Did Your Vote Matter?
I gave a speech this week on Proportional Representation for Make Votes Matter, and it got me thinking about whether your vote mattered in the last election. I suspect that the chances are that it didn’t no matter where you are, who you voted for and who won purely because of how the odds work. So, here are just a few of the ways that your vote was wasted. Your Candidate Didn’t Win Under the current system, if you make the cardinal sin of voting for a candidate that doesn’t win, that vote is wasted by design. Your candidate doesn’t get any political power as a result of coming second or third in the ballot, so a vote for a candidate that doesn’t win is essentially thrown in the bin. This discourages you from voting for a candidate that you don’t think can outright win, thereby shoring up the de facto two-party system that we have been dealing with for centuries. Your Candidate Won Comfortably Congratulations! But did your vote matter? Arguably this is the case that most people probably assume makes their vote matter, but I would argue that it’s not quite that straightforward. Imagine a two-candidate race where the winner gets 80% of the votes and the loser gets 20%. In this case, it is obvious that the 20% of votes for the loser were all wasted, but what about the 80%? In this case, the winner actually only needed one more vote than 20%, which for all intents and purposes is the same as 20% for a large enough ballot. once that total is achieved, all further votes for the winner are also wasted – a candidate doesn’t become more of a winner if they win by 80% or 0.8% of the electorate. This means that in this example, three-quarters of the votes for the winner are also wasted, meaning that if you cast a vote for the eventual winner, you only had a one in four chance of it actually mattering. Your Candidate Narrowly Won In this case, your vote likely had the most impact. If the example above actually had the winner with 40% of the vote and the runner up with fewer votes but still rounding to 40%, that means that every vote for the eventual winner was important. Conversely, all other votes were essentially ignored by the system, so even in this example of a very narrow margin of victory 60% of the electorate’s votes would be ignored by design. A Real Example Looking at the 2023 by election in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, the results were as follows: At first glance, this might look like it was only worth voting for Steve Tuckwell, but this is essentially what the system is deigned to do – to make it feel like only voting for the winner matters. But it is important to remember that this seat came very close indeed to flipping to Labour, which would have meant that votes for Steve Tuckwell were wasted and a proportion of votes for Danny Beales were the only ones that mattered, at least from the perspective of deciding an MP. Even more importantly, this vote was almost as close as it is possible to get, and it still meant that only 44% of votes cast actually mattered. By design, at least 50% of the electorate is disenfranchised using the First Past The Post system, which is horrible for democracy. What About Short Money? Short Money is the consolidation prize for voting for a party where the candidate didn’t win in your area. Assuming the party returns at least one MP nationally, Short Money is awarded to them in proportion to the number of votes they received in all elections across the country, and it is designed to help the MPs to pay for things like research that the government has access to as a matter of course. In essence, it is designed to allow parties that don’t form a government to at least have a fighting chance at representing their constituents, even if the government shuts them out of all major decisions. This means that even a wasted vote for electing an MP is useful to the party that candidate stood for, as long as the party managed to win at least one seat in all 650 constituencies. It’s not perfect, but it means that you can still vote for the party that you prefer even if they have no chance in your area.
Tory Edits
I have made a few edits of various Tory advertising posters or articles over the last year. Here’s a selection: CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v62), quality = 85
ReformUK’s Economic Ineptitude
The ReformUK party is not like every other political party. Originally the Brexit Party, the membership of this so-called political party is three individuals, namely Richard Tice, Tracy Knowles and Mehrtash A’Zami. No-one else has voting rights for the structure, leadership or policies of the party. As such, it is designed to be authoritarian in nature rather than democratic, which is the antithesis of my own beliefs and the Liberal Democrats in general. However, this structure is – amazingly – not the worst or only major problem for the “party”. Economic Woes On 24 February 2024, the ReformUK party announced a list of tax reforms (pardon the pun). This was broadly summarised as follows: Change the higher rate threshold from £50,000 to £70,000. Increase the personal allowance for income tax from £12,570 to £20,000. Set the inheritance tax allowance to £2 million (presumably this is per person, so the allowance would be £4 million for couples). Cut corporation tax to 15% (I saw this figure on Twitter rather than in the independent article, so this is less reliable than the others, but is certainly in keeping with their other promises). Add a 20% tax relief for healthcare fees and private school fees. This all seems very appealing if you have wealth and don’t rely on anything that is cut to fund this gift to the wealthy. So what is being cut to fund this tax giveaway? Nothing. They have mentioned that they will abandon net zero policies and eliminate illegal migration. The former of these is something of a red herring, because renewable energy right now is cheaper than fossil fuel power, so abandoning net zero actually costs money if we look at energy, the single largest contributor to our CO2 emission. The latter is also a red herring because the total cost of migration is essentially negligible. As part of my Twitter ranting about this, someone posted an article telling me that illegal migration (as they put it) had cost some £36 billion since 2020. This sounds like a large figure until you look at the annual amount of £9 billion and compare it to, say, the annual budget for NHS England, some £163 billion. In short, even if the cost of “illegal” migrants could be completely eliminated with no additional costs for whatever scheme replaced the existing structure, they would not even be able to fund a single month of NHS England’s budget with the annual saving. In short, they have not proposed anything that would possibly offset the cost of massive tax cuts, and we saw what happened when someone last tried to announce uncosted tax cuts for the wealthy. This is worse. Much worse.
Resignations on the Horizon?
In case you have been living under a rock or on the moon, you will no doubt have seen the news this week that the recent drama about the Horizon Post Office scandal hit the screens and forced the government into action. Sadly, their action has been the same as always, trying to pin the blame on someone – anyone – else. Right now, their two targets are Keir Starmer, who was directing the Public Prosecutions Service at the time when the sub-postmasters were prosecuted, and Ed Davey, who was Post Office Minister as part of the coalition government at the time. Was it either of their faults? No, definitely not. Was this the fault of the Tories in government? No. I am not writing this to assign blame to them, but instead to step above petty blame games and talk about the real culprits. Fujitsu At the heart of this scandal is the Horizon software, which was essentially a cash reconciliation programme installed in sub-branches of the Post Office in the 1990s. This software was developed and ultimately installed by ICL Pathways Limits, now part of Fujitsu, a large technology company with a pretty strong reputation. Unfortunately, it seems that there was a flaw in the software. For those of us with experience of developing software, this is probably not a surprise – every IT project has bugs, they are essentially unavoidable. However, in this instance the software bug made it appear as though cash was disappearing from sub-branches. I don’t understand the specifics enough to go into details, but these seem to be agreed facts. There also seems to have been some delay over the development of the software, which likely put more and more pressure on the coders to rush the job. To cut a long story short, though, the error seems to have originated from Fujitsu, so when the error was discovered they should have indemnified both the Post Office and the falsely accused Sub-Postmasters. That is what I would expect from a company that released a product which caused harm. This is not saying that they shouldn’t also be subject to fines or sanctions, but rather sets out the bare minimum they should do for rolling out a product which caused so much harm. There is some speculation that Fujitsu were given preferential treatment because their staff included the husband of our current Education Secretary, Gillian Keegan, and given the other cases of Tory corruption we have seen in recent years, this wouldn’t surprise me. The Post Office As I understand it, this is where the true blame lies. The Post Office management were aware of the issues as early as 2000 and didn’t report them back to MPs. They proceeded with charges that they knew – or reasonably ought to have known – were false, and in doing so ruined the lives of over 900 sub-postmasters. These were their staff, they absolutely had a duty of care to look after them, and given these hundreds of people were not guilty of stealing from the Post Office, they absolutely deserve compensation. The Post Office management needs to be investigated for ignoring the issue from 2000 to around 2013, when they finally obtained an assessment from Second Sight (which itself was wrong, as it concluded that the software was fine but the Post Office’s procedures were flawed). This means that for 13 years they had information from sub-postmasters that the software had a major flaw and for 13 years they ignored it. Post Office Ministers? If after reading this you still think that the Post Office Minister might still be to blame, here’s a list of such ministers since Horizon was installed: (Thanks to Christopher Hope for collating the data on the terms and names of the various ministers) The obvious question to ask is “what makes Ed Davey special out of this list?” Why is so much ire being directed at him (as well as Keir Starmer) as though this was his personal failure rather than the 19 other ministers with the exact same duties? Look into the source of said claims and I expect you will find a Tory donor desperate to create news that will keep his friends in power for a little longer. It won’t work. We see through the lies, and the British people will likewise see through the lies when they are presented with unbiased facts. Change is coming, and this might well be the last ever Tory majority government.
Steve Tuckwell – Conservative
In 2023, Boris Johnson was forced to resign in disgrace as MP for Uxbridge & South Ruislip following the investigation into his repeated lies to Parliament over Partygate. In the wake of that, a by-election was triggered in Uxbridge & South Ruislip, which ultimately resulted in Steve Tuckwell being returned as MP with a margin of only 500 or so votes (with a total cast for Tuckwell of just under 14,000). So who is Steve Tuckwell, what did he run his campaign on, and what has he done so far? This analysis will attempt to show that he is wholly unsuitable to be Uxbridge & South Ruislip’s MP, and why. This isn’t just going to be a political hit piece from an opponent, this is going to be a deep dive into Tuckwell’s political history and will include sources for any claims or comments that are relevant. Image from Wikipedia. Early Career There’s nothing particularly noteworthy about Steve Tuckwell’s career. He was a manager for Royal Mail and worked for a vehicle leasing company. Nothing that screams that he would be good or bad for the role of elected representative. I have not heard of any skeletons coming from any aspect of his career, but neither have I heard anything particularly positive that makes it seem like he was suitable for a career in politics. Political Activity In 2018, Steve Tuckwell joined Hillingdon Council as a councillor, standing as a Conservative candidate. As such, Tuckwell has been involved with the Council for five years at the time of writing, and as a senior person within the local party, it is fair to say that he had influence over most things that happened in Hillingdon. So what has he achieved? Looking at the Hillingdon Council website, it is pretty unclear. According to that, Tuckwell has only voted on 24 issues in that five-year period, so I think it is fair to say that his contributions were not prolific. Setting that aside for a moment, let’s consider what Hillingdon has achieved recently. Luckily I put together a list of the increased costs and charges some time ago, during a time when Tuckwell was a councillor but not yet an MP. These cost increases are indicative of a council in financial trouble, and since the council itself and the national government have both been Conservative for over a decade, there’s no-one else to blame. By-Election Campaign I was fortunate enough to enjoy a front-row seat to the Uxbridge by-election, as I was heavily involved in assisting my predecessor Blaise Baquiche with his campaign. Unfortunately, we weren’t successful, but we did learn some lessons and stocked up some ammunition for the next campaign – this one. In short, Steve Tuckwell ran his campaign on three points, namely: That he was already an experienced councillor and that Hillingdon was doing well (it wasn’t). That he would cancel the ULEZ expansion in Hillingdon (he couldn’t). That he would reopen Uxbridge Police Station (he hasn’t). Many of his campaigning issues stem from the fact that he made promises he had no way of achieving. MPs have no power over ULEZ, as that is a devolved power of the Greater London Assembly. His Conservative mayoral candidate colleague, Susan Hall, could probably have explained that to him, assuming she was able to recover from her entirely fictitious pickpocketing incident. I imagine I will be covering Susan Hall more in future blog posts, but suffice it to say, she’s ludicrously unqualified for any position of responsibility, let alone Mayor of a city the size of London. Likewise the status of Uxbridge police station is under the purview of the London Metropolitan Police, which itself is under the auspices of the Mayor. As such, Tuckwell’s entire campaign was based on lies. He has no more power as an MP to stop ULEZ expansions or to reopen Uxbridge police station than he had as a normal person. Arguably he actually had more power as just a councillor than an average MP would have. He had no business standing as an MP candidate if he knew that his promises were not just unlikely but outright impossible to achieve. He might as well have promised all voters in Uxbridge £1 million for all the realism it offered. It might sound nice to think about receiving such a largess, but it’s simply not going to happen. It’s fair to say that this on its own could be considered biased reporting about a political opponent, and it is much harder to attack someone’s campaign pledges during their campaign itself. So let’s look at what he has actually done since getting elected. Parliamentary Record Once someone gets into Parliament, their voting record becomes a matter of public interest. Hansard reports on everything that a member says in the debate chamber and every vote they participate in, including their actual stance on the matter. There are many aggregation tools which summarise this voting record, but the one I have used is Public Whip. The first noteworthy statistic is the number of rebellions. This indicates the number of times an MP has disagreed with what their party has decided. That figure? Zero. Not once in (at the time of writing) 79 votes. That means that he has voted for: Rwanda to be declared a safe nation in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Restrictions on the actions of trade unions, removing worker rights. Hiding the school safety report from public access, meaning parents around the country had no information on whether their children were attending a deathtrap. Criminalising nitrous oxide at a time when the prisons are over capacity. Voting against the expansion of the Electoral Commission’s role in combating electoral fraud. A 4% reduction in capital gains tax for landlords. Reducing the asylum and immigration budget without a credible plan for saving money. In short, he has voted exactly as Rishi Sunak tells him every single time. He has not voted in the interests of the
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of UK Politics
It’s quite a rarity to be able to say this, but next Christmas is now 366 days away because next year is, as far as I can tell, a leap year. Next year will also most likely see a General Election, unless Rishi Sunak decides for some bizarre reason to have an election campaign over Christmas. Barring the more minority parties, the current system for voting means that people realistically have a choice of Conservative (currently Steve Tuckwell in Uxbridge & South Ruislip), Labour or Liberal Democrats. Scientists are hard at work as we speak trying to determine whether 2024 will be a leap year. Here’s why you should vote Liberal Democrat, and perhaps more importantly, why you shouldn’t vote Conservative or Labour. In this article, I am going to refer to the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and if you fancy a bit of a challenge, you can try to predict which of those descriptors I apply to each of the major parties. The Ugly Just as a surprise for everyone, this is of course the Liberal Democrats. I kid, I kid, it’s obviously the Conservatives. Since coming to power 13 and a bit years ago, they have systematically made almost every aspect of life worse for UK voters. Schools are literally falling apart, doctors and nurses are regularly going on strike, inflation has been allowed to run rampant, and the Tories have spent their time focused on petty issues like the small boats “crisis” and London’s Ultra-Low Emissions Zone. When it comes to small boats, we are talking about 100,000 migrants arriving in the last five years, meaning around 20,000 a year compared to a population of around 70 million. To put the number in perspective, that’s around 0.03% of the UK population each year, which might as well be a rounding error. On top of that, of the 100,000 migrants arriving by small boat, some 92,000 of them submitted asylum applications, making them – by definition – asylum-seekers. In case you are wondering, that means they absolutely are not illegal migrants, but instead they are refugees with a legal right to be here until their application is reviewed and their case decided. In terms of the ULEZ, it is vital to remember two things, namely 1) that this was a Tory initiative introduced by Boris Johnson while he was Mayor of London, and 2) that MPs have absolutely no say or control over ULEZ, as this is a power deferred to the Greater London Assembly. As MP, Steve Tuckwell has no more power to influence ULEZ than literally any random member of public, therefore running his campaign on this basis was utterly despicable. I firmly believe that Uxbridge & South Ruislip have had enough of ugliness and will oust the Tories at the very next opportunity. The Bad In this category, I am going to put Labour. This isn’t for any specific policy at this time, as they have not yet released their formal manifesto for the next election. Rather it is for what they have already said they will do, or more specifically what they won’t do. As those of you who have read my blog previously will already know, I am a huge believer in the idea of Proportional Representation. At its heart, this is the principle that the amount of legislative power enjoyed by a party should be proportionate to the amount of votes they receive in an election. Hopefully this isn’t a particularly controversial statement, but the important thing to remember is that our current system doesn’t do this. Instead, votes cast for smaller parties are ignored, while votes cast for the largest party are magnified. This is why the Tories are currently enjoying 100% of the legislative power in Parliament despite only receiving 46% of the votes in the last election. So why am I talking about the Tories in a paragraph about Labour? The answer to that is in the position that Starmer and the Labour leadership have adopted, namely an opposition to Proportional Representation. Ultimately this means that it doesn’t matter what policies they have in the short- and medium-term, they are committed to handing absolute power back to the Tories at some point in future. This makes them part of the problem, not the solution. In my opinion, this is bad. The Good Without question, the Liberal Democrats are going to have some policies that you disagree with. Importantly, however, the main focus is on changing the electoral system so that your vote matters and your voice is heard. You can fundamentally disagree with me on everything else that I believe in, but I very much doubt that we disagree on the idea that you should have a say in who makes the law. Likewise, one of the objections I hear regularly is that switching to Proportional Representation will allow far right parties into Parliament. Unfortunately I think that objection is outdated – the far-right are already there, and our First Past The Post system helped them to get into power. We Liberal Democrats believe in a fair society for everyone rather than just the rich or just our supporters. As such, we will always fight for fair representation in parliament and fair treatment of everyone no matter their status of birth. To my mind, that makes us the Good in this analogy. We are clearly not the only good ones out there, but we are the largest truly progressive party, and unfortunately if we collectively want to see a more proportionate system of elections introduced, the progressive parties need to stand aside for one another. I’ll see you on the campaign trail next year. Come and talk to me if you want to discuss any of my points or my wider manifesto. Merry Christmas to those celebrating, and a Happy New Year.
5 Parliamentary Anachronisms
No, I am not doing an article bashing the Conservative Party, or at least not with that as the sole focus. Instead I wanted to cover some of the oddities of Parliament that stem from tradition rather than any reasoned process. As such, here are some of the weirder parliamentary anachronisms that we can see today. Minimalist Architecture In somewhere like the Palace of Westminster, it is hard to believe that the phrase “minimalist” could accurately apply to any part of the building. Nevertheless, the heart of our democracy, the debate chamber in the House of Commons, is woefully undersized. At the moment the UK has 650 elected Members of Parliament. Some of those do not take their seats, so the actual number of active MPs is a little below that, but the capacity of the debate chamber is well below that level, around 427 seats. This is why many of the well-attended debates see Members cramming into the chamber, with a significant number of elected officials reduced to standing to watch the proceedings. Oath of Allegiance I mentioned above that some seats are not filled at all. This is mostly due to the fact that the elected representatives of Sinn Fein do not take their seats, entirely because they will not swear the oath of allegiance. This is wholly understandable, as the oath is a personal declaration of intent to follow the orders of the monarch of the UK, while the whole purpose of Sinn Fein as a political entity is to separate Northern Ireland from the UK. Such an oath would directly contradict their party’s stance, so they refuse. Incidentally, it is not possible for an MP to either draw their salary or speak and vote in debates until they swear the oath, so that means that the current system specifically excludes representation for anti-monarchists. The Mace If you see a large ceremonial mace in front of the Speaker’s chair and wonder “what is that for?”, this is the section for you. This isn’t a table decoration or a paper weight, instead it is the symbol of the Crown in Parliament. By tradition, the monarch is not allowed to set foot in the House of Commons, so instead the Mace is present. Bizarrely, this means that any debates or decisions made without the Mace being present are not valid and will not be recorded in official proceedings. When Parliament is prorogued (brought to a temporary close) the Mace is removed, symbolically withdrawing the authority of the Commons to make any decisions. The Mace is returned at the Opening of Parliament. Member Behaviour One of the odder things about Parliamentary process is the way that MPs refer to one another. In short, naming another MP is taboo. Addressing another MP directly is likewise not permitted. Instead all comments are made to the Speaker and any referrals to active MPs is made by referencing their constituency (e.g. the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip). This is intended to increase the decorum of debate by stopping MPs from outright insulting one another, but I think it’s fair to conclude that Prime Minister’s Questions demonstrates that the quality of debate is woeful. Voting At the cry of “Division” by the Speaker, the Commons officially enters a closed state for voting for a motion. This is a literal reference, in that the lobby doors used to be physically locked to ensure that MPs didn’t vote multiple times or that outsiders weren’t called in to cast a vote they shouldn’t have. You might think that in this modern era of connectivity, there would be a move towards using that for votes so that more business could be done. Sadly not, the division is still counted by the MPs present physically walking through one of two side lobbies, casting their vote by tapping their membership card onto a scanner (a recent upgrade to each corridor having its own set of counters who would report back after a manual count). This is one of the more egregious anachronisms for various reasons. First, it is not particularly friendly to disabled MPs or those dealing with a new child to force them to physically move through a voting lobby. Secondly, it is grossly unfair to restrict MPs who cannot be in Westminster from voting. This is less of a problem for a London constituency as it is for one of the outer Scottish regions, which might be seven or eight hours away from Parliament. This is an area which could easily be modernised for the good of the country. A modern electronic voting system would be very simple to set up, and would reduce the time needed for divisions from 20 minutes or so to under a minute. With an app-based voting system and biometric protection, MPs would be able to cast their vote from anywhere in the world, allowing them to spend more time in their constituencies.
Ruislip Reshuffle
Reshuffles are hardly a rarity in politics. Sometimes there’s a really good reason for them, other times they baffle everyone observing the events. Hillingdon Liberal Democrats have just carried out a reshuffle this month, and in the interest of openness, here’s what has happened and why. Blaise Bows Out Those of you who follow my blog or my Twitter know that I was heavily involved in Blaise Baquiche’s campaign in Uxbridge and South Ruislip earlier this year. Everyone involved had great fun, but it didn’t get the result we were looking for, unfortunately. That said, I and others assumed that we would continue to work with Blaise into the General Election, but circumstances had other ideas. Blaise had to move recently, partly as a result of his father dying during the pandemic, and therefore found himself living in Chelsea and Fulham. At the same time, Chelsea and Fulham found themselves needing a parliamentary candidate. As such, this was a serendipitous match made in heaven, and Blaise reluctantly stood down as candidate for Uxbridge & South Ruislip. Jonathan Joins In In the wake of Blaise’s departure, the head of our local party, Jonathan Banks, elected to step up. Jonathan previously campaigned as parliamentary candidate for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner, and he indicated that he would happily resume this role for the good of the party and the constituents. Jonathan asked me what we ought to do about this, given I was currently the candidate for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner. Rexy Relocates As I had already been doing a lot of campaigning in Uxbridge with Blaise and as I felt that Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner would be left in very capable hands, I was more than happy to move my candidacy to Uxbridge and South Ruislip. I still get to be “Rexy For Ruislip”, the constituency is a little closer to home, and I am very happy that Jonathan is stepping into the role that I am vacating. I have very much enjoyed getting to know Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner during my candidacy, and I look forward to the opportunity to get to know Uxbridge and South Ruislip just as well. Final Thoughts Many thanks to Blaise for all his hard work – he will be missed. And thank you to Jonathan for stepping in to the candidate role again. Hopefully this is the start of a really solid period of development for Hillingdon.
What do Liberal Democrats Stand For?
A regular question asked is “What Do X Political Party stand for”. For most parties, this can be summed up in a single phrase, but it can be more difficult for the Liberal Democrats. So this article is about what the main political parties stand for. Conservatives What they stand for: rich people. I’m not going to sugarcoat this, the current Tories are all about looking after the wealthy in society, hence they make tax cuts that affect the rich far more than the poor and cut the services that the poor rely on. It’s fair to say that the Conservatives simply do not care about you if you don’t have a Coutts bank account or make large donations to their party. Labour What they stand for: ostensibly they are focused on helping the working class. In reality, their current stance is almost entirely a continuation of the current government. They support staying out of the EU, they have not proposed any sort of tax reform to specifically target the rich other than closing the non-domiciled loophole, and they have refused to back democracy by supporting the Proportional Representation demanded by their own party. In short, Labour really are not demonstrating that they care about anything other than getting into power. Reform What they stand for: think “Britain First”. This is a party for those who look at the Conservatives and think “nope, not fascist enough”. Frankly I am astonished that they are as popular as they are, as they have shown that they only really care about white British people and want to pursue very much an isolationist strategy for trade and international relations. A Reform government would likely ruin our international standing for years. I honestly do not know who they care about, because all of their policies seem to be largely based on hatred of “other” groups. Green What they stand for: the Greens put the environment first, with all of their other policies deriving from the idea that the country needs to still exist in 100 years or so. The Greens are advocates of Proportional Representation and rejoining the EU, so in many ways are natural allies of the Liberal Democrats. Unfortunately they are a very small party indeed, with only a single MP at present, who is due to step down at the next election. As such, anyone voting for them might want to consider whether their vote would be better placed with the Liberal Democrats. Liberal Democrats Saving the best until last, the Liberal Democrats essentially stand for fairness as a broad concept. This is best exemplified by the drive to make votes match power share in parliament, bringing proper democracy to the UK for the first time. As a party we are wholly committed to peace, with all of our MPs voting to make statements that we in the UK wanted a ceasefire in Gaza, something opposed by the Conservatives and largely abstained on by Labour. Our love of fairness extends to both the NHS and carers, and we believe firmly in a “cradle to grave” health service, which means that all medical staff need to be comfortable with their remuneration and benefits, and that our NHS buildings, such as Hillingdon Hospital, are properly renovated and modernised. We also firmly believe in education. It is unconscienable that we cut the education budget year after year, and we believe that both schools and universities should be available free of charge at the point of service. Finally, the elephant in the room, we believe that we must urgently rebuild our relationship with Europe. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we ought to rejoin immediately (though that would be my preference!), but it does mean that we need to step back from the highly adversarial position we have taken with our European members. Overall, what do we stand for? the answer is so much, but it all falls into the category of “fairness”.
Hillingdon MPs Vote Against Child Safety
Yesterday saw an opportunity for MPs to do the right thing. Somewhat predictably, both of our Conservative MPs, David Simmonds and Steve Tuckwell, voted against the opposition day “Safety of School Buildings” bill, along with most of the rest of the Conservative MPs in Parliament. This was a sad day for Hillingdon, with both of our Conservative MPs nailing their colours to the mast for all to see, showing that both of them care far more about party politics than actually looking after our children. What Was This? This motion, one of the few that can be brought by the opposition parties, was a response to the recent news that many of our schools are dangerously delapitated. This was described recently as a “critical risk to life” by Jonathan Slater, who was permanent education secretary from 2016 to 2000 and who specifically asked the Chancellor at the time – Rishi Sunak – for funding to repair the crumbling infrastructure. Sunak refused, offering only a fraction of the amount actually needed. Now we have schools turning into ticking timebombs, and Sunak’s Conservatives are doing everything they can to pretend the problem isn’t real. Unfortunately for them, the problem is real. Unfortunately for the rest of us, the critical risk to life means that our children and vulnerable loved ones are in danger (remember that the exact same problematic material was also used in the construction of many NHS hospitals). This bill was the first step in a long path towards finding out the extent of the problem. This was an opportunity to step up and protect the most vulnerable in society, and unfortunately the Conservatives blocked it. Our Conservative MPs Hillingdon is “fortunate” enough to have two Conservative MPs at the moment, and both voted against this Bill, essentially voting to cover up the failings of the government and the Prime Minister. These are not the actions of anyone who cares about the safety of our children, so both David Simmonds and Steve Tuckwell should think about their duties to look after their constituents, and should both be ashamed of what they have done. Steve Tuckwell’s voting record is here, and David Simmonds’ is here.