No.207 - 'Kiss and Don't Tell' or 'One Rule for them. Another for us!'
Dear James,
It’s one rule for them. Another for us. Mr Hancock, the Health Secretary, has been caught by The Sun, kissing ‘a close female aide’. He claims that he has breached the guidelines but not broken the law. Not sure how that will go down with his wife but the PM considers the matter closed. It seems that for the moment Hancock has dodged another bullet.
But the matter cannot be closed. The nation is appalled. More to the point, many in your own party are equally dismayed. The man responsible for drawing up the rules requiring the rest of us to sacrifice our freedoms has broken those very rules. Hancock is well documented last year as having strongly approved the resignations of firstly, ‘Professor Lockdown’, Niel Ferguson - due to his misstep with his own lover - and secondly, the Scottish Health Minister after visiting her second home against Covid rules. It seems that such rules however, do not apply to Mr Hancock himself. Or anyone else in your government.
Mr Hancock has had a difficult time as Health Secretary. He has scrambled around in the last eighteen months, throwing copious amounts of tax payers’ money at any possible lifeline – but preferably to ones with close connections to his pals - and latterly striking lucky with the vaccination programme. Of course he has had his supporters. Mr Rees-Mogg hailed him as a "successful genius" – who had made the world safer. This time though, those supporters are very thin on the ground. Even our ‘Minister for the 18th century’ has gone stumm.
Ten days ago your government lost the Chesham and Amersham by-election with a historic 25% swing to the Lib-Dems in a constituency that has been Tory since its creation in 1974. The victor converted a 16,000 Tory majority into an 8,028 win for her party. Ed Davey had a hay day breaking down his ‘Blue Wall’ with his little orange hammer.
One reason for this shock result was certainly Boris’s new planning bill. Just down the road in Boxford, your party has tried every way to help a developer to buy perfectly good agricultural land outside the village envelope to build 64 houses despite the almost unanimous rejection of the plans by the villagers. The company is called Catesby Estates. Catesby pride themselves on ‘Maximizing Land value for Landowners’ and are attempting to build the houses for the profit of the farmer against the concerns of the villagers. Twice they have been thwarted. Once by the previous planning committee and secondly by the High Court. If you, James, are to avoid a similar shock result in this deepest of deep blue constituencies, you had better start listening. Better still, you’d better do something to help your local community rather than slavishly following the government line.
But planning and the HS2 were not the main reasons for your by-election defeat. Your core vote was annihilated by the public’s rejection of Boris Johnson himself. As Mr Cummings continues to point out, Johnson is no leader. The ex-senior adviser vividly describes Boris’s style of meetings as “telling rambling stories and jokes and as soon as things get 'a bit embarrassing' does the whole 'let's take it offline' shtick before shouting 'forward to victory', doing a thumbs-up and pegging it out of the room before anybody can disagree." Boris is lazy, loves the limelight but hates the work. He can’t bear to sack ministers because either he can’t be bothered or he can find no others to replace them. To quote Mr Cummings again, Mr Johnson is ‘unfit to be Prime Minister’ as is Mr Hancock to be Health Secretary. Boris and Hancock run amok with our nation’s age old traditions of honour and respect for law and accountability. The Northern Ireland protocol, the illegal proroguing of parliament; the list goes on and on. That’s what the voters of Chesham and Amersham were angry about. Boris is demolishing the age old traditions that have made Britain unique in the world and they don’t like it. Boris and Hancock have lost the trust of the public.
With Hancock digging in, supported by Johnson, it is beyond me James, how you can hold up your face to your public. But I’d forgotten. You owe your position to the Tory Party even if that party is not the one you joined. It really is such a shame!
Kind regards,
BH – Your Concerned Constituent