BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN
There is a certain species of political creature that haunts the Westminster warren, a beast that is best understood not through the lens of constitutional theory or fiscal policy, but through the dusty, half-lit prism of an Irish builder’s breast pocket.
I once knew such a builder. A tragic figure, in the end—murdered, as it happens, which is a rather definitive way to conclude a career in damp-proofing. But in his prime, he was a man of singular character, and he carried with him a familiar spirit. Not a dove, not a lurcher, but a pet rat named Ethel.
She resided in the left pocket of his lumberjack shirt, her pink nose twitching above the plaid like a periscope surveying a world of chaos.
He had rescued her as a mewling pink whelp from a nest of vermin, and in doing so, he had committed the cardinal sin of sentimentality: he had mistaken proximity for virtue. He took Ethel to price up jobs, where she would observe the damp corners of basements with a professional squint. He took her to the greasy spoon, where she’d sample the off-cuts of fried bread. And, of course, he took her to the pub, where she would become the pièce de résistance of the evening, nibbling at pork scratchings while the regulars cooed and bought her saviour another pint.
I never liked Ethel. And it is not that I harbour any particular animus towards the genus Rattus. In the countryside, we understand rats. We know their utility in the great circle of muck and grain; we know they are survivors, not sinners. No, my aversion to Ethel was of a more refined, philosophical order. It was the sheer, brazen duplicity of the creature.
One moment, she would lie supine upon the builder’s palm, her belly exposed to the world, receiving a tummy-tickle that would make a Knightsbridge bichon frise expire from jealousy. Her little paws would curl in simulated ecstasy; her whiskers would twitch with manufactured innocence. She was, in that moment, the darling of the saloon bar.
But the moment the builder’s gaze wandered—the moment he reached for his pint or consulted his tape measure—her countenance would transform. The mask would slip. Her beady eyes would narrow into slits of pure, venomous calculation. She would scowl. She would nip the nearest finger with a viciousness that betrayed her true nature. She was the saboteur in the nest, the splinter in the paw of domestic bliss.
Why? Who really knows? But let us imagine that Ethel knew the terrible secret of her own existence. She understood, with the primal cunning of the sewer, that the very same men who were stroking her fur would, without a moment’s hesitation, dial Rentokil if they discovered her kin nibbling the corner of their Axminster. She was not grateful for her rescue; she was resentful of her dependency. She played the pet, but she seethed with the revolt of the oppressed.
I was reminded of Ethel this week, as I witnessed the spectacle in Westminster’s Great Hall. There, under the vaulted gaze of history, stood the next Prime Minister—a title so watered-down by modern mediocrity that it now holds less gravitas than a parish council chairmanship—Mayor Andy Burnham. And around him, like a tide of synthetic adulation, lapped a sea of Labour MPs.
They fawned. Oh, how they fawned. They gazed upon him as though he were the Second Coming of Attlee, a messiah of municipal socialism come to save the shires. They praised his mayorality, his transport policy, his very accent. It was a masterclass in theatrical devotion.
But let us recall, Dear Readers of Country Squire Magazine, that these are the same creatures who, not eighteen months ago, were doing the very same jig around Sir Keir Starmer. They massaged his ego, they applauded his forensic dullness, they hailed him as the anointed one—until they realised he was a dud. A beautifully tailored, human rights-quoting dud, but a dud nonetheless. And what did they do? They turned. They nipped. They scuttled for the nearest exit.
They are Ethel. Every last one of them.
They care, at their core, about only one thing: survival. Their default position is not statecraft, nor service, nor even the betterment of the realm. It is the defensive, cornered posture of the rat who knows the trap is being set. They can smell it on the wind. They know the country has had its fill of their left-sided profligacies. They know that the bloated welfare bill, that great feeder-trough of the dependency state, is being eyed with the same suspicion one might afford a compromised foundation. The builder is coming, and he has a bill for the damp.
So they put on a play. They perform their fealty for Burnham, the new builder, the new landlord. But here is the delicious irony, the twist in this tapestry of vermin: Burnham is himself a rat of the first order. A big rat. A rat who has spent a decade positioning himself as the man of the people while climbing the greasy pole of metropolitan consensus. He is the Irish builder in this parable—the one who carries the rat in his pocket, unaware that the rat is merely biding its time.
And so the stage is set for a carnage of the most delightful kind. The rats are going to end up taking chunks out of each other. They will nip and squeal and tear at the fabric of their own party, because that is the natural order of the sewer. They cannot help themselves. It is their genetic imperative.
Let them. Let them devour one another in the Great Hall. Let them scurry for the crumbs of power while the country watches, unmoved, from behind the hedgerows. For out here, in the damp and the muck of the real world, we know the truth about Ethel. We knew it all along.
You cannot reform a rat. You cannot reason with a rat. And you certainly cannot build a decent house with one nesting in your breast pocket. All you can do is watch the little beast gnaw at the very threads that hold the fabric together—until, one day, the pocket gives way, the creature falls, and the builder is left standing there, looking rather foolish, with nothing but a hole in his shirt and a lesson he was too vain to learn.
That is the Labour Party. That is Westminster. And that, most assuredly, is Mr Burnham. A pocket full of teeth, and not a shred of loyalty among them.
Dominic Wightman is the Editor of Country Squire Magazine, works in finance, and is the author of five and a half books including Dear Townies and Conservatism (2024).