Meeting held on Monday 18th July 2022.
Six people were present. seven sent their apologies.
At the time of our meeting Tory MPs were voting as part of the process of selecting their next leader. We considered their proposals for policy to lack any recognition of the state of the country: no reference to climate warming (despite records for hot weather being broken on this very day); no reference to redistributing wealth and the appalling poverty felt by many. The usual claims about reducing tax and growing the economy were made, (when the evidence shows that the former does not normally lead to the latter). It was suggested that Sunak posed the greatest threat to Labour, and he was hard working as a constituency MP.
Policies appear to be lacking from Tories, but also from Starmer, although it was suggested that, under Starmer’s leadership, several female shadow cabinet ministers had developed formidable potential. He has said that he would remove the charitable status (or Tax Exemption on fees) for ‘public’ schools.
Brexit has not been mentioned by Tory leadership candidates, although it clearly presents problems. Several of us felt ashamed to be British when travelling in Europe. In Brussels it is said that UK is a “broken state” and that is how it feels to many of us. Is this felt more widely, we wondered.
Johnson had clearly used Ukraine to promote himself and we felt the situation in Ukraine was presented in black and white terms. But the fact the Zelensky has charged 650 people with treason should lead us to be suspicious of his nationalistic fervour.
On a local matter, we were pleased that Robert Largan (High Peak Tory MP) was taking action against noisy motor bikers in the Valley, Bamford and Snake Pass. We wondered to what extent for him (as for Sunak, above) the energy that MPs put into constituency work serves them well when it comes to general elections.
Returning to the Tory Leadership candidates, we remarked on the prominence of non white males but sought to explain why it is that so many non white politicians were right wing. This appears to be more the case amongst Tories, where the candidates are often centrally selected, whereas Labour non-white MPs more often emerge from constituencies were ethnic minorities and poverty predominate.
The next meeting will be on 15th August.