No.250 - The People Have Spoken!
Dear James,
How much more evidence do you need? On Thursday your party suffered two crushing defeats in by-elections. The Liberal Democrats overturned a massive Conservative majority of over 24,000 at Tiverton and Honiton with a swing of nearly 30% and a 52.9% of the vote share. This is the biggest majority lost in by-election history and the third time in a year that the Lib-Dems have overturned sizeable Tory ma]orities. At the other end of the country, at Wakefield, Labour, with a 12.7% swing, grabbed back a 'red wall' seat less than three years after Tories snatched it from them in 2019. Surely James, even for you, it’s now clear that Boris, the ‘vote winner’ has become Boris the ‘vote loser’?
This is not mid-term blues, James. The nation is angry. We are offended and disgusted by Boris Johnson’s continued contempt for the values of our country. Now, even your own large majority is at serious risk.
At 5.35 yesterday morning, when the final results were through, Oliver Dowden the Conservative Party Chairman resigned. Mr Dowden said Tory supporters were "distressed and disappointed". In his letter of resignation, he wrote: "We cannot carry on with business as usual. Somebody must take responsibility and I have concluded that, in these circumstances, it would not be right for me to remain in office." He also said that "a deeply personal decision that I have taken alone" following a "run of very poor results for our party". Mr Dowden has been a Boris loyalist for the duration and now he’s gone. Only the true ‘believers’ such as Nadine Dorris, Priti Patel and Dominic Raab hang on in there.
Raab came on the radio yesterday morning in place of Mr Dowden to continues to purr ‘business as usual’, blaming ‘distractions’ such as ‘Partygate’ as if the fundamental values on which this country has been run for centuries are of no import. It’s the same old story, the same old lame excuses. You are a GINO – a Government in Name Only, James. Boris is hanging on to power simply to save face. There is no plan, no agenda; just the same old warn out shibboleths about ‘Levelling-Up’ and ‘Solving the immigration crisis by sending asylum seekers to Rwanda'. Your party is bankrupt of ideas, devoid of integrity and about to implode into a civil war. Ten days ago Boris lost his second ethics adviser when Lord Geidt resigned. Now the likes of Steve Baker and Andrew Bridgen are plotting to change the 1922 rules to allow another vote on Boris. The Tory Party Civil War is about to erupt into broad daylight, James and the results will not be pretty.
Meanwhile the country goes from crisis to crisis. Grant Shapps refuses to intervene in the biggest railway strike for thirty years. Instead he stirs up the age old class warfare that has been the scourge of our nation since 1066. However Shapps has run into the likes of Mick Lynch, the RMT’s General Secretary, a fast thinking, well informed latter day Wat Tyler. I can hear your party stalwarts thrilled to hear his cockney accent and the effect it will have in their minds for ’them who speak proper’. Yet Lynch hits the nail on the head on questions of inequality. That other curse of our nation for centuries is still with us. Lynch does not demand equality but simply a nationwide conversation about the ‘acceptable levels’ of inequality. ‘Cowboy capitalism’ continues to reveal its failures both at the lower end - the low paid and the upper end - the financial crises inflicted upon us at regular intervals. We are living in a country where fully employed people have to resort to food banks to survive. That is both unacceptable and, in the long run, unsurvivable for any government.
During this crisis, Johnson himself has been in Kigale. His response to the news from home was,’We must be humble. We must listen and learn”! Humble is not an adjective that one could ever apply to the in-built braggadocio of Boris Johnson. ‘Listen and learn’, even less so. Boris only pretends to listen. Learn he does not. He tells us that he will 'carry on, delivering what the people want me to do.” On Thursday the nation spoke loudly. The message couldn’t have been clearer. They want the 'Great Imposter’ to resign. Everyone knows, including you James, that if he continues he will only bring more damage to your party and, more importantly, to the nation. Until the next election, only you, the Tory MPs, have the power to remove this stain on our national politics. James, our nation will be eternally grateful!
BH – Your Concerned Constituent