13 minute read
Politics
Have you ever driven a car or been driven? You know your starting point. You know your destination point. Advice is offered as to the best route to use. You ignore it. The option of atlas, SatNav, Google Maps, signposts are there but you decide to ‘fly solo’. At some point in the journey you feel something isn’t quite right. The village you thought you’d have driven through by now hasn’t materialised. The sun is somehow rising in the West. You have two options. First, carry on and, Micawber-like, hope something turns up, only to find yourself driving round in circles, your blood pressure rising, time being wasted and your passengers losing patience. Or, second, you can pull over. Pause. Consult your passengers for their guidance, reference a map or ask for directions.
When time allows, I take my two older daughters to their High School in Gillingham. En route we pass Witch Lane. I ask
Conservative MP for North Dorset Simon Hoare
them ‘excuse me, I’m looking for Witch Lane’. They answer ‘which lane?’. I reply ‘yes’. They then ask where it’s near, I reply ‘Witch Fields’. Their reply is ‘which fields?’. They reply ‘which lane, which fields?’ And so on until they beg me to stop.
The driving around without a map, certain of the destination but unsure of the route, trying to find which lane has felt a little like being an MP these last few weeks. The ship has felt rudderless, the crew mutinous and the seas rough. The Government has been tossed around by chill external winds and tides – over which they have no direct control, we must note that international rates of inflation and interest are rising – but Government decisions, affecting a large swathe of North Dorset, have not been helpful. While not part of the decision-making process, and indeed making known my opposition to much of the mini-Budget, I want to apologise to you. I know from my inbox that many people are worried. Many have felt perturbed and believed that the Westminster ‘bubble’ simply doesn’t get it. I want to assure you that I do, and our new Government does.
While conscious I mixed my transport metaphors, I do feel that with a new captain at the helm/driver at the wheel we have a better, though not guaranteed, chance of finding the route to our destination and arriving there in one piece. There is no doubt that difficult decisions are going to have to be taken. The job of government, always hard, is now harder. Annoyance/ disappointment with the Government is high and patience has been worn thin. Through this article I want to assure you of one thing – the Parliamentary Tory Party has applied a cold flannel to its head. It’s put the shovel down. It’s stopped digging. A sense of relief has spread through the Party allowing us to re-focus on delivering for the United Kingdom and discharging the duties of governing placed upon us. Perhaps the words of public service announcements might suffice: “We apologise for the disruption caused. Normal service has now resumed.”
Sunak is the man for the moment
I cannot tell you how delighted I am that Rishi Sunak is Prime Minister. I’ve always supported this remarkable man, actively so as part of his team during both the summer and autumn campaigns. What struck me this time was not just the huge number of Conservative MPs endorsing Rishi but the fact that they come from all parts of my broad-church party. That’s important because he will have to quickly unite the world’s oldest political party after, let’s face it, a fractious and highly problematic interlude in our long history, one that most of us take little pride in.
The key challenge facing the Sunak administration will be economic as the country is buffeted by dire financial headwinds, many of which lie beyond our direct control. But the auguries are good – we have seen the markets respond favourably to Rishi’s election already. Markets may seem an arcane metropolitan preoccupation, but their importance lies in the real-life consequences they have for the public, most importantly my constituents.
The general sense at Westminster is that we now have a grown up in charge. Rishi Sunak is a decent, hard-working, competent, compassionate individual – definitely, the man for the moment.
I continue to lobby on the air quality issues I wrote about previously. The incinerator industry competes with more responsible reducing, reusing and recycling strategies for waste feedstuff, domestic and commercial. We already have too many incinerators yet more continue to be allowed. The cost is measured in terms of air quality and, possibly, human health.
It’s a pleasure to chair the Place Partnership for Trowbridge, Wiltshire’s county town. Whether you live in a village or a market town, town centres are almost certainly important to you. Too many have fallen victim to changing retail practises in recent years and need to be helped towards rejuvenation and, where appropriate, re-purposing.
I’ve now heard back from the Department for Transport about progress on the eagerly awaited Dorset coast to M4 strategic study that we expect to have implications for the A350. So, it turns out that the study isn’t now expected to report until early in the New Year. That’s disappointing but I will continue to apply pressure so that the schedule does not slip further.
Conservative MP for South West Wiltshire Dr Andrew Murrison
New Prime Minister’s record on the environment leaves lot to be desired
In his first address to Tory MPs as incoming Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak has said that the Tory party is facing an ‘existential threat’, and that it must ‘unite or die’. He also said that stability and unity is the only way we will overcome the challenges we face and build a better, more prosperous future for our children and our grandchildren.
While his first declared priority is tackling the economic crisis, he says he intends to run an ‘environmentally focussed’ government.
Good luck to him with achieving stability and unity, but rather more serious than the fate of the Tory party is the fate of our planet, on which all our futures depend regardless of our individual political leanings. The stakes could not be higher, and not just for future generations. The world’s climate is already changing for the worse, as long predicted, and urgent action is needed to save us from the course we are on.
Truss’s disastrous few weeks as PM included a refusal to address the issue of insulating the UK’s many old and leaky homes – in spite of it being part of the Tory’s 2019 manifesto; plans to scrap more than 500 environmental protection regulations inherited from the EU – many of which the UK itself helped to draft; new ‘Investment Zones’ with minimal regulation to constrain development, scrapping the new farm payment system that was previously claimed to be a Brexit bonus; and re-starting fracking.
Small wonder she incurred the wrath of conservation groups whose total membership exceeds eight million UK citizens, aka voters. Truss may have now stepped down, but Sunak’s own record on the environment leaves much to be desired. As Chancellor he is said to have been focussed more on the costs of environmental action rather than the benefits, and with apparently no regard for the catastrophic costs of inaction.
His reluctant windfall tax on fossil fuel companies contains loopholes that encourage more investment in oil and gas. He stood in the way of a nationwide programme of housing insulation, simply because of its upfront cost to the Treasury. Never mind the cost to all those who despite government support will struggle with heating bills this winter, as many do every year.
During the 2019/20 winter – before covid – the Office for National Statistics reported 10,320 excess winter deaths, mainly from respiratory and circulatory diseases that are worsened by living in cold conditions. Every one of those unnecessary deaths is a tragedy, and the preventable diseases add to the burdens of our already overburdened, understaffed and underfunded NHS.
Perhaps Sunak is going to treat us to Tory u-turns in a positive direction. If so, it will be most welcome. I’m not holding my breath.
Ken Huggins on behalf of the Green Party in North Dorset
Sunak was the stability candidate
Over the last week, the overwhelming message I have been receiving from constituents is that our priority needs to be political and economic stability. And it is in this spirit that I have decided to support Rishi Sunak as our next Prime Minister – and am delighted he has been selected.
Since the announcement of the ‘mini budget’, market forces have dominated the political theatre in this country – giving the impression that we are in a much worse position than other countries when the reality has been that the euro is at a 20-year low against the Dollar and the Japanese Yen is at a 32-year low – with interest rates and inflation going up across the world, not just here.
The Government was right to take unprecedented action to address energy prices because of war. It was also right to encourage economic growth to avoid stagnation and recession. I remember what it was like to be made redundant when the 2008 recession hit. In West Dorset, 18 per cent of our businesses closed during the coronavirus pandemic alone, so I know the value of economic growth and am determined to do all I can to ensure we prosper.
Therefore I welcomed the policies outlined by the former Prime Minister to avoid a potential recession forecast for spring next year. It is why I welcomed the decision to take Dorset seriously for economic growth by offering Investment Zones to bolster trading conditions for places such as Weymouth, Portland and Wool, and bring in quality jobs for people all across West Dorset.
While I believe Liz Truss’s intention to avoid a recession was right, the pace of her policies was wrong and caused ‘indigestion’ in the markets. And late last week, it became clear that the level of political turbulence was not sustainable and the drive to grow has to be balanced by stability, both political and economic. I made the decision to support Rishi Sunak in the recent leadership election after consulting many constituents and their priority was clear. ‘Political and economic stability’. Rishi, as Chancellor, delivered these core aims, and ranks consistently high among the many hundreds of constituents I have asked in recent days and I am sure he has the skills needed to unite us as a party, as a nation to weather the storms ahead.
Conservative MP for West Dorset Chris Loder
Politics
Time to reset with General Election
Let me get something out of the way: Greg Williams, you need to talk to people rather than firing off money-wasting information requests and picking fights in these pages. Get on the phone to Derek Beer and you will quickly understand how active he has been on the fraught issue of Shaftesbury’s pedestrianisation. It is fraught because it ain’t easy and people have very polarised views on the subject. Situation normal.
We, in the centre-ground of politics, watch with mixed feelings the swirl of theory and dogma, of slogan and mantra that surrounds us. The people and party in power are damaging themselves, for sure. The concern is that the country is also being damaged, people are being hurt and enterprises are going under due to the instability, indecision and palpable lack of capability evinced by this crew.
What would I like to see? A General Election now. As a third Tory Leader this year, Rishi Sunak has no mandate from the people and a parliamentary majority owed to a discredited figure and the trainwreck of Brexit promises. That is the past. We need to look to the future in a time of peril. We need a sturdy, well-made tiller for the ship of state, some decent hands on it and an agreed and purposeful course which is sensible, fair and positive.
My first mortgage was at an eye-watering – the word of the moment – 15 per cent. That felt okay because I had just come back from working in a country moving from dictatorship to democracy where inflation was close to 100 per cent, where begging had come back to the streets, where crime was rampant and the rule of law was close to disintegration.
It happens in the best of places where government loses touch with reality; where villages turn inwards to support themselves as best they can; where the towns are depressed and grey as economic activity declines and where the best people leave; where the cities become downright dangerous away from the tourist areas; where workers only look out for number one; where the nation becomes xenophobic, where borders become ramparts not gateways and global issues become matters for others.
We need to wake up, reset and re-energise. A General Election is how to do that even if the result becomes a requirement for consensus. For a consensus, policies and plans must be inclusive and wellthought-through so others buy into them – there’s a novelty. You must listen to the policies and plans of others. You then engage your combined understanding and experience to find the way ahead using the best practitioners. It is called management. It is how the best organisations work. It is the route to stability and sustainability.
The alternative? More see-saw, zig then zag, chaos and uncertainty.
Mike Chapman on behalf of Liberal Democrats across the Blackmore Vale
Conservative party has lost the plot
It’s becoming increasingly hard to write a political column that is current, considering we all file these about a week ahead of publication.
What is there left to say about the Conservatives? It’s like watching a slow-motion car crash, but one during which there is also a competition to see how many clowns can squeeze into the crashing car and pick up a ministerial salary. Who is left to have a go driving it, before it utterly wrecks itself, and the country with it?
Stuck in the boot of this tragic farce is you, dear reader. Maybe you’re struggling with an increase in your mortgage. Perhaps you can’t afford to put the heating on. Or you’re worried about the security of your pension. We are the hostages in this unfolding calamity.
Back to clowns – I wonder if West Dorset’s Chris Loder feels like a clown now, after he backed Liz Truss stating: “I am certainly of the view that Liz is good news for rural Britain.” Was she good news for your constituents, Chris? Do you still think ‘she has an exceptional track record of delivery’ after her whole economic philosophy was rejected by the markets, gutted by Hunt and she was unceremoniously dumped out of office?
What about another Dorset MP and Liz Truss backer, Christopher Chope of Christchurch? He stuck his neck out to defend Truss’s tax policies as the pound crashed and borrowing costs spiralled. Mr Chope is so unpopular in his own party – remember when he blocked the members’ bill against upskirting? – that the whips didn’t even send him the memo to stay away from the media as Truss’s tax U-turns were imminent.
Now he has conceded that the Tory party is a ‘laughing stock’ and that the Conservative economic agenda is ‘trashed’, adding: “I don’t know where to go from here, frankly.”
And that’s the key point. Our local MPs have no idea where to go from here. I know many people are fed up with Simon Hoare’s introspective, dithering radio appearances – even his own party members. The arrogance with which he repeats phrases like ‘the natural party of government’ as if the best the country deserves is him and his colleagues’ parlour games cannot be stomached.
I put it to you, Tory MPs of Dorset, that your party has lost the plot. That some of you want to bring back a proven, unrepentant liar as leader is a case in point. It’s time for a General Election, to bring in a party that is united, has a plan for government, and can restore the UK’s economic and international credibility. It’s time for a Labour government.
