A Few Preliminary Words
I have blogged in the past about a few MPs in the present House of Commons who stand out even in that —at best— mediocre ensemble for their stupidity, deadheadedness and general uselessness. My most recent targets have been Kate Osamor MP and Fiona Onasanya MP. I move now to examine Scott Mann, Conservative Party MP for North Cornwall.
Scott Mann has made so little impact in Parliament since he was elected in 2015 that I was entirely unaware of his existence until today, despite the fact that, in the years 2002-2004, I myself lived in the North Cornwall constituency and had a lease of one of the largest country houses there [seen below in a 1940s photograph]
The North Cornwall Constituency
The constituency is largely rural, though it contains some fairly small towns (Launceston, Bude, Wadebridge, Padstow); it has a significant, mostly coastal, tourist industry. It was held by the Liberal Democrats from 1992 to 2015. The national collapse of the Liberal Democrat vote in 2015, which continued in 2017, was reflected in North Cornwall. The Conservative, Mann, increased his vote share from 45% in 2015 to 50.7% in 2017. It can now be considered a safe Conservative seat.
Scott Mann
I am not someone who is biased against those who drop out of school or education; after all, I myself did! (and then had to do it all myself later). There are several possible reasons (apart from sheer lack of ability) why someone gets a university degree late or (as in Mann’s case) not at all (and in any case the “degree” label is so devalued these days anyway), but Mann’s background, like those of so many MPs now, does not inspire confidence.
Mann was educated locally before becoming a postman, working out of the sorting office in Wadebridge (Cornwall), the town in which he had been both born and brought up.
In 2007, Mann was elected as a county councillor. In 2016, he resigned after having been criticized for poor attendance. He remained a postman until he became an MP.
Mann employs his girlfriend as “part-time secretary” via Parliamentary expenses (she gets about £30,000 a year for a part-time job). Apparently, they do not live together. He also claims, or has done, for other personal items, such as Amazon Prime [see Notes, below], and for his London accommodation. Well, after all, he lived for years on a modest Royal Mail pay-packet, and the opportunities to make hay, as a county councillor, are far more limited than those open to an MP.
Now Mann has come to public attention as the idiot who says that all knives should be fitted with GPS (!) and that anyone carrying one should be severely punished unless hunting, fishing or shooting! P.G. Wodehouse meets Common Purpose? I have some sympathy with the tweeters who asked “how are you even an MP?”
“Scott Mann admitted his idea was “s—“, but added: “ultimately we do have a problem, and no one’s coming up with any solutions, we need to sort it out.”” [Daily Telegraph]
I fear that the answer to the above question (as to how this idiot ever became an MP) is the same as applies to all other “deadhead” MPs (and they are many) in the Westminster monkeyhouse: they get through a selection procedure which is often a joke, or rigged, then get “elected” in circumstances where only one candidate (sometimes two, very occasionally three) has a realistic chance, because of FPTP voting, dominated by 2 or 3 System parties.
Notes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Mann_(politician)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Cornwall_(UK_Parliament_constituency)
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmregmem/150608/mann_scott.htm
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/25383/scott_mann/north_cornwall
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/11/nine-mps-used-parliamentary-expenses-fund-amazon-prime-subscriptions/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-47572133
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/tory-mp-ridiculed-after-saying-all-knives-sold-in-uk-should-be-fitted-with-gps-trackers-a4091791.html
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/03/14/mp-mocked-suggesting-knives-should-fitted-gps-trackers/
The tweet that exposed Scott Mann MP as a deadhead…
The twitterati respond…
Update, 4 December 2019
Unusually, especially for a Cornishman (I would suppose anyway), Mann cannot swim. He nearly drowned in 2016 and had to be saved by fellow-MP Johnny Mercer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Mercer_(politician)#Personal_life
Update, 26 February 2020
The General Election 2019 confirmed Mann as MP for North Cornwall. In fact, Mann received the votes of no less than 59.4% of those who bothered to vote, the largest winning percentage in the history of the constituency if one leaves out the unopposed victories of Liberals in 1918 and 1923.
In 2019, Mann managed to more than double his 2017 majority to 14,752; he also doubled his majority in percentage terms. Interestingly, the LibDem candidate’s percentage share (30.8%) fell not only compared to 2017 (36.6%) but even as compared to 2015 (31.2%). Another sign that the LibDems are on the way out even in former strongholds.
Update, 2 March 2020
In February 2020, Mann was appointed PPS to Gavin Williamson, the Secretary of State for Education (formerly —and risibly— Secretary of State for Defence), who himself has featured in these pages as a “Deadhead MP”: https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/05/02/deadhead-mps-an-occasional-series-the-gavin-williamson-story/.
Update, 21 June 2024
Well, less than 2 weeks separate us from Election Day 2024. The Guardian has done a piece on North Cornwall at election time: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/19/field-fork-disillusioned-voters-feeling-pinch-north-cornwall.
Seems that deadhead MP Scott Mann is now odds-on to lose his seat to the LibDems. Five years ago, and in fact until quite recently, I thought that “LibDemmery” was dead, but it has revived as a result of the total incompetence of the present Conservative Party and its ministers and MPs, and may be set to actually get 40, 50, maybe even 60 or 70 seats at the 2024 General Election. Who would have thought it? Unmerited, of course, but unmerited benefit is, after all, so UK 2024…
As for Scott Mann himself…well, my opinion is that, for someone with his very underwhelming academic and work background, he has been very lucky to have had a pretty well-paid near-sinecure as MP for 9 years.
Indeed, in 2022, he was even appointed to a minor ministerial position (as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, or PUS) by Liz Truss. That was after he was “shifted” says his Wikipedia entry (probably edited by Mann himself) in 2021 after a few months being a Government Whip (paid) to being an Assistant Whip (unpaid). Translation: he’s useless.
Mann will now have to forgo the MP salary (now over £90,000 p.a., plus pretty decent expenses), and that also means that the London flat will go, as will (at least as paid “part-time secretary”) his girlfriend.
In fact, MP salaries are not paid while Parliament is not sitting by reason of a General Election, so he may already be feeling the pinch.
Mann could, I suppose, go back to being a postman, a far more socially-useful job than being an MP, at least one of the type Mann has been. Otherwise, unless his friends can find a job for him, he may soon start to learn from personal experience how hard life can be in contemporary Britain for the unemployed, especially at his age (46).
That should not come as too much of a shock to him, though. After all, he himself voted for all of the anti-“welfare” nonsense put through from 2015-2024, and approved of most if not all of the Dunce Duncan Smith nonsense of 2010-2015.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Mann_(politician)#3rd_term_as_MP_(2019-).
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/25383/scott_mann/north_cornwall#profile
https://www.theipsa.org.uk/mp-staffing-business-costs/your-mp/scott-mann/4496
Update, 5 July 2024
Mann came a very poor second at GE 2024: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Cornwall_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2020s
Ian Robert Millard 