What's a remainiac to do?

At the time of writing, the dreadful but effective Brexit Party was polling at  around 31%, incoherent Labour at 23%, resurgent Lib Dems at 16%, hapless Tories at 9%, the possible-surprise-package Greens at 9%, the dismal Change UK at 4% and the busted flush that is UKIP a puny 2%.

So, we have with Brexit and UKIP, two definite, unambiguous we-want-Brexit at all costs taking up 33% of the votes.

The other 67% features the unambiguous pro-remain/pro-people's vote/pro-revoke Article 50 parties at 29%. But here's the bit that's harder to quantify - who is pro-remain among those who still plan to vote for one of two increasingly pathetic major parties?

Among the 23% for Labour, there is a strong pro-remain component - there are still plenty of people, and not just Labour MEPs, who are pushing the line that a vote for Labour is a vote for a second vote and the best way to quell the charge of the Brexit Party in Brussels. And there are pro-remain Conservatives who may well be resigned to the fact that Theresa May's Brexit deal is as good as it will get for the UK outside the EU, but would open a quiet bottle of champagne if this whole Brexit shit-show was called off.

Those who are pro-remain probably add up to quite a bit more than the 33% Brexit/UKIP conglomerate. A Survation poll from May 17 revealed 51% support for remaining in the EU. This same poll found 68% of Labour voters and 47% of Conservative voters support remaining.

Obviously, we all know we can't put blind faith in polls but with around 67% of voters apparently not interested in either of the hardline Brexit parties, it would appear there is no appetite for a hard Brexit and possibly a diminishing appetite for any Brexit at all.

Thursday's European election will, most likely, be a protest vote for most people. If we leave the EU, as planned, on the new deadline of October 31, our latest batch of MEPs will only represent us for a few months. But for almost all of us, whether we're remainers or leavers, Thursday's vote is a chance for us to be heard. There is a lot of impotent rage right now. It has to come out somewhere and I'd rather it came out in the ballot box than on in riots on the streets.

For pro-remain voters - and I make no secret of being one of these people - it's a frustrating time. We don't want to see Nigel Farage emboldened any more. We look at him and his diabolical collection of candidates in utter despair. Ann Widdecombe hates women so much that she changed religion when the Church of England started ordaining us as vicars and, despite professing to be a Christian, she has no issue with pregnant women giving birth in shackles. Claire Fox takes a deliberately contrarian view on child pornography which is so awful that it's unclear whether she genuinely believes children would not be traumatised if they had to participate in simulated sex for the purposes of gratifying absolute sickos or she is just trolling for attention. Annunziata Rees-Mogg has had a long career writing articles about how to get rich off other people's misery. Lucy Harris has cheerfully said we'll just have to deal with 30 years of economic hardship as a price worth paying for Brexit.

To these awful charlatans, along with Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, Brexit hardships and job losses are for the little people. If you genuinely believe any of these people give a damn about you, I have a box of fishnet condoms in the boot of my car to sell you.

But it's too easy for me to sit here and slag off these people. I could sit her all night pulling them apart forensically but it's not going to make a difference. It won't change minds. It won't win hearts. If anything, every time a milkshake is thrown, it strengthens the resolve of the "LEAVE MEANS LEAVE!" crowd.

My fellow remainers and I should be pushing a positive case for remaining in the EU. This should have been the case back in 2016. There are so many benefits we will lose, many of which have not occurred to most people, particularly in the event of a disastrous no-deal Brexit.

International Development Secretary Rory Stewart was seen the other day quite rightly pointing out that a no-deal Brexit is not a destination -  it is stunning that he is not seen as a more serious leadership contender than Boris bloody Johnson among Tory members, but I digress. A no-deal crash-out is a starting point for a long, onerous process of negotiating with the EU, and with the rest of the world without the support of the EU. The inevitable outcome will be a deal with the EU that is not much different to Theresa May's deal, only it will leave the UK in an even weaker position. It will probably break up the UK.

A no deal Brexit is not a lark. It is not something to be flippant about. We will be the only country in the world trading under WTO rules for God-knows-how-long now that Mauritania is no longer solely trading this way. Surprise, surprise, this is because Mauritania is seeking to trade freely and closely with geographical neighbours in northern and western Africa and as part of the ever-closer African Union. Mauritania's example reflects a positive case for being part of close economic and free trade unions with the countries closest to your shores.

But none of this is being distilled by one pro-remain party that remainers can all galvanise around. Instead, our votes will be cast in different directions - there is certainly a strong groundswell of support for the Liberal Democrats, whether those who are voting yellow with a clothes peg on their nose or they are simply energised by the #BollocksToBrexit slogan. And I predict the Greens will do better than expected on Thursday.

As for Change UK, it has scooped up plenty of smart people who have, it now appears, thrown their political careers on a bonfire. It's a shame - it could have been so good. There was a frisson of hope and energy when people started defecting from the Labour and Conservative benches. A lot of we remainers really wanted it to be good - like a new Amy Pohler movie. But it has not been good. Not even the logo is good. The black lines on a white background look like a flag to wave while opposing gay rights, which I am guessing is not the vibe they were going for. And the message about changing politics has been swept up in a tidal wave of critics yelling that the party is all about preserving the status quo rather than changing a damn thing.

That's the problem with pro-remain messaging. Few of us think the EU is perfect but we do believe the benefits are still immense, that we should stay in, retain our influence in the world, play our role in reforming the EU where required, emphasising how we are made stronger by the four freedoms, and not see a diminished UK make desperate trade deals with the US, Russia and China. It's just that it's bloody hard to encapsulate this complex and nuanced message on a bumper sticker, bus or billboard.

On the other side of the fence, the simple soundbites such as "take back control", "leave means leave, "let's go WTO" and "no deal, no problem" have cut though the noise. And remainers, all of us, may have left it too late to fight back with better arguments, with positivity and at the ballot box.

Local Elections 2018: Limited gloating opportunities

Hopes were high for post-local election gloating for both major parties, particularly in London. Here, Labour hubristically thought they might take Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea, and Wandsworth councils from the Conservatives and wrest Barnet back from no overall control. The Tories won all four. 

Meanwhile, the Conservatives thought they were in with a shot in Sutton but the scandal-ridden local Liberal Democrats prevailed, albeit with a 12-seat haemorrhage. The Conservatives also lost pro-remain Richmond-upon-Thames and Kingston-upon-Thames to the Liberal Democrats.

Jeremy Corbyn had planned to go to Barnet in North London to gloat today but instead, there was a last-minute change of plans and he travelled some 240 miles to Plymouth, the one bright spot for Labour, although by no means a bellwether for the national mood. Labour gained four seats in Plymouth and the Conservatives lost one.

Theresa May, meanwhile, went to Wandsworth to gloat over a result that should surprise nobody with a functioning brain stem - the Conservatives have presided over a low council tax borough where the streets are clean, the parks are green and crime rates are low. That said, the Conservatives only clung on by 141 votes and lost eight seats, while Labour gained seven.

But this is not just about London - across England, there was not a whole lot for either Labour or the Conservatives to sing about. Labour lost Nuneaton to the Conservatives in the Midlands, the Conservatives lost Plymouth to Labour. South Cambridgeshire has gone to the Liberal Democrats, a previously Conservative council. Three Rivers, in Hertfordshire, went to the Liberal Democrats after formerly being under no overall control.

It is true that at local elections, local issues are important. For example, Britain is a nation obsessed by the bins - you don't have to look too far to find someone who will complain that bin collections are not frequent enough, there are too many bins, too few bins, not enough is being recycled, recycling is an onerous burden, some idiot keeps fly-tipping instead of disposing of festering mattresses responsibly and so on and so forth...

But it would be naive to suggest that people didn't use this election to give the major parties a kicking over bigger issues than bins, parking, potholes and dog poo, particularly in regard to Brexit. Leavers and remainers are feeling equally powerless as they watch this government negotiate with the European Union with all the agility of a walrus on a trapeze and struggle to figure out exactly what Labour policy on this not-so-insignificant matter. On top of this, plenty of people are dismayed with the way Labour has dealt with serious accusations of anti-semitism. Therefore, the local elections were seen by many as a good excuse for a protest vote. 

So how did this pan out? It panned out pretty well for the Liberal Democrats and Greens with both parties picking up the votes of pro-remain voters, many of whom are currently feeling politically homeless. 

Overall, the Liberal Democrats increased their share of the vote by three percentage points to 16% at the time of writing - they were on 444 seats nationally, an increase of 49. This included some curious results, including Labour losing a seat to the Lib Dems in the Pallion ward of Sunderland council. That would be the same Sunderland that voted 60% in favour of Brexit, despite the area's biggest private sector employer, Nissan, setting up shop there in 1984, urged on by Margaret Thatcher who successfully sold the Japanese car-maker the idea of basing a factory there because of free access to the European market. 

The Green party won a few more seats - at the time of writing, they had 34 seats across the country, up from five. Interestingly, more than 80 per cent of the council seats gained by the Greens were snaffled from the Conservatives. That would indicate that there is a handful of seriously disillusioned Tory remainers out there, as well as Labour losing pro-EU voters to the Greens.

UKIP proved themselves to be a spent force in British politics with a pitiful three seats across the country, a drop of 121 seats. It would seem that the Conservative Party has scooped up these votes, suggesting the Tories are appealing strongly to a voter base that seeks massive cuts to immigration, probably doesn't give a toss about anyone affected by the Windrush scandal and is startlingly sanguine about the prospect of the UK crashing out of the EU with no deal and having to revert to WTO rules. Last night and this morning, as election results rolled in, Conservatives were happy to go on TV and say they had gained votes from UKIP.

And this is a crucial difference between Labour and the Conservatives right now - the Conservatives are taking a pragmatic approach. Plenty of Tories are appalled by UKIP but they will cheerfully Hoover up their voters. Hell, the Conservatives have cravenly taken control of Pendle council in Lancashire thanks to the reinstating of a councillor who was suspended from the party for retweeting a racist joke. It's not necessarily a principled approach but this is not an era for conviction politicians in Theresa May's desperate Conservative Party. 

Meanwhile, a common tactic in the murky world of Twitter political debate among Jeremy Corbyn's increasingly delusional Momentum fans is to accuse Labour-leaning Corbyn critics of being "red Tory scum", "Blairites" and to "fuck off and vote Tory" - colour me shocked to learn that this mindless strategy has not been converted into enough votes to control crucial councils up and down England.

The results are not really a ringing endorsement for either equally incompetent party leader. The only saving grace to come out of all this is that we might be spared having to vote again this year. Another general election would probably result in a similar outcome to the status quo - and Theresa May does not need two consecutive elections in which she recklessly sought a huge mandate but emerged with a grip on power like a limp handshake. Her reputation as a "safe pair of hands" is in tatters, Brexit negotiations will continue to be a car crash, and the Windrush scandal won't quite go away, despite Amber Rudd stepping down as Home Secretary.

But it all boils down to a big pile of "meh" with a huge helping of "whevs". With votes counted in 136 of 150 councils at the time of writing, Labour has 1,896 councillors, an increase of 58, and the Conservatives have 1,256 councillors, a drop of nine. This looks like an easy gloat for Labour but their problem is that this has not translated into a red landslide of taking control of councils across the UK. And it is not an easy gloat for the Tories because nothing much really changes for them, apart from losing Plymouth.

And people up and down this green and pleasant land will still complain about the bins.

Photography by Martin Deutsch/Flickr

Optical illusions

"Optics" is becoming the new "I misspoke". The new bullshit excuse. The new cliche when something isn't a good look. Or high praise when it is a good look.

Remember the fad of saying "I misspoke!" when all someone did was expose themselves as an idiot/racist/sexist/cloth-eared dolt/intellectual bankrupt? Misspeaking is when a kid calls a teacher Mum or Dad, it's a genuine slip of the tongue, it's often a Freudian slip, such as Sophy Ridge saying Kezia Dugdale is the leader of "Scottish Labia".

Now this election campaign we've all endured - largely with the able assistance of vast quantities of liquor, with all its car crashes from across the political spectrum - has popularised the good versus bad optics cliche. But it's lazy, shallow and lacking in nuance.

It was terrible optics for Tim Farron, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, when he flubbed and flopped in response to questions about his attitude towards gay sex. Never mind that he has a better voting record than Theresa May on LGBT rights and it would appear he can keep his private religious beliefs out of politics - the story became an excruciating series of images of Farron looking uncomfortable.

Compare those scenes with Theresa May being asked by Andrew Marr if she thought gay sex was a sin. Without hesitation, she crisply answered "No.", And that was the end of the debate, even though her voting history on LGBT rights has only recently become progressive. It was obvious that she was ready for the question. It looked like she had been rehearsing her answer in the bathroom mirror.

It was good optics.

Now she is desperately trying to eke out a deal with the notoriously homophobic DUP - surely these are the worst optics of all for her if she is trying to convince anyone that she gives a damn about LGBT rights.

And this nonsense is not limited to politics.

A few days ago, The Pool reported on a ridiculous PRWeek event in which an all-male panel addressed the audience on how to fight sexism in the workplace. PRWeek is generally pretty sound - it's a good source of news on the PR industry as well as a fine place for PRs (and journalists looking to cross to the dark side for more money) to find jobs. So you'd think an event run by an organisation dedicated to public relations would not be quite so tone-deaf as to host a festival of weapons grade mansplaining. Yet that is what happened.

The explanation for this debacle (at an event called "Hall of Femme" - I ask you...) was that "the optics might have appeared off".

"The optics might have appeared off".

Jesus H. Christ on a two-wheeled perambulation device. No, This is not merely about how it looked. It's about how it was. It's about how bloody patronising it is to expect a room full of women listen to a room full of men tell them where they're going wrong and to offer pearls of wisdom about speaking loudly, rather than being listened to, and "stretch opportunitoes" when, for some women, the opportunities simply are not there.

The "optics might have appeared off" is a shallow excuse for stupidity.

And, sometimes, when the optics are good, the reality is bloody awful. Just ask Theresa May.






Photography by savertashe2/F;ickr

General Election 2017: What a load of rubbish

My husband worked for many years on regional newspapers in Britain and he said that whenever he had to cover a council meeting, the debate would always boil down to a dispute about the bins.

Frequency of collection, quality of bins, old-school metal bins versus modern wheelie bins, too many recycling bins, not enough recycling bins, confusion over food waste disposal bins, access to biodegradable bags for food waste disposal bins...

There is no shortage of rubbish-related issues for British people to get angry about. Letters pages in regional newspapers are home to missives that run the garbage gauntlet from the grumpy old bugger who feels genuinely oppressed by having to separate the recyclables right through to the smug eco-warrior who boasts that last year, their household only produced enough waste to fill an empty jam jar. In the city of Bath right now, people are raging over unsightly wheelie bins. Oh, the humanity.

Hell, every Tuesday morning when I walk to the tube station, I find myself joining in the national chorus of harrumphing about rubbish. Monday night is bin night in my neighbourhood and this means that on Tuesday morning, I find out which people in my street are pathetically lazy when it comes to rubbish disposal.

My ire is particularly fierce for the residents of the mid-terrace houses who, I assume, either cannot be arsed to take a bin out to the footpath via the back lane, won't carry a bin through their precious house, or refuse to store a bin in their front garden as if it's the home design equivalent of having one's genitals out in public. These people instead put their rubbish out the front of their houses in black plastic bags and never seem to use the food waste bins or recycle anything. Unsurprisingly, the urban foxes love to rip open these bags so leftover dinners and pooey nappies are strewn over the footpath. Delightful.

I tut loudly as I accidentally step in someone's abandoned vindaloo.

Now rubbish has become an election issue in multiple constituencies. The local Conservatives sent out a letter a few weeks ago complaining about the prospect of Labour-controlled Merton Council changing from weekly to fortnightly bin collections and whining about providing residents with more bins for rubbish and recycling. Frankly, if these means we only have to take the bins in and out every two weeks rather than every week, I'm all for it. It's the worst job of the week. I hate it. And if it means people are more responsible with their waste and take the time to rinse out empty jars and yoghurt pots for recycling, that's even better.

Such is the local obsession with rubbish, Stephen Hammond, the Conservative MP for Wimbledon, gave the issue more prominence on his leaflet than Brexit.

Local Conservatives have managed to convince people to put posters up in their windows featuring a picture of an overflowing wheelie bin and the fuming words: "NOT ON OUR STREETS!". Of course, this is an easy PR win for them. It's easier for them to campaign on bins than cuts to health and social care in the neighbourhood because those cuts can be traced to central government and that's currently run by, you guessed it, the Conservatives. Awkward. And not something they want to talk about in the lead-up to a general election.

Just up the road from Wimbledon, in the constituency of Carshalton and Wallington, the Tory challenger to Tom Brake, the incumbent Liberal Democrat MP is one Matthew Maxwell Scott. 

Like Hammond, Maxwell Scott would sooner amble naked along the Southbank at high noon than make too big a deal about Brexit on the campaign trail. Like Hammond, he is trying to fool people that the local hospital will keep all its services under a Conservative government. He even had the hide to pose outside St Helier Hospital with Jeremy Hunt.

And like Hammond, he is all about campaigning on the bins.

Maxwell Scott even tweeted a link to a Spectator column entitled "Forget Brexit. What really matters is rubbish" in which he features prominently. This is literally what he wants people to think about as they cast their votes on 8 June in Carshalton and Wallington. Rubbish. He wants people to vote with rubbish foremost in their minds, not the biggest political, social and economic upheaval of our lifetimes.

And he could well take the seat from the Lib Dems, despite Brake's apparent if often baffling popularity. The constituency falls in the borough of Sutton, which voted heavily to leave the EU, unlike the borough of Merton next door, which was strongly pro-remain. It would appear the Daily Mail's "London metropolitan liberal elite" bubble ends in Merton.

As long as the people of Carshalton and Wallington remain convinced by Maxwell Scott that Theresa May is the best person to lead Brexit negotiations, even though she will be as effective as homeopathic brain surgery, he can win it. 

And he will really win big if he campaigns hard on the bins and waste management - the LibDem-controlled Sutton Council is inept and scandal-prone, especially in relation to a waste incinerator and the cosy relationship between local LibDems and Viridor, the company planning to build said incinerator. 

On top of all this, Maxwell Scott, like Stephen Hammond with Merton Council, is making a big deal out of Sutton Council's unpopular changes to bin collection. #SuttonBinShame is a local trend on Twitter.

Now, don't get me wrong. Waste management is important. Of course, for any waste management system to be truly effective there comes a point where local government moves back and personal responsibility moves forward - people cannot expect the council to separate their recyclables for them, hire a skip after building work or drive them to the tip to dispose of a raddled old mattress. Despite claiming to be the party of personal responsibility, there is very little talk of this radical concept whenever Conservatives bang on about bins. They are firmly on the side of those who think separating one's own rubbish and thinking about what they throw away are enormous, politically correct burdens.

Yep, that is where we're at with 17 days to go before the election. We are reduced to witnessing candidates campaigning about bins. Never mind that bins are a local government responsibility rather than a Westminster responsibility. The local Tories don't want people to think about separation of powers when they vote. They want us to think about bins, not Brexit.

With Theresa May's catastrophic "dementia tax" U-turn today, that's one more issue no Tory candidate wants you to think too hard about. That seems to be the strategy - don't think too hard about a back-of-a-fag-packet health and social care policy, don't think too hard about Brexit. Just vote for your bins. Hey, the economy might go over a cliff, the Union may come apart at the seams, but at least someone took a stand and gave the local council a jolly good talking-to about fly-tipping.

Rule Britannia...

Photography by James Grimwood/Flickr

Oh God, we're voting again... *opens wine*

Way to kill the long weekend buzz, Theresa! There we all were, eating chocolate and hot cross buns, getting drunk, and generally enjoying a four-day weekend when - BOOM! - the Prime Minister calls another sodding election.

Theresa May strode out the front of 10 Downing Street looking for all the world like she was about to declare the Hunger Games open, and took on an increasingly megalomaniacal tone as she announced that on 8 June, Britain is again going to the polls. Whoop-de-doo! She won't give a flying fuck if there is a low turnout due to sheer voter fatigue as long as she can shore up her majority and continue to drive us over the hard Brexit cliff.

It has been said already that she is gambling on an increased majority to quell the noisy Eurosceptic Tories but that would depend on how many Eurosceptics end up getting elected. She may well find herself with more hard Brexiters to contend with on her side of the house.

Her delusional rhetoric about how the country is united behind Brexit but Westminster is not is laughable. Or it would be if it wasn't so damn effective. For weeks now, she has been implying that if you are not 100 per cent behind her car crash of a Brexit, you hate this country and you are an unpatriotic scoundrel who probably uses bunting for bog roll.

Of course this is some serious short-termism on the part of Theresa May. She can bang on until she is blue in the face about how a Conservative victory will give her a strong Brexit mandate but basically she is pouncing on her 20-point poll lead. She knows she can win this thing in the next few weeks. She is out-UKIPping UKIP so those votes are hers, except for a few hardcore racists, there are the safe Tory seats that she can still count on, there will be Labour seats that will fall to the Conservatives - and she knows there are plenty of ardent remainers who cannot vote for Corbyn and won't vote Tory, but she is banking on there not being enough of these people to topple her.

The simple fact is that  Corbyn has never been pro-EU, has so far enabled Theresa May's hard Brexit, and he has outed himself as drinking the moronic lefty Brexit Kool-Aid. His recent comments on how great a post-EU Britain will be show he is trying to scoop up UKIP votes by being the third choice for UKIP voters after UKIP and the Tories. He has all the political acumen of a slow-learning kitten and, as such, he is a gift for the Tories.

If Labour lose the election in the predicted landslide, one can only assume that will be the end of Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. Or will he be the party's unflushable turd? If he does step down after an electoral annihilation and someone who is not a Russia-and-Iran-and-Venezuela-and-Cuba-dictatorship apologist nor an overgrown student protester is put in charge of Labour, that may well give Theresa May something to lose sleep over. But not for now. And "for now" is her focus.

"For now" means that not only can she capitalise on Corbyn's terrible polling but she can also nip the threat to the Tories by Arron Banks in the bud. I'm sure she will pull something out of her craven bag of tricks to appeal to the worst racists.

For the remainers who would not trust Corbyn to lead Brexit negotiations any more than they'd trust May and her incompetent clown car of Boris Johnson, Liam Fox and David Davis on such a massive task, this election is quite the pickle. (Disclaimer: I count myself to be in that pickle).

There will be plenty of voters willing to overlook Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron's religious conservatism on abortion - after all, he has not shown any signs that he would override the pro-choice views that prevail within the party. He abstained on the same-sex marriage vote and now says he regrets that decision and would now vote in favour. People seem to be forgiving of him on these two issues. Whether there will be enough voters to forgive the party as a whole for the 2010-2015 coalition with Conservatives remains to be seen. It is on that issue that the potential success of the Liberal Democrats will hinge in this election.

Will the Greens gain any traction or are they a step too far to the left for many of those who will vote to oppose - or at least soften - Brexit? Brexit casts such a long shadow over pretty much every aspect of policy-making that for many, it will be impossible not to vote with this as the foremost issue. For those who voted remain, there will be some serious nose-holding in polling booths across the country on 8 June.

In any case, on any given day between now and 8 June, it will never be too early to start drinking. What a time to be alive!










Photography by Wojtek Szkutnik

In which the Rant Mistress admits she made some terrible predictions...

In my last blog post, I recklessly made some predictions that expired like a pint of milk in the sun. In some cases, these predictions turned to crap in less than 24 hours. We have just witnessed one of the weirder weeks in British politics, a week where one could quite literally go to the toilet and return to find that something else had happened to dominate the news cycle, at least for an hour or so.

In the interests of accountability - something that appears to be anathema to our elected representatives - let me go over the predictions I made when I blogged six days ago.

1. I predicted that Boris Johnson would win the Conservative Party leadership race over Theresa May.

Hey, at least I was half-right. Theresa May is still in the running and I think she will be our next Prime Minister. Stephen Crabb, a man who believes you can pray away the gay and did not vote for marriage equality, has no business being the Prime Minister. Andrea Leadsom shouted a lot in the pre-referendum debate that, depressingly, clinched it for Vote Leave, largely thanks to Johnson's disingenuous "Independence Day" speech, but she does not command the same respect within the Conservative Party that May does.

Love her or loathe her, Theresa May's speech about why she should be the next Prime Minister was pitch-perfect. She was reasonable, she was calm, she dialled back on her awful record on human rights, she reminded people that she voted for marriage equality, she came across as competent, and she had a perfectly fair dig at Boris Johnson over his moronic purchase of secondhand German water cannon.

What I sure as hell didn't see coming, along with the rest of the country, was Michael Gove and his wife, Sarah Vine, outing themselves as Poundland Machiavellians.

Sarah Vine supposedly accidentally sent an email to a member of the public in which she is advising Gove on strategy in the leadership race. I am entirely unconvinced that this was an accident. It's a weird email fail, to accidentally send that particular email to a member of the public. It's not the same as the accidental "reply-all" when a hapless office employee inadvertently declares true love for a colleague to the entire company or lets the whole team know about an embarrassing medical appointment. Why was that email "accidentally" sent to the public and not some boring "don't forget to feed the cat" message? I am wearing my unconvinced face.

In any case, it meant we won't have Prime Minister Johnson any time soon. He is probably relieved. He wanted all the power and glory of being PM but none of the responsibility of leading post-referendum negotiations with the EU.

2. I predicted that Jeremy Corbyn is toast as leader of the Labour Party and Dan Jarvis will be the new leader.

Jeremy Corbyn is still the leader of the Labour Party, weathering storms this week that would probably bring down other party leaders. Dan Jarvis is nowhere to be seen. Angela Eagle came out as the challenger to Corbyn's leadership but now she has scurried back in her box. For now. There are campaigns across the whole Labour Party spectrum to shore up new members to ensure either a Corbyn win or a Corbyn downfall in any forthcoming leadership challenge. Whether the popularity of Corbyn within the party membership correlates with the popularity of Corbyn among the people he needs to attract to form a government is debatable.

Because I am a glutton for punishment, I'll make another prediction - Corbyn will survive a leadership challenge and the Labour Party will split. If the anti-Corbyn members join forces with the Scottish National Party and the Liberal-Democrats, there is a decent chance of an alternative centre-left political force in Britain, but that will require all three elements to be the bigger person and forgive the past.

3. I predicted a new general election before Christmas and advised Labour to stick with their new leader, even in the event of a loss to maintain party stability.

I am not game to predict when the next general election will be, Labour may well still be led by Jeremy Corbyn by Christmas and the state of the Labour Party by then is anyone's guess.

And with that, I think I will take myself off the computer and pour myself a large glass of wine. Who knows what predictions I'll make next...

Could the election ever have been all about the NHS, stupid?

"It's the economy, stupid!" is a frequent, if cliched, explanation for why elections are won. It's so obvious. The winning party was either strong on economic policy or, as is more likely in the case of this month's UK General Election, was strong on giving a good impersonation of being strong on the economy.

If the only payrise you've received of late is down to tax cuts, if you're not struggling on a zero hours contract, if you have never seen inside a food bank, if you really don't know what the difference is between the debt and the deficit and don't particularly care to find out, if you're genuinely happy with supermarket prices and the economy's current rate of growth, then yes, it is pretty obvious why the Conservative Party came out as looking like they might be strong on the economy. Whatever. It doesn't matter what your politics are, you can probably find figures to support your argument or you might genuinely believe George Osborne is doing a sterling job as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

For the beleaguered Labour Party, the polls (Ha! Remember those wacky polls before the election?), suggested the public thought Team Red rather than Team Blue was stronger and more trustworthy on the NHS. But this didn't translate into nearly enough votes for Labour to come close to a majority. The wheels fell off for Labour on the NHS long before Ed Miliband unveiled his stone tablet inscribed with the meaningless platitude of "An NHS with time to care".

While there certainly are people in Britain who would support the NHS moving towards a user-pays system and an increased take-up of private health insurance, the overwhelming feeling I get is that "free at the point of use" remains an important pillar of the NHS for many people from across the political spectrum. People understand that we pay for the NHS via our taxes and people expect in return to not receive a bill or have to file for bankruptcy as a result of receiving NHS treatment.

I remember debating UKIP's NHS policy with a Kipper on Twitter who was desperate to reassure me that UKIP is committed the NHS remaining free at the point of use (except immigrants like me, who have not yet lived here for five years, would have to take out private health insurance...). I found that UKIP, Tory, LibDem and Labour supporters all push the "free at the point of use" line but few seem too concerned with whether NHS services are publicly or privately provided.

And so the missed opportunities for Labour to show true strength on the NHS began.

Why didn't Labour promise to look into the billions of pounds the NHS internal market costs taxpayers in administration costs alone?

When we have situations across the country such as Virgin Care running essential urgent care services at Croydon University Hospital so poorly that quality standards are simply not being met, G4S being allowed anywhere near a hospital, Serco misuing public funds in relation to NHS contracts, we have a problem. The problem is compounded by private companies being exempt from FOI laws?

At the very least, Labour could have pledged to overturn the FOI exemption for private companies in relation to NHS contracts. Why did this not happen?

A promise to cap profits of private providers in the NHS did not resonate with voters.

The National Health Action Party, the Greens and UKIP all had policies on rolling back expensive PFI contracts, which are costing us billions in repayments, meaning we frequently get one hospital for the price of nine. Why was Labour afraid of a mea culpa on PFI? PFI may have been started by the Conservatives but it went nuclear under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. A humble admission that this was a massively expensive SNAFU and a pledge to do something about it could have been a vote-winner.

The cost of the NHS internal market and PFI contracts represent cost pressures on the NHS that make the Daily Mail's constant wail of "health tourism" pale into insignificance. They would be pledges that would not fit nicely on a ridiculous stone or have the snappy insta-appeal of the mansion tax, even though that would not come close to helping plug the NHS funding gap.

Why couldn't the Labour Party found a way to get the message out there that internal market costs and PFI are crippling the NHS financially way more than immigrants ever will?

Instead, we have much NHS fun and games already with the all-new, all-singing, all-dancing Conservative majority government. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt is now bashing nurses over anti-social hours pay in his quest to make what is already a 24-hour service an unachievable 24-hour service. There are unrealistic promises of hordes of new GPs despite there not being enough GPs in training to achieve this, and despite Britain struggling to attract foreign GPs to make up the shortfall. It all smacks of setting the system up for inevitable failure, ably assisted by a compliant NHS-bashing media, thus whetting the public appetite for selling off more services.

Whether Labour, under the election manifesto's NHS promises, would have done any better is a moot point. Whether the new Labour leader will be able to offer a genuine, cost-effective, patient outcomes-focused alternative remains to be seen. All I will say is that if one of the "modernisers" wins the leadership contest (I'm looking at you, Liz Kendall...), I predict more of the same for years to come.

OK, so what has gone on with the UK general election?

The polls predicted a close election. Britain was braced for a hung parliament and the possibility of voting again to break the deadlock. But the deadlock never happened and the Conservative Party won a majority. There will be no deals with the Liberal Democrats. With only eight LibDem MPs left in the House of Commons, they'll be able to hold their meetings in a booth at Pizza Hut. UKIP only won one seat. Labour members are in shock. And the SNP took almost every constituency in Scotland, which was about the only thing anyone predicted.

So why did vast swathes of Britain turn blue? I suspect UKIP helped the Conservatives enormously. It does not take a great leap of imagination to picture right-leaning, undecided voters across the country who were contemplating voting UKIP thinking better of it in the privacy of the ballot box. The Conservatives may have seemed a safer choice than a largely untested, gaffe-prone party that cannot quite shake its reputation for racism or sexism or being stuck in the 1950s or blaming floods on gay people getting married.

It is ironic that UKIP, the party that claims to be anti-establishment, helped to ensure the establishment retained power. Then again, this is the same party that all at once says it is in favour of free speech, constantly whines about "BBC lefty bias, appears on the BBC with alarming regularity, and called the police after Camilla Long had the temerity to make a joke about Nigel Farage on Have I Got News For You. We cannot expect any consistency from UKIP, the party that once had uniforms for taxi drivers as a policy despite claiming to be the party of minimal government interference.

The UKIP factor is more of a worry for the Labour party. In many seats, UKIP polled strongly against Labour candidates, eating into their majorities. This will mean some serious soul-searching for Labour. Ed Miliband attempted tough talk on immigration. Indeed, his bizarre stone monument named "Controlled immigration" as a promise.

For Labour, myriad questions have emerged. Will Labour need to try and out-UKIP UKIP to win back traditional working class Labour voters? Is it fair to tar all working class Labour voters as susceptible to UKIP policy? Should Labour instead try to educate voters in order to counteract UKIP's fear-mongering about immigrants? Or will Labour instead assume there will always be an element of the working class who will vote for them no matter what and try instead to appeal more to their liberal middle class supporters? Was Labour not radical enough on the NHS? Can Labour win over Green and Liberal Democrat voters in 2020 and would that be enough to dredge up a majority in five years' time? And what about being annihilated in Scotland?

Which brings us to the SNP. The Tories don't need the SNP to form a government, Labour is in no position to ask the SNP to help them take charge. The SNP rode high on a wave of Scottish nationalism but in England, English nationalism and a fear of being run by the SNP in a coalition, did not help Labour's cause. In the end, it didn't matter how many times Ed Miliband said there wouldn't be a Labour-SNP coalition. People were not convinced. As a result the SNP goal of ridding the UK of the Tories failed despite winning 56 seats.

Of course, there was also the rank hypocrisy of politicians who not so long ago were begging Scotland to stay in the union now encouraging everyone outside of Scotland to panic-vote a possible coalition away, neutering the influence of the very people they were courting during last year's referendum.

Given the SNP campaign was a strongly anti-austerity, let's-get-rid-of-the-Tories campaign, we can only assume their MPs will vote against any planned Conservative cuts in the new parliament. But even if they vote as a bloc with Labour, the Green MP and the smattering of LibDems, the Conservatives won't have any trouble getting things passed through the House of Commons. Whether the House of Lords is compliant, however, is another matter. And the Conservatives could easily face divisions, especially on issues such as Europe, if rebel MPs refuse to vote with the whip. We shall see...

And then there was the LibDems' obliteration across the whole country. London is left with just one LibDem, the cadaverously insincere Tom Brake, who has managed to convince people he is keeping the local hospital open on the strength of an e-petition so out of date it is addressed to the wrong body.

But were the LibDems punished for becoming yellow Tories? Given the number of yellow seats that turned blue, possibly not. Either there was a curiously apathetic attitude in polling booths of "Oh well, we may as well just vote Conservative, same difference" going on or perhaps there are more natural conservatives among us than we realised. With seats such as Twickenham, Sutton & Cheam and Kingston & Surbiton going from LibDem to Tory, were the more affluent and elderly voters, those more likely to vote and vote blue, coming out in force in these areas?

Oh well, maybe it is time for some good old electoral reform, eh? Remember way back in 2011 when we had the AV referendum? AV? Alternative vote? Anyone? Given that about three people turned out to vote, nobody seemed to understand what AV was, and the asinine Louise Mensch drearily sneered from the US that AV was bad because Australia and Papua New Guinea have it, it came as no surprise when the referendum failed. Now, all of a sudden, people who couldn't give a damn about electoral reform in 2011 are suddenly crying out for proportional representation instead of first-past-the-post.

In particular, losing parties are crying out for a spot of proportional representation - the Liberal Democrats and UKIP would have both done a whole lot better under that system. And maybe it isn't a fair reflection of the national mood if UKIP only gets one seat despite getting more than four million votes across the country. They are four million people the major parties will try to win over in 2020 if they are serious about governing with a comfortable majority.

But ultimately, UKIP may not matter at all in the long run. The purple pound-sign warriors can talk up their success-despite-only-having-one-seat all they like tonight. David Cameron has promised an in-out referendum on Europe in 2017. If he keeps his promise, UKIP will slink further into irrelevancy regardless of the result.

If the UK votes to leave the EU, that sucks the life out of pretty much every UKIP policy so they'd be instantly beside the point. If the UK votes to stay in the EU, the people will have spoken out against UKIP's obsession, life will go on and the UKIP MEPs will continue to be ineffective in Brussels at everything except riding the gravy train.

And as the night falls on the first day of the Conservative majority government, there will be a lot of pollsters, as well as Labour supporters, NHS campaigners, LibDems and people who'd sooner hammer rusty nails into their eardrums than vote Tory who are wondering what the hell to do now. Next up, we will have the inevitably unedifying spectacle of parties choosing new leaders as they lick their wounds. You might not like the result of this election but, chances are, you cannot look away. If you want change, however, you will have to do stuff as well as look, tweet and bleat.

St Helier Hospital, the political football that keeps getting a kicking...

We didn’t want to be right but we knew we were. While people from the major parties were telling the public that St Helier Hospital was safe, we – as in my fellow Keep Our St Helier Hospital (KOSHH) campaigners and I – knew the hospital was far from safe.

We suspected as much when we took the time to read a little-known document, the South West London Collaborative Commissioning strategy document. Yes, I am sure it is on your bedside table right now too. In short, it outlines strategies for “efficiency savings” (Read: cuts) for hospitals across South West London. It telegraphs keeping all services at St Georges Hospital in Tooting (as seen on Channel 4’s 24 Hours in A&E) at the expense of services at either Epsom, St Helier or Croydon University Hospitals, or a combination of the three.

This makes sense from an axeman’s point of view because St Georges has a PFI debt and this basically makes it too big to fail. St Georges has enjoyed the addition of a helipad, it is a major trauma centre for vast swathes of England, it occupies a huge site just off Tooting Broadway, it is at breaking point. St Helier Hospital is a handy back-up for St Georges. As well as taking its own patients in A&E and maternity, it is a place for St Georges to send ambulances and women in labour when it’s at full capacity.

And, in the midst of threats to St Helier Hospital, a new and misleading narrative emerged. 

The major parties, all desperate to look like they are serious about local health services, all desperate to win the forthcoming election, started parroting the line from the trust itself that St Helier Hospital was “safe for five years”. This has appeared on leaflets that local politicians have shoved through my front door. And, yes, we all knew there were plans for an overhaul of local services in the next few years and the strategy document tells us that after that, vital services at St Helier and Epsom Hospitals (the two hospitals that make up the Epsom-St Helier Hospital Trust) could be eliminated. 

So that is where this “safe for five years” line has come from.

We’re talking about the elimination of piddling little things like A&E, maternity, paediatric intensive care and the renal unit, no biggie… Except that without these, other services are then imperilled – the assisted conception clinic works with maternity, the fracture clinic works with A&E, the eye clinic that works with anyone with eyes, and so on and so forth…

The strategy document is just a reheated version of the farcically named “Better Service, Better Value” review that cost taxpayers at least £8 million, including (and this will become relevant soon…) loads of our damn money spent on hiring private consultancy firms to advise on how to best carve up local healthcare services.

Still, the major parties kept parroting the mindless “safe for five years” rhetoric. As if that is good enough. As if aiming for such a low target of five years of service followed by an abyss of uncertainty for patients and staff was somehow acceptable. As if nobody bothered to ask why, when all the proposals that have been bandied about will involve expenditure, investment in making Epsom and St Helier Hospitals as good as they can possibly be was not on the table.

And then last week it all kicked off.

First, Nick Clegg and incumbent LibDem MP for the constituency of Carshalton and Wallington, Tom Brake, thought it’d be a jolly wheeze to stroll on the green opposite St Helier Hospital for a photo opportunity. Just a photo opp, mind. They had no intention of taking questions about the hospital or the wider NHS. But 18 hours before the event, word got out that they were going to descend on the green. Protesters from KOSHH, the National Health Action Party, the Labour Party and the Greens did a great job of disrupting things. Good.

A tragic, orange placard-waving LibDem rent-a-crowd fawned over Nick Clegg as he said, with a straight face, that the cadaverous Tom Brake had worked really hard to keep the hospital open. Hint: Tom Brake has done no such thing. All he did was set up an e-petition so long ago, it is now addressed to the wrong body. I have no idea when he plans to hand it in or to whom. The only thing the e-petition has achieved is a bigger mailing list for Brake’s propaganda emails. A lot of people signed the e-petition in good faith. A lot of people have been taken for mugs.

And then, that very afternoon, an astounding story broke on the BBC. The story that showed KOSHH campaigners are not a bunch of scaremongering cranks after all. 

Representatives of a private consultancy firm were overheard on a train to Waterloo talking about a proposal to build an 800-bed “super-hospital” on the site of Sutton Hospital, a place that died the death of a thousand cuts and is now a depressing, largely abandoned site and the recent victim of an arson attack.  

And why the hell do we keep spending taxpayer money on private consultants? Oh, that’d be because the wretched Clinical Commissioning Groups, created by the Tories and the LibDems under the rancid Health and Social Care Act 2012, force doctors to become experts in things other than medicine and they require expensive, external advice. This advice isn't necessarily in the best interests of accessible patient care, mind you...

But local Tories and LibDems would sooner enjoy a napalm enema than admit that the actions of their parties in the House of Commons have put St Helier Hospital in jeopardy.

Instead, we are witnessing desperation politics of the highest order as local party stooges attempt to shut down discussion about the Health and Social Care Act or use the tired old cliché of “Don’t use the hospital as a political football!” to try and shut down debate. Sorry, kids, it is political. There is no way around that. Deal with it or pipe down and let the grown-ups talk.

Jeremy Hunt, the failed marmalade mogul who passes for the Secretary of State for Health, intervened, presumably after a panic-stricken call from local Tories who were seeing their hopes of winning the seats of Carshalton & Wallington and Sutton & Cheam evaporate before their very eyes.

In world record time, Hunt released a hastily chucked-together statement saying that a Conservative government would block any plans to build a hospital on the Sutton site. Slippery as ever, he did not actually mention blocking any plans to close either Epsom or St Helier Hospitals.

I have a few questions at this juncture. Firstly, why the hell would anyone trust anything this man has to say on the NHS? Secondly, did he really have time to read all three proposals in full, including costings, in the midst of an election campaign in order to make such a bold promise? Thirdly, given Jane Ellison said, when she was Health Minister, that the government has lost control of the NHS and that this is "exciting", can Hunt make such a promise at all? (Also, Jane Ellison's idea of excitement and my idea of excitement are two very different things...).  

Other proposals are a rebuild for St Helier and a refurbishment for Epsom Hospital. But, according to the BBC, the Sutton plan is the “preferred option” just as a plan to cut A&E and maternity from St Helier Hospital was the “preferred option” under the wasteful Better Service, Better Value programme.

So, there you have it. The BBC has exposed a bunch of overpaid private consultants who were either too arrogant or too stupid to think nobody would overhear them talking at length about a meeting with the Epsom-St Helier Trust CEO, one Daniel Elkeles. This would be the same Daniel Elkeles who told KOSHH campaigners a few weeks back that, surprise, surprise, St Helier Hospital was safe for five years. He just omitted to tell us that after five years, the hospital may be gone entirely.

What a bloody mess. But just as well the mess has bubbled to the surface before the election. It might force people in SW London to think hard about who they vote for on May 7.

And in the meantime, here are some questions that need to be answered as a matter of urgency.

1.  Can details on the three proposals, including full costings, be made available as soon as possible? And would a new hospital on the Sutton site be a PFI hospital?

2. Will the costings for the Sutton Hospital site hospital include the massive roadworks and transport upgrades that would be required to cope with the massive traffic increase for a residential area with narrow streets?

3. Why is the term "super-hospital" being bandied around for the 800-bed Sutton proposal when that would actually mean a decrease in beds for the area? What services would actually be provided at this place?

4. Will there be an independent analysis of travel times for ambulances that would have to go to Sutton instead of Epsom or St Helier's A&E, including those that are diverted from St Georges Hospital in Tooting? 

5. Will there be an independent analysis of journey times for cars as this will affect women in labour?

6. Did either Paul Burstow, the LibDem MP for Sutton & Cheam, or Tom Brake, the LibDem MP for Carshalton & Wallington, know about any of these plans before the story broke last week?

7. When did Daniel Elkeles, the Epsom-St Helier Trust CEO, first become aware of these plans?

8.  Why should anyone believe any promise of Jeremy Hunt's or any Conservative after the broken promise about no top-down reorganisation of the NHS?

9. Could the Sutton Hospital site land be disposed of expediently to ensure the "super-not-so-super hospital" option doesn't happen?

10. Given the other two options involve rebuilding St Helier Hospital and refurbishing Epsom Hospital, can we see how the combined costs of these compare to the Sutton Hospital option? Both these hospitals deserve the investment to make them the best they can possibly be.

We're waiting...

Fifty shades of yellow

I had an interesting Twitter conversation last night. It all started when I retweeted the fabulous Freya, who tweets as @FuzzCookies. Reflecting on yesterday's awkward Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition mid-term review press conference, she observed: "When Nick Clegg needs the toilet at work, he usually has to raise his hand for permission. Not today on Coalition Birthday as a treat."

Yes, it's lavatorial humour but an apt analogy for the toothlessness of the Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister. It's in the same vein as Private Eye magazine's The New Coalition Academy satire which portrays the government as a dysfunctional school with David Cameron as the headmaster.

But Baroness Meral Husseine-Ece, a Liberal Democrat peer who tweets as @meralhece, didn't find Freya's tweet nearly as amusing as I did and responded to Freya and I with: "Really unfunny."

Being berated by a Baroness for sharing "potty jokes" certainly appeals to the naughty schoolgirl side of my nature, and soon a lively discussion ensued as to whether or not Freya's original tweet was funny. Then Tara Hewitt, who tweets as @Tara_Hewitt, weighed into the chat. Tara describes herself as a "Blue Blairite" in her blog - a Tony Blair supporter and NHS diversity consultant who has since joined the Conservative Party. Tara commented that she supports the coalition and pointed out that it was good policy on the part of the Lib-Dems to raise the tax threshold.

Yes, that was a good policy but, as Freya pointed out in her inimitable style, it was "like finding a tiny diamond in a football pitch-sized flurry of shit." Yep.

The simple fact is that the coalition is not really working. It was a flawed idea from the start because the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats are just too different. In Australia, there is a long-standing coalition that is currently in opposition. But it is a coalition of the Liberal Party, a conservative party despite the name, and the National Party, a conservative party with a strong focus on the interests of rural Australia - as such, regardless of what you might think of Australian Tories, it is a coalition that makes ideological sense.

In the last general election, it was obvious plenty of people were dissatisfied with Gordon Brown's Labour government but the outcome was intriguing. Plenty of seats went to the Conservatives - which was understandable and not surprising - but a big chunk of votes also went to the Liberal Democrats. It wasn't enough to form a Lib-Dem government in its own right, but it was enough to send a message that many people in Britain didn't feel as if a more conservative pathway was the answer either.

Fear of a minority government reigned supreme and a coalition was formed. It was like being at a wedding where all the guests know it isn't going to work out, but nobody is able to stop it from happening.

It is clear the coalition is at odds on welfare reform, unity on marriage equality is proving difficult despite David Cameron's support, there are schisms over Britain's role in the European Union and issues such as the tuition fees debacle led to Nick Clegg broadcasting a apology. The apology then went viral on YouTube as an wobbly auto-tune song - when you go global via a really unfunny form of comedy, it's time to reassess your life.

In yesterday's press conference, Cameron and Clegg vowed to hold it together until the next election in 2015. But this is going to make for a bizarre election campaign for the Lib-Dems when the time comes. Over the next two years, will they continue to compromise the values of their party and support Conservative-led policies but then offer a new raft of policies for the election which will be at odds with Tory policy? If they do that, will any left- and centre-left-leaning voters trust them enough to support them for another term? If they don't do that, however, the Lib-Dems may as well join the Conservative party and be done with it.

Will this mess lead to the rise of UKIP as the third major political party in Britain? My tip is that it won't, despite the outcome of some recent opinion polls and Labour may just squeak into office. I can't see the Lib-Dems performing brilliantly at the next general election - local government elections are an indication of that (although, frankly, it'd be great to see party politics removed from local government but that's another rant for another day, suffice to say I wish Siobhan Benita was the mayor of London.).

UKIP is currently attracting kneejerkers who feel David Cameron isn't being conservative enough, but the party holds limited appeal for younger voters. UKIP leader Nigel Farage is valiantly claiming to be an eccentric, but I can't see him becoming a serious force in British politics as long as enough people see him as an anachronism, a racist or just a lunatic.

The Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times" could well apply to the next two years in Britain. By 2015, we will know if the welfare reforms actually got more people off benefits and back in the workforce. Whatever the case, we will still have potty jokes to amuse us. Whether we will have a pot to piss in remains to be seen.

Politicians, perks and public transport

Nadine Dorries is whining again today. She says she was given permission to take four weeks off while Parliament was sitting, but admits she didn't disclose that she wanted the time off to go to Australia and appear on I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here. Now everybody is picking on her. Boo and also hoo. But there is an element of hypocrisy - no Member of Parliament should be allowed to take additional time off unless they are ill or there are genuine personal reasons for taking extra leave, such as bereavement. This is how it works for the rest of us. Why should MPs be any different?

And while we're at it, how about we make the working lives of MPs more like the working lives of the people they represent? Perhaps we should view Parliament as being like the London head office of a company that has branches across the whole nation. Below are a few pointers on how MPs can live like the rest of us, not make outrageous expense claims and maybe even save taxpayers some money. This is how it works for employees, especially in the private sector. Surely the Conservative Party cannot object to Parliament being run more like a private company...

• If you live and work in London, you generally get public transport to work at your own expense. MPs who live in the Oyster card zone should do likewise. This is not at all unreasonable on a salary of £65,738.
• If you work for a private company with a London head office but you're not based in London, your company will most likely reimburse you for travel expenses when you need to be in the capital for work. As such, MPs, apart from those not based on the mainland, should be able to claim train travel between their constituency and London, provided they travel by Standard Class.
• However, if you do need to travel to London for work purposes in the private sector, you're probably not allowed to claim for the rent on a second residence in London. Chances are, you will be put up in a hotel and, in this age of austerity, it probably won't be the Dorchester. Instead of MPs having second homes in London, how about a few empty buildings get transformed into budget hotels for MPs? Surely all they need is a clean, comfortable room, a desk, a phone, wifi, and somewhere to shit, shower and sleep?
  
  The process could be put out to tender so that private companies, such as Premier Inn and Holiday Inn Express, can bid for the contract to develop the buildings and offer rooms to MPs at a guaranteed reasonable rate so the taxpayer is paying for the sort of rate a reliable corporate client would pay. What Tory could possibly object to such privatisation? When Parliament is not sitting, the hotels would be open to the public. This is London. The rooms will be booked. The hotels would create jobs during the construction phase as well as when they are operational.
• MPs who are not based in London will receive an Oyster card for travelling around London and can only claim taxi fares if they have to attend late night Parliamentary sessions, which are rare.
• No MP should be allowed to claim for maintenance and repairs on their constituency homes. Everyone else pays for their own home repairs. Why should MPs be any different? Seriously, they are no better than the "benefits scroungers" many of them claim are wasting the taxes of hardworking people.
  
  This is by no means an exhaustive list of ways that we can ensure MPs lead lives that are more like those of their constituents, but it's definitely a start. Any more suggestions are warmly welcomed. One of my favourite writers, Fleet Street Fox has explained how George Osborne lives in no way like anyone I know but can't seem to apply the same acumen to the economy.
  
  After all, if the current government is obsessed with cutting spending and reducing benefits, surely they can set an example? We're all in this together, aren't we? Aren't we? Hello? Tumbleweeds...

Image courtesy of www.kozzi.com