realistically, some people will never be drug-free. Some people will always need prescription amphetamines and prescription opioids and there’s nothing wrong with that (I have ADHD! I take prescription amphetamines every day! In fact, I take multiple medications that are technically controlled substances for various chronic issues!) People who use drugs are still human and deserve compassion. People who are addicted to drugs are still human and deserve compassion. You are not superior to people who use drugs.

So in case you weren’t aware, British Columbia (like a lot of places) is having an overdose crisis. People are dying from toxic drugs; it’s now the leading cause of death in the province for people aged 10-59. That’s a McFucking problem that we’ve gotta do something about! And we’re trying, but Pierre Poilievre doesn’t like that.

So let’s get to this garbage fire of a political ad. Sigh.

Justin Trudeau did not personally decriminalize crack, heroin, and cocaine. Justin Trudeau allowed the provincial government of British Columbia to decriminalize the possession of small amounts (<2.5g) of drugs for personal use, so that addicts just trying to exist would not have their drugs seized or face criminal charges or jail time. Justin Trudeau allowed the provincial government of British Columbia to treat drug addiction and the toxic drug crisis as the public health problem that it very clearly is. This is an evidence-based policy currently only meant to be valid from January 31 2023 to January 31 2026 as a temporary harm reduction measure during a time of crisis. It remains illegal to possess or use in school zones, playgrounds, pools, skate parks, airports, certain private properties (like shopping malls) and in every other province in Canada. Selling drugs is still illegal. These “woke policies,” AKA “trying to save goddamn lives while treating addicts like people and not punishing people who are already struggling” is really not that fucking radical when it comes down to it. It’s merely a step in the right direction but more needs to be done. What we need even more is a safe supply of drugs. And universal basic income.

Anyway.

“blah blah blah crime” so like drug-related crimes rates actually aren’t going up? And when it comes to crimes associated with substance abuse, the one with the highest statistical rate of violent crime is actually alcohol.

These are all things easily fact checked in mere moments, but Conservatives don’t want you to do that. But “Common Sense Conservatives,” huh? The facts don’t actually matter as long as people feel afraid of drug crime, and people afraid of crime and wokeness will vote against their own best interests. Never take political ads at face value. Always fact check.

Also reminder that if you are going to use drugs, don’t use alone if you can, get your drugs tested for safety (the edible is hitting since I first wrote get them tested then get them tasted) and I highly suggest everyone consider getting a naloxone kit or learning how to use one because you might be able to help save someone’s life.

Treat addicts like people. Don’t vote Conservative. Like, for fuck’s sake just let the drugs win the war on drugs already. I’m joining the war on drugs on the side of the drugs.

I’m tired of being the voice of reason. It’s exhausting. I’m gonna take an angry nap.

#cdnpoli #bc politics #canadian politics #conservatives #justin trudeau #harm reduction #tw overdose #tw death #tw drugs #war on drugs #drug use #politics #government #pierre poilievre #liberal party

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blackswaneuroparedux · 1 year

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Never write a letter to your mistress and never join the Carlton Club.

- Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

Despite its having Wellington’s characteristic terseness and, as regards the first bit, good sense, it feels an odd thing to say. Wellington was after all the Carlton’s founding father and, although he played no large part in its affairs, he must have observed its political success with considerable satisfaction. Perhaps, like many phrases supposedly uttered by famous people, it was attributed to him, but actually coined by someone else.

It would be hard to overestimate the importance of the establishment of the Carlton Club in the history of British party politics. At the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, there were in existence two great clubs, Brooks’s and White’s, linked to the historic Whig and Tory Parties respectively. But by the 1830s, the two political parties needed far more than their long-standing London bastions could supply. They simply were not large enough. Some MPs had begun to resort to non-political clubs, like Boodle’s in St James’s Street, giving rise to the following merry ditty: ‘In Parliament I fill my seat/With many other noodles/And lay my head in Jermyn Street/And sip my hock at Boodle’s’.

Such exile from the political mainstream soon became unnecessary. Politics entered a new era, in which the two parties, which evolved in the 1830s and the two subsequent decades - acquiring new names, Conservative and Liberal- expanded their political activities greatly. They needed London accommodation on a generous scale in premises which provided a variety of rooms, large and small.

That is what the Carlton Club supplied. In 1837, the year of Queen Victoria’s accession, it opened its first club house in Pall Mall on the corner of Carlton Gardens, yet another reminder of the gross, bloated monarch, George IV (114 years later a slim Miss Margaret Roberts would depart from the next door house in Carlton Gardens en route to her marriage to Mr Denis Thatcher).

The Carlton club remained on its Pall Mall corner site until a Nazi bomb fell on it in October 1940. The original club house underestimated the party’s need for space. It was enlarged in the 1840s as Sir Robert Peel brought the party first to election triumph in 1841, and then to political disaster and division as a result of the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. To assist the Conservative party’s recovery from the split that the Corn Laws’ repeal brought about, the enlarged building was demolished and replaced by an even bigger one in 1856.

Members stared from the Carlton club’s windows across Carlton Gardens at the Reform club, founded in 1836, four years after the Carlton, to equip the Tories’ opponents with the same range of services, social and political, that the Carlton pioneered. It should be noted in passing that in the new nineteenth-century political world the Conservatives put themselves at the forefront of organisational change, where they were to remain until Tony Blair’s day.

The close proximity of the two rival clubs meant that they kept each other under close observation. In the early days, the Reform took a great interest in the volume of mail posted by servants of the Carlton, who retaliated by waiting until darkness fell before venturing forth. During a political crisis in 1884, blinds were pulled down at every window of the Carlton club’s library after a member noticed two figures across the road in the Reform club spying with the aid of opera glasses. Members of the Carlton noted with satisfaction that their club eclipsed the Reform in size and grandeur.

But that’s a matter of griping. Or is that groping?

In 2022, the disgraced Conservative MP Christopher Pincher was alleged to have sexually groped two men, in an area known as Cads’ Corner within the Carlton. Former No 10 strategist Dominic Cummings once claimed that Prime Minister Boris Johnson referred to the now disgraced MP as “Pincher by name, pincher by nature” before making him deputy chief whip, which he subsequently had taken away from him.

The club boasts about this ‘inviting corner’ that features a small cluster of chairs underneath a grand staircase - but talk to my father’s peers and friends who are members about how Cads’ Corner gained its name and they get all coy and look at their watches. Indeed it’s well known that it’s the spot where male members could stand to stare up the skirts of female guests walking up and down the stairs.

As a member of the Reform club naturally I think they’ve got their head up their arse or at the very least looking up at some unlucky lady’s skirt.

#wellesley #duke of wellington #carlton club #club land #london #gentlemens club #society #St. James's #reform club #personal #scandal #poilitics #conservative party #tories #liberal party

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