“We’ve had to scale the event back,” the bald man told me.
It was less than half an hour before Gina Miller was due to launch her new political party, True & Fair, in a Westminster conference centre. Other than the bald man, there was one person in the room — me. There is scaling back, and there are bloody massacres. Dutifully, I began eating one of the 50 croissants laid out for journalists. Someone had to.
He was a PR, and said that it was his job to handle the press. Handle: like a dog, or a problem. It promised to be a light day’s work. Man, it was quiet. I heard an empty crisp packet breeze across the road to Parliament Square.
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Fifty mugs stayed eerily unfilled with coffee. Oh God I thought, if I’m the only person here I’ll have to ask Gina Miller a question. Only one made sense: Gina, where is everybody? The deserted room, big enough for several Greek weddings, gave me that bad party feeling. How could I escape?
The PR sensed my uncertainty, and attempted to handle it.
“It’s not just an in-person event,” he said. “We also have a livestream.” Phew. He shuffled off, and Quentin Letts shuffled in. Now there were two.
Gina Miller must hate Boris Johnson. This week, like every week, he is the only story in the postcode. When Miller was jihading against Brexit, Boris gave us all the pleasure of his final ascent to the top, recently he's given us the even greater pleasure of his descent. The scenery crumbles, the set collapses, and a cloud of dust blocks the view of anything else.
[su_unherd_related fttitle="More from this author" author="Will Lloyd"]https://staging.unherd.com/2021/10/centrism-always-fails/[/su_unherd_related]
Many people think Gina Miller is an egotist. The millionaire lawyer who tried to stop Brexit; the Remainer activist who couldn’t get outside herself. Well, perhaps. There was always something daring and disobedient and adventurously rude about her. In another life she might have been the first contestant on Dragon’s Den to be arrested for punching Peter Jones in his smug face.
Miller has the gift of not being a nice person. She has the rare courage to be unpleasant. To wreck things. Look at photos of her, triumphant, outside the Supreme Court in 2019. The small, witty mouth and bright, despising eyes. Her chin raised, proud as Benito Mussolini’s. Yes, an egotist. But a worthy player in the drama too. What exactly did she want, now that it was all over?
Quentin and I fought our way through the crowds to the auditorium. There, a few more hacks, heavily outnumbered by Miller’s aides, were finding seats.
Another, hairier, PR toddled up to me. We shook hands. Before I had time to ask him anything, he said: “Oh, no, we’re not worried about the in-person turn out. There’s also a livestream. This is all about introducing Gina — no, sorry — not introducing Gina, but, err…” And then he walked off, handling completed.
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But Miller was introduced anyway. First by a video montage of ordinary people reading scripts about how crap British politics is. Then by a PowerPoint — clicked through in a silence so fantastically profound it felt physical — full of slides from the pollsters Savanta ComRes. These revealed the extraordinary: British people do not trust the established political parties, nor do they like them. Politicians, like robbers, need an opportunity. True & Fair’s was the evidence provided by the montage and the slides. Everyone despises Westminster business as usual.
She arrived. White heels, white suit; as pristine as fresh A4 paper. As blank as a lost memory. Miller looked angry; whether at the state of British politics, or at the sad sight of this unfilled room was hard to say. She scowled. Her arched, fixed eyebrows glowed with a special incandescence. I hoped this would show up on the livestream.
Her speech was a blizzard of pointless adjectives, catastrophic predictions, and mangled metaphors. She talked about roadmaps that set out visions. She talked about “deafening silences” and creating a “government that works for everyone”. Miller wanted to “help real people in the real world”. Overworked words like these have a tainted character. They are hard to trust.
Miller chewed on them. Her tone drifted up nasally. Words were stuck in her sinuses. She tried a joke. “Status quo — Latin, some would say, for the mess we’re in.” It was a lawyer's ventured joke. The product of a padlocked imagination.
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Moaning about Britain’s low productivity, Miller said we lagged behind the US, France, and Germany. “In fact,” she grimaced, “we only just beat Italy in productivity terms.” Italy! This was British xenophobia so classically proportioned she might have been Roy Chubby Brown. Italy!
The tiny group of hacks began to look at their phones. Online someone had described True & Fair’s colourful circular logo as a “buffering rainbow sphincter of doom”. The internet learned what the rest of us knew: attendance was poor. It was awkward.
Miller crashed on about the empty rhetoric of politicians, while contributing nothing more than that herself. There were no ideas, not a single policy. She would later say that they were available on True & Fair’s website. The more she tried to flesh her party out, the thinner it seemed.
Finally, she mentioned it. “Brexit — yes, I’m daring to use the word apparently banned in Whitehall — is on course to cause a 5% contraction of Britain’s economy over the long term.” After all Miller’s boilerplate, hearing the word was sweeter than the sound of mandolins: something she cared about at last.
Forgetfulness is an essential part of survival. In one sarcastic aside, Miller revealed that she couldn’t let it go. Normal people do. They age, they forgive each other. Brexit is gone. In the long-run, technical arrangements will be made between groups of civil servants, who, although on opposite negotiating tables, believe the same things. The economic impact of the pandemic will make it impossible to tell if Brexit was "good" or "bad". Lord Frost will publish his autobiography. FPBE Dads will continue to simp Marina Hyde on Twitter. Nothing will change that much — unless you’re Irish, and therefore invisible to the rest of Britain.
[su_unherd_related fttitle="More from this author" author="Will Lloyd"]https://staging.unherd.com/2021/10/do-the-tories-have-it-too-easy/[/su_unherd_related]
Miller can’t forget. The deep, banging conflicts of Brexit still jangle in her mind. So she’s launched a doomed political party, for herself. If she had wanted a loser's revenge, she would have been better off starting a Substack, like Dom.
Instead she was here, lobbing vague slogans — "real solutions rather than empty rhetoric" — to a centre ground that ceased to exist years ago. "It's time to demand change," she said, caught in the delusion that the British voter crosses their ballot hopefully. The British voter usually turns out to release complex, resigned forms of disgust, not to change the country. If it were any different, new parties might be more successful.
So, she is a tragic figure. A Brexit leftover, surrounded by uneaten croissants. In the Long 2016 period she offered Britain a narrative, a high concept. The woman who never finished law school turning over May and Boris in the Supreme Court. She abseiled into the hearts of Remainers like an SAS soldier into an endangered embassy. Or, she was the elitist, doggedly thwarting the will of the people with her fancy lawyers. These were false stories imposed on the random and ambiguous truths of the era.
Still, back then Miller took her opportunities for performance well, and the press found a use for her. Yesterday, outside of Brexit's high dramas, facing rows of unfilled chairs, she floundered. Miller sounded exactly like what she was railing against — a Status Quo politician. She tried to present herself as a prophet of change, but she looked like a familiar symptom of the times she wanted to transform. Out of touch and toothless, mouthing the same old platitudes about education and the economy you've heard a hundred times before. Shouldn't she just be a Liberal Democrat?
The press were done with her now. Three journalists bothered to ask questions, before Gina Miller stormed off into a side room. Her speech was an end, not a beginning.
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SubscribeVery enjoyable piece. One of the most annoying human beings ever to have lived. So many strange creatures were emboldened during the Brexit years – crawling into the light to shriek their disdain for Britain. Letwin and Adonis and Grieve and Gauke and all the rest. I see the same desperation on Steve Bray’s face these days – and I wouldn’t care, I shouldn’t, but they tried to sell my country.
Still, let them seethe. The best revenge is living well – and of course, free.
Yes, well written with loads of humour. I briefly felt sorry for her, then the fleeting feeling disappeared.
You sure know how to attract downvotes Jools.
What is the secret?
Acronym for Mechanical Extract Ventilation.
Don’t forget Bercow! I wish I could.
Bercow would have loved her.
Why? Did she cheat on him?
The winner !
My name for him is John Bercuckold.
Steve Bray still exists? My assumption was always that he was some kind of dust devil or genius temporis.
When we discuss, or I read about, the supercilious left-wing north London public sector elite – or the lawyer elite, or the charity elite, or the academic elite, or the Twitter leftist – sneering at us ignorant proles, for having private sector jobs, two cars, a defined contribution pension and voting conservative, for a long time I couldn’t really picture any such person.
One knew they existed, but you somehow couldn’t imagine anyone like that actually existing; occupying physical space, having a face, uttering north London platitudes, and advocating higher income taxes on people poorer than themselves while dodging paying any personally through their personal service companies, and what not.
Thanks to Gina Miller, that class of repellent left-wing hypocritical de haut en bas lowlife parasite does now have a face. She’s what they look like. That’s what she is. That’s all she is.
Whenever I need to be reminded of how much I hate the likes of Gina Miller, I just have to think of Gina Miller.
That last sentence made me actually cry! How therapeutic, cachinnation…
I regard her as the female living embodiment of Orwell’s boot stamping on the human face.
Spot on! What a vile, disgusting, worthless human being (if, in fact, she is human), which seems debatable.
I don’t know much about Gina Miller but I must say the piece is very well written and entertaining.
Seeing media clips of Miller from afar (USA), she always seemed to come across as tone-deaf, in a bubble, removed from society, smug even. Not a compelling figure at all.
Rather like Hilary Clinton, though less successful!
Hmmm, you never see Gina Miller and Kamala Harris in the same room.
I must tell you that Gina <Miller is absolutely correct :>>>>>
GB News:
“Ms Miller, who has brought legal cases over Brexit, said there had been an “erosion of trust” in the political system.”
.
Well, Brexit HAS eroded trust in politics hasn’t it ? Remember *Hic* Shoubry and The Amigos ? Poisoned Dwarf ? Dominic Brie ? Oily Whatsit ?
We all owe a big debt of gratitude to St Gina.
.
Almost single-handedly she demonstrated all that voters needed to know about the remain cause.
This article is complete Jackson Pollocks. True & Fair is a welcome addition to British politics. We have a Conservative party that believes in conserving nothing, a Labour party that has contempt for labourers, a Liberal Democrat party that is illiberal and tries to overturn elections, a Green party that wants trucks to drive back and forth across Europe and a Scottish Nationalist party that continues to suck at the English taxpayers’ teats. A True & Fair party that believes in dictatorship and serving the interests of hedge funds will fit in well. In fact, there must be openings for other parties that are the opposite of their names and I would welcome suggestions.
Nonsense, the article was true and fair, if a little sarcastic and bathetic. Will Lloyd has a hatchet and he’s not afraid to use it, thank goodness.
Read the last 2 sentences again.
Oops, thank you for pointing that out. Note to self – always read to the end.
Graciously done Adrian
Or start at the end and read backwards – it sounds daft but I find it often works.
Actually he really liked her in his article of a few months back (check it out ) So much so I assumed Will really wants to be a novelist and was looking to be her next lost cause .
The UnHerd courtship obviously didn’t get a hearing .
The useless, unprincipled party would be good.
The Independent Group for Change seemed to be desperate to support the 2016 status quo of EU dependency.
Witty and sadly true, a wonderfully ironic comment…. tongue in cheek done to perfection!
Isn’t it amazing how somebody so lacking in a most basic and fundamental understanding of the real world, so devoid of any contextual or situational awareness can be so privileged and so wealthy? Not jealously, but when foolish idiots seem to float to the top of our society, then we really need to talk about what is “true and fair”.
I am slightly puzzled. He says she is a lawyer? Had she passed the Law Society exams, or had she been called to the Bar? I find the description of her as a “lawyer” insulting to those who worked hard to qualify as real lawyers!
Well, she must spend a lot of time at the bar by the sound of things.
She could be selling Kia -Ora before the main feature . Is she Maori ?
She’s from Guyana.
She does have tattoos of the EU flag, so could be
No, she isn’t a lawyer – she gave up her law course “for personal reasons”, probably because she was too thick to complete it. Her only “achievement” was to marry a very rich hedge fund manager, whose money could pay for actual lawyers to try to destroy democracy. Try and fail.
It should not need saying but, someone who has passed the Law Society exams is a solicitor, someone called to the bar is a barrister (in England), someone who has a recognised academic degree in law is a lawyer, many prominent professors of law did not become members of either profession.
Brilliant read! Thank you Wll. I had completely forgotten her until the announcement of her Party launch emerged from all the other garden party rhubarb.
An arrogant, overbearing pain in the proverbial, clearly with no self-awareness, who has tripped and had the gas from her balloon well and truly dispersed. Never mind, she has loads of reddies to console herself.
This made me laugh. (And very enjoyable piece altogether).
“It’s time to demand change,” she said, caught in the delusion that the British voter crosses their ballot hopefully. The British voter usually turns out to release complex, resigned forms of disgust, not to change the country.
Still, do we ever need some new political parties. Maybe not _this_ one, but I hope this doesn’t discourage the others too much.
Indeed. And perhaps we can have one or two based on a real movement rather than an ego, be it that of Gina Miller, Nigel Farage or Laurence Fox.
Not fair at all on Farage, who campaigned for Brexit for decades.
That’s not the point. UKIP was nothing without him. That’s the point.
“What exactly did she want, now that it was all over?” Just another grifter playing the political long-game.
If all that is achieved is a headline grabbing GE or by-election victory, followed by elevation to the Lords when the excitement wears off, then Gina will consider it all worthwhile. HoL is the real prize for this type of opportunist and it will only take the right shade of government to make that happen.
“Nothing will change that much — unless you’re Irish, and therefore invisible to the rest of Britain.”
Can anyone explain that to me? The Irish have always been anything but low-viz to me. Gina would hand the lot over to the EU quicker than you could say “Blair Foundation”.
Unbezahlbar !…
As blank as a lost memory.
The product of a padlocked imagination.
“buffering rainbow sphincter of doom”
A Brexit leftover, surrounded by uneaten croissants.
Nature beige in tooth and claw.
A reference pool so shallow it isn’t even filled with bile.
Headmistresses, or they did 65 years ago when I last noticed, generally have the greater good of the school in their sights when emerging to dispense control measures. Ms Miller appeared, in spite of her fine words, to value the greater good of Ms Miller alone when posing in front of the courts for photo opportunities.
Egoist, period!
And clueless. Obvs.
Wonderful.piece, thank.you!
Ah! Good news at last. It sounds as though a plenitude of croissants was the high point.
Angry and nasal sums her up well. I was hoping she would have joined that exodus of financial talent to the EU.
This may get me down votes on here, but here goes anyway. Ms Miller was right to take the government to court over the proroguing of Parliament, and I was happy with the judgement of the Supreme Court. I voted to leave and I was getting frustrated by the continual blocking happening in Parliament, but when Mr. Johnson announced his intention to prorogue Parliament I was very disturbed, it seemed an unlawful act to me and I feared it might set a bad precedent. None of this means that I find Ms Miller in the least sympathetic, although I would never condemn her egotism, it’s one of the requirements for a politician
Yes, it was probably unlawful. So were all the other prorogues that nobody cared about because it suited them…possibly.
How about the efforts to take the government to court over the lockdowns, which were probably illegal too. Where was Ms Millar then?
She just wanted to end Brexit. Which is amazing when her speech included a warning about lack of productivity. When productivity had flatlined almost entirely because of our membership of the EU!
I wouldn’t down vote you for a perfectly legitimate opinion, which I might share wholeheartedly, if the remain manipulators had not been so disgusting themselves. Think Bercow, Letwin, Grieve, etc., who had spent a summer driving several coaches with horses through our parliamentary protocols. But that’s now past, and even Jonathan Sumption has redeemed himself by speaking out on our behalf regarding stolen freedoms over the last two years.
One point which you don’t mention, Ms Miller initially commenced her campaign against Brexit long before the proroguing matter. It was a few months after the 2016 Referendum, and the courts heard her appeal in November 2016. She was a thorn in Brexit’s side for the duration. https://ukandeu.ac.uk/the-facts/what-was-the-miller-case/
Hi – no down-vote here. Whilst not warming to the lady (like she would care), I felt the first legal challenge was a sensible safety brake on the issue of implementing Brexit without approval from Parliament, before things got truly messy.
In the end, Labour ensured May’s compromise Brexit got thrown out even though there was barely a gnat’s proverbial between what (I think) Starmer was demanding (at least at that moment) and what May had already agreed.
Anyway Boris got in – unintended consequences and all that – and Northern Ireland is a weeping sore, to be picked open by opponents here and in Brussels. Not sure if all the “lockdown party” theatre at the moment is intended to knock Article 16 protocol implementation off track or Brexit altogether. I’m honestly past caring anymore. My “Leave” vote has shown us who actually runs UK plc, and as I always suspected, it ain’t our politicians. At least that is now out in the open.
The second legal challenge (proroguing) seemed more a pathetic exercise in confected outrage and political sophistry to me, but it did usefully put Blair’s Supreme Court into the spotlight. In the end it was noisy, posturing, fabulously expensive and ultimately of no use at all to the country – a fitting tribute to it’s creator.
Not sure that your feeling judgment about the legality of the prorogation can count for much.
What I saw was the precedent-based reasoning of the divisional court being overthrown by a political-style judgment from abstract principles in the supreme court. That they then united 9-0 only served to emphasise that this was now politics not law.
In doing so they were claiming a constitutional position alien to our own traditions, and rooted instead in radical and liberal theory. They have sacrificed something precious, and like the small men they are, they have no sense of the damage they have done.
What’s an FPBE Dad?
Follow Back Pro EU, apparently. Still obscure to non-Twitter people.
Although it does help if you get the letters in the right order.
Such a terrible acronym! Usually, you do the laboured slogan thing in order to get one that sounds cool, like SAGE or AEGIS or whatever. Or you want one that’s fairly obvious, like OMG or TBH. I have no idea what they were thinking when they came up with FBPE.
They were going to call themselves Back Into Democratic Europe Today, but then somebody pointed out that the acronym fundamentally wouldn’t wash
OK, now I know what the words are but still have no idea as to what they mean!
FPBE – Für Bundesrepublik Pan-Europa
.
Vielleicht ?
Das ist ja viel besser.
Danke, ich versuche mein Bestes
What did Keith’s mum say ?
You’ll have to remind me: what is she famous for?
“A Life Of Brian”?? He’s just a naughty boy.
She used to be quoted in the Private Eye obituaries in poetic form by E.Jarvis Thribb (17 and half )
They would start off ‘so farewell then Gina Milller’ as above
and end ‘Keith’s mum says …’
Now that is journalism! Informative and entertaining. Words, phrases beautifully chosen. A masterpiece.
Having gushed about the style, the contentIt’s intriguing, not just for Gina Miller trying to capitalize on the polularity she does not have, but the little flickering flames of new political parties that extinguish themselves by being oxygenless in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It’s curious that our political spectrum is so polarised we have a singular, official opposition party. Ditto the USA. Whereas, other European countries seem to generate a system compared of larger numbers of parties, leading to greater prevalence of coalition governments – not that that is an inherently good thing!
Gina Miller is old news, it’ll be far more interesting to see how the Reform Party fares…maybe she should join it!
great writing. really top class journalism.
A glorious and richly comic image.
True and Fair – it’s like something from a very unfunny left wing comedy. Maybe she’s seen how ridiculous she is and is embarking on a new career satirising herself – one lives in hope.
If it is a game, politics, then she and other remainers are the equivalent of a football team spending the match standing in the goal mouth deaf to the boos from the crowd.
She’s stood there selling Kia -Ora before the main feature
Yea, but she tried. That is better than most of us do.
She had loads of cash. Far more than most of us do.
Exactly , a vanity project by the bored wife of a rich man . She gave up her own law studies .Perhaps she finds lawyers attractive .If she doesn’t mind risking a bloodied kimono she knows where to go .
You could say the same about the Final Solution. Just because someone tried it does not mean they deserve applause.
Oh, come on..’Final Solution’?
and 28 stupid sheep up voted that? Talk about 4 legs good 2 legs bad…….
What a smug, misogynist, article, full of hate. I normally enjoy Unherd’s contributors, but not this one.