Writing About Brexit: Tory MPs Vilify Their Own Withdrawal Agreement

This was first posted on Facebook on 17th September 2020, with support from my Ko-Fi network.

Just as a squib to start with:

Chris Grayling has been quietly replaced on the Security Committee, chaired by formerly-Tory MP Julian Lewis, and has taken on a part-time job, 7 hours a week “advising” Hutchison Ports Europe, for which he is to be paid £100,000 a year. Given Grayling’s track record it is just as well it’s only 7 hours a week, or it could cost Hutchison Ports Europe a lot more than a hundred grand.

And Robert Jenrick, the Secretary of State for Housing, has chosen to inform the nation of a regional lockdown via the Peston show on ITV, not via the House of Commons or even the daily coronacvirus briefing. (And Chris Whitty says it needs to be a national full lockdown for at least two weeks, but that of course that wouldn’t suit Johnson’s donors.) Lindsay Hoyle scolded the government for that breach last time it’s happened: now it’s happened again.

But this is politics as usual: it’s deadly, during a global pandemic, but it’s normal Tory stuff.

Julian Lewis and the Russian Report

This was first posted on Facebook on 17th July 2020, with support from my Ko-Fi network.

I am on the Conservative Party’s mailing list to supporters. I’ve been on this list for years, as I find it occasionally useful to know what the Tories are telling their supporters.

Today, the news is that the party is asking its supporters to donate to support the re-election of a Conservative MP who was elected in December 2019 to a previously always-Labour constitutency, because “As a Party we are committed to ensuring every one of our new MPs can successfully defend their seats. That work must start now.”