19 October 2023 , 19:39
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The parliamentary by-elections yesterday offered us a dress rehearsal for the final “bye-bye!” poll next year.
And likely two more to come, in Blackpool South and Wellingborough, Northants, where Peter “Flasher” Bone has been suspended from the Conservatives.
That would make a grand total of 21 by-elections since 2019. Is this a record?
What a sorry tale of sexual misconduct, frustrated demands for peerages, rule-breaking, Partygate wrongdoing and jobbery.
Historically, death – usually natural but also assassination – was the cause of by-elections. And the grim reaper has been busy, taking four.
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Three resigned to take even better-paid jobs, one went to Holyrood, and two quit in a huff as they didn’t get a peerage from Boris Johnson. But the rest committed a variety of sackable offences, mostly sexual misconduct, and all but one were Conservatives.
Remember the Tory MP caught twice watching porn in the Commons chamber, and claimed he was looking at tractors? It would be hilarious if it weren’t so sickening.
These people were elected to serve the public, but some simply didn’t know how to behave. Yesterday’s Tamworth poll, after the resignation of Chris “Bottom” Pincher due to groping allegations, symbolises the rotten state of Westminster politics.
I’m sure this stuff goes on all the time, and is only now coming to light because of new rules and greater oversight of MPs’ conduct.
People who work in the big Gothic shed by the Thames feel more confident about reporting bad behaviour by the little-god lawmakers. And the next generation had better learn the lesson that they can’t get away with it in future.
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The government is “reviewing” its promise to honour the triple lock for the state pension as it’s deemed too generous.
For “under review” read “the axe”. Wages are growing by 8.5%, but ministers claim this headline rate includes bonuses for nurses and other public sector workers.
They want to rat on their pledge by giving only 7.8%, the so-called underlying rate of pay rises, robbing old folk of £74 annually.
This chiselling scam would save the Treasury £2billion a year, taken from pensioners to fund a Tory tax-cut election campaign.
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Look for the detail in pickpocket Chancellor Hunt’s financial statement on November 22, his last chance to buy votes at the expense of pensioners.
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The Wombles are making a comeback, 50 years after they were on the telly.
They never really went away. They’ve been running the country, into the ground, from their burrows under Wimbledon Common.
Mop-haired Great Uncle Bulls**t , surly Tobertory (Lee Anderson), and Orinoitall (Jacob Rees-Mogg) come up at night in Parliament Square.
“Underground, overground..!” The Wombles eventually disappeared for a time, which is about right.