Question Time 9th June 2022
The Panel:
Chris Philp (Conservative)
Wes Streeting (Labour)
Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat)
Rory Stewart (Former Minister)
Tom Harwood (GB News)
Venue: Dorking
I had a friend who farmed. An excellent man, one of those irritating people who’s good at everything, he husbanded an impressive acreage stocked with pedigree herds. At agricultural college, he earned top marks in all put before him while representing the county in any sport he put his hand to.
One sharp Debatable Lands early spring day, the best herd’s best ewe delivered an excellent looking specimen. But all was not well. The vet was called. No doubt the beast’s temperature was taken, and its pulse. No doubt the poor thing was asked to say ‘arrr’ (or baaaa) before a diagnosis was delivered. It’s predicament was defined by a long veterinary word which translated to a brain stuck to a skull instead of sitting comfortably in a sack of fluid. There was a cure and a free one at that. Each morning, as a low lying sun emerging from the southeast began to sparkle upon the frost-bound fells, a successful hunt of a tidy farm yard and nearby paddock (because the poorly animal soon cottoned on) ensured lambsie received her daily, therapeutic, cruel to be kind, firm, hard, farmer’s welly kick to the forehead.
Appropriately my friend’s farm sat within the parliamentary acreage of The Right Honourable Roderick James Nugent Stewart OBE FRSGS FRSL, an individual who first thing every morning (perhaps by a butler while Rory completes The Times crossword with one hand and translates Kierkegaard into Sanscrit with the other) deserves a vigorous blow about the head.
In a comprehensive 2010 New Yorker Magazine contribution, which amongst other things exposed some of the ridiculous exaggerations in Rory’s CV, Mathew Paris confided to journalist Ian Parker,
“I think Rory might fly very high and he might just drift and fizzle out.” He [Paris] said that the initial concern of the Conservative leadership was that Stewart might prove to be “not really a sticker, not a stayer.”
Since then Rory has (selectively and in rough chronological order) been elected to the House of Commons as Tory MP for Penrith and the Border, been on the HoC Defence Committee, been Minister for the Environment, Minister of State for International Development, Minister of State for Africa and Minister of State for Prisons. A member of the National Security Council, Secretary of State for International Development, prominent in the Scottish referendum ‘No’ campaign and prominent in the Brexit referendum ‘Remain’ campaign. Stood in the Tory leadership election.
(Deep breath)
Married a dippy American, had the party whip removed, stood down from Parliament, left the Tory Party, stood as a miserably unsuccessful candidate in the London mayoral election, become a fellow of Yale University, taken his wife and young family to live in Jordan, sat beside me on the train from Oxenholme to Euston, appeared in voluminous media work, including a BBC series on Lawrence of Arabia, and delivered a baby while on the phone to my sister-in-law.
(Phew)
Paris wasn’t wrong. Stewart is a flitter. His lastest flea like leap, as if from the head of an infested farm animal, is back to where he started and, for once, is no laughing matter. However he is introduced tonight by fake Fiona Bruce of the fake BBC, Stewart is representing The Britain Project, a Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair vehicle and forthcoming attempt at a coup d’etat.
Our country is entering dangerous waters.
Stewart is a senior figure within The Britain Project, along with Blair and an array of politicians, media types, advertising people and pollsters. Like Nazi ex-pats in a late 1940s street cafe in Montevideo, they dream of revisiting an old order with Blair restored to influence via a new Macron style En Marche political movement. Their strategy is simple. A Common Purpose-esque operation to trash Britain and everything British with a thinly disguised Blairism offered as a solution to the resulting disruption. They pray for fuel price increases. They hope for rail stikes.
Besides Blair and Stewart, their people include television’s Trevor Philips, polling’s Peter Kelner and uber Remainer and former MP David Gauke. Many other London bubble Remainers and EU Quislings wait in the wings, keeping a low profile.
Make no mistake, the present Boris derangement syndrome hysteria is a precursor to an attempted coup.
***
As for the ridiculously exaggerated CV. A twenty-year-old Stewart did tutor royal princes Harry and William, but only for two weeks during a 1993 summer holiday. Stewart had left Balliol, amla mater to Boris and Jo Johnson, with a degree in PPE in 1992. Rory’s much-vaunted service in the Black Watch was as a post-Eaton 18-year-old on a 9-month programme which included a short commission as a probationary temporary second lieutenant.
The charity in Afghanistan that he ‘established and ran’ wasn’t established by him, wasn’t run by him and wasn’t a charity. A matter covered in this previous QT Review.
‘Governor in Iraq’, following Blair’s illegal invasion, translates from Rory-speak into English as Green Zone non-job of Deputy Governor of Maysan and Dhi Qar where nothing could be done other than hiding while the locals ran riot. Similarly, on the Rory calendar, walking across Afghanistan for 32 days takes two years.
***
Oh my God. Leyla Moron (Liberal Democrat). Gasp. Question zero, what about Leyla Moron’s make-over? Wow.
Question one, competence and leadership, should Boris go?
Rory Stewart (The Britain Project) thought Johnson should go and claimed every Tory MP on the Government payroll will have voted for Boris (which they won’t have) meaning 75% of backbenchers did not support the prime minister.
Chris Philps was more enthusiastic. Boris had won last Monday’s vote of confidence and colleagues should accept the result. The important matter was policy, such as the Online Harm Bill and recently announced Housing Bill, not politicking in Westminster. The electoral verdict of the voters at the next general election would be what counts.
Chis Philp (Conservative) is a Grammar school boy from South London. After taking a First in Physics at Oxford, he completed a Master’s Degree in Particle Physics (or some such). After graduation, he pursued a business and management consultancy career before being elected MP for Croydonistan South in 2015. His father is the interesting Brian Philps, pictured appropriately on the far right and wearing a poppy.
A Bromley Grammar School old boy and top archaeologist, Mr Philps senior is director of Kent Archaeological Rescue Unit and an Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Kent at Canterbury. A former UKIP candidate, according to News Shopper, “Mr Philp has led more than 600 archaeological projects with the most important being 42 years work in the historic centre of Dover, where he discovered three Roman forts.”
Lush Layla, with a fresh perm, new colour and a new pair of specs, said if Boris Johnson does have the confidence of his MPs he doesn’t have the confidence of the people. Boris lacks integrity. People want a good old fashioned sanctimonious lecture from a Palestinian hottie babe. No, she didn’t say that, good old fashioned British integrity is what actually slipped from her sweet, kissable lips.
Layla Moron is the cartoon caricature loopy Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon. The pan-sexual part-Palestinian loon was educated privately at the exclusive Roedean School. After graduating from Imperial College, London, Layla taught at the exclusive International School of Brussels before becoming an MP in 2012.
An audience member, who sounded Australian, called Boris shameless. A pattern of behaviour, he doesn’t care.
Tom Harwood (GB News) suggested the vote hadn’t been about Partygate but about the juddery quality of the Government’s performance. Tom made the mistake of comparing Johnson’s election promises to a post-pandemic political landscape. On firmer ground, he added that Boris needed to deliver a clear policy agenda that will work.
How about a public vote of confidence, wondered another audience member.
This is who Boris Johnson is, said nasty Wes Streeting (Labour). The majority of Tory MPs tolerate the intolerable and look the other way. Wes churned out his special advisor administered strap lines. Fifteen tax rises. Something was the highest ever since the war. Something else was dropping. Hospitals are opening food banks to feed poorly paid £40,000 a year fat nurses with brand new 4x4s and three foreign holidays year.
There is a hole in British politics, revealed Rory. One to be filled by himself and Tony Blair, he was thinking. Tom challenged him, Boris is centrist and doing everything a centrist like Rory would do.
The centre is about integrity, countered Rory. Hahahahahaha. Blair? Integrity? Hahahahahahahaha?
Question 2, do you support the forthcoming railway stike?
Wes didn’t want a strike and claimed the RMT union don’t want one either. They will not want to lose a days pay, he pointed out. He’s not wrong. Around here, 350 iron road miles north of Dorking, the Top Link men are on a minimum of £90,000+ a year, in a hereditary job for life with a massive pension. Their children go to private schools. They own properties abroad. Good luck to them, but they shouldn’t be allowed to strike.
Bruce asked again if Wes supported the industrial action. He waffled.
Leyla (has she had her teeth done as well? I think she has) supported the right to strike but this isn’t the right time. People have to get to work. She referenced £40,000 a year nurses again while wearing a lime green jacket over a black part see-through top accessorised with a gold medallion and a silver necklace containing a single diamond. To be blunt, Puffins, I would give up my £90,000 a year job reading The Sun while the train drives itself to emigrate to Oxfordshire for a chance to get to work with Layla.
The commuter-land audience wasn’t keen on the strike, nor were they enthusiastic about nationalising the railways, which was another of Wes’s ideas.
Tom called the RMT dinosaurs who wanted to freeze the railways in the past. We should ban train strikes and replace the unions with staff associations. Rory agreed, signalmen are on £44,000 a year (and the rest, Rory). The RMT have a monopoly. He suggested a pay review body rather than industrial action. The public shouldn’t be held to ransom.
An audience member made an important point. When they strike it affects all of us, in a way that us being on strike doesn’t affect them.
Chris Philps had put all of this into a private members bill that nobody had taken any notice of. It had been in the last Tory manifesto too but nobody had taken any notice of that either. It was now being ‘looked at’. Chris was against the strike and reminded us that Wes and the Labour Party are in hoc to their trades union paymasters.
An angry Wes said the RMT don’t ‘affiliate’ to the Labour Party. Hmm. What’s that supposed to mean? Wes was suggesting the RMT don’t give money to Labour. He was lying. The RMT donates to Labour MPs. These donations appear in their declared Parliamentary interests. This example is from the sad old millionaire ‘two houses and a boat’ Corbanista IRA leftie Comrade John McDonnell:
Name of Donor: RMT
Address of donor: Unity House 39 Charlton Street, London NW1 1DU
Amount of donation, or nature and value if donation in kind: £8,325
Donor status: trade union
(Registered 10 January 2020)
Perhaps lying Wesley should resign?
Baby faced Wesley Paul William Streeting is the Labour MP for Ilford North in occupied East Londonistan. A graduate of Selwyn College, Cambridge, Mr Streeting has never had a job. A fuller QT Review biography of nasty Wes can be found here.
Low points being he is an openly ‘gay’ former Head of Education at the pro-grooming organisation Stonewall. His partner, Joseph Dancey, is ‘a self-employed communications and public affairs adviser.’ In 2018 Skwawkbox called out Mr Streeting as a nasty bully, especially regarding his behaviour towards Puffin’s favourite Dianne Abbott. Wesley threatened to sue, but didn’t.
Question three was about the cost of fuel. A giant, brand new fat nurse’s (or bone idle train driver’s) 4×4 costs £100 to fill with petrol.
Chris saw this as an international problem solved by Chris’s existing policies. Petrol will get cheaper if more people are in work and there are more post-Brexit trade deals. Really? Wes needed an emergency budget to put money into people’s pockets. How does that work, Wes? Where does the money come from? 46% of the cost of petrol is tax, Tom reminded us.
A lady in the audience wanted public transport to be prioritised. They’re on strike, love. Hard lines. Showing her ignorance of life outside of a privileged outer-London public transport rich bubble, she boasted she doesn’t have a car and manages just fine.
Layla was going to cut VAT on everything. She’d been contacted by a nurse. Is your humble author the only person in this country who isn’t a nurse? Single mum, two kids. I’ll stop you there, Layla, tell your constituent to get married, problem solved.
Rory was surprised by the Government’s behaviour and wondered why VAT hadn’t been cut on fuel. He wanted to cut other taxes too but didn’t say how the resulting shortfall in Government income would be made up. Chris chanted of existing Government policy, such as research and development tax breaks.
Layla played the trump card. The global warming crackpot LibDems are going to abolish petrol, therefore making its price irrelevant.
Question four was about the housing crisis. There are three reasons for the housing crisis; immigration, immigration and immigration. None of the panellists or audience members dared to address the real issue.
Tom is a rent boy, the only one on the panel. Oi. I mean he rents a property rather than owns one. Not enough homes are being built. We have to build hundreds a day, every day, just to accommodate the illegal immigrants arriving by dingy at Dover, he didn’t say.
Tom Hedley Fairfax Harwood is a political correspondent with GB News. Formerly he was under gin-soaked Greggs masturbator and Hull Universtiy graduate Fatty Fawkes at the pale imitation of Going-Postal that is the Spad obsessed Murdoch owned Guido Fawkes web disappointment. Privately educated at The Perse School, Cambridge, Tom is a Durham University politics graduate.
Layla, who’s in favour of mass uncontrolled immigration, worried for her constituents in unaffordable Oxfordshire. She was going to build lots of new houses but only with the consent of local residents who don’t want any new houses built.
Wes referenced miserable living conditions in his own overcrowded third-world welcoming constituency. Infrastructure and public services have been inexplicably pushed to the limit while Wes is in favour of mass, uncontrolled, unlimited immigration. God knows what Chris was on about. He seemed to suggest that selling an existing rented house to its occupant was the same as building a new house for somebody else. Which it isn’t.
Sold stock needs to be replaced with new social housing. It’s difficult to do, said Rory. The answer was to build more high quality rented accommodation. The Government hasn’t budgeted that money and it won’t happen.
Rory is an expert on housing. He has a house in Dufton, near Appleby, from when he was the local MP. Very nice it is too. He has a large family home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which he bought when he was going to be an academic at Harvard before suddenly deciding to be an MP. He must have rooms in London. There is a castle and family estate in Scotland; Broich House near Crieff in Perthshire. It’s at the end of that long tree-lined avenue to the left that the Google car isn’t allowed down.
Rory is in favour of mass uncontrolled immigration and the accompanying house building – as long as it’s not near him.
© Always Worth Saying 2022
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