Tag Archives: Justin Tomlinson

Diary Blog, 5 July 2024

Morning music

GE 2024

Disappointing. I wanted the Conservative Party to be crushed (~50 seats) whereas, now, on about 120 seats, it can still pose as a viable party, and its status as official Opposition reinforces that.

Labour, as expected, won the most seats, easily (with 2 results not yet in, 412 MPs, and a majority of about 96 or so).

The other System party, the LibDems, have apparently won 71 seats, almost all entirely by default, as “alternative choice”, or “dustbin” choice, or “tactical choice”.

Of course, this election again emphasizes the inadequacy of FPTP voting, but the “usual suspects” make sure that the System parties oppose proportional representation. “They” remember Adolf!

FPTP makes it very hard for small parties to rise up. That makes the modest success of both Reform UK and the Greens even more striking.

It has been hilarious to read the tweets bitterly whining at Farage having won at Clacton.

Reform UK now has a foothold at Westminster. The exit poll had predicted 13 MPs. Looks like 4 now. Still, the significant thing, apart from those 4 successes, is that Reform came second in dozens of other constituencies. When Labour (as is inevitable) lets down the voters over the next 4-5 years, Reform may be in a position to do much better.

The Greens also did well, though that party will never be able to convince the general public that they are really “green” while they continue to support mass immigration, or allowing the creation of large solar electricity installations, or huge wind turbines, on green fields etc.

While I am disappointed with the overall result, and with some individual results too, I have seen plenty of results that have cheered me.

A number of the MPs removed have been featured over recent years in my “Deadhead MPs” series.

Some removed MPs:

Victoria Prentis [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Prentis], a complete puppet of the Israel lobby, and an exceptionally poor Attorney-General, has been removed (as MP). A Conservative Friends of Israel member.

Karl McCartney [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_McCartney], a very unpleasant Con MP, is now (for the second time) removed. Conservative Friends of Israel member.

Jacob Rees-Mogg [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Rees-Mogg] a kind of “cosplay” fake or would-be “aristocrat”.

Theresa Villiers [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theresa_Villiers]. Complete puppet of the Israel lobby; member of Conservative Friends of Israel.

Penny Mordaunt. The now-washed-up “great white hope” of those Conservative Party members outdated enough to want a real English person as leader and possible PM. Not the worst of the ditched MPs. Never mind; she will always have the memory of that Coronation sword and, a few years earlier, that swimsuit moment…

Liz Truss. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liz_Truss. Surely needs no introduction. As for Woollyhead Trussbanger [Kwasi Kwarteng— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwasi_Kwarteng], he stepped down before the General Election. Conservative Friends of Israel member.

Selaine Saxby. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selaine_Saxby.

She will no doubt return to teaching girls, and eating self-packed lunches.

Nigel Evans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Evans. A useless creature, whose only real job before becoming an MP was helping out in his parents’ corner shop. He was also lucky to escape conviction on sex offences (see my “Deadhead MPs” profile, below).

Therese Coffey. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%A9r%C3%A8se_Coffey

Oh, God, what can one say? Actually, I already said it, years ago (see her “Deadhead MP” profile, below). She had one of the supposedly safest Con Party seats, too.

Justin Tomlinson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Tomlinson.

Total deadhead. He will have to go back to managing a cheesy provincial “club” of some sort…

Scott Mann. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Mann_(politician).

This was the idiot who wanted to put GPS trackers in the handles of all knives to deter “knife crime”! A total deadhead. He should have suggested putting microchips under the skin of those “likely” to commit knife crime, but that might be seen as “racist”, of course.

As I said in an update to that blog post, “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.

Robert Largan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Largan.

One of the best results of GE 2024, as far as I am concerned. Not merely a Conservative Friends of Israel member, but a very nasty little individual, who tweeted against me a few times in the past, and also gloated online at the convictions of Alison Chabloz, the satirist and singer, who lives and/or lived in the High Peak constituency.

Larghan was a “bean-counter” (accountant) for Marks & Spencer before latching onto the old MP racket; perhaps he will go back to that way of making a living.

After losing his seat as the HIgh Peak MP Robert Largan, who was standing for the Conservative party, says he has helped a huge number of constituents and brought money to the area during his time in power.

This morning it was announced that Jon Pearce had taken the seat with 22,533 votes and Mr Largan only getting 14,625 votes.

However, reflecting on his time in office Mr Largan said: “All political careers end in failure.

[Buxton Advertiser]

Largan, derivative to the end…(and most “political careers” last longer than 5 years…).

Incidentally, I notice that all or almost all of the Conservative Party MPs binned (not just the few noted above) would have retained their seats had it not been for the Reform UK candidatures.

Tweets seen

Our animal friends.

Man proposes, God disposes” etc, but this will have been merely the start, now that Reform UK have their boots under the table. They are, of course, not social-national, but their success moves the “Overton Window” a bit, anyway. A real social-national movement must emerge, though.

More music

More tweets

Reform UK apparently got a national vote-share of around 14%. In a pure PR system, Reform would be allocated about 91 MPs, not the miserable 4 allowed via FPTP.

Will Hutton, like so many of his type, cannot see that most of the issues, if not all, that he highlights, have been caused, or have been made worse, and/or are still being made much worse, by the continuing migration invasion, numbered in the millions. Indeed, over the past 25 years alone, numbered in the tens of millions.

Labour’s “landslide” is an arithmetical trick, nothing more. No-one really has any enthusiasm for Israel-puppet Starmer and his unimpressive MPs. The result of GE 2024, as expected, was that Labour’s vote-share stayed almost the same (33.7%, compared to 32.1% in 2019), as did the LibDem vote-share (12.2% compared to 11.6%), but the Conservative Party vote-share dropped from 43.6% in 2019 to 23.7% in 2024.

Reform UK’s vote share (the official figure not yet seen by me but supposedly 14%) was obviously the main reason why Con losses and Lab gains were so great.

Another significant fact is that over 40% of those eligible to vote did not vote. Turnout was below 60%.

Tweeter “@BarnabyEdwards” displays the usual “woke” inability to think. He only accepts the logic he wants to accept. At first, it’s “ha ha, look at Reform UK! What a failure!“, then, when some facts about voting numbers are pointed out, it’s “yes, FPTP is rubbish, but fact is that Reform UK have only 5 MPs and yet are treated the same as serious parties like Plaid Cymru and the Greens, and will get more coverage than they merit“.

The said tweeter, one Barnaby Edwards, is really saying that Plaid Cymru, with its (faux) Welsh “nationalism”, and the pseudo-Greens, merit more coverage than Reform because (unspoken) Reform is anti-migration invasion etc.

Look at the popular vote numbers, though: Reform UK well over 4 MILLION votes; Plaid Cymru below 195,000, not even a twentieth of the number of votes received by Reform. As for the Greens, 1,842,000, so good but still a long way short of half the number of votes received by Reform.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_Kingdom_general_election#Results

Incidentally, tweeter “@BarnabyEdwards” has nearly 23,000 Twitter/X “followers”, whereas the more sensible or less biased fellow talking with him, “@cllranderson”, has a mere 2,000. Typical of the platform, of course.

Comment is surely superfluous…

Late tweets

Whatever you call this, “democracy” it is not, except in a very broad sense.

Late music

[Arnold Bocklin, Villa by the Sea]

Deadhead MPs, An Occasional Series: The Justin Tomlinson Story

Background

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.

Notes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Swindon_(UK_Parliament_constituency)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Tomlinson

https://www.gov.uk/government/people/justin-tomlinson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Kelly_(British_politician)

http://www.justintomlinson.com/about/biography

https://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/16320207.rewind-pictures-from-cairos-and-eros/

https://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/16320207.rewind-pictures-from-cairos-and-eros/#gallery9

https://companycheck.co.uk/company/04739303/TB-MARKETING-SOLUTIONS-LIMITED/companies-house-data

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmregmem/120514/tomlinson_justin.htm

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18769451

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/dwp-tory-apologises-parliament-making-14224350

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/sep/15/justin-tomlinson-shows-sorry-seems-to-be-the-easiest-word

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1434753/mp-justin-tomlinson-announces-love-for-25-year-old-aide-after-divorcing-wife/

Below, Justin Tomlinson’s one-time milieu, Eros nightclub, Swindon, in 2002:

Update, 7 May 2019

Below, Tomlinson making himself look stupid and nasty again…

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/dwp-leaves-claimants-waiting-9-15010363

Update, 30 May 2020

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Swindon_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swindon_North_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2020s