So here we are again, in the “deadhead MPs” zone. The problem I have is that so very many MPs are now deadheads, meaning MPs who fall below the bar even for mediocrity. Mediocrity alone does not qualify an MP to be immortalized here. The MP must be outstandingly poor. How to say where that line is set, when so many now qualify? Anyway, having already chosen a number of MPs to participate in this series, here is a well-deserving example: Jess Phillips MP [Lab, Birmingham Yardley].
Jess Phillips
Background
Jess Phillips is the daughter of two “socialist”-oriented persons, who apparently walked around naked all the time at home, in front of their children. Very odd. Even the East Germans (some of them) only did that on specified Baltic beaches. The online magazine, Conservative Woman, commented thus:
“‘Teach girls at school about orgasms, says Labour MP’. That startling newspaper headline, alone, would have been sufficient for most readers to guess that the source was an interview given by that shameless self-publicist Jess Phillips.“
“Her interview also revealed that not only was Phillips brought up in a ‘naked household . . . an environment where nothing was embarrassing’, today in her own home she often goes around nude. Jess further boasts of being ‘open about sex’ with her two sons, currently aged 10 and 14, which must be delightful for them, though it is unclear whether or not she is clothed during their intimate chats.”
“If Phillips’s tale of home nudity is actually true and not a wind-up, far from being charmingly eccentric, it is revolting. Were a father revealed to be exposing himself to school-age daughters, with whom he frankly discusses sex, it would likely be career-ending, certainly for an MP, and might also interest both social services and police.”
“But don’t expect Jess Phillips to have her collar felt – she won’t be wearing one.”
Readers of the profile were not complimentary to Jess Phillips:
“Phillips is as mad as a barrel of polecats anyway. The fact that people actually vote for her is astonishing.”
and
“I’d like to like Jess Phillips, because at least she seems to have an infectious laugh. The trouble is, I remember her laughing also at male suicide statistics. Seemed to think it funny that suicide is the leading cause of death in British men aged 20-49. Not so funny really.”
It seems that her parents, though “socialist”, set up a private company in order to make money out of the NHS, her mother having been Deputy Chief Executive of the NHS Confederation and Chair of South Birmingham Mental Health Trust. That private company was active from 2003 until at least 2010, but is now defunct. Jess Phillips’ mother died in 2011.
Jess Phillips attended a local grammar school for girls, then the University of Leeds (Economic and Social History and Social Policy, a “soft” degree); she then took a post-graduate diploma in Public Sector Management at the University of Birmingham.
“At 16 I was a raver, a party animal to say the least. Weekends would start early on a Friday night, round at my friend’s house where we’d get ready. Then we’d be out, maybe to a local party at someone’s house. Then on Saturday it was an all-night rave until the wee small hours of Sunday.”
The only known jobs done by Jess Phillips are working for her parents until 2010 (when she was 29), and (from 2010) working as a business development manager at Women’s Aid domestic abuse charity. It is unclear for how long this position lasted. In the 2010-2015 period, Jess Phillips was also engaged in paid political activity as a councillor and as a member of at least two local quango panels. On occasion, Jess Phillips has made reference to having done waitressing and other work, but I think that we can be sure that we are talking days or weeks rather than months or years, assuming that she ever did those jobs at all.
Jess Phillips is married to one Tom Phillips. They have two children. I have been unable, as yet, to discover whether her husband is of Jewish or part-Jewish origin or indeed whether she herself is.
Controversies as MP
Jess Phillips
was selected as candidate not by open competition but via an approved “all-women shortlist”;
is a member of Labour Friends of Israel and has made a number of pro-Jewish interventions; Jews on Twitter etc often seem to give her support (may be part-Jew);
invented an altercation with Diane Abbott MP in which, Phillips claimed, “‘I roundly told her to fuck off.’ When asked what Ms Abbott did after that suggestion, Ms Phillips replied: ‘She fucked off.'” According to Diane Abbott in a January 2018 Guardian interview: “Jess Phillips never told me to fuck off. What was extraordinary is that she made a big deal of telling people she had”. Phillips later apologised.” [Huffington Post]
“Phillips told Owen Jones in December 2015 that she had told Corbyn and his staff “to their faces: ‘The day that … you are hurting us more than you are helping us, I won’t knife you in the back, I’ll knife you in the front‘”, if it looked as though he was damaging Labour’s chances of winning the next general election. Responding to criticism about her use of language, Phillips said on Twitter: “I am no more going to actually knife Jeremy Corbyn than I am actually a breath of fresh air, or a pain in the arse” [Wikipedia]
walks around in the nude at home, despite having two sons living with her;
has quarrelled with UKIP MEP candidate Carl Benjamin aka “Sargon of Akkad”, who said, in 2015, that “he would not even rape her”. Jess Phillips has now dredged that up, four years later, and has been making her usual and no doubt well-paid round of the TV and radio studios in order to make more publicity for herself out of it; she has even made complaint to the police about it, four years on (and, no doubt coincidentally, during the EU election campaign)!
has threatened several times to resign from the Labour Party but somehow never quite manages to do it (see below for details of how much money she drags down solely by being an MP);
“In July 2018 it was reported that Phillips served as deputy editor of The House, the in-house Parliamentary magazine published by the Dods Group, which had been purchased by Conservative Party donor and former Tory vice-chairman Michael Ashcroft, earning an annual salary of £8,000 for two hours’ work per month.” [Wikipedia]. So she does maybe 2 hours work each month for that obscure magazine, which pays her about £700 per month, i.e. about £350 an hour. Not bad compared to most of her poverty-stricken constituents, who are probably lucky to get £10 a hour!
draws a salary of £80,000 and also claims a quarter of a million pounds each year in expenses, most of which consists of “staff pay”, which includes £50,000 a year paid to her husband as “Constituency Support Manager” (house husband?); she also claims about £30,000 a year for accommodation (about 50% more than average);
constantly makes the rounds of TV studios, radio studios, Press interviews (all or mostly paid…)
Ambition
“In March 2019, she said: “I think I’d be a good prime minister” and that “I feel like I can’t leave the Labour Party without rolling the dice one more time. I owe it that. But it doesn’t own me. It’s nothing more than a logo if it doesn’t stand for something that I actually care about – it’s just a f***ing rose.” [Wikipedia]
Conclusion
The mystery is (or would be, were it not so common in the House of Commons now) why this ignorant, uncultured, foul-mouthed creature was ever thought suitable to be an MP. Birmingham Yardley is a safe Labour seat, and it seems that no way exists for her to be removed, unless her local Labour Party deselects her. Incredibly, despite her saying time and again that Labour means nothing to her, she has been reselected. She makes a very good living out of being a caricature loudmouth MP, and I see no possibility that she will leave Labour unless another party offers her a continued sinecure. Unfortunately.
Jess Phillips is the Left's equivalent of Boris Johnson – using irreverence and edginess as a substitute for ability, more interested in being a media celeb than in the hard graft of political ideas and debate, courting publicity at every opportunity. Why do people fall for it?
In case people think that I select only tweets hostile to Jess Phillips, here is one from (another) “Labour” and pro-Zionist doormat, Stella Creasy MP (Labour Friends of Israel etc), who wants to make “misogyny” [meaning trenchant criticism of any female, female MP that is] a “hate crime”! Note: Stella Creasy and Jess Phillips are both personal friends and members of Labour Friends of Israel.
It makes me want to tear stuff up and go all boudicca that this is happening to @jessphillips – I'll settle for now for making misogyny a hate crime so these idiots can be tackled and ensuring there's jacobs crackers and edam on tap whenever she needs next door x https://t.co/17XM6SJf6x
and here is another tweet supporting Jess Phillips, this time from vastly privileged System mouthpiece Dan Snow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Snow , the son of BBC talking head Peter Snow. Dan Snow: St. Paul’s School, Balliol College, Oxford, married to the second daughter of the 6th Duke of Westminster (who was one of the richest men in Britain). “Snow presented his first programme in October 2002 just after graduating from university, co-presenting the BBC’s 60th anniversary special on the Battles of El Alamein with his father” [Wikipedia]. “With his father”?…Oh, that’s handy… Nepotism Central…Also a Remain drone (of course), Dan Snow thinks that making a silly remark should “instantly” disqualify a political candidate! He’s a well-educated, er, idiot…(correction, a well-educated and above all well-connected idiot).
Feeling so sad and helpless about the @jessphillips assault discourse. It should obviously be instantly disqualifying. That it isn't shows there is evil in our politics. I would never have believed it of my country.
and here’s another, but this time obscure, idiot who also believes that only “approved” and uncontroversial candidates should be allowed. Oh, right, like in Asian fake “democracies” such as China…
of course you are in an 'obvious box' – your politics are those of a careerist politician. You could be any number of Parties. I would suggest that your eye is on the main chance for Jess Phillips, not the people of Britain who you say you serve…? #RevolvingDoor
I have to admit that I found the following tweet rather funny!
Just leaving Westminster and and man ran down the street along side me asking me about why Carl Benjamin shouldn't be able to joke about my rape. Shouting "I pay your wages".
First The Times gave us Phillips as glamorous & seductive, now we have her looking like a prison warden. No matter how the media portray Phillips they'll never persuade us she's anything other than a publicity seeking opportunist. pic.twitter.com/7RlPDPNz7r
I expect that the judge and police/CPS will turn a blind eye. I myself think that she should suffer some penalty. What an incredibly stupid woman she is.
Update, 15 November 2023
🚨🚨 BREAKING: Jess Phillips has RESIGNED from Keir Starmer's front bench after voting for a Gaza ceasefire pic.twitter.com/x1zRT2v2Vr
Maybe liberalism’s children are starting to realise that multiculturalism has been a disastrous social experiment that no one wanted and that will destroy every society it’s forced upon. https://t.co/9qRLKK25TC
It just occurred to me that, with Jess Phillips, the apple did not fall far from the tree. She, like her parents, combines pseudo-socialism with grabbing as much money as possible, and with using Labour Party networking in order to do that.
I saw tweets about her today:
This is exactly the same kind of whataboutery and denialism that enabled the rape gangs to begin with https://t.co/Ol7CYZmIhy
Just a straight-out enemy of the future of white Europe.
Update, 25 October 2025
The second is from all 6 survivors switalskis represent both on the panel and 2 that have resigned, outlining the concern both from on the panel and that led to people leaving the panel. pic.twitter.com/7hgIXsCGEj
the Conservative Party humiliated and suffering a defeat worse than many (but not I) anticipated;
the Labour Party, though losing few seats (82), also humiliated, in that, at this point in the conventional electoral cycle, the norm is for the governing party to lose and possibly lose heavily, but for the official Opposition party to make gains, perhaps considerable gains;
the Liberal Democrats, who have not, in general, recovered since their rout at the 2015 General Election (and who in fact did worse at the 2017 General Election in terms of popular vote share —7.4% in 2017 as against 7.9% in 2015— though better in terms of House of Commons seats —12, up from 8), had a “good” result in these local elections, more than doubling the number of LibDem councillors.
Local councillors elected (only about a third of the over 20,000 total were in contest this time) were 3,561 (Con), 2,023 (Lab) and 704 (LibDem); others (mainly Independents) elected numbered 1,310, a large increase.
The totals of local government seats now held (mostly council seats) by the three main System parties: Con 7,615, Lab 6,327, LibDems 2,576.
The 2019 local elections gave the System parties the following vote shares: Con 28%, Lab 28%, LibDems 19%, Others (and spoiled votes) 25%.
The electoral swing percentages: 7% down for Con, 1% down for Lab, and 8% up for the LibDems.
It can be seen from the above that these elections were disastrous for the Conservatives, not successful for Labour. As to the LibDems, their upsurge was mainly a protest vote by pro-Remain former Conservative voters. Not very important. I do not want to waste more time than I have already on washed-up UKIP or on the Green protest vote.
Had the Nigel Farage vehicle, the Brexit Party, been contesting the local elections, the Conservative and Labour parties would have done very much worse, the LibDems about the same (their votes coming exclusively from Remainers and from those who think that mass immigration actually somehow benefits the people of the UK).
The 2019 EU election
It is now too late for the EU election not to be held in the UK. The pathetic “deal” cobbled together (as I write this, not quite agreed between Theresa May and Corbyn) will not be able to prevent the EU election happening. Thus Brexit Party comes into play.
Look at the film clip below. Nigel Farage arriving at a rally in Newport, Wales, on 30 April 2019. His reception is not just warm or supportive; it is ecstatic, an ovation by followers who seem almost to worship him.
The Brexit party turned up in Newport, south Wales last night. A true Labour heartland. Usually. https://t.co/NoBovPxNCv
Reminiscent of the entry of Adolf Hitler into the speech hall at Nuremberg in 1934, as shown in Triumph of the Will [dir. Leni Riefenstahl, 1935]. None of the substance and depth, of course, but superficially rather similar.
Opinion polls: Brexit Party was recently running at about 30% (2 May) and may by now be higher, maybe even 35%. That figure, though, relates purely to the upcoming EU elections
As regards Westminster elections, Brexit Party was running at 14% a few days ago, but it might well rise, perhaps considerably, from there. Labour is on about 30% and Conservatives around 25%.
Brexit Party is pretty much the only game in town as regards the EU election in the UK. Indeed, if Conservative/Labour do agree some unsatisfactory last-minute and cobbled-together “deal” to put to the EU, i.e. “Brexit In Name Only”, Brexit Party might well do even better on 23 May.
Possible General Election 2019
The System parties are assuming that, if some kind of limited faux-Brexit is presented to the British people, with or without a fake “Second Referendum” or “People’s Vote”, that that will shoot the Brexit Party’s fox. I’m not so sure.
There is huge dissatisfaction around, not only around Brexit (from both main directions), but also around the continuing other issues that bedevil the UK: the continuing low levels of pay and “welfare” (social security), overcrowded rail, poorly maintained roads, the spending cuts of a decade now impacting services such as NHS and police; immigration is continuing on a very large scale, too.
The msm and Westminster Bubble crowd have not fully caught up with what is happening. Look again at the Con, Lab and LibDem local results. Labour did not do well in terms of pressing ahead, but did not much slip back. The Conservatives suffered a really big hit. The LibDems did well mainly at the expense of the Conservatives.
In any 2019 General Election, the Conservatives, under whoever is their new leader, would face a three-front war: against Labour, LibDems and Brexit Party. It has been assumed up to now that Brexit Party would take the role and have the effect of being a spoiler alone. Maybe now it might be more than a mere spoiler. Half the Conservative voters of 2017 are saying that they will not vote Conservative next time. I have already blogged about how that could mean a loss of 100 or even 200 Commons seats for the Conservatives. Most ex-Con voters will vote Brexit Party.
It may well be that Brexit Party can do well enough to create its own bloc of seats. Maybe 50. Maybe even 100. Labour will also benefit from the Conservatives losing votes to both Brexit Party and the LibDems.
I cannot see the LibDems doing better than staying at about the same level that they are on now (12 MPs), but votes for them from former Conservative voters may easily let in either Labour or the Brexit Party, depending on the seat in question. Having said that, it is not impossible that a small number of LibDem candidates might slip past the Con, Lab and Brexit party candidates in closely-fought 3-way or 4-way splits.
So the Conservatives will be losing Remain votes to the LibDems, Leave votes to Brexit Party. It may be, also, that those floating voters whose priorities lie elsewhere than with the EU/Brexit situation will go with Labour.
The Conservatives may be left as a niche party for the wealthy, the smug affluent, the buy to let parasites, the Zionist Jews etc. In a sense that was always so, but other categories of voter made up the weight in elections.
The Conservative Party may be permanently reduced to a hard core of 25% of the electorate, and perhaps to an even lower level than that. The ethnic minorities (except the Jews) are estranged from the Conservatives and are fast-increasing in number. The “blacks and browns” etc vote Labour. Many of the English/British (i.e. white) middleaged and elderly are either disappearing by effluxion of time or are defecting to Brexit Party; only 16% of voters under 35 favour the Conservatives; only 4% of those under 25. Very many of the young or quite young vote Labour or Green.
The msm seems to be saying now that the most likely outcome is a hung Parliament, with the Conservatives as biggest party in the Commons. I tend to stick with my prediction of 2+ years standing, that Labour will be the biggest party, though without a majority, if an election really is called this year. There is an outside chance that Labour might get a majority, but if its remaining Northern English base continues to erode, a Commons majority is not going to happen.
In the clip immediately below (from Sky newspaper review), journalist Brendan O’Neill, with loudmouth “Fleet Street Fox” (Susie Boniface), addresses the Labour lack of success in the local elections:
The local elections were devastating for the Labour Party. It lost control in some of its old heartlands, including Bolsover and Hartlepool. It is paying the price for its betrayal of Brexit and its cosying up to the woke pro-Remain middle classes.
In fact, there were no less than 39,000 spoiled papers in all! Many had “BREXIT”, “Brexit Party” or Swastikas drawn on them…
Spoilt ballot papers on an industrial scale; support for the two main parties collapsing; explosion in the number of independent councillors; a new single-issue party surging in the polls…Was there a time when our political establishment was held in such contempt by the people?
Gilet Jaunes marching for the 25th consecutive week. A movement of workers fighting for greater democracy, economic justice and national sovereignty. Totally ignored by the 'internationalist' British Left. (They're just a bit *too* working-class, you see.) pic.twitter.com/6LrneaSlu1
"We need an English socialism that resists relentless commodification, values the land, believes in family life, takes pride in the country and its traditions: a conservative socialism." https://t.co/6bhSg7aisk
and here below we see Lisa Nandy MP trying to avoid mentioning that the Labour vote is now at least partly (in some areas, almost entirely) an ethnic non-white vote. Seems that the Conservatives of Smethwick, at the famous 1960s by-election, were right: “if you want a n****r for a neighbour, vote Labour”! Lisa Nandy is trying to say that “graduates” (meaning “the educated”?…hardy ha ha in the era of “everyone gets a First” degrees) prefer Labour. Everyone and his dog is now a nominal “graduate”, who has gone to “uni” and got a crap (in many cases) “degree” leading to (also in many cases) a low-wage job, thus (ditto) leading to socio-political dissatisfaction…
What does Labour losing control of Bolton, but gaining control of Trafford tell us? That the same trends we saw in 2017 and 2018 are holding – we’re gaining amongst graduates, often in cities, and losing our core vote elsewhere
The Labour leader of Sunderland city council sums it up:
We lost 10 seats because this city voted to leave but our MPs have been campaigning for a second referendum, and local people said, 'We're just not having that.' pic.twitter.com/wOmFFxB6PF
My main article, above, says nothing about Change UK, the new party for Remainers and pro-Zionists. The article does not cover Change UK because Change UK is doomed and (as I said in another blog post) all but pointless. It is running at about 4% in the opinion polls re the EU elections, but better (some polls even had it recently at 10%!) re. any general election.
Readers will recall that UKIP had support, at the 2015 General Election, of 12.6%, yet gained no MPs (except for the ex-Con MP, Carswell). UKIP’s support was evenly spread throughout England and Wales; it had no Schwerpunkt or concentration of support in a few constituencies (which is how the LibDems and Greens, both with lower levels of support nationally, score). It follows from that that Change UK, even with 10% of votes (5% is more likely) has no chance of getting anywhere in any general election in 2019.
The significant thing about Change UK is that it will pull even more votes from the Conservatives, already losing votes to Brexit Party and LibDems.
Update, 7 May 2019
In the past days, while “Change UK” has apparently already sunk without trace (and almost nothing is heard about it), Brexit Party is really developing into something. Today, it was announced that there will be EU elections in the UK on 23 May, only 16 days from today. Brexit Party looks odds-on to be largest UK party and perhaps to take most of the seats allocated to the UK.
Huge crowds coming out all over the country for the @brexitparty_uk.
Peterborough rally for the Brexit Party. When was the last time British politics saw something like this?? Astonishing. They’re doing three rallies a week! pic.twitter.com/YVUlQnhTdw
Sorry if I'm being dense. But given Change UK and the Brexit Party weren't even standing, isn't this "the Lib Dems are back!" narrative a touch premature.
The Brexit Party gets more popular by the day, with 34% now intending to back them in the European elections – more than the Labour and Conservative Parties COMBINED. The 17.4m have been betrayed by our political class for years, and now we're going to MAKE them listen!
“A ComRes poll for the Sunday Telegraph showed that if a Westminster general election were called, Labour would reap the largest share of the vote with 27%; the Brexit party would garner 20% ahead of the Conservatives on 19%. The Liberal Democrats would win 14%, followed by ChangeUK (7%) and the Greens (5%) with Ukip trailing on 2%.” [The Guardian]
The 2019 local elections are at an end and the results collated and endlessly analyzed in the msm. I had predicted a seat loss for the Conservatives of well beyond 1,000 seats, somewhere between there and 1,500. In that, my prediction was correct. Where I went wrong was in thinking that Labour would do well.
What I got right was the disgust and despair voters generally now feel in respect of the Conservative Party. What I got wrong, mainly, was in assuming that voters in the North and Midlands would vote Labour to spite the Conservatives, even if only as a choice between evils and not much supporting Labour as such.
The facts
The system of voting for local councillors etc in the UK is as antiquated and convoluted as one might resignedly expect: not all councils are elected in the same year, and some councils only elect a third of their councillors in any one election. Absurd.
The actual result of the election nationwide, where 8,798 seats (between a third and a half of all the 20,712 local government seats in the UK) were being contested was:
Con 3,562 (loss of 1,334) seats;
Lab 2,023 (loss of 82) seats;
LibDems 1,350 (gain of 703) seats;
Others 1,310 (mostly Independents). The Greens did well and now have 265 councillors (a gain of 194). UKIP did badly, and now have only 31 councillors (a loss of 145).
Analysis
The two major System parties are now widely despised. More than that, the political/electoral system is now despised; people have little or no trust in it or in those who are making their living from it. Those facts are reflected not only in the votes cast, but in those not cast. Turnout varies depending on the type of body being elected, but seems overall to have been only about 30%, if that. In addition, unprecedentedly huge numbers of ballot papers were spoiled, some being endorsed with the words “Brexit” or “Brexit Party” or a drawn Swastika. Unsurprising, when one considers that, in many local council seats, there was no real choice.
In many areas of Southern England, the Conservatives were not opposed by even System party opponents from Labour or the LibDems. That explains the way in which disgusted voters voted for anyone not tainted by System connections: Independents (despite most being completely unknown to most of those who voted for them; complete wild cards); Residents’ Association candidates, Greens. How though to explain the relative success of the LibDems (a System party)? How to explain the collapse of UKIP (a non-System party)? In fact, there is no difficulty in understanding those apparent anomalies.
The LibDems were obviously voted for by voters who liked the LibDems’ focus on local affairs, those who are Remain supporters voting for the LibDems as an anti-Brexit protest vote, and by those former Conservative voters who wanted to punish the Conservatives generally, but who were unwilling to vote for Labour, Greens or for complete wild cards. For those people, I suspect mainly in the South of England, the LibDems were an acceptable compromise “dustbin” vote.
The Greens were probably mostly voted for as a pure protest vote, as well as an environmentally-oriented protest vote.
UKIP lost out badly and now, out of a possible nearly 21,000 councillors, has only 31. I think that one can see why that has happened. I have been tweeting/blogging for years that UKIP peaked in 2014. Since then, UKIP has been sliding. The good, but not good enough, 2015 General Election result led to a precipitous plunge in UKIP’s fortunes. Its new leader, Batten, has slowed the plunge, but not stopped it.
UKIP had insufficient troops and funds to fight these local elections hard. It did not contest the vast majority of seats anyway. Apart from that, it is clear that the connection with the “alt-Right” wastes of space (“Sargon of Akkad” Benjamin, “Prison Planet” Watson, “Count Dankula” Meechan) has damaged UKIP badly. Benjamin’s spat with ghastly “Labour” (Labour label) MP Jess Phillips was probably a huge turn-off for many voters. This is the end of the road for UKIP, even re. the EU elections (if any are held in the UK), because defections to Brexit Party have already left UKIP with only 3 MEPs, and BP is running at 30% or more in the opinion polls, while UKIP is now down to about 3%.
Conclusion
These were elections in which voters clutched at straws, weakly trying to damage the main parties of the System. In most seats, there was no non-System candidate standing. The aftermath has been that Con and Lab are now trying to cobble together a faked-up “deal” (“Brexit In Name Only”) so that both parties can avoid having to hold EU elections at all on the 23rd of this month..
We are coming to the end of even the pretence of representative democracy in the UK. Any means will soon be entirely justified in replacing the present corrupt, decadent and totally incompetent system with a better one. The present political system is just not working.
There were almost no candidates ostensibly “nationalist”, still less social-national. A few did well where they stood, here and there. The standouts were Karen King and Julian Leppert, both of whom were For Britain Movement candidates..
Julian Leppert was elected for the “For Britain” party in Waltham Abbey, Paternoster ward, in Epping Forest, Essex. The one-time BNP councillor received 40.7% of the vote, 321 votes; the Con in second place got 227. Turnout was only 23%. About 808 votes were cast in toto.
Karen King, in Hartlepool, de Bruce ward, won with an even more striking 49.5% vote. “The turnout for the elections was 27.18% with 19,284 verified votes from an electorate of 70,943” [Northern Echo]. That of course relates to all Hartlepool and not simply the ward picked out, where Karen King/For Britain Movement got 694 votes, Labour 527, Con 180.
Hartlepool Borough Council councillors now consist of 13 Labour, 8 Independent Union, 5 Independent, 3 Conservatives, 1 UKIP, 1 Veterans’ and People’s Party, 1 For Britain Movement and 1 Socialist Labour Party. Such fragmentation is interesting. The old “three party” or “two party” System stitch-up is just not working any more.
Of course, readers of this blog will know that I have little time for “For Britain Movement”, and 2 councillors is a very small contingent out of the nearly 21,000 in the UK, but looking at those results in isolation, one can only congratulate the candidates.
I shall blog separately about the prospects for the main System parties.
I tweeted (before Twitter expelled me) in the past about freedom of expression and how it is now under attack across the “West”; I have also blogged about it. It is not a straightforward issue but clarity is possible. The same is true when talking about the enemies of freedom.
Below, I link to a BuzzFeed “report” (propaganda piece) promoting the views of Jess Phillips MP, one of the worst MPs in the present House of Commons, who has now said (of a UKIP candidate, Carl Benjamin):
“The Electoral Commission should surely have standards about who can and can’t stand for election. If Facebook and Twitter can ban these people for hate speech how is it they are allowed to stand for election?”
It is hard to imagine being back in 1999, let alone 1989, 1979, 1969 (or any time before that right back to the 18th Century), when a Member of Parliament, even one as profoundly ignorant, uneducated and uncultured as Jess Phillips, would say that a civil service body should decide who should be allowed to stand for election!
Now there are certain kinds of people who cannot stand for election in the UK, and there is a debate to be had about whether those rules are too restrictive, but it has never been seriously suggested before that a candidate should be barred from standing simply because of whatever he or she has said!
Now, those who read my blog etc know that I have rather little time for “Sargon of Akkad” (Carl Benjamin) or his fellow “alt-Right” vloggers (“Prison Planet” Watson etc) but I think that they have the right to speak, to speak online, and to stand for elections. As to Benjamin’s “rape” comments about Jess Phillips, well they were in very poor taste and certainly not chivalrous (though Jess Phillips has no time for courtesy and, still less, for chivalry, in any case), but I do not think that he should be arrested, questioned by police etc about them, nor prevented from carrying on his doomed attempt to become an MEP.
The general assault on freedom of expression in the UK and across the “West”
The attack on what might loosely be called “free speech” is being led and largely carried out by the Jewish or Jewish-Zionist lobby, monitored and supported by the Israeli state. This can be illustrated by a few examples from the UK, starting with my own experiences:
Alison Chabloz sang satirical songs which were posted online; she placed a link on her blog. She was persecuted, lost her job as a result, further persecuted, then privately prosecuted by the fake “charity” called “Campaign Against AntiSemitism”, which then led to prosecution by the CPS and conviction under the bad law of the Communications Act 2003, s.127. At present she is still appealing:
Jez Turner made a speech in Whitehall in 2015, in which speech he suggested that Jews should be cast out from England as they had been on several occasions in the past (eg under Edward I). After a long legal struggle with the Jewish lobby, more particularly the “CAA”, the CPS caved in and prosecuted Jez Turner. He received a 1 year prison sentence in 2018 (he was released on strict conditions after 6 months).
Tommy Robinson
The activist known as Tommy Robinson has been banned from both Facebook and Twitter.
I have written and spoken many times about the “privatization of public space”. In my case, I have been disbarred because Jews wanted to stop me tweeting and/or punish me for exposing them. I have been interrogated by the police at Jewish instigation. I have had other problems with the authorities in recent years. All the doing of Jew conspirators.
In the past, printed matter was the medium of political propaganda. Today, it is online matter that counts, but the online platforms and internet services are in few hands, and most of the hands that matter are Jewish.
An individual can now be effectively silenced by being banned from Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, which can be the decision of a single capitalist “owner”, a manager or executive, or even some deskbound dogsbody.
In addition, that decision-maker, or a couple of such, can deprive the individual of money donations via removal of his or her Paypal, Patreon or other money-donation service.
Likewise, an organization can now be all but wiped out simply by the same methods. Just as I was expelled from Twitter (albeit that Twitter is just a waste of time and effort, really), so have been expelled (“suspended”, in Twitter’s weasel word) Alison Chabloz, Tommy Robinson and innumerable others. They have also been removed from Facebook, YouTube etc (I have no accounts on those platforms) and from donation sites, Paypal etc.
I see that Facebook has now removed Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam organization too (for “anti-Semitism”). The Jews are crowing. Maybe prematurely.
It is clear that power online is in very few hands. One decision by some Jew like Zuckerberg and an organization with literally millions of followers, such as InfoWars, can be sent spinning into outer darkness, with no right of appeal or legal redress qua citizen.
In the USA, these facts also mean that the Constitutional right to free speech is scarcely worth the paper it is printed on. I was always sceptical about it, on the basis that, yes, you can speak freely in the USA, so long as you do not mind losing your job, profession, business, home etc…Now the near-uselessness of the Constitutional freedom of speech is even more stark: by all means speak freely, but you are restricted to howling in the dark, or at least in the street. Your online “free speech”, meaning your communication with anyone not your immediate neighbour or family, is monitored, censored and can be completely taken away from you, not by the State, even, but by online platforms pressured by or owned by the Jewish Zionist lobby. We see that there are moves afoot in the UK even to prevent our taking part in already-stacked elections!
Conclusion
As European people and social nationalists, we can no more rely on online platforms than we can rely on getting elected in a rigged system, on fair reportage from the msm, or on getting justice under rigged legal systems.
Believe it or not, this idiot, Paul Bernal (see below), is a law lecturer! I feel sorry for his students at the University of East Anglia! According to his definition, even Stalin’s Soviet Union or Mao’s China had “free speech” (because you could *say* whatever you liked, but as a consequence might get shot…)
What an idiot! Absolutely prize…!
Time for the regular reminder that freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from the consequences of your speech.
This blog post is not primarily about the Jess Phillips idiot-woman, but it is frightening to see the tweets of her supporters, showing the intellectual dullness even of the supposedly educated these days: see the tweet by one @docsimsim of Richmond, below
Jess Phillips my shero. She should be in the shadow cabinet atleast and possibly the next labour leader should she want the job. #StopBrexithttps://t.co/v0goH4HsOw
Others, however, have seen through the Jess Phillips Empty Vessel performance
Ignorance. Just ignorance. Sad indictment of how poorly ideas/policies are communicated. The MSM only interested in sound bites & those who produce them. The mouthpieces, eg Jess Phillips, always available for comment & contribute nothing. #BBCQT adds nothing to the discussion.
Here’s an American, one “Chris”, who seems to find it unobjectionable that some “authority” persons should “decide” on whether a candidate can be “allowed” to stand:
and here is Jess Phillips trying to make more publicity for herself while trying to squash down what little freedom of expression still exists in the UK:
Happy to discuss indeed. Personally I think we need a code of conduct that cannot be breached by those who stand as public representatives. I'd say saying you would rape someone if forced I'd say was a clear breach. I'll contact you for a meeting. Thanks https://t.co/iMlQvYIOBn
For those who are unaware, since being elected in 2015, Jess Phillips has squeezed every penny she can out of the taxpayers: not satisfied with a salary of nearly £80,000 and very generous “expenses”, she even “employs” her husband on £50,000 a year as “Constituency Support Manager” (he stays at home and is, presumably, a “house husband”). Yet she, this ignorant, rude, uneducated, uncultured creature, has the cheek to talk about “people with literally no discernible skills” getting high pay! That may be so, but she should look in the mirror, if she can bear it!
YouTube have banned me for 'hate speech', I think due to clips on Nazi policy featuring propaganda speeches by Nazi leaders. I'm devastated to have this claim levelled against me, and frustrated 15yrs of materials for #HistoryTeacher community have ended so abruptly.@TeamYouTube
— Mr Allsop History (@MrAllsopHistory) June 5, 2019
Update, 18 June 2019
Just one more random example of the slide into censorship and quasi-official lies or falsity:
A Dr Who writer @OldRoberts953 is expunged from a book by the BBC because he won’t conform to the latest transgender ideology. His views on transgenderism are probably shared by 90%+ of Brits but he’s now a Non-Person for the BBC. The net tightens around free speech. Please share https://t.co/G9fM2BK1e4
The police, CPS etc, but especially police, seem incapable of distinguishing, or unwilling to distinguish, between “grossly offensive” (unlawful) and merely “offensive” (lawful) and tend to treat all “offensive” communications as “grossly offensive”, which runs counter to Court of Appeal and Supreme Court case authority.
This is what happens when plainly bad law, such as Communications Act 2003, s.127, is drafted and passed into statute.
[above, Rory Stewart, many years ago in Afghanistan, consciously reprising Lawrence of Arabia; he was sometimes called both “Florence of Arabia” (in Iraq) and “Florence of Belgravia” (because of his well-connected and wealthy background)]
Introduction
My attention was caught by the BBC Politics tweet below.
Rory Stewart MP [Con, Penrith and Borders], who until yesterday was Minister of State for Prisons, a political dead-end, now can be said, appropriately enough, to have jumped free with one bound, and is now Secretary of State for International Development, a position again not quite in the front rank but a Cabinet post all the same. From his new elevation, Stewart has wasted no time in declaring his candidature for Conservative Party leadership.
I have been interested in Stewart and his political career for several years. I was puzzled as to why someone who appeared to have so many advantages (wealth, family influence, expensive education, pre-political career moves, a degree of public prominence etc) seemed to have run into the sand as an MP. However, it may be that he was playing a long game which will yet bring him to the highest office.
I do blog about MPs individually, but mostly those I term “deadhead MPs”. Stewart is certainly not one of those. However, his CV is almost too obviously brilliant. He seems to have almost too many talents, qualifications and virtues to be true. I do, perhaps unfairly, harbour a suspicion that the sum of his many parts may not quite add up to the same amount.
“After graduating, Stewart joined the Foreign Office.[11] He served in the British Embassy in Indonesia from 1997 to 1999, working on issues related to East Timor independence, and was appointed at the age of 26 as the British Representative to Montenegro in the wake of the Kosovo campaign.” [Wikipedia]
Stewart is believed to have been, like his father, an officer of the Secret Intelligence Service [SIS], a fact alluded to by David Dimbleby on BBC Question Time. Stewart neither agreed nor demurred. Still, a touch of the James Bonds impresses the common herd, I suppose…
[above, Brian Stewart, the father of Rory Stewart, wearing the badge of a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG), the 4th-highest order of chivalry in the UK (if excluding two now-dormant orders, the Order of St. Patrick and the Order of The Star of India)]
“After the coalition invasion of Iraq, he became the Coalition Provisional Authority Deputy Governorate Co-Ordinator in Maysan and Deputy Governorate Co-ordinator/Senior Advisor in Dhi Qar in 2003, both of which are provinces in southern Iraq.[9] He was posted initially to the KOSB Battlegroup then to the Light Infantry.[12] His responsibilities included holding elections, resolving tribal disputes, and implementing development projects.[12] He faced growing unrest and an incipient civil war from his base in a Civil-Military Co-operation(CIMIC) compound in Al Amarah, and in May 2004 was in command of his compound in Nasiriyah when it was besieged by Sadrist militia.[9] He was awarded an OBE for his services during this period. While Stewart initially supported the Iraq War, the International Coalition’s inability to achieve a more humane, prosperous state led him in retrospect to believe the invasion had been a mistake.” [Wikipedia]
Full marks for honesty, but not for perspicacity. Let’s look at the above again: Stewart joined the FCO (and/or SIS) in 1995-96 and by 1999, at age 26, he is British Representative in Montenegro, at that time emerging from nearly a decade of ex-Yugoslav conflict.
This is rather remarkable. Why was a 26-y-o appointed to this rather important strategic post? Even more remarkably, perhaps, Stewart was then posted to Iraq in the immediate post-invasion era, and was rather famously deputy-governor of an Iraqi province at the age of 28. As noted above, he even “saw action” to some extent when his compound was besieged by militia fighters.
“From 2000 to 2002 he travelled on foot through rural districts of Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, India and Nepal, a journey totalling around 6000 miles, during which time he stayed in five hundred different village houses. He had previously walked across West Papua in 1998,[115] and has since made a number of long walks through Cumbria and Britain. He also travelled into Libya a day after the fall of Colonel Gaddafi.” [Wikipedia]
“In late 2005, at the request of the Prince of Wales and Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan,[15] he established, as Executive Chairman, the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, a human development NGO, in Afghanistan, and relocated to Kabul where he lived for the next three years restoring historic buildings in the old city of Kabul, managing its finances, installing water supply, electricity, and establishing a clinic, a school and an institute for traditional crafts.[4] Stewart was awarded the Royal Scottish Geographical Society‘s Livingstone medal in 2009 “in recognition of his work in Afghanistan and his travel writing, and for his distinguished contribution to geography”.[16] Stewart stepped down as Executive Chairman of the Turquoise Mountain Foundation in May 2010.” [Wikipedia]
By any standards, Stewart’s life up to age 33 at least (he is now 46) was packed with achievements and adventures. Not many UK MPs could lay claim to anything even a tenth as interesting and varied (note my blogs about “deadhead MPs”). Indeed, it seems that, in 2008, a Hollywood studio (Studio Canal/Brad Pitt) actually bought the film rights to do a biopic of Stewart, starring, it was envisaged, Orlando Bloom as Stewart! No film has been made (yet).
This is not the British politics we know! This is somewhere in the realm of John Buchan and Sidney Reilly, a post-imperial Great Game pastiche.
Stewart’s second book, The Prince of the Marshes: and other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq, also published as Occupational Hazards: My Time Governing in Iraq, describes his experiences as a Deputy Governorate Co-ordinator in Iraq.[4] The New York Timescritic William Grimes commented that Stewart “seems to be living one of the more extraordinary lives on record”, but for him the “real value of the new book is Mr. Stewart’s sobering picture of the difficulties involved in creating a coherent Iraqi state based on the rule of law”.[126] Stewart’s books have been translated into multiple languages.
Stewart’s reflections on the circumstances under which outside military and political intervention in countries’ internal affairs may or may not hope to achieve positive results were distilled in a 2011 book, Can Intervention Work?, co-authored with Gerald Knaus and part of the Amnesty International Global Ethics Series. He has also written about theory and practice of travel writings in prefaces to Wilfred Thesiger‘s Arabian Sands,[127]Charles Doughty‘s Arabia Deserta[128] and Robert Byron‘s The Road to Oxiana.[129]
In 2016, he published The Marches, a travelogue about a 1,000-mile walk in the borderlands separating England and Scotland, known as the Scottish Marches, and an extended essay on his Father, Brian Stewart.[130] The Marches was long listed for the Orwell Prize, won the Hunter Davies Lakeland Book of the Year,[131] was a Waterstones Book of the Month,[132] and became a Sunday Times top ten bestseller.” [Wikipedia]
I suppose that many would be well satisfied to have done even one or two or three of the things noted above. Stewart has dozens of accomplishments and successes to his name. A few more are:
“His 2008 cover article in Time magazine, where he debated presidential candidates Obama and McCain, arguing against a troop surge in Afghanistan, has been shortlisted for an American Journalism Association Award
Afghanistan: The Great Game – A Personal View by Rory Stewart, a documentary in two parts that tells the story of foreign intervention by Britain, Russia and the United States in Afghanistan from the 19th century to the present day,which aired on BBC2 and which won a Scottish BAFTA (2012).[139]
Border Country: The Story of Britain’s Lost Middleland, which investigates the rift created by Hadrian’s Wall, and the issues of identity and culture in a region divided by the fabricated border, which was singled out for praise by David Attenborough.”
“Stewart speaks some French, Persian (Dari), and Indonesian. He has also studied at school, in the Foreign Office, and on his Asian travels, Latin, Greek, Russian, Chinese, Serbo-Croat, Urdu, and Nepali languages. He acknowledges that the latter three languages are “very rusty“;
He has lectured at Harvard and even advised Hillary Clinton…;
He is a karate expert (level unknown) and belongs to the Special Forces Club in London, some of whose members were in WW2 secret work, some were in the military and naval special forces, some ex-intelligence personnel —and there are also some who are rumoured to be just gold-plated fakes and fantasists;
“His speech about hedgehogs in Parliament in 2015[39] was named by The Times and The Telegraph as the best parliamentary speech of 2015 and described by the Deputy Speaker as “one of the best speeches she had ever heard in Parliament” [Wikipedia]
Stewart is married to an American woman who had previously been married to a fellow NGO worker. One of the children of the Stewarts was delivered by Stewart himself without medical assistance.
Stewart once tweeted to me about something, several years ago, and was very polite, something that I value. I do not attribute that entirely to the influence of the Dragon School or, indeed, Eton. He seems to know how to behave (though not all agree, I have heard).
Thoughts
Stewart’s stellar career stalled after he became an MP in 2010. Having said that, he has chaired Commons committees, been promoted slowly but surely, and Wikipedia notes that he attended the Bilderberg cabal along with George Osborne. Not that being a Bilderberg attendee is a guarantee of lasting political success (cf. Nick Boles MP) but it does indicate that the primary powers behind the Western throne consider that a person is of interest.
This is Rory Stewart’s moment of opportunity. He has seized it. Once Theresa May leaves office, the Conservative Party will elect a new leader. Stewart is the international System candidate nonpareil. I should not be surprised were he to win a first ballot outright, bearing in mind the collection of fools, knaves, deadheads and frauds likely to oppose him in the contest:
Penny Mordaunt, best known for diving in a swimsuit (she looked good, so be it…) and for being a reserve naval sub-lieutenant;
Michael Gove, pro-Jew, pro-Israel fraud and expenses cheat (I tweeted that once and it was one of 5 tweets that had me disbarred at the instigation of the Jew lobby, so it pleases me to repeat it!);
Boris Johnson (aka Boris Idiot), who proved as Foreign Secretary that he cannot hold down high office;
Andrea Leadsom, a nonentity;
Jeremy Hunt, smarmy clever snake and tipped to take May’s purple;
Amber Rudd, yet another dimwit, though she thinks herself terribly clever. Pro-Israel, pro-EU, pro-immigration. Was involved personally with Kwasi Kwarteng, the “African at Eton” (well, one of them), who has now married, or is about to marry, a younger Amber Rudd lookalike. Amber Rudd’s own seat may well be lost next time;
Philip Hammond, careful calculating Remainer;
Dominic Raab, part-Jew, pro-Brexit, hardfaced and careerist.
There may be others. There would have been Gavin Williamson (who has the self-confidence of the stupid) and Stephen Crabb (sex pest, expenses cheat and so pro-Israel that he could be termed “an agent of influence”) but both of those have ruled themselves out by their egregiously poor behaviour. Deadheads.
It scarcely needs to be said that, as social nationalist and thinker into the future, I am not on the same page as Rory Stewart, so obviously NWO/ZOG in orientation is he, and whose MP voting record etc is far from entirely to my liking. He also wanted the UK to remain in the EU and now seems to want to “leave” but not really leave: Brexit in name only (BRINO). However, there is no doubt that he is the standout candidate now to replace Theresa May, which means that he could be Prime Minister by the Autumn.
Still don’t understand the hard-on people have for Rory Stewart. Guess Brits can’t get over their worship for the military or posh men addicted to lying about statistics.
Military? Does 5 months as an instant 2nd lieutenant count? Or is that a reference to Stewart’s “secret war” posts?
A few more thoughts, 4 April 2019:
It seems that Stewart favours immigration:
“One farmer told Stewart, “All illegal immigrants should be rounded up and on the first ship out.” Some voters might expect their Conservative candidate at least to nod, but Stewart said, “Hmm,” and changed the subject. After leaving that house, he said quietly, “Actually, I’m rather in favor of immigration.” [The New Yorker]
So he favours (mass?) immigration. That would chime with those Bilderberg/Davos linkages. Also, it is all very well for a spoiled son of the “British Establishment” (father was a high-ranking SIS officer; Stewart lives in a country house surrounded by a small estate of a hundred acres or so) and who has always had access to effectively any money or anything he wanted without struggle or effort, to be OK about the mass of British people being replaced by blacks, browns, Chinese etc; and having to live with those basically backward peoples, share limited housing, road/rail space etc. Not to mention the effect on rates of pay, and the huge strain on public services, education, NHS, “welfare” etc.
Stewart is quite consciously remote from the concerns of the British people. He has put in huge effort on his adventures and career, but has never had to. Big difference.
I seriously wonder now, looking at or studying Stewart, whether he is right for the office of Prime Minister. Yes, it is very impressive to have run an Iraqi province (effectively or not, though?…) or part of Kabul (ditto) when only 28 or 30-ish, it is impressive to have walked across Afghanistan etc. It is impressive to have all those literary and other medals. However, how far does that get you in terms of being a British Prime Minister?
As a matter of fact, is it really that impressive to have been deputy governor of an Iraqi province when you were (some say) no bloody good, accomplished almost nothing and got a transfer a few months later to a more congenial post elsewhere in Iraq? I do not know the truth of it all, and I may be unfair or simply mistaken here, but I wonder whether Stewart’s other great accomplishments have a rather thin layer of reality under the surface glitter?
Impressive though those career highlights are, I am unsure as to whether Stewart really does have what it takes to be Prime Minister of this country in 2019 or 2020, as distinguished from being in that high office in a John Buchan political landscape circa 1912, and as a kind of Richard Hannay, a Hannay who is playing the role of an earlier and English/Scottish type of “Jack Ryan”, the American adventurer-patriot who eventually becomes President in the bestselling books of Tom Clancy.
I have spent some time (by my standards anyway) in preparing and writing and rethinking this picture of Rory Stewart. He disturbs me more than he reassures me: he seems rather fixated on himself, his own psychology, his motivations, his own (enormous and not denied by the man himself) ambition.
It worries me that, in the interviews and profiles I have read, Stewart says much about himself, his achievements, his accomplishments (or allows them to be known…), but little about the needs of the world, of Europe, of the European peoples, of the British people. I see little or nothing in terms of policy, or wider ideas, just a self-view that he is the right sort of chap to run the UK. That sounds like a more impressive sort of David Cameron-Levita-Schlumberger to me, and that worries the hell out of me.
Parris is not only remote from the concerns of the British people (though in his case the remoteness comes not from ancestral hauteur but is the self-consciously created la-di-da-ness of the fastidious metropolitan gay), but is also a pro-immigration Remainer who thinks that ruling the UK should be left to people like him and his affluent, cosmopolitan, pro-multikulti friends. Trouble is, it has been, and look at the result! (Parris himself, elected in 1979, was reprimanded by Mrs Thatcher for having replied to a constituent that she should count herself lucky to have a council house, whatever its flaws…), though he stayed on as an MP until 1986.
I started off thinking that Rory Stewart was, judging objectively, far and away the best candidate to replace Theresa May. I still think that he is by far the most accomplished candidate, but I the more I read about him, the more doubts and suspicions I have. I am also disturbed that some of the Jewish lobby on Twitter seem to favour him.
In the end, no System party or candidate has the right to rule the UK. Social nationalism must triumph.
A few recent tweets seen about Rory Stewart
I’ve a horrid feeling it means they are going to do a deal soon. She will announce she is going, the contest will start with Rory Stewart being lined up as her successor. Democracy is dead in this country, I just worry they will do us out of voting for MEPs too.
Rory Stewart abnormal. Who ignores pleas fr help when a quadriplegic prisoner lying on back 24/7 with bedsore so badly neglected & tissue deteriorated that pelvic bone is exposed ? Stewart as Prisons Minister downright cruel.
I thought I’d heard it all from Diane Abacus until this bloke Rory Stewart springs up. Where do political parties find these lying conniving self indulgent corrupt fuckwits? https://t.co/6cbEnUKXnY
Here is a surprise. The MI6 house journal, the Guardian, shills for ex MI6 officer Rory Stewart (whose dad was also deputy head of MI6). The Guardian views his role in the destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan as making him "highly qualified" in International Development. https://t.co/2NrZXzC9tE
The first day of his promotion to Cabinet is an opportune time to recall a classic from Rory Stewart's back catalogue. As Floods Minister he said the flood defences had worked well but the water had come over the top of them. #r4today#BBCNews#Reshufflepic.twitter.com/1N2iHIkvpP
Oh, dear…(see below): I am thinking now that Stewart is rapidly using up his credit with at least some of the public, though in the end the ones who will vote for a new Conservative Party leader will be, initially, the Con MPs in the Commons, not Joe Public. It may be that Stewart will be seen as the ideal “Stop Boris” candidate, someone to rally to. I do not know what level of MP support he now has. I presume some, or why would he risk being humiliated? On the other hand, he does strike me as a very ambitious gambler and chancer.
Am I alone in thinking Rory Stewart comes across as a complete prat. I’ve never seen less leadership qualities from an officer in the armed forces.
The tweeter above is yet another who seems to think that Stewart’s 5 months as a gap-year “officer” on probation is something real, rather than a kind of adventure holiday for the gentry. Unless the tweeter, like others, takes the term SIS “officer” at face value, rather than as a conventional designation (cf. police “officer”, council “officer” etc).
Update, 25 May 2019
Well, here we are after Theresa May’s announcement of departure, and Rory Stewart is on all msm outlets. He has put the knife into Boris-Idiot and may have damaged the latter’s campaign. Opinion on Stewart himself is divided, half seeing his accomplishments and character, half seeing his gaffes. The tweet below is more favourable than not to him
On the other hand, I saw Stewart on TV, saying that “we” must build 2 MILLION (!) houses. My reaction? “Only because the UK has imported millions of unwanted immigrants, who are breeding fast; and Britain CONTINUES to import huge numbers, even in 2019!”
I see no willingness in Bilderberg/Davos Stewart to take on mass immigration. In fact, he seems to support it. The negative effects will scarcely impact him or his family, after all, in his listed Borders country house…
Ah…another tweeter who raises points against Stewart:
and, below, the sort of statement that comes easier to those who have never been poor, hungry, desperate etc…Almost clownish coming from someone who has been an MP and whose votes, with those of other Conservatives and LibDems, enabled the attacks on the unemployed and disabled since 2010…
The country can be a much better and much happier place if we learn again to focus on the small things that make a real difference to people. pic.twitter.com/KfYxEi6E6e
Stewart seems to be an engaging fellow, at least on the surface, but the more I see of him, and the more that I read about his voting record and views, the less I like him ideologically or politically.
Update, 1 June 2019
Ah, I see that I am not alone in thinking that Stewart’s accomplishments and achievements are perhaps not quite all that they seem on paper:
“Though few would speak on the record, there is a broad critique of Stewart that his biography is a little overegged and certainly self-regarding – leading to a nickname, a member of his wider social circle confides, of “Florence of Belgravia”.” [The Guardian]
“Though Stewart has claimed to know “what it feels like to be in the army”, for instance, he spent only a gap year stint in the Black Watch and did not see active service. He can often give the impression his role in Iraq was rather more important than the reality, according to someone who witnessed his work there (“He was regarded as a pretty competent mid-ranking Foreign Office official … He wasn’t a nonentity and I think the view in Iraq was that he was conscientious, but he wasn’t Lawrence of Arabia.”).” [The Guardian]
“Several well-placed observers of Stewart’s time in Afghanistan point out that his much-discussed Afghan walk, the origin of his reputation as an expert on the region, was a month spent crossing a comparatively safe part of the country (“Other people would call it a walking holiday,” notes one).” [The Guardian]
“In general, he has done a lot and it’s all very impressive,” says someone who observed Stewart at close quarters in Kabul. “But it’s not quite as impressive and remarkable as he allows people to think. This is not necessarily all his doing, but the willingness of others to project things on to him … All sorts of journalists wrote up the Turquoise Mountain Foundation [Stewart’s Afghan NGO, which aimed to preserve local crafts] as the most amazing project in Afghanistan, when it was actually a rather low impact thing that affected the lives of a small number of people.” [The Guardian]
“…to his credit he does not dissemble when asked directly about his experience (“It was unbelievably brief,” he told the New Yorker of his time in the Black Watch.)” [The New Yorker; The Guardian]. So not even 5 months? Sounds as though it was somewhere between the 5 months previously claimed and, er, what? A week? A month? A few months?
“Claims this week to have “negotiated in Iraq, negotiated in Afghanistan” provoked “snorts of derision”, the former Afghanistan correspondent Jon Boone tweeted. “Who with, the Kabul guild of potters and calligraphers?” [The Guardian]
Maybe Stewart should not have exposed his gilding to the very harsh light of scrutiny.
A few more thoughts
Since I penned the main blog post, much has happened. Stewart has come under more scrutiny, but also has travelled the country (the UK, not Afghanistan) doing Twitter vox pop chats with random passers-by. At least he is not afraid to do that. He is becoming better-known to the public and apparently now has a few Conservative MPs supporting him; but not many. As to the bookmakers, some have him as 66/1 for “next Conservative leader”, though Betfair betting exchange has him at 12/1, which strikes me as more realistic (making that 66/1 a value bet if you can get it)
“Speaking in her personal capacity – and not in her current role as chief executive of the Jo Cox Foundation – Catherine Anderson told The Courier she was drawn to Rory’s internationalism.” [The Courier]
A few more endorsements like that and it’s Goodnight Vienna to Stewart!
Ah…seems that Catherine Anderson is “an aspiring Conservative MP” who used to be “Chief of Staff” and Campaign Manager for (drum roll…) Rory Stewart! In fact she worked for Rory Stewart for nearly 9 years!
Well, the first ballot has been held and Rory Stewart is still standing. Just. 4th from bottom. All below him (McVey, Leadsom, Harper) eliminated (though only from the contest, sadly…). So far, only 19 MPs voted for Stewart. His immediate prospects look bleak, inasmuch as Boris-Idiot, someone with no real vision, ability, ideas, ideals, nor even basic decency, is the frontrunner still. Boris has 114 craven MPs backing him, so far.
Our analysis of the results of the first ballot of the Conservative leadership contest… three candidates have been eliminated – Leadsom, Harper and McVey. pic.twitter.com/GUlcsa900q
What does it say about the Conservative Party and, to a lesser extent, the UK (England, mainly) that a blot like Boris Johnson may soon be Prime Minister? I am not talking about his character alone, but also his actual ability to be effective. Still, there it is…
Update, 17 June 2019
Well, as I guessed a couple of days ago, Rory Stewart has gained ground, at least in the betting, though the betting exchanges’ and bookmakers’ odds are often not a reliable guide to political results (see the EU Referendum, the Trump election, the recent Peterborough by-election etc).
Stewart is now at 2nd place in the betting to be next Conservative leader, though only at 16/1. Boris Johnson is favourite at around 1/5 odds-on (Hunt 20/1, Gove 46/1, Raab 85/1, Javid 120/1).
By all accounts, Stewart did well in the TV debate (Johnson the sole absentee, obviously afraid of being exposed as an idiot and incompetent, as well as wanting to seem to be the “presidential” figure above the fray).
Having said that, Stewart will have to pull off a considerable coup even to be one of the final two, though that now seems a 50-50 possibility.
Update, 19 June 2019
Well, Rory Stewart is out of the race, which means that, until or unless Boris Johnson leaves frontline politics, his career is stalled again. He pledged not to serve in a Johnson Cabinet, and, as I blogged previously, it is doubtful that Johnson will appoint him to anything significant anyway.
That leaves Johnson, Hunt, Gove, Javid.
Looks as though arguably the worst candidate is about to win…
Talked to a Tory MP last night who was backing Johnson "Do you think he'd be any good as PM" "No" "What on earth will he do about Brexit"? "No one knows" "Why do you want him, then?" "He's the best hope we've got" "By 'we" you don't mean Britain do you?" "No the party, of course"
Having said that, Stewart has staked his claim to be taken more seriously somewhere down the line. System politicians, like revolutionary ones, are all seeking to catch the right wave, like surfers.
Update, 20 June 2019
Just saw this tweet, posted 2 days ago. Worth reading; one has to take its veracity on trust, not ever having heard of the tweeter, and the emailer mentioned remaining unnamed.
So Rory Stewart is standing down as MP for Penrith and Borders at next election. He has also resigned from the Conservative Party. Reasons not given. Maybe, in the end, he just was not hungry enough, which would explain why he did not want further ministerial preferment, or to seek the role of PM, but does not explain why he has also decided not to continue as MP; neither does it explain why he has also resigned from the Conservative Party. Perhaps the situation will be clarified in due course.
Update, 5 October 2019
Ah…mystery solved. Stewart is intending to stand for the post of Mayor of London.
He has obviously seen how Boris-Idiot used the position to keep his profile high until he was ready to re-enter the Westminster fray.
The other main candidates are already known: Sadiq Khan, the present Mayor, for Labour, and Shaun Bailey, the West Indian who will be the Conservative candidate. Sadiq Khan has the support of the msm, the Jewish lobby etc, as a Labour mayor who is rather anti-Corbyn. Shaun Bailey may be seen by the blacks as rather an “Uncle Tom”, and there are still questions around missing or misapplied funds of a “social enterprise” he set up in 2006: the monies missing were never accounted for; other monies, amounting to the bulk of spending by the organization, went on “travel and subsistence”, probably for Bailey himself. No criminal charges or civil claims were ever brought, though.
Despite Khan’s poor record as Mayor, he is probably well-placed vis-a-vis Bailey. Now that Rory Stewart has entered the fray, Bailey is holed below the waterline and his candidature will inevitably sink. Whether Rory Stewart can beat Khan and the other candidates (the LibDem being the main also-ran) is an open question.
London is a mainly non-white city now, and an English candidate (well, Anglo-Scottish) like Stewart may find this an uphill slog. On the other hand, Khan is not a popular figure, Stewart is a fresh and now politically non-aligned contender who, however, has high public recognition and profile. I do not think that he can be written off here, and if that is so, his wider ambition, to be Prime Minister, may survive the presently wintry conditions.
Update and addendum, 10 October 2019
Thank to an alert and well-informed blog reader, I can now add a significant addendum to my study of Rory Stewart:
So it turns out that, notwithstanding the listed country house in the Scottish Borders, notwithstanding the almost caricature “country gentry” persona, Stewart is part-Jew! It now is clear that he is what the Reich called a “Mischling”, in his case one-quarter, his maternal grandfather having been “a Jewish doctor from Wimbledon”, whose own parents were Jews from Romania who arrived in London after having lived in New York City for a while.
Well, now it becomes clearer: the self-publicizing (shades of Boris Johnson…), the liking for “fancy dress”, eg tribal costume and being photographed posing in it, the pro-immigration stance, the Davos and Bilderberg linkages.
More than that: Stewart’s wife, Shoshana Stewart, is half-Jewish. In fact, the “half” in question is the maternal half, which means that, according to the way that Jews themselves calculate ancestry, his wife is “Jewish”, simpliciter; that also means that, according to Jewish custom, Stewart’s children are Jewish (though of course we non-Jews decide such designations according to genetic science, meaning that his children are in fact three-eighths Jewish, if my mathematical calculation is right, which often is not the case; anyway, no matter if the right answer is three-eighths or something else, the exact proportion changes nothing). According to the Jewish Chronicle report, above, Stewart and his wife and children celebrate Jewish religious holidays as well as the main Christian ones.
I smelt a rat about Stewart when I saw that the vocal Jew cabal on Twitter all seemed to favour him during the Conservative leadership contest, but it did not occur to me that he himself was part-Jew. I thought that his odd and dark looks came from Western Scottish origins (as they presumably do, in part). I thought that the Jews were supporting Stewart because of his “liberal” Conservatism…
How do these facts, concealed or at least not publicized until now, affect Stewart’s London Mayor election bid? Damaging, I think. While the Jews of North London will probably support him now, the far greater number of Muslims and others who commonly disfavour Jews will probably not vote for him (despite the fact that the present Mayor of London and Labour Party candidate, Sadiq Khan, a Muslim by origin, has been a complete doormat for the Jewish lobby for years).
Fair comment, surely, if one looks at Rory Stewart’s voting record as an MP (2010-2019).
Without taking away from his interesting and accomplished background, as detailed in my lengthy blog hereinabove, my feeling at the moment is that Rory Stewart is basically an oleaginous, dissembling, part-Jew shit.
Update, 6 April 2020
Stewart is no longer standing as candidate for Mayor of London:
There must be a reason; I do not know that reason.
feels entirely absurd that one year ago this month Rory Stewart became the new DfID secretary in Theresa May's cabinet, and since then he's resigned from that post, run for the Tory leadership, left the Tories, and run for London mayor as an independent
So once again Rory Stewart is the nearly man: nearly something important in SIS or FCO, nearly Conservative Party leader, nearly Mayor of London. Sometimes a candidate has to stick in there and await Fate. Had Stewart not huffed off and resigned as MP after losing out to, ultimately, Boris Johnson, his time might have come, after Johnson messes up even more, which is inevitable.
I always recall being in the USA during the 1992 US Presidential Election campaign. At one point, Clinton was placed third of the three major candidates in the opinion polls. A poor third, at that. He stuck it out (admittedly, what else could he do?) and, after Ross Perot dropped out, beat George Bush snr. for the Presidency, being inaugurated in 1993.
[addendum, 31 October 2021: my point about Clinton sticking to it applies more forcefully to Ross Perot, which I should have explained better. Had Perot shown more resilience, and stuck to it, he might easily have become President and thus, as a non-Republican/Democrat candidate, made history. As it was, he dropped out, later claiming that sinister forces had threatened him and his family. Who were they? NWO/ZOG?].
Years earlier, Clinton, who at 31 had been a very young Governor of Arkansas, was defeated there after one 4-year term. Undeterred, he tried the next time and was re-elected. A stayer.
I should think that this spells the end of Rory Stewart as a potential political leader. What does it mean for the London race? I have not followed it closely, but it must give the Conservatives a better chance, despite their candidate being a West Indian with a very dodgy background in terms of near-fraud (though he has never been charged with anything).
Sadiq Khan was running at 8/1 on (1/8) with the bookmakers. Rory Stewart was at 11/8. Shaun Bailey, for Conservative Party, at 20/1. Now that Stewart is gone, I imagine that Sadiq Khan will go out to about 1/6, and Shaun Bailey go in to about 10/1 or so. Despite his poor record, Sadiq Khan is unlikely to lose to Shaun Bailey.
In a John Buchan story, the Stewart or “Hannay” character would no doubt “retire” from public life only because he would be secretly saving the Empire from imperial Russia, or imperial Germany, or would be thwarting a dastardly plot involving transnational conspirators. In fiction, he would save the Empire, then either be knighted or (and/or) be appointed Chief of the Imperial Secret Service. In real life? I have no idea. Stewart is now, or was until recently, teaching at Yale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rory_Stewart#Post-political_career.
Update, 22 January 2022
Boris Johnson is a symptom of a much broader problem in British politics – which can only be fixed with new policies, and – almost certainly – new parties and a new electoral system https://t.co/4XUQ8YGAZ8
Had Stewart retained his MP-status, he might now be in again with a real chance of leading his former party. Having decided not to continue as MP, he is necessarily out in the cold.
Update, 9 July 2022
Just read an appreciation of Stewart from the Tatler (2016, expanded and updated 2019). Don’t think I saw it before today. Written by Quentin Letts [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_Letts].
Frankly, nowhere as complete, or as good, as my own assessment, if I say so myself. As for it containing “everything you need to know about Rory Stewart“, I think not! For one thing, no mention of the part-Jewish background, and no mention of the fact that his wife is half-Jewish.
Update, 2 April 2023
Well, in the end, the London Mayoral Election was held in 2021. There were 20 candidates, both Independents and those from political parties. In the run-off, Sadiq Khan (40%), beat Shaun Bailey (35.3%) in what turned out to be a close-run thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_London_mayoral_election.
As for Rory Stewart, now 50, he has pottered around doing podcasts in the past couple of years. He also moved to Jordan in 2021 with his wife and children, apparently to do work connected with his Turquoise Mountain charity.
That article mentions that Stewart is (or was, in September 2021, when the article was written) thinking of possibly standing again as a London mayoral candidate in 2024. I doubt that he will. The 2024 election will be run on FPTP lines, giving an outsider (in his case, as a non-party candidate) fewer chances.
Overall, it seems to me that Rory Stewart’s political career is finished, in all likelihood.
“Anyone with the slightest interest in politics should get a copy of Rory Stewart’s political memoir.
Not because he had a particularly long or even influential career: just nine years in Parliament and only months in the Cabinet. But you will learn more about the nature of Westminster machinations and how government actually works (or doesn’t) from this volume than from those of many more illustrious politicians. In terms of the quality of writing, there has been nothing to approach it since the diaries of Alan Clark (who never made it to the Cabinet at all).
But whereas Clark was a genuinely bad person — part of the attraction, perhaps — Stewart is a fundamentally good man, even if his self-belief, touching on the messianic, occasionally made him appear preposterous.”
[Dominic Lawson in the Daily Mail].
Interesting that Stewart was apparently in SIS/MI6 for several years, and that Dominic Lawson was said to have been a long-term SIS/MI6 source: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_Lawson. Lawson is 17 years older than Stewart, in fact born the same year as me— 1956.
However, the allegations about Lawson do refer mainly to the 1990s and focus partly on the Balkans, particularly (ex-) Yugoslavia. Stewart joined FCO/SIS in the mid-1990s, and was posted to Montenegro in, I think, 1999. Tenuous link, perhaps nothing…
“This silly little man has delusions of grandeur“, “I cant wait to see the back of Khan, but Rory Stewart god help us“, “Gottle of Gear“, “Nay ,nay ,thrice times nay.“, “The guy’s a joke, and not a funny one“, “Please no, he’s a right weirdo” and “Oh no! Not this opportunist” are among some of the more polite.
Rory Stewart has now written his latest book. His profile is high enough even in 2023 to ensure msm interest and comment (not all favourable, though):
Behind a paywall, but I include it for the sake of completeness.
[Rory Stewart, 2023]
I expect that I shall buy the book secondhand off Amazon, once it reduces to about £5 or £2. The price for the new and unreleased (until 14 September) book has already declined from the original £22 to £16 or so.
I am not now in the new-book-buying classes (and prefer hardbacks) so the Amazon website is a great boon for me.
Not long ago, I bought the memoirs of Gorbachev, a heavy tome; great value at about £5 including postage from a used-book company on Amazon.
I have now bought another book: £2.80 only, and also including the postage. Hard to believe. One wonders how they make a profit, but then (to coin a phrase) I never was much of a businessman!
I met the author a few times in the 1980s. Frankly, a rather pompous man whom I (even more frankly) found rather unpleasant in a minor way, but his book might be interesting. As for the author, he is now deceased.
(about how Stewart is now angling for both a peerage and a ministerial portfolio from Starmer…).
Stewart’s ambition and careerism are both relentless, if inconsistent.
Actually, in terms of individual jobs or posts, I should say that Stewart (despite his many accomplishments) is a “quitter”, but behind that is his already-noted enormous ambition, “looming like a thundercloud over the scene“…
An old friend of mine used to quote her deceased husband (ex-Guards officer, ex-Royal Flying Corps, WW1, d. circa 1970): “if you throw a Jew out of the door, the Jew will sneak back through a window“… Of course, Stewart is only part-Jew.
If Starmer can indeed give Rory Stewart a job and put him out of his often expressed misery of not being a politician with a brief anymore then that really would be great for everyone including those who are tired of hearing him pine pic.twitter.com/83Q6CfN6Lz
Stewart will fight Vance over 'ordo amoris' but stands idly by while mothers kill their own children in their wombs and HMG arrests those who pray silently against it!
Emasculated phoney who actually cares nothing for the most vulnerable and marginalized.
USAID: British politician complaining that his wife was supposed to get $1M in USAID grants before Trump cancelled the contract. Rory Stewart's wife runs Turquoise Mountain Foundation, which exposes modern art to puzzled Afghan women.
USAID: The NGO which Rory Stewart’s wife works for just has its USAID funding cancelled, The Turquiose Mountain Foundation, teaches ‘liberated’ Afghan women about modern art like Duchamp’s urinal. pic.twitter.com/0IJdoF2Rwn
Oh this has absolutely made my day. Rory Wrong About Everything Stewart whingeing about his wife having her $1 million contract from USAID cancelled with immediate effect by DOGE. Priceless, absolutely priceless🤣🤣
Stewart once again proving the truth of the old adage about how it is better to keep your mouth shut and let people assume that you are an idiot, than speak and thus confirm it…
I had meant “Deadhead MPs” to be indeed “occasional” in these blog pages, but the “democratic” deadheads are so prevalent now, and so prone to getting themselves into trouble and into the newspapers, that I have had to write more often about them than I had at first intended.
Gavin Williamson’s background
So we move to Gavin Williamson. Where to start? At the beginning, I suppose: Williamson was born in 1976, in “bracing” Scarborough. His parents were both public sector office workers. Comprehensive school was followed by the University of Bradford, where he read Social Sciences. He was involved with the rowdy and eventually shut down Conservative Students organization, of which he was penultimate Chairman.
Williamson must have graduated in 1997 or 1998. The next we hear of him is in 2001, in North Yorkshire, where he was a county councillor for a while. He is also at that time involved in Conservative Party activities in Staffordshire and Derbyshire.
There is an obscurity about Williamson. We do not know what non-political jobs he has done, save for having been Managing Director of a fireplace manufacturer, Elgin & Hall, for a while (until 2004) and then Managing Director of and shareholder in Aynsley China, a Stoke on Trent china manufacturer founded in 1775 and which was dissolved in 2014. It seems, again, obscure as to when Williamson’s connection was severed, but between 2005 and his election as MP in 2010, he was also Managing Director of an architectural design firm or company. So we are told.
Am I missing something here? Williamson came from modest origins, his academic background seems to have been at best mediocre, there is no evidence in the public domain (that I have seen) of family wealth, yet here is Williamson, still in his twenties at that, becoming managing director of three separate companies in three different industries or areas of commercial activity, despite the fact that his academic background was in Social Sciences, nothing to do with business, industry, china manufacture, pottery, architecture or design. He is even described as “co-owner” (major shareholder?) of a china manufacturer. Where did he get the capital? Very odd.
It is likely that Williamson is a freemason, but all the same, his being appointed to those jobs (all seemingly within about 5-6 years) is a little strange, somehow.
Parliament
Williamson made a racing start in the House of Commons from election in 2010. He became a Parliamentary Private Secretary or PPS to a minister in 2011, again (this time to a Cabinet minister) in 2012, then made another career leap in 2013, becoming PPS to the Prime Minister (David Cameron-Levita).
In 2016, he supported Theresa May in her leadership bid, mainly (we are told) in order to stop Boris Johnson. In return, upon her victory, May made Williamson the Government Chief Whip.
In 2017, following the resignation of drunk and sex-pest Michael Fallon as Secretary of State for Defence (I feel another blog post in this series coming on…), Williamson was appointed to replace him.
Secretary of State for Defence
It was after having been appointed to Cabinet that Williamson’s lack of serious academic, political and intellectual background began to tell, resulting in a series of blunders and gaffes. The Sun “newspaper” reported that “
Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson has ‘lost the plot’ over barmy plan to put guns on tractors
Other crazy ideas include disguising mobile missile defence systems as Coca-Cola lorries and transforming old commercial ferries into beach assault craft”
and continued:
“DEFENCE Secretary Gavin Williamson has stunned military chiefs with crackpot ideas to solve an equipment crisis — including fitting tractors with guns. Williamson‘s department faces a shortfall of £20billion in its budget for new equipment.”
“A source said: “The man is out of his mind. No one knows what to do.”
As the MoD struggles to deal with a budget black hole, Williamson has been accused of hatching a series of crackpot schemes to solve an equipment crisis.
According to several senior sources they include:
MOUNTING “really expensive guns” on tractors and disguising mobile missile defence systems as Coca-Cola lorries;
BUYING old commercial ferries and transforming them into beach assault craft, and;
WASTING thousands of hours of civil service time on plans to launch his own medal“
The source added: “We need billions and serious ideas to tackle serious problems.
“Yet Williamson is mucking about with his spider and coming up with crazy suggestions. The man is out of his mind.
“His behaviour is totally bizarre and no one knows what to do.”
“Williamson took over at the MoD in November. The source added: “Everyone had so much hope in him. It all looks so misplaced now.”
Defence chiefs now fear Williamson’s bizarre regime has torpedoed any hope of the MoD getting desperately needed extra money out of the Treasury.
It needs £1billion more a year just to keep the armed forces at their present size — and it has to somehow fill a potential £20billion budget deficit in its £179billion ten-year equipment plan.
But sources say ex-furniture salesman Williamson’s failure to grapple with the detail and refusal to heed expert advice is proving disastrous.”
“It is feared he also scuppered any chance of a financial aid package by briefing against the Treasury and boasting he could “make or break” Theresa May as PM.
Williamson’s idea for armed tractors is said to have come at a summit on the equipment budget.
A source said: “Gavin just came out with it. He said, ‘Can’t we buy tractors and put really expensive guns on them?’ People were open-mouthed. Others didn’t know where to look. It was totally bizarre.”
Williamson has since denied making the comment.”
“But insiders say it was just one of a stream of nonsensical suggestions.
He allegedly outlined the disguised missile trucks during a meeting with his Polish counterpart to discuss the renewed Russian threat.
A source said: “The idea was to have an HGV with the livery of the Coca-Cola brand — but inside would be a missile defence system.
“His plan was missiles systems disguised as soft drinks delivery trucks. No one really knows why.” [The Sun]
More:
Williamson thought that a proper way to respond to the Spanish government over Gibraltar was to fire paintballs at Spanish Navy gunboats;
Williamson responded to Russian comments about the Skripal affair by saying that “Russia should just shut up and go away”, hardly a suitable response, neither tough (bearing in mind Russia’s alleged behaviour) nor intelligent (bearing in mind Russia’s enormous and growing strength!);
Williamson “threatened” to send a warship (one of maybe a dozen or so that the UK now has) to the South China Sea, to intimidate China…That would really frighten a country that has 512large ships, about 800 naval aircraft alone, and a quarter of a million sailors! (see the link in the Notes, below, for details of the truly fearsome Chinese order of battle on the high seas).
In Williamson’s very silly mental landscape, throwing around schoolboy remarks about paintballs, shutting up nuisances with a throwaway remark and disguising mobile missile-carriers as Coca-Cola trucks serve as brainstorming, I suppose…
Now, of course, Williamson has been sacked for supposedly having leaked secret talks in the National Security Council (NSC). He denies having done so. As Mandy Rice-Davies said, in another context, “well he would, wouldn’t he?”
What can we learn from this farce?
For me, there is much that could be learned, were there politicians with the ability to learn.
First of all, I am concerned less about the leak, or who did it, than the fact that a mediocre little careerist like Williamson could ever become an MP, let alone minister, let alone Cabinet minister. It must be something to do with freemasonry and/or the Israel lobby (is Williamson a member of Conservative Friends of Israel? Odds-on…).
Secondly, I am concerned that the now-ex Secretary of State for Defence has so much time on his hands that while in office he can spend a quarter of an hour telling his contact at the Daily Telegraph all about his day (or whatever). Also, was that mobile telephone secure?
As soon as the leak scandal blew up, I thought “either Williamson or Fox”. Fox probably learned his lesson when Cameron-Levita caught him leaking years ago.
South Staffordshire is one of the safest Conservative seats. Williamson got 69.8% of the votes cast in 2017.
What now?
Williamson has been replaced by Penny Mordaunt, though the reason remains obscure. Surely her stints as naval “reservist” sub-lieutenant were not taken into account? Rory Stewart MP, arguably a better candidate, was also elevated, but to another ministry.
As to Williamson himself, there are now calls for him to face police action and possible prosecution. Theresa May would rather avoid that, in the runup to the EU elections, but time will, of course, tell. Watch this space.
I doubt whether Williamson can ever recover from this whole situation, though he will be able to stay on as MP unless sacked by his local Conservative association. He will not be seen on the Conservative front benches again, though.
Well, I was wrong. Not about Willamson as such, but the parting comment that his frontbench Conservative career had finished. Incredibly, Boris-idiot has appointed Williamson as Secretary of State for Education! So this twerp is actually posing as a Cabinet minister again! At first I was incredulous, but there again, you have a complete idiot as Prime Minister, and a bunch of total fuck-ups as Cabinet ministers anyway: Priti Patel, Matt Hancock, Sajid Javid, Liz Truss, Grant Shapps (!), that little pissant Robert Jenrick, Dominic Raab, Michael Gove, Andrea Leadsom, Amber bloody Rudd, the idiotic James Cleverly, Liz Truss (!), Theresa Villiers (a doormat for the Jew-Zionist lobby even in a Cabinet stuffed with Zionists and pro-Zionists) etc…
…and…among those who sit in on Cabinet without being members, Nadine Dorries (I mean, how lowbrow can you go?) and even, on occasion, apparently, ah…the fellow who runs the Wetherspoon’s pub chain! Who is not even an MP!
Among the rest of the Cabinet and the occasional attendees, I suppose that Williamson does not stand out as impossibly half-witted. No, he fits in just fine…
“Ian Millard has left the building”…
Update, 4 March 2022
Williamson was dismissed as Education Secretary in 2021; also dismissed from Cabinet and Government.
Williamson was appointed Sec for Defence on Nov 2 2017. Days after FBI revealed it was investigating suspected Russian assets/agents operating in London. Some of these had met Foreign Office officials. These including Johnson, then Foreign Secretary 2/https://t.co/x9Vf995MS0
I wrote about the Russian connections to Brexit & Conservative party which unleashed a world of trouble.
Meanwhile, Isabel Oakeshott had a tip off. A person "high up in govt" with intelligence connections rang Richard Tice who passed it on to her. 4/https://t.co/YQB5sm0SCI
Under cross-examination, I had to explain how I obtained the emails. It's a matter of court record – & therefore reportable – that source believed that person who tipped off Tice about Banks's Russian connections was…drum roll…Gavin Williamson, then sec of defence 6/ pic.twitter.com/3hwkz0Viw4
On Nov 14, 2017, Theresa May called out Putin in strongest possible terms. A landmark moment. First time, UK govt acknowledged Russia's attack on our democracy.
Final weird oddity. The article I wrote at that time on Russian connections to Brexit includes Johnson's relationship with Russian "diplomat" Sergey Nalobin. He ran an influence op targeting Conservative MPs.
A useless freeloader, personifying the broken UK political system.
Update, 25 May 2024
“From the next general election, Williamson’s current seat of South Staffordshire will be split, with Williamson being selected as the Conservative candidate for the newly formed constituency of Stone, Great Wyrely and Penkridge. Philip Catney, a senior politics lecturer at Keele University described the newly formed constituency as a safe seat, with a Conservative MP being “guaranteed a job for life”.[94]
On 4 September 2023 Williamson was told by a Parliamentary independent expert panel to apologise to the House of Commons and to take behavioural training. The panel concluded that he had abused his power when he sent Morton text messages in 2022.[95]“
[Wikipedia]
An “eccentric” but not a pleasant one. Useless idiot.
Here, in my occasional series about those I am pleased to call “deadhead MPs”, I now feature Justin Tomlinson MP [Con, North Swindon]. Tomlinson is unique —so far— in terms of this series, in that he has actually achieved junior ministerial rank (appointed junior minister at the DWP). [*Note: I have previously written about Kate Osamor MP, but until she resigned she was only in the Shadow Cabinet and has never been in government].
As on previous occasions in this series, this MP’s academic and work background do not inspire confidence. His family origins seem obscure. Having been born in Blackburn, Lancs, in 1976, he attended a comprehensive school in Kidderminster, Worcs, before reading History and Politics at Oxford Brookes University (the former Oxford Poly).
Arguably bizarrely, Tomlinson’s only known employed position was as manager of a small nightclub known as Eros, in Swindon: see Notes, below (the photographs show scenes every bit as ghastly as expected, a strange mish-mash of provincial, cheesy, decadent and humdrum. Forget Cabaret, think The Office).
It must remain a mystery as to why Tomlinson, a son of either Lancashire or Worcestershire, and then a student in Oxfordshire, relocated yet further South to Wiltshire. Was the Swindon job (as manager of “Eros”) the only one he could get?
We are asked to believe that Tomlinson also “ran a small marketing business” called TB Marketing Solutions Ltd at the same time (c.2000-c.2010). It must have been “small” indeed. The Companies House accounts summary shows the company’s net worth in 2011 at only £66,000. It seems to have had, at any one time, only one director other than Tomlinson, as well as a company secretary, and to have operated from a privately-owned or rented flat in Swindon. It was dissolved in or shortly after 2011. Still, something to add to the CV, I suppose…
Tomlinson may be short on background but he is certainly not lacking self-confidence, having when a student placed a bet on himself to become Prime Minister!
“Chris Kelly and Justin Tomlinson stand to collect £500,000 from William Hill should either become prime minister before 2038. Tomlinson placed two £50 bets at 10,000/1 when the pair were at university. Both are already Conservative MPs.” [BBC, in 2012]
Chris Kelly stood down as MP in 2015 (returning to his family’s Midlands truck-rental business), which is a pity in that he might have made a good “deadhead MP” for this series, were I able to find anything even slightly interesting to say about him.
Back to Tomlinson. He was a local councillor for several years prior to being selected then elected as MP for North Swindon, one of the two constituencies in the town.
Some highlights from Tomlinson’s Parliamentary career
“In May 2015, it was reported by The Huffington Post that his appointment as Minister for Disabled People was controversial as he had previously voted against protecting the benefits of disabled children and those undergoing cancer treatment.” [Wikipedia];
“Tomlinson faced calls for his resignation in October 2015 after it was reported that he had leaked information from the Public Accounts committee regarding regulation of short term high cost credit “payday lenders” to Wonga.com back in 2013. Tomlinson accepted he had broken the rules and apologised, stating that his “strongly-held belief that action needed to be taken on payday lenders” had caused his “judgement to be clouded”.[13] Tomlinson arranged £30,000 of sponsorship for Swindon Supermarine F.C., a local football team by the same payday lender wonga.com. The football club’s chairman, Jez Webb, has made donations of £30,218 to both Tomlinson’s and local Conservative Party funds since 2014. Webb stated that he donated in a personal capacity and that the very similar amounts “were coincidental.”[14] Tomlinson was subsequently accused of trying to remove references to previous links to Wonga from his website, including the arrangement of a sponsorship deal with Swindon Supermarine F.C. in 2011.” [Wikipedia];
Tomlinson, 42, employs his personal partner, Katie Bennett, 28, as his office manager, on a salary of £50,000 p.a.; Tomlinson was married from 2012-2016 to another lady but is now divorced;
“Tomlinson leaked a draft of a public accounts committee report on the credit industry to someone he knew who worked for payday lender, Wonga. And when that person emailed four suggested amendments back, Tomlinson had forwarded them virtually word for word on to the Committee as if they were his own.” [The Guardian];
“In November 2018, Tomlinson again sparked controversy, this time by suggesting that families facing penury under the Universal Credit scheme initiated by the Conservative governments of 2010-2018 should “take in a lodger.”
“Tomlinson was apparently unaware that [even discounting the fact that few such families have spare rooms], both private and other (e.g. local council and housing association) leases prohibit any form of sub-letting.” [Evening Standard].
North Swindon
Considered to be a “bellwether” constituency, North Swindon has, since its creation in 1997, always followed the national trend. Tomlinson was elected for North Swindon in 2010, receiving a 44.6% vote share (Lab 30.5%). In 2015, the Conservative vote share was 50.3% (Lab 27.8%) and in 2017, 53.6 (Lab 38.4%). In other words, Labour are creeping back but were still well behind in 2017.
Tomlinson has consistently voted for Leave/Brexit, which may help him hang on.
Tomlinson’s vote in numbers was just under 30,000 in 2017, and his majority about 8,000. If, as a recent opinion poll claimed, half those who voted Conservative in 2017 are not going to vote Con in any 2019 General Election, that would reduce Tomlinson’s likely vote to about 15,000 and render the election of another candidate, probably the Labour one, likely. Labour got over 21,000 votes in 2017.
Conclusion
Well, there he is, voters of North Swindon— your deadhead MP. If you want to kick him out, the only lawful way is to vote for Labour or, if it stands, Brexit Party, next time.
In the end, Tomlinson held on at North Swindon rather easily. Nigel Farage stabbed his Brexit Party and its candidates (and supporters) in the back; Brexit Party candidates in Conservative Party-held seats (even where the sitting MP was a Remain partisan) were all stood down so that the Conservative Party could win the General Election of late 2019. Tomlinson thus faced no danger that much of his vote would defect to Brexit Party.
Not that the absence of Brexit Party materially altered the result. Labour’s vote slid substantially, and Tomlinson was re-elected by a majority double that which he had achieved in 2017, both in absolute and percentage terms (majority in 2017 was 8,335; in 2019, 16,171).
His vote share in 2019 was 59.1% (2017: 53.6%); pretty convincing by any standards.
Tomlinson continues as Minister of State (i.e. junior minister) at the DWP, the post he has held since April 2019.
Update, 9 August 2022
Tomlinson was sacked as junior minister in a Government reshuffle of September 2021.
“In February 2022 Tomlinson was accused of bullying and sending inappropriate “unprofessional” and “belittling” messages to employees at Conservative Campaign Headquarters.[32]“
[Wikipedia].
Tomlinson must have blagged plenty of money since 2010 in terms of pay, expenses, and “consultancy fees” from Wonga etc. He may need those monies. On present opinion polling, the bellwether seat of Swindon North may jettison him at the next general election.
Update, 5 July 2024
As expected, Tomlinson was binned at GE 2024. Time for him (and girlfriend/wife?) to get employment of a more useful type.
This is the latest in my occasional series about those whom I consider to be “deadhead MPs”. The lucky politico this time is Karl McCartney, MP for Lincoln 2010-2017.
I would not usually bother with someone who is no longer an MP and who is very unlikely to be returned to the House of Commons. In McCartney’s case, I have decided to make an exception. The reason is because McCartney’s combination of brash overconfidence, unpleasantness, personal moneygrabbing and expenses blodging, lack of interest in the poorer part of society and unimpressive academic and work background is now, and has become, over the past decades, almost typical of MPs (and by no means only on the Conservative side of UK System-politics). That such people can become MPs is an indictment of the selection and election procedures in place in the UK.
Lincoln is considered to be an “ultra-marginal” and a “swing seat”. In 2010, McCartney and the Conservatives won with 37.5% of the votes cast, as against 35.2% for Labour and 20.2% for the LibDems (BNP 3%, UKIP 2.2%, English Democrats 1.3% and an Independent on 0.5%).
In 2015, McCartney was re-elected: Con 42.6%, Lab 39.6%, UKIP 12.2%, LibDem 4.3%, TUSC 0.7%, Lincolnshire Independent 0.6%. The key points were the collapse of the LibDem vote by 16 points, the non-appearance of the BNP and English Democrats, and the rise of UKIP —by 10 points, though that was modest bearing in mind that the BNP and EDs did not stand. Both Con and Lab increased their percentages.
In 2017, the result was Lab 47.9%, Con 44.7%, UKIP 2.6%, LibDem 2.6%, Green 1.2%, and two Independents (0.6%, 0.3%). A pattern seen in many constituencies: UKIP slumping back to a 2010 or pre-2010 level and the LibDems failing to recover from the 2015 debacle and indeed slipping further. While the Con vote percentage did slightly increase –2 points– in 2017, Lab did far better–8 points higher. That despite the UKIP slump, despite McCartney favouring Leave/Brexit, despite the appearance of a Green candidate likely to impact the Labour vote. It is hard to escape the view that the Con loss was the result of popular judgment on McCartney himself.
McCartney was exposed from 2010-2017, in various ways, as unsuitable.
A lecturer at the University of Lincoln blamed McCartney’s laziness and complacency for the loss (see Notes, below) and was too polite to mention McCartney’s alleged porn-trawling (though that was, admittedly, in 2014), his employment of his wife at £50,000 a year via Parliamentary expenses, or his expenses generally.
“On 28 February 2013 McCartney apologised to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) for the content of notes he had sent to staff. The notes were described by IPSA Chief Executive, Andrew McDonald as ‘abusive’, ‘offensive’ and ‘condescending’. McCartney’s apology stated, “I apologise unreservedly to IPSA for my comments” [Wikipedia]. and
“The following month he claimed that IPSA’s incompetence had forced MPs from all parties to borrow money and that he had had to ask his parents for financial assistance.[30] McCartney also said that he had been told by a “senior IPSA official” that the organisation intended to “damage MPs as much as possible,” a claim that IPSA said was “wild ..simply untrue.” [Wikipedia].
The readers’ comments section under that newspaper report was harsh:
“Poor old Karl. He really needs to wipe away those tears and get on with his life. He is an arrogant, rude and bitter loser. And they are his good points. Lincoln and the Conservatives are better off without him. Ignore him Karen.”
and
“Happiest day last year was when he walked away in a huff and refused to speak to anyone or congratulate at the election result which pretty much summed everything up.”
As to what McCartney is doing now, I think that the answer may be “very little”. I notice that, as I write this piece, around 1800 hrs, he has already tweeted or retweeted 29 times today, so far. His website seems to say that he will be the Conservative candidate at the next general election. It is hard to know why. One can only speculate as to why the local Conservatives have chosen him. He was a lay magistrate at one time; he is a Freeman of the City of London (see Notes, below), having “worked with”, his website claims, more than one Lord Mayor in the late 1990s. Freemason? I do not know.
McCartney obviously did pretty well financially in his 7 years as MP: salary of (then) about £70,000 pa, and wife’s salary (paid out of his expenses claimed) £50,000 pa; also possible other (outside) sources of income (I do not know about this). His overall expenses alone over his time as MP totalled well over a million pounds. He does not appear to have a job at present (there is nothing mentioned on his website); perhaps his wife has found another job, now that her well-paid work as her husband’s assistant has gone.
Readers of The Lincolnite (online newspaper) were as harsh as those commenting on Lincoln Live (above):
“A totally useless MP, more concerned about himself and his expenses than he ever was about Lincoln – amazed that they’ve reselected this waste of space.
John Bercow (Speaker, House of Commons) summed him up nicely with this in a parliamentary debate when McCartney let himself (and us) down yet again:
“Mr McCartney, calm yourself. Be quiet, young man. We do not need to hear from you. You add nothing and you subtract from the proceedings.”
Then there were the abusive notes (for which he had to apologise) he sent to the parliamentary expenses staff when they queried his expenses.”
and
“Unvelievable! [sic] A sure fire way for the Conservatives to lose votes.”
and
“It’s not what you know but who you know ,Roll your trouser leg up, funny handshake and fancy apron crowd.”
What are McCartney’s chances of getting back as Lincoln’s MP? Very slight. I have blogged elsewhere about the impact of Brexit Party (and slightly revived UKIP) on the Conservative vote, assuming that Brexit Party contests a general election. That alone would sink the Conservatives in an ultra-marginal such as Lincoln.
Another point is that present Labour MP, Karen Lee, who worked in shops for years before spending 14 years as an NHS nurse, still puts in some shifts at a local hospital, donating her NHS earnings to charity! What a contrast to greedy, moneygrasping and “entitled” McCartney! His work in the City of London in the 1990s was obviously so unimportant that even his own website says almost nothing about it (neither does he seem to have done much outside Con politics in the decade up to his election in 2010).
In addition to all that, Karen Lee is local in origin, whereas McCartney was born in Birkenhead, “Murkyside” (Merseyside), and was educated there and in Wales.
Well, there you are. My latest “deadhead MP”, who is hoping to resume his place at the trough soon. Over to you, voters of Lincoln…
“In England, the most established borough freedom is that conferred by the Freedom of the City of London, first recorded in 1237. This is closely tied to the role and status of the livery companies. From 1835, the freedom “without the intervention of a Livery Company” has been bestowed by a general resolution of Common Council, by “redemption” (purchase), at one time for an onerous sum. Now the Freedom can be obtained by servitude, by patrimony, by nomination, or by presentation via a Livery Company. Freedom through nomination by two sponsors is available for a fee (known as a “fine”) of £100, but is free to those on the electoral roll of the City.” [Wikipedia]
Update, 1 May 2019
I am writing this update just after 1400 hrs. McCartney took to Twitter today at about 0600 and, by my reckoning, has, in the intervening 8 hours, tweeted or retweeted at least 52 times (I think that I have left out a few retweets). Quite a few of his tweets and retweets seem to be about “anti-Semitism” in the Labour Party. McCartney must have been part of the “Friends of Israel” crowd (like 80% of “Conservative” MPs). He obviously wants to remain (((onside))). I have no idea whether Lincoln’s deadhead former MP actually has a job at present. I doubt it. He seems an extremely unpleasant person either way.
In the article above, written for The Lincolnite (local online newspaper), McCartney again obsesses about “anti-Semitism” in the Labour Party, saying that Labour peers have raised the issue again. Well, about 50 or 60 have, out of 179…
I wonder whether the voters of Lincoln share McCartney’s obsession with speaking out in favour of the Jewish lobby? I doubt it! As for the rest of his article, the Lincolnite needs a sub-editor to correct spelling errors (“buses” is right, “busses” is not) and grammar.
Some of the few readers’ comments on the above article have been unkind:
Why are you giving this failed Tory a voice he spent 1000s on a letter folder, and employed his wife as an assistant on 45k a year. He doesnt give a toss about us he just wants his expenses back…“
I am assuming the Lincolnite has decided to join his very early election campaign hence the article. I assume we will get more of the same until a General Election. As it stands he is a nobody and yet has got 3 times more space than the sitting MP who represents which Party? Well blow me“
Seems that McCartney and his wife, a local councillor, are living rather well off the hump, despite having had their joint income reduced since his 2017 election failure:
Well, it seems that McCartney’s leech-like tenaciousness in Lincoln might (against the odds and all reason) pay off. Corbyn-Labour is suffering a crisis of public confidence, while (by reason of that) Boris-Idiot and the misnamed “Conservatives” are riding high in the opinion polls.
People vote (mainly) according to party label and national trend rather than for or against the individual candidate. That plays to McCartney’s advantage here, however unfair that may be. At present, the Conservatives are favourites in the betting to retake Lincoln (1/2) whereas Labour is on 11/8:
If I myself say so, it was rather prescient of me to have included Karl McCartney in my Deadhead MPs series, inasmuch as the tides have turned, at least temporarily, in his favour, which means that he may well be back as MP for Lincoln (well, MP for His Own Benefit, His Wife’s Benefit, and, maybe, Lincoln) by 12 December.
The betting odds have McCartney favourite to retake the seat on Polling Day. That must reflect the general/national public sentiment against Labour, mainly, as well as McCartney’s pro-Brexit stance in a Leave constituency.
Brexit Party is standing, but is probably of no great significance now, Farage having shot his own party in the head (now at 3% or so in the opinion polls). UKIP stood at Lincoln in 2017, but only received 2.6% of the total vote.
Well, the voters of Lincoln have evidently eaten too many potatoes. McCartney has been elected again as MP. He must be celebrating his return to paid “work”, generous (whatever he says) expenses, and perhaps to getting his wife back on the gravy-train (£50,000 pa as “assistant” or whatever, yet again via expenses), though the rules were changed for MPs elected in or after 2017, so it may be that he at least will be prevented from blodging in that way.
McCartney was elected this time because the Brexit Party candidate withdrew on his own initiative. What an idiot…his (guessing) several thousand intended votes probably did it for McCartney, who beat the far better Labour candidate, Karen Lee, by about three and a half thousand votes.
After McCartney lost his seat again in 2024 (he scored 23% as against the Labour candidate’s 43.8%; Reform scored 18%, so even had Reform not stood, McCartney would still have lost), he tried to be selected as Conservative Party candidate for the Greater Lincolnshire mayoral contest, but did not make it onto the shortlist; in any event, the ex-Con Party ex-MP, Andrea Jenkyns, standing for Reform, soundly beat the Con Party candidate, by 42% to 26.1%: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Greater_Lincolnshire_mayoral_election
McCartney is now 57. His loyalty to the Jewish lobby and the Israeli cause may have helped him stay as MP for a total of 12 years, but his political career, such as it was, is now at an end.
A recent ComRes poll indicated that only about half of those who voted Conservative in the General Election of 2017 are intending to vote that way in the next general election, which might come any time between Summer 2019 and early June 2022. I have been thinking and blogging etc for a year or so that 2019 might be the year. Mainstream commentators have recently been gravitating to the same view.
The Brexit chaos has highlighted the incompetence of the Theresa May and other Conservative Party governments stretching back to 2010: roads, rail, social security/”welfare”, the migration-invasion (mass immigration), crime etc.
As I have more than once blogged and (before I was banned in our “free” country, tweeted), the choice for many may be between a Labour Party government which may well prove to be incompetent, and a Conservative Party government which has already, time and again, proven its incompetence.
Labour, Conservative, UKIP, Brexit Party
Labour is now slightly ahead of the Conservatives in the opinion polls, probably because
UKIP, though effectively washed-up as an electoral force, has managed, under its latest leader, Batten, to halt its downward slide;
Brexit Party now exists and is taking votes mainly from the Conservatives;
also, Theresa May is now finally seen almost universally as the disaster she is.
No-one expects UKIP to win seats in any general election this year; after all, 1 in 8 voters voted UKIP in 2015, but the rigged/unfair UK electoral system deprived it of its merited success. On strict PR voting, UKIP’s 12.6% popular vote would have given UKIP about 80 MPs. Indeed, had many not seen a vote for UKIP as a wasted vote, that number could have been doubled or even trebled. In Mrs. May’s now-famous screech, “nothing has changed!” as far as that is concerned.
UKIP will probably get a few percentage points of the vote in English and Welsh constituencies, maybe even 5%, but that will not win any seats. What it will do, though, is deprive the Conservatives (mainly) of those votes (nearly 600,000 in 2017). Many constituency seats are won and lost by less than a thousand votes.
Now we have Brexit Party, which I had thought would fight only the EU elections, but which, it seems (see Nigel Farage’s comments in Notes, below), now intends to fight the next UK general election.
My initial skepticism about Brexit Party has been proven wrong, at least in the opinion polls. Brexit Party is now running at anything up to 30% re. the EU elections, and, in initial polling, 14% in respect of Westminster elections. That latter polling may already have been superseded by events, but even 14%, at a general election, is huge, inasmuch as it means that Brexit Party and UKIP in aggregate may take away from (mainly) the Conservatives as much as 20% of the votes in any given English or Welsh constituency. In an average constituency with average GE turnout that works out at about 8,000 votes!
As usual, most of the Twitterati get it wrong. Look at the tweets below by one Tom Clarke, who seems to be a fairly typical Remain and anti-nationalist tweeter. He says, probably correctly, that 27% is not enough to “take power” but fails to see the side-effects in terms of depriving others of power…He also bleats about “mandate”. What about the 52% who voted Leave in 2016?
And there’s the problem for the Brexit Party in a nutshell. Set up for something that won’t happen, for which there has consistently been no appetite and no desire to compromise on anything. That is why they’ll never get above 30-odd %
In fact, Twitter is a poor guide to elections and popular votes. The twitterati voted Remain in 2016 (losing side), thought that Trump had no chance of becoming US President (wrong again), and are (or often seem to be) almost all pro-immigration, virtue-signalling idiots etc…
Core votes
The Labour core vote, though no more than 25% of eligible voters, is solid because it is composed of those unlikely to be enticed by other parties presently around, and particularly by the Conservative Party: almost all “blacks and browns” (and other ethnic minorities, except for Jews); almost all of the poorly-paid, unemployed, and disabled. Others, while not “core vote”, add up to possibly another 10% of the eligible electorate: those 18-24 (only 4% favour Conservative), voters under 35 (only 16% favour Conservative). Increasing numbers of persons in their 30s, 40s and older are victims of buy-to-let parasites and bully landlords, or are not getting much personal or social benefit from their work. Labour’s policies speak to them. The Conservatives have nothing to say to such people except “pay up or get out! And don’t complain about repairs!” and “poor pay? Get a different job!”
When one thinks “who today would vote Conservative?” the answer, in broad brush terms must be
the wealthy
the affluent
buy to let parasites
those who own their homes outright and are financially stable
those elderly who are stick-in-the-mud creatures of frozen voting habits
That is the 25% or so core vote, to which must be added
those who hate Labour or Corbyn enough to vote Conservative simply in order to keep Labour and/or a Labour candidate out.
Here is an important point: the Labour core vote may be and probably is growing; the Conservative core vote is shrinking.
The Brexit Party and UKIP strike both at the Conservative core vote and the potentially-Conservative non-core vote.
Would Boris Johnson make a difference?
Doubtful. I concede that I am as anti-Boris as almost anyone could be, but my antipathy is matched by many voters: Boris is apparently the choice for Con leader (and so, unless there is a general election, Prime Minister by default) of about 70% of Conservative Party members (if one can believe sources such as the Daily Express), but even if correct, that is 70% of (at most) 120,000 Con Party members, i.e. 84,000 voters out of at least 40 million (in 2017, about 32 million voted).
In polls of the wider public, Boris Johnson is only a few percentage points ahead of other possible Con leaders.
Conclusion
Since 2017, I have thought that the most likely result of the next UK general election is Labour to win most seats, but not enough to have an overall majority. Now, for the first time, I am questioning that and wondering whether a strong general election campaign by both Brexit Party and UKIP might weaken the Conservative vote to the point where, nationally, the Conservatives might get as little as 30% (could it drop even to 25%?) as compared to 42.4% in 2017 and 36.9% in 2015.
I am of course no psephologist, but using online tools etc, it seems not unlikely that, if the Conservative vote falls to 30% and Labour is five points ahead, Labour might end up with about 300 seats and the Conservatives about 250. Others, about 100. No overall majority.
If, though, the Con vote were 25% and the Lab vote five points ahead, the Conservatives would end up with perhaps 225 or fewer seats, while Labour might get about 320. Yet again no overall majority for Corbyn, but closer.
However, we are uncharted territory, and in the “glorious uncertainly” of the British electoral system, it is not impossible that, in dozens and perhaps hundreds of constituencies, the Conservatives might come in second rather than first, their vote sapped by voters voting for UKIP, Brexit Party and others.
The ComRes poll cited at the start of this article said that only just over half of 2017 Con voters were planning to vote Con next time. In 2017, about 13,600,000 or so voted Con. If that is reduced to about 7 million, then the Conservative Party is toast.
In that event, the parliamentary Conservative Party would be reduced to a half, even a quarter of its present strength, and Labour under Jeremy Corbyn might actually be elected with a considerable majority. After that, anything might happen.
In my concluding sentences, above, I explored what might happen if Brexit Party (and/or UKIP, but Brexit Party is plainly taking off in a way that UKIP now is not) were to take away a large number of votes from the Conservatives. I examined what would happen if, nationally, the Conservatives went from 35%-45% down to 30% or 25% (or even lower).
Nigel Farage has made comments indicating that Brexit Party might make inroads into the Labour vote too, especially in the North where Labour was once monolithic in its supremacy in most constituencies.
The polling percentages and national vote percentages can only take you so far. In 2017, Theresa May led the Conservatives to inconclusive victory-defeat and 317 MPs, despite getting 42.4% of the national vote, a level not achieved by any political leader since Mrs Thatcher in 1983. In 2015, David Cameron-Levita’s Conservatives only got 36.9% of the national vote, yet 330 MPs. Only in an electoral system as Alice in Wonderland as that of the UK could that make any sense.
In other words, predictions are tricky when it comes to exact or even inexact numbers.
However, in my view, Brexit Party (and what is left of UKIP support) will hit the Conservatives harder than Labour. Indeed, some voters in seats where Labour never wins may vote tactically to unseat Conservatives, even if the result is that a LibDem or other may get in as a result. One can easily imagine seats fought until now as effectively a two-way split which may now be fought as a three-way or even four-way split.
If Brexit Party can go up from its 14% polling (Westminster voting intention; in EU elections the figure may be as high as 30%) to 25%+, that raises the serious possibility of Brexit Party MPs being elected. If about half the 2017 Conservative voters are not going to vote Conservative (as ComRes reports), are they going to abstain or vote elsewhere? The fact that they bothered to vote before seems to suggest that they will vote again. That means that even in the handful of seats where the Conservatives won in 2017 with over 60% of the vote, the Conservative share of the vote might go from 60% or so to 40%. (the safest Conservative seat is North East Hampshire: 65.5% in 2017).
In the circumstances above, defending a 60% vote share and ending up with perhaps 40%, the Conservatives would still win in most cases, but that would not be the case in more typical constituencies, where the Conservative MP won in 2017 with 50%, 40% or an even lower percentage of the votes cast. A Con MP who got 40% in 2017 might end up getting 30% or even 20% next time.
If Brexit Party can maintain momentum, it (with UKIP’s effect added) will cripple the Conservatives, who will lose swathes of seats. For example, in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Boris Johnson received about 50% of the vote in 2017. Most of the rest (40%) went to Labour. Were half or even a quarter of the Conservative votes to be cast elsewhere, Labour would win (even if the votes “cast elsewhere” were not cast for Labour). In that example, Boris would end up with less than 40% and (if Labour’s 2017 40% vote were to hold up), the Labour candidate would win. That could be replicated in hundreds of seats, in theory. Most would fall to Labour, a few might go to or revert to LibDem, but it is also possible that some would fall to the Brexit Party. At present, unreal though it feels, it is not totally impossible to foresee Nigel Farage’s Frankenstein coming to life (energized by the Brexit hullabaloo itself) and actually ending up as a bloc of anywhere between a few MPs and as many as 50.
Times columnist Iain Martin tweeted on 27 April 2019 that “Disintegrating Tories need a leader who can get the Brexit Party to shut up shop.” It is clear to him, quite evidently, that Brexit Party, even if only as a “super-protest”, has the ability to smash the Conservative Party forever by reducing a typical Conservative vote in a marginal or even hitherto “safe” constituency by anything up to 8,000 votes…
The corollary is —almost— equally true: if Brexit Party (and UKIP) either did not exist or were not popular, the Conservatives would be well ahead of Labour for the next general election.
27 April 2019
Interesting analysis from 2017: had Labour won 7 more seats (requiring only 2,227 votes!), Corbyn might now be Prime Minister!
and here is John Rentoul, writing in The Independent, saying outright part of what I have been saying (I think that he is the first msm commentator of importance to have done so), that is that the Conservative Party is a dead duck (he says “smoking ruin”!) and likely to run only third after Labour and Brexit Party at the next UK general election:
If that polling is right, the combined Brexit Party and UKIP vote at the possible/probable 2019 General Election is now running above 20%. Today 21%, tomorrow 25%, even 30%? Anything above 10% (as in 2015—UKIP got over 12% that year) is pretty bad for the Conservatives; anything above 20% will kill them stone dead. They would lose not even 100, but 200 MPs.
Update, 1 May 2019
With only 1 day to go before the UK local elections, I saw this tweet:
This is incredible! I am not a “supporter” of Farage or “Brexit Party”, but this is the sort of reception that few get! Reminiscent of the Fuhrer (though without the depth or substance, of course). Brexit Party is on a roll! Only three weeks to go before the moment of truth (EU elections).
The Brexit party turned up in Newport, south Wales last night. A true Labour heartland. Usually. https://t.co/NoBovPxNCv
I have in the recent past posted a few analyses of the Labour and Conservative defectors who called themselves the “Independent Group of MPs”, which has now become the new party Change UK. I concluded that, if it became a party, it would have even less success than had the Social Democratic Party [SDP] in the 1980s: see Notes, below.
Change UK is now putting up candidates for the EU elections. As far as I know, it missed the boat for the UK local elections and in any case would have had few candidates available.
My attention was caught by the tweet below. The tweeter is “Senior Political Correspondent” for the online news outlet BuzzFeedUK.
This morning's new Brexit Party candidates: environmentalist, Afghan vet, charity director, entrepreneur, nurse
This morning's new Change UK candidates: Boris Johnson's sister, two former Tory MPs, that BBC guy and QC who tweet a lot…
The tweet makes the point readily enough. Change UK is the unalloyed party of Remain. It is also, as Wickham’s tweet suggests, the party of the Westminster Bubblers, and of the cronies and families of existing MPs and others who, like “Tricky Dicky from Billericay”, have been “doing rather well” out of the existing political and socio-economic system. I notice, as one does, that Change UK also seems to be the party of (some of) the Jews and (both Jewish and non-Jewish) Zionists. Luciana Berger, Mike Gapes, Gavin Esler etc.
Only this morning, Change UK launched its EU election campaign. 3,700 people wanted to be Change UK candidates. 70 were chosen. Some “celebrity” new candidates were announced: Gavin Esler, Rachel Johnson (one-time Editor of The Lady, and sister of that idiot who wants to be Prime Minister and whose comic am-dram reprise of Winston Churchill is apparently admired by a few people who have dined too well at the golf club).
“Esler added: “I have never been a member of a political party but I am now. “I have never been a candidate in an election but I am now. I have never been seriously worried about the future of our country but I am now. Our political system is a joke. It is a worldwide joke. They are laughing at us – not with us, at us.” [The Guardian]
Those who have read my blog posts about The Independent Group/Change UK will not be surprised to be told that I rate the chances of the new party as being somewhere around zero. This is not in fact a party at all, but a dustbin into which has been thrown unwanted rubbish from the Labour and Conservative benches of the House of Commons.
The Interim Leader of this party without policies is Heidi Allen MP. She has made it very clear that Change UK (which has 11 defector-MPs now) will not bring down the present Conservative minority government:
“Asked if Change UK MPs would back the government in a no confidence vote, Ms Allen told the BBC: “I can’t say wholeheartedly that we’ll vote for the government, or indeed would we ever be a confidence and supply partner in any coalition type government. You need to see what the offer on the table is at the moment….Do I believe however that a general election is a smart thing right now for our country? Absolutely not.” [Daily Mirror]
Does Heidi Allen believe that statements like that fool potential voters? If she does, she must be even more stupid than I had imagined (despite her degree in astrophysics: I only ever met one person with such a degree, and that woman was as thick as two short planks…).
It is obvious to everyone, surely, that the “Change UK” MPs are unwilling either to precipitate a general election (which they probably could, given the numbers of the parties in the House of Commons) or to hold by-elections in their own seats, because they must know, in their hearts, that most of them have little or no chance of retaining those seats.
There are several reasons why I think that Change UK has no chance: its MPs, its palpable Hampstead/Highgate/Blackheath and also affluent provincial air, its paucity of policy, its apparently chaotic organization, and its connections with Jewishness and Israel (those latter being, though, the least of its problems).
Then we look at those MPs again….Heidi Allen, does anyone, anyone at all in the UK, see her as Prime Ministerial material? Fathead Chuka? Ha ha! He has a meltdown trying to decide what scent to wear and which nightclub to attend! What then about Anna Soubry, MP for Broxtowe, or should that be “for Plymouth and Angostura”?…
There is another aspect: the British people are not moving toward vague ZOG-approved “Centrism” (ZOG/NWO/EU-ism, if you like), but toward the so-called “extremes”, meaning that they actually want to be helped and not oppressed by their government, and they also want a government which can accomplish concrete results.
There is something doomed and even pointless about Change UK.
She is correct, @ChukaUmunna. Change UK is losing traction. I could have remedied that for you, even prevented it. I applied for the social media position but didn't receive a reply. Your social media presence is staid, at best. Why hasn't it improved yet?
Change UK literally is the face of everything that is wrong with politics, people who look like the frame of a david milliband, cameron, clegg, may, are just copy and paste robots in a suit the idea is dead. If centre ground new politics looks an ex tory i aint buying it. https://t.co/VQseOiLnk1
It isn’t clear what #ChangeUK want to actually change.
They want to stop Brexit, stay in the EU and apparently won’t even vote to bring down Theresa May if Labour bring another confidence motion forward in Parliament. https://t.co/OU0r94yTGP
Why didn't you call yourselves 'The Remain Alliance' Party instead of Change – which is @Change organisations name.?They mean real change – your party does not mean change at all. @brexitparty_uk are the real political party for change. Leave means leave. https://t.co/V8inLOHu7D
— Grace Mason 😇🇬🇧🙏✝️♥️ (@Gracefulgrace10) April 23, 2019
"Change UK are a single-issue Party with no coherent policy platform… This is a re-branding exercise for former Conservative and Labour politicians who presided over cuts to public services and the relentless growth in inequality." https://t.co/tycslU2R0e
The funding of “Change UK” is opaque. It seems that it is funnelled via offshore trusts in at least two jurusdictions. Panama is one. The second part of the video below shows Joan Ryan, now a Change UK MP, at a time when she was still a Labour MP, conspiring with Shai Masot, an Israeli intelligence operative, and talking about using a million pounds in Israeli funds to suborn or corrupt MPs, presumably Labour ones. Does some of Change UK’s funding come from Israel or from secretive non-governmental Jewish sources?
Update, 26 April 2019
A tweet or two that caught my attention:
Anyone else noticed how the candidates for @brexitparty_uk are young, old, black, white, mixed race, working class, middle class. And the candidates of Change UK @IndGroup_UK are all from the cafe in Waitrose?
Meanwhile, away from the pathetic defector MPs and their Israeli links, Brexit Party is storming forward, over the bodies of the already-dying “Change UK”:
This is incredible! I am not a “supporter” of Farage or “Brexit Party”, but this is the sort of reception that few get! Reminiscent of the Fuhrer (though without the depth or substance, of course). Brexit Party is on a roll! Only three weeks to go before the moment of truth (EU elections).
The Brexit party turned up in Newport, south Wales last night. A true Labour heartland. Usually. https://t.co/NoBovPxNCv
While Brexit Party is holding large meetings, rallies almost, all over England (2,000 people in Peterborough, where the by-election is due on 6 June), Change UK is holding tiny gatherings, promoted by typical msm “journalists” (almost all pro-Israel, pro-Remain, anti-Brexit).
Change UK London Rally vs Brexit Party Peterborough Rally. One made lead story on BBC News, the other didn’t even feature. That’s right. The tiny one made the front page, the massive one didn’t. Why’s that I wonder? pic.twitter.com/0MVGwgUoly
Ironic! Lying Jew Zionist Mike Gapes MP (MP until the next general election…) well and truly put in his place by LBC’s Iain Dale (who usually bends over backwards for Jews)! If it had been any other presenter, Gapes would be screaming “anti-Semitism!” by now!
An interesting tweet (see below), from a week ago but just noticed: Change UK is less popular than Brexit Party even in metropolitan, cosmopolitan London!
and now Chris Leslie, one of the Change UK MPs, i.e. a political careerist elected under the Labour banner and who, facing deselection from his very safe seat, defected to the “Independent Group” which is now Change UK, decides to comment on the contrived Jess Phillips “rape” storm in a teacup:
Unfortunately for deadhead Leslie (who belonged to Labour Friends of Israel….quelle surprise…), “Sargon of Akkad” (Carl Benjamin) is a UKIP candidate and not a Brexit Party one! Leslie wrong again. Thousands of replies later (see the thread), Leslie has still neither deleted his inaccurate tweet nor apologized. Incompetent little chancer, who has never had a job outside politics. A drone.
So now it turns out that some of the big donors to “Change UK” are a pack of Jews who are also behind finance-capitalist projects designed to snoop on British people. The names are enough…Isaacs, Sugarman, Agioff…
EXC: Who is behind the controversial facial recognition software used by the government to register EU citizens post-Brexit, which has been condemned by Remainers and privacy campaigners?
You really could not make it up! Change UK (appropriately known as CHUKUP) is an “organization” of donkeys which is also “led” by donkeys! I have nothing against real donkeys (charming little friends of humanity who are more worthy and more beautiful than any of the CHUKUP MPs) but I prefer not to vote for human ones to rule over us!
One of Change UK's top candidates has defected to the Liberal Democrats a week before European elections https://t.co/auNeLQjJcv
Meanwhile (see below), faux-revolutionary poseur Owen Jones interviews Anna Soubry MP, who appears to have been on the sauce again, judging from her mannerisms and words. Or maybe she just has mental problems. Or both. She conflates freedom of speech (which she claims, falsely, to support) with freedom of movement inside the EU. Of course, she is a bit thick anyway, and certainly not educated or cultured. She says that the “white working class” are against immigration because they have never seen non-whites! She’s either cuckoo or drunk (again)! She also says that she does not want the votes of any Broxtowe voters who are anti-immigration. Bin her. Evil old bitch.
I hope that she loses her Commons seat and subsides into an alcoholic stupor somewhere.
Update, 18 May 2019
Some of the ex-Labour Change UK idiots now try to worm back into the Labour Party! Ha ha! I bet that fathead Chuka is one of them!
Imagine this: fathead Chuka was once spoken of (in the corrupt msm) as ministerial or even prime ministerial material! They said the same about airheaded Heidi Allen! Imagine idiots like that at the head of affairs! It might be even worse than the present bunch of idiots…
…while in Liverpool, Jewish couples meet to shoot the breeze while they shop…oh, no, wait, it’s Zionist MP Luciana Berger and her few supporters
Good to see you found the 4 other CUKs in Liverpool, so sweer
I have to say, Change UK are certainly doing politics differently! Don't think many people have seen this level of organised incompetence from a political party,,,,,,,,,,, ever! Truly Historic!
In the opinion polls, Change UK are now at or under 2%. Looks like this blog foretold the future accurately (again). Only 5 days to go before “Change UK” sinks permanently.
I just noticed this “blast from the past”: Zionist Kate Godfrey thought that she had a freeloading “Labour” political career set up, no doubt with the help of Common Purpose drones, but people saw through her careerism and Zionism, with the result that she never did become an MP, and later resigned from the Labour Party in a fit of pique, relocating from West Midland to East Midlands. Now she tries to become an MEP for Change UK! You couldn’t make it up! Ha ha! She made the wrong call yet again! She used to tweet nonsense about me to other Zionists in their Twitter echo-chamber, a few years ago. Looks like “the Curse of Millard” is still working!
Change UK holds a “rally” (5 members of the public and 5 reporters)!
Now we’ve seen the enthusiasm of the people for Chuka and Soubry’s great party I assume we’ll be seeing less of them on #marr, #bbcqt and #BBCR4today… but I won’t hold my breath pic.twitter.com/TlZ9uVgCAT
Well, I was there a month ago, but the msm is now finally catching up with me!
“Change UK is dying before it even learned to walk. Its MPs know it. Its candidates know it. The public knows it. Change UK never really wanted to change anything. What it wanted most of all was for things to stay the same. For the UK to remain in the EU and for the extremes of both the Tory and Labour parties to shut up and go away” [ The Guardian]
So here we are, EU election day, and “Change UK” is tweeting (see below) that the problems of the UK are all because of “the lies” supposedly told by “the far right”, UKIP and Brexit Party (none of which have ever had any power in the UK)…
Meanwhile, I sincerely hope and believe that Change UK is being slaughtered at the polls.
Update, 26 May 2019
Votes being declared in the EU Elections. The BBC interviews Heidi Allen MP, the ex-Conservative defector now in Change UK. She says that CHUKUP is only “at the start of something”. Asked “where does Change UK go from here?”, she answers with waffle. CHUKUP is not even contesting the important Peterborough by-election. It’s finished.
Update, 27 May 2019
Oh, no! Looks as though Anna Soubry has been hitting the bottle again, following CHUKUP’s terminally poor European Elections results…
Even in the Broxtowe area, in which Anna Soubry’s constituency is located (the boundaries are not exactly the same but almost the same), CHUKUP only managed 4.7%. Anna Soubry should just open another bottle and try to forget what is left of her unimpressive political career.
Broxtowe (East Midlands) result:
Brex: 35.9% (+35.9) LDem: 20.9% (+14.5) Grn: 13.5% (+5.7) Lab: 12.1% (-14.4) Con: 8.9% (-15.2) ChUK: 4.7% (+4.7) UKIP: 4.0% (-27.0) Looks like Broxtowe rejects your opinion Anna & the CHUKs 😂 No wonder you do not want a by election 😂 😂
Well, Change UK (I call it CHUKUP) is still notionally in existence by polling at statistical zero. As I predicted on 18 May, Fathead Chuka [Umunna] has indeed had a meltdown and defected, though to the LibDems rather than back to Labour (they wouldn’t let him rejoin). He lasted a month or so in CHUKUP, so anyway rather longer than the day or two he lasted as Labour leadership candidate! What a total waste of space Fathead Chuka is! I suppose that he hopes that the LibDems will find him a seat to contest. Not Streatham, which has been safe Labour since 1992: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streatham_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s
Meanwhile, “Interim Leader” Heidi Allen clashed with drunken creature Anna Soubry. Allen advised a merger with the LibDems. When Soubry attacked the idea, Heidi Allen walked, and now sits as am Independent. That leaves Anna Soubry as “leader” of this waste of space “party” and its 5 MPs, none of whom will be MPs as soon as a general election is called.
As I predicted pretty much from the start, finished.
Update, 4 July 2019
I missed this: Change UK is now called The Independent Group for Change. The third or fourth name this dead-parrot “party” has had in its few months of existence.
I do not think that most newspapers even reported the above. Maybe a small paragraph on some obscure page. A sign that The Party Formerly Known As Change UK is on life-support, which with the next general election will be turned off.
Chuck Anna Soubry into a vat of alcohol and go home.
Update, 28 January 2024
The post had a few hits today, the first for a long time. I was idly wondering whatever happened the Blair-Brown “Labour” drone Chris Leslie, at MP until the 2019 General Election.
Well, seems that (((they))) rewarded him— he is now the chief executive of a trade body representing the organized debt and debt collection industry. How pleasant…
Ian Robert Millard 