It’s Not A Job For Life

James Gray, Conservative MP for North Wiltshire, is once again facing a vote of no-confidence in his tenure as the party’s parliamentary candidate.

Despite surviving the previous de-selection attempt, local Conservative grassroots members are still up in arms over an affair he had while his wife was receiving treatment for breast cancer.

Though his act of betrayal was perhaps not necessarily political, it almost certainly betrayed Mr Gray’s demeanour and personal attitude to marriage – one seemingly at odds with Mr Cameron’s current media drive on family values.

Does Mr Gray deserve to be effectively sacked for having an affair? Put it this way; I think it’s worth comparing the treatment of wife-cheating James Gray and that of other supposed Conservative dissidents.

Remember Conservative MP, Howard Flight, who was deselected by Michael Howard for saying in a private meeting that a Conservative Government would be more likely to cut taxes than it was making out? Or Roger Helmer MEP, who had the Conservative Whip in the European Parliament unfairly removed after he robustly challenged the EU Commission over corruption?

In the modern Conservative party, it would sadly seem that it’s acceptable to cheat on your wife, as numerous Conservative MPs including Mr Gray and buffoon Boris Johnson have proven (the latter several times in fact) – but not to advocate cuts in taxation or display admirable and healthy scepticism towards the greater European Union bureaucracy.

Personally I hope that North Wiltshire Conservatives deselect Mr Gray – in part as punishment for how he has treated his wife, but also because it will send out a signal to other MPs that they owe their seat to the work of party members and the voters who elected them. Even in a safe seat MPs should think twice before acting with impunity and disregard; for that which the electorate gave unto them, they should also be able to taketh away.

Another Labour Coronation

It would seem that, like their friends and colleagues in the European Union, the Labour party have once again given up on the pretence of democratic practice.

At the close of nominations today for leader of the Scottish Labour party, only one name was put forward to contest the position – that of Wendy Alexander, MSP for Paisley North, and brother of Labour MP, Douglas Alexander.

Much like the election of her Labour counterpart, Gordon Brown, down south in Westminster, the leadership was not a contest but a coronation without debate or real choice.

The BBC are currently making a good go of arguing that, because Wendy Alexander was almost challenged by a ‘socialist’ candidate, she must therefore be a ‘moderate’. In reality however, she is yet another progressive radicalist bent on profound social, moral and cultural change – and in that sense in no way moderate at all, like much of the Labour party these days.

Where Does The Law Stand?

Sometimes you really do have to question where the law stands in this country, and just whom it aims to serve.

Over the weekend in Bristol, a batch of pure heroin reportedly caused the deaths of two drug addicts while leaving another two seriously ill in hospital after near fatal overdoses.

Subsequently, the police issued a city-wide warning to help raise awareness by calling for all Bristol drugs users to remain vigilant and take extra precautions when injecting themselves.

Since, in fact, the use of heroin is illegal, why are the police calling for criminals to be ‘careful’ when breaking the law? Perhaps the police should also be warning people to pay special attention when they speed on the motorway, or advising would-be murders to take extra care with knives or firearms in case they accidentally injure themselves in the course of a criminal act?

Will either bed-ridden Bristol addict be prosecuted for drug abuse? Highly unlikely, since the law no longer seems to condemn individual users, and quite often indulges them in their ‘illness’ as if it were similar to a common cold which can be caught without any individual responsibility.

Comparably, if you wish to break the law by using or selling drugs, then the likelihood of any retribution is so slim as to be almost negligible. On the other hand however, should you wish to stage a peaceful protest outside the home of Government in the nation’s capital, then you’ll be met with unbridled force and the full fury of the criminal legislative system.

So long as the authorities and the Government continue to believe that drug abusers, like criminals, are themselves victims of social problems caused by relative poverty and the state’s inadequacy to nanny them into submission, then Britain’s drugs problems will only grow, and public trust in the police will only decline yet further.

Cameron Launches Fightback

David Cameron has reaffirmed his commitment to economic stability in an interview on the BBC this morning, in which he actually came off rather well.

With the prospect of an early election in the autumn, Mr Cameron has to regain the initiative and political advantage he had enjoyed under Tony Blair if he has any hope of winning and forming a fresh Government capable of real and lasting change.

Despite the fact that Mr Cameron says he had not underestimated Gordon Brown, I think that he and his team privately know that they have. The Conservatives have allowed themselves to be panicked unnecessarily.

However, all is not lost. If Mr Cameron really wants to improve the Conservatives’ polling figures, then he needs to make a concerted fight back on policy issues. At a General Election the general public do not care what the Conservative party has done to change itself internally, but what the Conservative party is proposing to do for them.

It’s that which Mr Cameron and his frontbench team must now focus upon – that, and mercilessly attacking the record of Gordon Brown; the co-architect of the New Labour social experiment and direct cause of so many of Britain’s problems in the past decade.