Question Time 7th November 2024
The Panel:
Sarah Jones (Labour)
Matt Vickers (Conservative)
Bonnie Greer (Author and Poet)
Tim Montgomerie (Journalist)
Venue: Hartlepool
Sarah Jones was first elected to parliament in 2017 and is the Labour MP for Croydon Central. Comrade Sarah is an old girl of the private £18,000 per annum Old Palace of John Whitgift School. Founder John Whitgift, a 16th-century Archbishop of Canterbury, rather like the modern-day BBC Question Time, travelled the land accompanied by a retinue of 800 horses while living well and professing a concern for ‘the poor’.
With an interest in equality equivalent to that of £30,000-an-hour Fake Fiona Bruce, the Archbishop accumulated a mammoth endowment that continues to this day and owns, amongst other things, Croydon’s Whitgift shopping centre. A graduate in History from Trevelyan College, Durham University, during Sarah’s studies she fell pregnant with her eldest son, Joseph. Now married to Ian and a proud mother of four, she lives in a comfortable home in the posh, Surrey, end of Croydon where a modern three-bedroom rabbit hutch house costs £600,000.
From there Sarah reflects on a career that includes running campaigns for the housing charity Shelter and the NHS Confederation. She has also been on the board of Wandle Housing Association, was a communications director for the 2012 Olympics and worked for Labour MP Mo Mowlam. Unconvincingly, Ms Jones describes this laundry list of government non-jobs and quangoland positions as, “Understanding business as I’ve worked in the private sector.”
As the new Minister of State at the Department of Energy Security And Net Zero, one assumes she walked and swam to Singapore on a recent £5,298 jolly paid for by retail billionaire Lord David Sainsbury. Other freebies include a donation of £2,500 from Croydon’s Grand Sapphire Hotel, £2,000 from Unite the Union and £2,500 from Beyond 2050, a hydrogen-specialist political strategy and communications agency.
Should energy ministers be taking money from hydrogen-specialist energy companies?
As for Croydon’s Grand Sapphire Hotel, there is an associated Grand Saphire Foundation whose cause is ‘to help families from poor backgrounds in Pakistan and assist them with the weddings of their daughters.’ House points deducted from any hard-hearted Puffin who denies the passion and romance of the sub-continent and is cynical enough to consider this a fake marriage immigration scam that part-funds the local MP.
Born two days before King Charles, Bonnie Greer (NHRN – Bonnie Hutchins), Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, is a writer and poet who makes her money as a box ticker on boards, TV programmes and in quangoland. A full QT Review biography of Bonnie can be found here. Residing in a £1 million+ apartment in London’s exclusive Soho, Ms Greer also hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. Brave readers who have forgotten what Bonnie looks like while pretending to be a somewhat less immodest Marie-Guillemine Benoist ‘Negresse’ can click on this link.
Bonnie’s mighty work, ‘Entropy’, described in a New York Times review as ‘painful’, is in an electoral college losing 1,126,182 places behind a certain Donald J Trump’s ‘The Art of The Deal’ in the Amazon best sellers list. Warming up for tonight’s Question Time, Ms Greer has already likened Tuesday’s presidential election win to the Holocaust, ‘… friends who fled Vienna in 1935 tell me …’ She added of Mr Trump, “..twice impeached former president, Jan. 6 coup leader, convicted #felon, adjudicated sexual abuser, and man who mismanaged the 2020 economic implosion and coronavirus disaster that killed more than 1 million..”
To which a number of Twitter sages responded to the effect, and yet, well, you know, he still trounced your Kamala Harris.
Fifty-three-year-old Tim Montgomerie was educated at The King’s School, Gutersloh, while his father, Major Hugh, served with the British Army On the Rhine at Bielefeld. After graduating in Economics and Geography from the University of Exeter, Mr Montgomerie joined the Bank of England as an analyst and became a staffer at the Conservative Party. A committed Christian and co-founder of the Centre for Social Justice, it was Tim who launched the inferior politics website Conservative Home. After a stint at the Times, Mr Montgomery became an advisor to Mr Johnson’s Number 10. Now long departed from Downing Street, Tim writes, podcasts and contributes to Times Radio and TalkTV.
Since the July 2024 election, Matt Vickers represents the Stockton West constituency on behalf of the Conservative Party. Between 2019 and 2024 he served as the MP for Stockton South. A graduate in Law And Management from Teesside University, Matt is the son of well-spoken of local builder Alexander Vickers and his hairdresser wife, Hilary. After university, the 41-year-old worked for Woolworths and Home Bargains before moving into local and then national politics.
The Shadow Minister for Crime, Policing And Fire, Mr Vickers recently took donations from a Mr John James (£16,000) and the interesting Cayzer Trust Company Limited (£9,500). According to a piece in the Morning Star, the Cayzer Trust’s wealth comes from founder Charles Cazyer, a self-made late-19th-century shipping magnate. With the proceeds from his shipping line, Charles bought vast country estates in Scotland, got himself elected to parliament in 1892 and was later made a hereditary lord.
The Cayzer Trust being the vehicle of the Cayzer family wealth, investments include Irn Bru brewers AG Barr and the Conservative Party, via donations to Red Wall Tory MPs. In 2020, The Times Rich List put the family wealth at an estimated £819 million.
***
Question one, what benefits could President Trump bring to the UK? Trade and inward investment suggested Sarah. We already enjoy £300 billion worth of business a year with America. But what specifically about Trump, wondered La Bruce? The two new governments have to work together, replied Sarah, to provide, say, ‘progress in the Middle East.’
Trade, echoed Matt, the US is our biggest trading partner. They didn’t tell us of that important truth throughout Brexit did they? It was all Europe, Europe, Europe. And defence, continued Matt, Trump’s as keen as we are to spend more on defence.
While all of this was going on, there was subtext. Not so much an elephant in the room, more of a Bonnie Greer sat at a table. In fact, a charging two-ton bull elephant in a foul temper might have looked less intimidating. The camera kept cutting to a fuming Ms Greer. In a black leather jacket atop a brown polo neck jumper, she was looking for bovver, her face set like a bag of chisels crossed with a slapped backside.
Donald Trump represents nothing more than the MAGA narrative, suggested an audience member. And more than half the American voters, La Bruce interupted. Benefits? He’s only in it for himself and his own base. Ominously, the carefully selected BBC audience applauded. The answer is ‘not many’ suggested another audience member. A benefit might be that we learn to rely less upon America. Our biggest trading partner? The major contributor to NATO?
What frightened Tim Montgomerie more than the Donald, was a weak and declining Biden. Some applause for that too. Trump is a strong man, whether you like him or not. This makes the world a safer place, albeit not via the ‘conventional route.’ No one would have feared a President Harris. Take on Trump at your peril. More applause. Has the BBC’s audience selecting machine failed like the Democract’s election stealing one?
Tim thought Putin to be evil, evil, evil. But Trump will offer a deal which, without any viable alternative, will include the loss of Ukranian territory to the Russians. A protracted argument broke out between an elderly gentleman and Tim. The gist of it being that the gentleman was unaware the Ukrainians were on the side of the Nazis in the war and the Soviets during the Cold War.
The Trump Derangement Syndrome began to rise. The next lady contributor was hysterical. Trump is going to abolish voting and rule until death. Bonnie’s turn. She is from New York, she began. No, she isn’t, she’s from Chicago. No matter. She recalls Trump’s New York in the nineteen-eighties. Trump is a totally immoral transactional businessman. His second term will change the post-Second World War concordat about how the world should work. You’re going to have to go to Mar A Lago and tell him what Britain is going to do for him. The special relationship means nothing to him. What has the UK done for the US? Na-da. The Labour government has to be savvy enough to understand about what they can do for Trump. Bases? Be a stooge? But we have nothing to give him?
As if it wasn’t ever so. Nixon, Clinton, Bush foreign policy were a charity?
Tim disagreed, Donald Trump liked the Queen… Stop, Tim, stop, interjected Bonnie. The castles, the Queen, what brings Americans over here, the theme park image, has nothing to do with the realities of your life.Tim shot back. To laughter, he referenced the golf courses here and Trump’s mother being Scottish.
Fake Fiona announced unilaterally that the vast majority of the UK doesn’t support Trump. Where does she get that from? Another phoney poll? That’s what the BBC was saying about American voters, until halfway through Tuesday’s count. An audience member mentioned how unhelpful Lammy’s comments have been. ‘Tyrant in a toupee’ got another airing. Everybody’s been rude about Trump at one time or another, pointed out Sarah, even his present vice president and Elon Musk.
Bonnie shook her head.
Even though the mud monster is now big enough to have trampled their village to smithereens, the dimmest of the villagers kept on throwing mud at him. A hairy person in the audience denounced Trump’s supporters in stronger language than ‘garage’. He couldn’t understand. The voters are wrong! ‘Convicted criminal’ got a mention. There is an important point here which is never made; not convicted by the law, but by a corrupt and politically partisan legal system.
A nut went over the top while Bonnie smirked. Women’s bodies. Race war. La Bruce made another unilateral announcement, based on a phoney opinion poll conducted from a sample of one television presenter. All of this is true – but they still voted for him.
Bonnie wanted to tell us a secret. We Americans are squeamish and never go anywhere. Enclosed between shiny sea and shiny sea, the man with the six-gun will protect you. Donald Trump appeals to those tropes. Bonnie declared the black people and Latino people are wrong. America is a fortress settled by those who escaped from elsewhere to do their own thing. This is the heart of the American experience. Donald understands that Americas want to be safe from YOU! Yes, you, people of Hartlepool.
‘Next week we’re in Basingstoke,’ interrupted La Bruce, somewhat spoiling the dramatic tension.
Time for another question. How can labour say they are investing in the future while increasing university tuition fees? The questioner, a third-year student, felt betrayed after believing the patent untruths told by Labour before the election. Universities are struggling and starved of resources, said Sarah. Are they? There’ll be a major reform next year which will solve everything so no more awkward questions during the seminar. Further education colleges needed to be better funded too, to provide the tradesmen that we need.
A sixth former spoke. There are no other opportunities for us, only university. Student debt is a discouragement. Modern apprenticeships are out of the area and places on them are very competitive. Get a job, love, problem solved. A university lecturer spoke. He wasn’t introduced or captioned as such but you can tell. The beard. The specs. The open collar. Although you couldn’t see them, there will have been leather pads on the elbows, hush puppies and an embarrassing stain or two on the trousers. There is a factory not quite in the Home Counties that churns them out.
A woman in the audience had five children. One is at Cambridge and one at a ‘middle of the road’ university. What a snob. Sarah said she understood as she has children in secondary school. Hmm.
Bonnie addressed the young man who asked the question. When she first came to Britain, what amazed her was that you didn’t have to pay to go to university. Bonnie had to start work at 19 to pay her way through college. What’s wrong with that? She had developed a ‘debt-based relationship with money’. That means she spent more than she earned, like an idiot. She lived from ‘pillar to post’. Presumably, the great woman of words meant ‘from hand to mouth.’ Maybe she should have studied brain surgery instead of poetry. Bonnie expected a Labour government to have equal education and higher education for all. But she didn’t know how it would be paid for.
Tim thought the universities were letting students down. The camera went back to a thunderous-looking lecturer. Tim wouldn’t mind if some universities closed as they do not all give a good enough education. We need a better return from universities.
***
Although two of Sarah’s children harmlessly attend school, a question mark sits beside her eldest son, Joseph, now a lobbyist at Flint Global. On its website, Flint Global boasts of advising international business and investors on policy, politics, regulation, and competition issues in the European, UK and Asia-Pacific markets to ‘maximise the value of investor assets’. They also remind us that following the July 2024 general election, the UK is led by Keir Starmer’s Labour Party and are brazen about their ability to sell influence and change policy in Westminster.
‘UK businesses need to understand the implications of this political change and how to engage effectively on the new government’s policy agenda. Members of our team at Flint are well-placed to advise on this. They have deep experience of working in and with Labour, both in government and in opposition, and include former Labour ministers, policy advisers and senior civil servants.’
And cabinet ministers’ children. Furthermore, on energy, Flint boasts their ‘specialist team’ can use a ‘unique insight and understanding’ to advise generators, network companies, retailers, and investors on how to ‘positively shape the policy debate’. No doubt through mummy’s seat in the cabinet.
Why is this allowed?
© Always Worth Saying 2024
The Goodnight Vienna Audio file
