Why do MPs send nude pictures of themselves?

Adam Dyster has gone to work for the shadow Defra secretary Steve Reed. I admit this is not an appointment which would normally trouble the political scorers, but it is a straw in the wind. Mr Dyster was, until recently, the adviser to both the chairman and the director-general of the National Trust. As Zewditu Gebreyohanes points out in her new pamphlet, ‘National Distrust: the end of democracy in the National Trust’, it was against the interest of the Trust that Mr Dyster advised both, since it blurred the necessary governance difference between the trustees and the management. Mr Dyster was previously, in the Jeremy Corbyn era, the national organiser of Labour’s environment campaign, influencing, he says, the party’s general 2017 election manifesto. His NT advice may help explain why its management reacted so harshly to criticism by the members’ pressure group Restore Trust. The Trust’s management seems determined to be close to Labour. Last month, Hilary McGrady, its director-general, wrote excitedly on LinkedIn about her meeting with Keir Starmer and Reed to discuss ‘the alarming state of nature in the UK’. Starmer also obliged by saying in a speech how appalling it was that the Tories had started attacking the National Trust. Essentially, the current management is trying to turn the NT into a green pressure group dominated by the left rather than a natural and built heritage charity dominated by people who care about natural and built heritage. The power of Ms Gebreyohanes’s pamphlet, publicly endorsed by Sir William Proby, a former NT chairman, is that it sets out how the management has been able to do this by stripping out the governance safeguards and member democracy. The key weapon is Quick Vote, a system which enables management to direct members to vote the way it wants. It reminds me of the block votes of the Labour party conferences of yore.