By Isle of Wight Observer
They cremated Maggie at Mortlake, West London, in 2013. Had they buried her, I’m sure she’d be spinning in her grave. What on earth was that conference all about?
I stood as a Conservative councillor in 1998. My election leaflet said, “David Holmes, for a fresh future”; 25 years later, Rishi says exactly the same thing! After 13 years in power, surely that’s proof the Tories are fresh out of ideas. The conference seemed more like a civil war than election prep.
When Mrs T came to power, the highest tax rate was 98 per cent, she reduced it to 40. The basic tax rate was 33 per cent and she cut that to 25. I started work in 1979, so keeping more of my £30 a week mattered. Those were the Tory Party’s reforming glory days. So, what’s the new offer, apart from banning fags, A Levels and mobile phones in schools?
Only one per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds say they would vote Conservative, so I guess it doesn’t matter if Rishi upsets them.
We’re paying the highest taxes for 70 years; next year, Rishi and Co will take £100 billion more than pre-2019 levels. He blames the pandemic, but according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, higher government spending is responsible. Most of the cash will go to the NHS and looking after older people. So how come MP Bob Seely can’t convince his party we need more money for the Isle of Wight? Remember that “Island Deal” Bob? Is it still coming?
How come management of St Mary’s was handed to Portsmouth’s QA without debate? It’s usually chaotic in St Mary’s. The staff – too often agency people from London – are often overwhelmed. Scandalously, NHS trusts regularly pay as much as £5,200 for one doctor to cover a single shift! It’s clear evidence of government incompetence and a failure to plan. And the ‘winter pressures’ haven’t kicked in yet.
After 13 long years, all of our public services are worse than they were. Just like Rishi, is Bob really going into the next election claiming “all’s well”? The Conservative Party is not what it was. Whatever happened to the party of low taxes, sound governance, and law and order? How did corporation tax for Britain’s smallest businesses go from 19 to 23 per cent? They’ve even blown it with our ‘nation of shopkeepers’.
The PM can’t just plead for more time. Higher taxes? That’s Covid. Stabbings? Blame Mayor Kahn. Immigration? We’ll bring it down. Higher food and fuel prices? Blame Putin. Housing? We’ll build more – unless you don’t want them anywhere near you.
Eye-watering mortgage rates? That’s the Bank of England. Every single failure is someone else’s fault.
The other big takeaway from conference? Rishi will end those annoying blanket 20 mph speed limits! That’ll only be guidance too, of course. Well thank you Rishi; I look forward to keeping my foot down past local schools.
HS2 is over and done with; thank God they didn’t start Boris’s Estuary Airport or that new London bridge. Imagine those half-finished? Claiming it’s “savings”; Rishi’s HS2 announcement means they’ve wasted billions of our taxes. The PM, who used our money to hire a helicopter to get from London to Southampton, just doesn’t get it.
Rishi’s refresh and reboot speech was dull and embarrassing, come polling day; he’s toast. The only possible hope is the uninspiring alternative. The thought of Sir Keir and Angela Rayner in Downing Street makes me twitchy. The Tories may have given us the highest taxes in history, combined with failing public services, but not even Mick Lynch thinks he’d be better off under Labour.
Our country is certainly in a mess, and the party most likely to fix it gets my vote.