This isn’t the Tory Party of Margaret Thatcher
I’VE noted the many recent letters from your readers having a go at our local Conservative MP, Laura Farris. At the same time as reading these, the points in which letters on multiple issues I tend to agree with, I got yet another email from the
Good Law Project, an organisation bravely holding the Government to account in the courts, on the subject of it not being much fun to be a Tory backbench MP at the moment, No 10 having reportedly threatened them with the withdrawal of funding for their constituencies if they don’t toe the party line in Commons votes.
Not only does this undermine Parliament yet again and weaken MPs’ independence, but if the allegations are true this is a very serious misuse of public money, in the realms of criminal conduct, by or for the Prime Minister, which the Good Law Project is taking to court. So our MP may have been placed in the unenviable position of trying to protect her constituents’ interests by toeing the line, voting for, and then trying to defend in the pages of this newspaper, the indefensible.
That is why she has been earning the unfortunate nickname of Laura Lobby Fodder Farris.
I hope she summons up the courage to start defying them.
The sins of this Government are now too long to list, and I can broadly categorise them under the headings of lack of accountability, lack of compassion and, sadly, even possible corruption with crony contracts.
Their full-scale assault on accountability, whether in trying to force MPs to spare Tory MP Owen Paterson from suspension after he broke Parliamentary lobbying rules, the illegal prorogation of Parliament, the Elections Bill that will undermine the independence of the Electoral Commission, etc etc, unfortunately will deepen the rot and the wholesale torpedoing of standards in public life.
Lack of compassion shown multiple times, whether it is in justifying the harsh treatment of refugees, clobbering Universal Credit claimants, failing to address the harsh poverty that is causing an avalanche of dependency on food banks, attacking and then failing to pay compensation to the Windrush folk.
I could go on, but am trying to keep this letter relatively short.
And failures of compassion even at local level as shown by the appalling, heartless treatment of the Dobson family by West Berkshire Council over a CIL error.
I also agree with readers who have written in about the rudeness of local Tory councillors to members of the public trying to ask questions at West Berkshire Council meetings. I have witnessed this at first hand many times.
Again this is about an aversion to accountability.
Our Labour candidate, Charles
Croal, currently standing in the by-election for the Tilehurst South and Holbrook ward, certainly isn’t afraid of accountability, and would never be rude to people asking him questions.
In conclusion, I was brought up by Tory-voting parents in Mrs Thatcher’s constituency when she was our local MP.
Long dead now, they would be horrified by what the Tory Party has become and how its leading politicians shamelessly behave.
And I am seeing that anger now reflected in long-term Tory voters in recent campaigning on the doorstep, and indeed in the emails some of them proactively send to me. My conclusion is that the Tory Party that my parents supported no longer exists, even though they occasionally try to make One Nation noises in their rhetoric.
I’ve seen one pundit explain this as them having metamorphosed into the English National Party.
If true, that would certainly go some way to explaining their policies on Northern Ireland, hard Brexit etc that may eventually lead to the break-up of the UK.
Mrs T must be spinning.
The only way to stop this is to stop voting for them.
Get their snouts out of the trough. Labour has been keeping close tabs on all these issues and has plans to address them.
And corrupt people will have much to fear from a new PM who was formerly our distinguished director of public prosecutions, Sir Keir Starmer MP.
DR LIZ BELL
Chair, Newbury Constituency Labour Party