It’s time for a show of integrity

WE Brits are pretty good at complaining. Weather, prices, taxes, politicians are generally in the line of fire, especially the latter. Often our moans are justified, but a quick look around and we can see others worse off than ourselves.

Take the electors of St Michael’s West ward in the recent Barbados general election.

By a large majority they voted in Bishop Joseph Atherley of the Evangelical Holiness Christian Community Church who was the candidate of the Barbados Labour Party. The party trounced the outgoing government 30 seats to nil. It was a night of great rejoicing for voters glad to see the back of a Government that had made a mess of things.

Just seven days later, the Bishop, to the astonishment of his party and constituency electorate, decided to “cross the floor”, and in so doing, became the leader of the Democratic Barbados Labour Party, and therefore the leader of the opposition.

Now it would appear that the real reason for such a move was because he was somewhat miffed about not being given a Cabinet post offered to 24 of his colleagues.

Then there was the commercial aspect. As an ordinary MP his annual salary was 60,000 bajan dollars. As leader of the opposition, this doubled.

The bishop claimed that he wanted the opposition to have a voice in Parliament. He also claimed he still fully supported the aims of his former party.

I suppose we must be grateful that we do not see such wild antics here in the UK. However, this country currently faces many challenges, and we have to rely on our politicians to get us the best deal.

With Brexit very much in my mind, if our Government finds that dealing with Brussels in the person of Mr Barnier, who claims our proposals are pure fantasy, is impossible, then we should walk away and adopt WTO rules.

This would be in the best interests of the UK and honour the democratic referendum result.

Now is the time for politicians to demonstrate integrity. Russell Luckock is chairman of Birmingham pressings firm

AE Harris