Question Time 27th June 2024
The Panel:
Andrew Mitchell (Conservative)
Yvette Cooper (Labour)
Stephen Flynn (SNP)
Leyla Moran (LibDem)
Venue: Birmingham
In recent QT reviews, we’ve spotted an over-representation of the never-had-a-job community in a parliament that promises to be overloaded with policy, research and advocacy types after the election. The Labour candidate in this reviewer’s constituency, although she presents as an ordinary local lass, turns out to be a former Lambeth councillor and Bell Pottinger lobbyist. I’m indebted to Madeline Grant of the Daily Telegraph, who must read this column and has been motivated to some extra ‘amateur digging’ – especially via the Labour Party’s identity kit ‘about me’ website profiles.
Madeline has unearthed a cadre consisting of councillors, public sector employees, staffers from charities, unions and think tanks, party officials, lobbyists and PR and public affairs wallahs. *Deep breath*. Wonks, pollsters, former MEPs, journalists and Labour luminaries’ offspring. The latter includes Sue Gray’s son, Liam Conlon, the candidate for Beckenham and Penge. It was Sue Gray who, when a civil servant, skewered Boris Johnson with her ‘Partygate’ report. Madeline also discovered that six members of the Labour Party NEC have been parachuted into safe seats.
As for tonight’s panel, Stephen Flynn has never had a job. After college and more college, he was engaged by the SNP, becoming a councillor and then an MP (Aberdeen South) by age 31. Yvette Cooper Balls graduated in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Balliol College, Oxford, before undertaking further study at the London School of Economics. As a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard, the current MP for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford worked for the (Bill) Clinton presidential campaign and managed only one year as a financial journalist at the Independent before entering parliament in 1997.
Keeping it in the bubble family bubble, the 55-year-old’s husband is former MP Ed Balls, a journalist and TV presenter whose brother, Andrew, was once a Financial Times journalist. Daughter Ellie (she/her) is a RADA-trained actor, director and theatremaker. In her RADA profile, Ms Cooper Jr notes her linguistic talent in both received pronunciation and Yorkshire, while claiming to be from Hackney.
Herein lies the tale of her parents’ expenses thievery. With both Mr and Mrs Cooper-Balls being MPs in the provinces, their various primary and secondary residences were heartily flipped to avoid Capital Gains Tax. The dishonesty became beyond parody when Mr Ed lost his seat in the 2015 general election and received a £44,000 relocation award for moving back to somewhere he’d never left. Tut tut.
Privately educated Layla Moron taught in one of the private schools she pretends to detest before becoming the Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon. The 41-year-old pan-sexual half-Palestinian’s father was a was a high-ranking diplomat. Ms Moron’s partner is Rosy Cobb, a Liberal Democrat press officer suspended from the party following a scandal involving the selling of voter data.
Andrew Mitchel is a hereditary Conservative MP. His father was Sir David Mitchell, member for Basingstoke from 1964 to 1983 and for Hampshire North West from 1983 until he retired in 1997. Andrew hit the headlines in 2012 after the Hampstead-born 68-year-old called a police officer a pleb when told to dismount his bicycle at a Downing Street security gate.
What a shower!
Those plebs are in for a rough ride after the election. A completely detached media-political-legal elite in their London Labour bubble will pursue policies such as Net Zero, mass uncontrolled immigration and ‘progressive’ identity politics laws, which defy logic beyond the tangled tautology of a Britain-hating blob. Misery awaits the other 99% of the population. The words ‘lawful’ and ‘rebellion’ spring to mind.
Readers will be saddened to hear that this reviewer has parted company with his pupil, Mr AI Bot. Mr Bot was engaged on a twelve-month indenture, which QT Review HQ haven’t renewed. He started off well enough but became odder and odder. Apparently, third parties tightening up on their copyright hampered his endeavours. Charging by the word, he billed double for researching Question Time. Tells you something. All is not lost. He has been replaced by a free intern, Miss Chat. Fresh to the role, at the moment everything is ‘storied’ and ‘vibrant.’ I shall think of a way to beat it out of her.
As for the venue of Birmingham, earlier this year the city was declared bankrupt by its Labour council. Meanwhile, the good citizens kept on voting for them and turfed out a Conservative mayor in May’s local elections.
Speaking of which, myself and Mrs AWS enjoy our days out on the train. Opposition politicians keep insisting upon us that nothing in this country works anymore. The rattler is not exempt. The wine is sometimes warm. On our last trip, roast swan was off. Instead, the steward presented me with a sausage sandwich, as if I were sat among the mobility scooters in Morrison’s cafe. Every cloud has a silver lining. Now that we’ve given up on First Class, we can go further on our budget. At the end of next month, we will visit Birmingham, making tonight’s QT a kind of mission prep or top-up tan.
Speaking of our budget, to cope with the post-pandemic cost of living crisis, I took an evening position in the supermarket where Mrs AWS and her sister work. The other day, sitting in our little mess, a new member of staff asked how long I’d been there.
‘You mean since I was head-hunted, recruited, poached, sourced by an elite recruitment agency and given an offer I couldn’t refuse?’ I replied as if an effortlessly self-important newly promoted mid-shipman.
‘No,’ a junior colleague interrupted, ‘since your wife got you a job.’
From the mouths of babes, sucklings and sixteen-year-olds sent by the Job Centre…
Incidentally, if I were as dishonest as the Cooper-Balls, I’d write articles about these days out to make them tax-deductible. Shhhh, don’t tell.
***
The first question was about knife crime, with an audience member telling of a murdered friend. He was unimpressed by party manifestos which promised things as AI recognition, tags and reducing stop and search. He would prefer Reform UK’s policy (who he pointed out weren’t present on tonight’s programme) of tougher sentences and more stop and search.
We have to act, said Yvette, with comprehensive not token measures, such as mandatory referral to a youth panel. That’ll terrify them. We must ban online sales of the likes of ‘panther’ knives. Prevention should include a young mentor’s sure-start type scheme for teenagers.
Question one wasn’t encouraging me to go on my day trip. Neither were the local photos on the front of the panellists’ desk, which looked somewhat brutalist. In keeping with the gist of the question, one pictured building looked like a Central American super-max prison – but turned out to be the local library.
Andrew Mitchell was sensitive to the use of stop and search and to facial recognition, assuming the hoodlums take their masks off. He wanted tougher sentences. There was a bill before parliament but it had been abandoned because of the election.
A loon in the audience seemed to suggest the stabbers were the victims. Fellow loons applauded, but perhaps because the comments were phrased as an attack on the government.
In dashing pink, Layla Moron blamed the stabbings on mental health ‘going downhill.’ Stop and search is a waste of time. It’s the stabbers who are full of fear which is why they carry knives. Youth workers and mental health drop-in hubs are what is needed. Preventing murders by stopping and searching suspects is discriminatory.
The black community don’t trust the police, said a tinged lady in the audience. Let’s say the unmentionable. The ‘community’ are against stop and search because it hampers the pushing of drugs.
The idea that bad people do bad things unless you clobber them didn’t seem to have sunk in.
Why is it happening, wondered Stephen Flynn. The fabric of society is scarred from 14 years of austerity. Public spending must go up. Pubic services must be improved.
He referenced the great success that is Glasgow but forgot to add that drinking and fighting has been replaced by drugs, drugs, drugs, drugs and more drugs, with drugs-related deaths now off the scale.
Back to the questioner. You’re making excuses for them. It’s a basic question of telling the difference between wrong and right.
Exactly. But the political classes are only interested in games with words that justify their upper-middle-class London social constructs.
Question two. Why should we vote for any of you? Quite. Vote Reform.
Because of tax and spending, said Andrew. The Council Tax in broke Birmingham has just risen by 20%. I must say, if Rishi’s campaign were as impressive as Andrew’s toupe, the Tories would be twenty points ahead, not twenty points behind.
Why vote for Yvette? Trust has fallen, she suggested, but just in the Tories. Partygate. Chaos. She became very animated but the audience didn’t clap. We need change, vote for Yvette!
The vast majority of people in politics, began Stephen, fiddle their expenses, think of the voters as plebs and embezzle camper vans. In fact, he didn’t say that but rather listed loonie asperations encouraging Net Zero and mass immigration – with no attempt to explain how it could be done in practice or how much it would cost.
Question three was about climate change and was asked by Erin, a first-time voter.
La Bruce pointed out Scotland is missing all its climate targets and is still issuing oil and gas licences. But, Stephen informed Erin, you get free university tuition in Scotland. Net Zero is an economic opportunity for Scots…to sit in the dark and cold, eating raw food.
Layla Moron described an existential threat to the entire planet. The LibDem manifesto commits to planting 60,000,000 trees and doubling the amount of land that is wild while building more new houses than the other parties.
Depressingly, Andrew agreed with her and added that vast amounts of taxpayer’s money are already being spent on this ‘agenda.’
A loon in the audience wanted a green new deal to solve the climate crisis, austerity and the cost of living crisis all in one go. The fools applauded him.
And therein lies the problem. All the political parties are committed to cast-iron London bubble agendas – no matter how nonsensical.
Next on my agenda – sleep!
© Always Worth Saying 2024
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