Opinion: As inoffensive creatures go, newts have had terrible PR. Synonymous with bores in the PG Wodehouse books and famously inebriated in popular slang, the tiny amphibians even feature on the Department of Conservation’s hit list as unwelcome aliens to New Zealand.
But newts are about to strike a telling blow in British politics. They look set to frustrate Boris Johnson in a way that a slew of parliamentary inquiries and police investigations could never quite manage while he was in office.
Greater crested newts could well prevent the former British prime minister from installing a swimming pool in his moated stately home.
Let’s just linger to marvel at how loaded that preceding sentence is with exquisitely silly information. The newts, obviously: most ostentatiously crested being presumably a requirement for proximity to a stately home. But it’s even more outlandish that such a beleaguered chancer as Johnson has parlayed himself from the deepest of political dog boxes to a multimillion-pound pile with a moat. Famously broke and on the scrounge up until and during his prime ministership – wealthy admirers funding even his wallpaper and holidays – Johnson has reportedly bought his fabulous new fastness on the basis of advances for books he has yet to write, and on high-tariff conference speeches he has yet to give.
He is beguilingly learned, witty and entertaining, so doubtless good for the dosh.
Still, considering a British bank recently sacked multi-millionaire Nigel Farage as a customer for being, in its view, of poor political character, the readiness of other banks to lend to the scarcely less controversial and definitely less reliably solvent Johnson is a fascinating paradox.
But newt soft power is the real story here. One can always depend on local authority wallahs to improve upon even the silliest of stories. Accordingly, Johnson’s local council says there are highly likely to be endangered newts in and around Castle Boris, making the pool’s installation unfeasibly disruptive.
The expert it consulted has not established that there are newts, but his diagnosis of the possibility of current or future newts could thwart the pool plans.
Why, a practical New Zealander might ask, could Johnson and his family not just do laps round their moat? Moat swimming was dreamily immortalised in the classic young adults’ novel I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. Who wouldn’t want to float in a moat?
Alas, as a moat owner told the Times of London earlier this year, moats are an absolute nightmare to keep in swimmable condition. She doubted the famously mercurial Johnson had the right temperament to be trusted with one. Moats need dredging every few years – which costs tens of thousands of pounds – and rigorous regular cleaning, weeding and monitoring. Neglect these chores and one has an evil-smelling and unattractively slimy habitat fit only for bitey insects.
This may be why newts like them. It’s also a pretty fair description of the general political environment.
Still, Johnson should have seen this coming. He’s on record decrying the habit of petty officials of using newt habitats and the like to forbid desperately needed building and development.
Were they creative, Nimby-ists worldwide would divine a handy new tool in all this ‒ with a backhanded conservation bonus. Beg, borrow or steal an endangered creature to make itself at home wherever other people’s building would be an inconvenience to you, and you might have the perfect shield. Newts can’t be evicted in some countries. In New Zealand, certain endangered snails and geckos might do the trick. But keep it real. The sudden appearance of kākāpō blundering around Wellington’s character villa suburbs, or long-eared bats mysteriously infesting Auckland’s proposed light rail route, might attract unwelcome scepticism from DoC.
