So, farewell then, David Evans – soon, no doubt, to be Lord Evans of Penge.
Completely quackers: David Evans wants Labour Party activists to be more like geese
The Croydon-based political consultant and fixer in Liverpool yesterday gave a final speech to the Labour Party Conference after four years as their General Secretary.
And in what was supposed to be a morale-boosting rallying call for local party activists up and down the country, Evans – long known for his disdain for Constituency Labour Party organisations – opted for a bizarre metaphor, as he goosed volunteers and chided them to be better organised.
This from the man who oversaw widespread factionalism in the party, hundreds of members suspended, often on flimsy and fabricated charges, and under whom membership nose-dived from 532,000 in 2019 to 366,604 by March this year.
In Croydon, Evans was known to be close to the likes of Tony Newman, Alison Butler – with whom he shares a daughter – and Simon Hall, the people who managed to bankrupt the borough. Hall and Newman have been “administratively suspended” from the Labour Party since 2021, with the party General Secretary failing to bring forward their disciplinary process.
Evans, hand-picked by Keir Starmer to oversee the party’s administration soon after he took over as leader, resigned as General Secretary earlier this month. Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee had nominated another Starmer ally, Hollie Ridley, a career-long party employee, as Evans’ successor. There were no alternative choices, which is how Starmer’s Labour prefers things.
What Ridley made of Evans’ valedictory speech is not known, but for many in the conference hall, it was as bizarre as it was hectoring, and provided ample proof why he has had a long-term role behind the scenes and, but for four years as a councillor in Croydon, Evans has never had any success in winning popularity polls.
Evans said the party has spent too much time acting like a “gaggle on the ground” rather than forming the “magnificent V-formation” associated with a team of flying geese.
“Last week, I was in my garden and I found myself watching a flock of geese fly over my house,” said Penge resident Evans.
“When you see geese on the ground they look chaotic, noisy, awkward.
“Indeed, on the ground they’re called a ‘gaggle’. But when you see them fly in that magnificent V-formation, they’re majestic.
Gaggle gurgling: David Evans has never been a fan of constituency party organisation
“In the air, do you know the collective noun for geese is a ‘team’. They’re not born to do that, they learn it.
“You can see where this is going. The lead goose shoulders the headwind to lessen the load on the others, it means they can go further, longer, faster.
“They’re noisy in flight, they’re always communicating. And best of all if a goose falls out of the V, they go back for them. No goose gets left behind.
“I’ll be honest, too often in our history we haven’t always been a majestic flock of geese, a team, we’ve been a gaggle on the ground, too easily turning inwards crying betrayal, losing shape when the going gets tough.
“We must break this cycle, we must seize the opportunity now, this week, to build a party and a government umbilically connected.
“It doesn’t mean a party that just follows blindly, it means a proper partnership in service with the British people, listening openly to each other, challenging each other to be better, so that we have a party that has the government’s back every day of the week and we have a government that never loses touch with the voters.”
One delegate, asked what he thought of Evans’ speech, said, “He’s completely quackers.” This being Starmer and Evans’ new, tightly disciplined Labour Party, none of the delegates gave him the bird.
But one ornithologist left-winger observed: “This being September, what David Evans saw from his garden will probably have been a flock of geese migrating, and getting out of the country as quickly as possible.”
Read more: Labour Party chief’s consultancy business is in deep trouble
Read more: #TheLabourFiles: MP Reed, Evans and the Croydon connection
Read more: Starmer’s Labour is ‘losing members, losing funds, losing staff’
Read more: Newman and Hall resign as councillors claiming a ‘witchhunt’
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