Gosh, doesn’t Hugo (I’m not going to interfere now I’m no longer an MP) Swire look wrecked! Where has he been! Obviously having a good time now he doesn’t have his fourth part-time job to worry about!
And their boss Frit de Peiffel Johnson
Category Archives: General Election
Boris Johnson still FRIT FRIT FRIT
“There is no sign that Boris Johnson will agree to an interview with Andrew Neil before the end of the election campaign, with both the BBC and the Conservatives simply saying that negotiations are ongoing.
With little over a week until polling day, the prime minister has still not set a date for his one-on-one interview on primetime television, despite every other party leader agreeing to take part. …”
Book Review – Boris Johnson “72 Virgins” (a real book by Bojo available on Amazon)
“So it turns out In 2004, Boris Johnson wrote a “book of fiction” called ’72 Virgins’.
It’s about a group of Islamic terrorists who attack Westminster, whose plot is then foiled by a bicycling Tory MP known for tousled hair, classical allusions and flapping shirt-tails.
As the story develops, the protagonist seizes the opportunity to make himself such a lauded global hero that the media will deem it absolutely futile to print the latest thing he doesn’t want his wife to discover.
Ever the cretinous glutton, with a deeply false belief in his own guile, that very subplot increased in intrigue when, within two months of publication, fiction turned fact and Johnson was sacked from the shadow cabinet after the then Tory leader, Michael Howard, judged him to have lied to the party and to the public about his extramarital affair (lying no longer seems to be a sackable offence for conservative politicians, but rather the gold standard).
This book is brimming with terms such as “alpha male,” “Islamic nutcases” and “a mega-titted six-footer”. Arabs are casually noted to have “hook noses” and “slanty eyes”; A mixed-race Briton is called “coffee-coloured”; and slurs of “pikeys” and people who are “half-caste”.
Imagine the absolute outrage if Jeremy Corbyn wrote this book?
Laura Kuenssberg would never shut up squawking about it!
The BBC would lead with it on every story & it would be front page of every tabloid rag!
But he didn’t, Johnson did, so, of course, we NEVER hear about it.
He describes French people as ‘turds’ and makes strange personal attacks on Sierra Leone.
In the final third of the book, the plot becomes rushed and there are multitudinous printing and grammatical errors, and a number of sentences that literally do not make any sense.
The novel’s attitude to women is so rampantly sexist, it is depressing. In the 20 occasions in which women enter the narrative either the narrator or a character sizes them up and down, phwoaring over, to give a few examples: “tits out”, “lustrous eyes”, “long legs”, “a mega-titted six-footer”, “loads of pretty white teeth”, “good teeth and blonde hair”, and an “unambiguously exuberant bosom”.
One Female characters comment is attributed to her “premenstrual irrationality”, there are also appearances from a “girly swot” and a woman who looks “like a lingerie model, only cleverer and, if anything, with bigger breasts”, it actually reads like it was written by a horny teenager rather than an Eton educated prime minister.
If anyone feel the need to rush out and buy this, it’s on Amazon for £7.49, however Fultons are selling 6 rolls of Andrex for £3 saving you £4.49.”
Source: Dan Lambert, Facebook
More Tory dirty tricks
“A Conservative parliamentary candidate has been asked to explain the addition of two swastikas to campaign placards which were apparently defaced in 2017, and were photographed at the time but did not feature any such Nazi insignia.
In June 2017, during that year’s election campaign, Simon Hart, the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire, who has represented the constituency since 2010, uploaded a photograph to Twitter of one of his campaign placards.
It appeared to have been vandalised so that after the words “Simon Hart” a scrawled message in black marker pen added: “WILL STARVE YOUR NAN AND STEAL HER HOUSE!”
The image generated some sympathy for Mr Hart, and was used in a subsequent article published by WalesOnline, about the abuse MPs including Mr Hart suffered during the election.
Local press claim Mr Hart has used the incident as a campaigning platform since 2017. …”
Jupp’s boss Dominic Raab in danger of losing his seat to Lib Dem
Swire gone.
Raab might be going
Jupp …… ?
Not really a good time to be a “parachuted central casting Tory” with two “mentors” at such a low ebb!
Let’s make it all three out.
Remember: a vote for anyone other than Claire Wright is a vote for the Tories!
A suggestion to the BBC …
If Johnson will not be interviewed by Andrew Neil but WILL be interviewed by Andrew Marr (and maybe by the anodyne One Show) replace the original presenter with Neil live on air, and wait to see what happens next!
Boris called “pub bore” for lacklustre radio interview
“It was like two pub bores talking about weather: HENRY DEEDES listens as PM takes on a Ferrari”
“IFS warn austerity ‘baked in’ a Tory manifesto with ‘notable’ lack of social care funding”
In a dire warning the IFS added: “even in 2023–24 day-to-day spending on public services outside of health would still be almost 15 per cent lower in real terms that it was at the start of the 2010s.”
“The Institute for Fiscal Studies is deeply unimpressed at what it deemed a “lack of significant policy action” in the Conservative Party manifesto.
The Tory social care crisis for Britain’s elderly and infirm that Johnson had promised to fix when he became PM did not even get a mention in the manifesto. Johnson had previously claimed that he had a plan ready to sort it out.
The IFS concluded that the manifesto plans meant people expecting relief for Britain’s public services after a decade of austerity would instead see “cuts to their day-to-day budgets of the last decade baked in.”
Economic researchers at the independent think tank calculated that the National Insurance threshold rise to £9,500 that Boris Johnson appeared to have lied or been mistaken about will actually only save most in paid work “less than £2 a week” and highlighted the “notable omission” for any plan to deal with the crisis in social care funding.
Nigel Edwards, chief executive at the Nuffield Trust, an independent health think tank, said he was “bitterly disappointed” to see “unnecessary delay” in tackling the issue of social care.
IFS director Paul Johnson said: “If a single Budget had contained all these tax and spending proposals, we would have been calling it modest.
“As a blueprint for five years in government, the lack of significant policy action is remarkable.”
Main manifesto pledges quickly debunked
Speaking at a launch event in Telford, Boris Johnson reaffirmed his commitment to take the UK out of the EU by the end of January, so they could “forge a new Britain”. “We will get Brexit done and we will end the acrimony and the chaos,” he said.
As well as a flagship promise of 50,000 more nurses for the NHS in England despite Brexit “chaos”, the manifesto included a U-turn restoring maintenance grants for student nurses previously scrapped by the Tories.
Tory sources later acknowledged that about 30,000 of the additional nurses would come from measures to retain existing staff rather than new recruits, and the main Tory manifesto pledge was debunked among other claims by a fact checking service within hours of the launch. Labour called the Tory figures “deceitful.”
Chief executive Will Moy said the Conservative Party could “do more to meet the standards we expect” after investigating its pledges on paving the way for 50,000 new nurses and limiting day-to-day spending increases to only £3 billion, despite promising a litany of public services investment.
The fact checkers also slammed Johnson’s use the the slogan “get Brexit done”, a phrase that appears 22 times in the manifesto including on the cover, when a deal with the European Union could take “years to negotiate”.
“The Brexit process will not be completed by January,” despite what Johnson keeps repeating said the independent organisation.
‘Older people face a triple whammy’
“After a decade of the Conservatives cutting our NHS, police and schools, all Boris Johnson is offering is more of the same: more cuts, more failure, and years more of Brexit uncertainty,” Jeremy Corbyn responded.
He added: “Boris Johnson can’t be trusted. Older people face a triple whammy as he has failed to protect free TV licences for over 75s, refused to grant justice to women unfairly affected by the increase in the state pension age, and not offered a plan or extra money to fix the social care crisis.”
The lacklustre manifesto may be down to Conservative complacency after recent polls. The latest polling released on Sunday, created by Datapraxis using YouGov polling and voter interviews, suggested the Tories were on course to secure their largest Commons majority since 1987 – a majority of almost 50 MPs.
This would mean if Boris Johnson met the public services spending promises in his manifesto the UK would still be looking at a decade of cuts “baked into” our services, according to the IFS analysis.
Boris Johnson’s broken promise to fix Tory social care crisis
Paul Johnson of the IFS’ initial reaction to the Tory manifesto was scathing: “If the Labour and Liberal Democrat manifestos were notable for the scale of their ambitions the Conservative one is not. If a single Budget had contained all these tax and spending proposals we would have been calling it modest. As a blueprint for five years in government the lack of significant policy action is remarkable.
“In part that is because the chancellor announced some big spending rises back In September. Other than for health and schools, though, that was a one-off increase. Taken at face value today’s manifesto suggests that for most services, in terms of day-to-day spending, that’s it. Health and school spending will continue to rise. Give or take pennies, other public services, and working age benefits, will see the cuts to their day-to-day budgets of the last decade baked in.”
“One notable omission is any plan for social care. In his first speech as prime minister Boris Johnson promised to ‘fix the crisis in social care once and for all’. After two decades of dither by both parties in government it seems we are no further forward.
“On the tax side the rise in the National Insurance threshold was well trailed. The ambition for it to get to £12,500 may remain, but only the initial rise to £9,500 has been costed and firmly promised. Most in paid work would benefit, but by less than £2 a week. Another £6 billion would need to be found to get to £12,500 by the end of the parliament. Given the pressures on the spending side that is not surprising.”
“Perhaps the biggest, and least welcome, announcement is the ‘triple tax lock’: no increases in rates of income tax, NICs or VAT. That’s a constraint the chancellor may come to regret. It is also part of a fundamentally damaging narrative – that we can have the public services we want, with more money for health and pensions and schools – without paying for them. We can’t.”
School cuts barely reversed
The Conservative manifesto confirmed previous commitments in England to increase school spend in England by £7.1 billion by 2022–23. However, that would leave spend per pupil in real terms after a decade of austerity at the same level as 13 years ago, the IFS explained.
In contrast the IFS found the Labour commitment of a £7.5 billion real terms increase by 2022–23 a 14.6% rise in spending per pupil.
Unlike Labour and the Liberal Democrats the Conservative manifesto refused to extend free, pre-school childcare.
IFS researchers warned that the Conservative manifesto pledges left “little scope for spending increases beyond next year outside of those planned for health and schools.”
In a dire warning the IFS added: “even in 2023–24 day-to-day spending on public services outside of health would still be almost 15 per cent lower in real terms that it was at the start of the 2010s.”
@BenGelblum
IFS warn austerity ‘baked in’ a Tory manifesto with ‘notable’ lack of social care funding
Actor Hugh Grant endorses Claire Wright
“Famous British actor, Hugh Grant, has tweeted his support for Claire Wright – the Independent Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for the East Devon constituency.
Yesterday (November 28), he retweeted a post promoting Claire Wright, adding the caption: “Dear LD [Liberal Democrats], Green and Labour voters of East Devon, do this for your country. We beg you.”
Claire Wright responded to the actor’s nod with the comment: “Thanks Hugh! Love Actually is my fave Christmas film btw! Romance and politics!!!”
Grant, who famously played Britain’s Prime Minister in Love Actually (2003), is pedalling a real-life political agenda in the run-up to the General Election.
His Twitter feed @HackedOffHugh is dedicated to a campaign against the Conservative party winning a majority of seats in parliament on December 12.
He has retweeted a number of posts imploring members of certain constituencies to vote for parties, which are in with a chance of toppling the Conservative lead.”
https://exmouth.nub.news/n/actor-hugh-grant-rallies-behind-east-devon-independent-claire-wright
Absolutely BRILLIANT local Johnson interview!
Give this local reporter a knighthood!
Boris Johnson:working class men “drunk, criminal, aimless, feckless and hopeless”
“Boris Johnson dismissed workers as “drunk, criminal and feckless” in a rant that exposes his class hatred.
The slurs, written when the PM was a journalist, emerged as he targets working-class votes.
He dismissed working-class men as “likely to be drunk, criminal, aimless, feckless and hopeless”, and single mums as “irresponsible” in a sickening magazine column in 1995, which emerged yesterday.
Mr Johnson wore a blue collar to be snapped in a butcher’s on the election trail in North Devon and Plymouth yesterday.
But Labour chairman Ian Lavery, an ex-miner standing in Wansbeck, Northumberland, said of his outburst: “These are outrageous remarks from a man out of touch with reality and whose ignorance and hatred of working-class communities knows no bounds. …”
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/boris-johnson-dismisses-workers-drunk-20984876
“Boris Johnson has threatened Channel 4 over his own absolute moral cowardice”
It seems a trip to Dart’s Farm (where he was today) was more important than the global climate emergency!
“We are too far down the rabbit hole now to even know if a line has been drawn. There are so many lines now it is as if all our little lives have been tapped out and cut up with Michael Gove’s bank card.
So we can only repeat, as a statement of fact, that today was the day when the prime minister began threatening to shut down actual TV channels for the crime of his own complete moral cowardice.
It is impossible to say whether we have already gone this far before. But this is where we are.
Boris Johnson refused to take part in Channel 4’s “leaders debate” on the climate emergency, just as he has refused to be interviewed by the BBC’s Andrew Neil, and also refused even to be interviewed about whether or not he has refused the BBC’s Andrew Neil.
Where his podium should have been, Channel 4 placed a melting ice sculpture. The Conservative party sent Michael Gove in his place.
There is some uncertainty over who refused to allow Michael Gove to take part. Was it Channel 4 themselves? Was it the other party leaders? Given the other party leaders have done interviews with Andrew Neil, and Boris Johnson is refusing, they can hardly be blamed for not being the enablers to Boris Johnson’s utter shamelessness for a second time.
Gove, naturally, has responded by telling Jeremy Corbyn he’s scared. A good time to remember Michael Gove, who is less a human being and more just the Oxford Union accidentally made flesh, also likes to claim that the referendum was all about making the UK more welcoming to immigrants.
Still, the actual grownups over at the Conservative Central Office have responded by launching a formal complaint with Ofcom, and threatening to have Channel 4’s public broadcasting licence revoked.
This is the country we are now.
Who knows, perhaps, once we’ve “taken back control of our own laws”, other people being sanctioned entirely for Boris Johnson’s own failings will be the standard run of things.
“Prime minister, we’ve had one of the mothers on the phone again. Says it’s your daughter’s birthday. You’ve forgotten. Again.”
“Whoops. Righto. What shall we give her? Custodial or will 100 hours’ community service do?”
Arguably, it was going this way three and a half years ago, when Dominic Cummings threatened ITV with legal action over including Nigel Farage in their EU referendum debate show, telling them there would be “consequences”.
There were, inevitably, no consequences for ITV. Dominic Cummings made a tit of himself, but see also proroguing parliament, the Supreme Court case, refusing to send the withdrawal letter – when a tit makes a tit of itself, there are no consequences either. It is already a tit.
By the time of the second advertising break, a puddle had begun to gather on the floor beneath the Boris Johnson ice sculpture. I am reliably informed the Boris Johnson ice sculpture has already prepared court documents to suppress the puddle’s existence.
By virtue of his own non-attendance, Boris Johnson had created quite literally the exact kind of mess he had himself shown incapable of clearing up from the floor of a flooded optician’s just three weeks ago.
So there you have it. Create a mess that you can’t clear up then blame someone else. Whatever else goes wrong, the metaphors can always be relied upon to write themselves.”
Mark Steel eviscerates the Tory ‘intelligentsia “
“This election is proving we have the finest democracy in the world. How reassuring that Boris Johnson isn’t turning up. The prime minister doesn’t have time to discuss marginal issues relating to the environment, such as how we continue to have an environment.
It’s the same as if every scientist agreed all the country’s planes, cars, buses, boats and seaside donkeys were on fire. You wouldn’t expect the transport secretary to interrupt his busy schedule to worry about that.
The Conservatives have paid similar attention to detail in other areas, such as their promise to provide 50,000 extra nurses. Nicky Morgan then proudly insisted 19,000 of these extra nurses will be nurses who are already nurses, spending ten minutes on Good Morning Britain, explaining “these 19,000 nurses will still be nurses, so they’ll be extra nurses”.
It’s the same as if I promised to get an extra heart and two extra legs, and tomorrow announced I’d managed it, as long as you included the heart and legs I had to start with, that hadn’t left.
This is how the Conservatives will make us all better off. They’ll introduce a scheme whereby if you have £300 in the bank, tomorrow you will have an extra £300, as long as you include the £300 you started with. Do that every day for a year and you’ll be a millionaire, but Labour don’t want that, because they hate people trying to better themselves.
Then Matt Hancock assured us there are no plans to include the NHS in a trade deal with Donald Trump, because in the document about the trade deal the NHS is only mentioned four times.
So there’s no need to worry, because we all mention things four times in a trade deal when we’ve no intention of including them in a trade deal. If you tell someone “I’m popping up the shops to buy some biscuits, I’ll buy biscuits up the shop, they’ve got biscuits up the shop and I’m buying some, I fancy buying some biscuits”, only an idiot would think that meant you were popping up the shop for some biscuits.
One by one, after each interview, these characters are withdrawn from public view. There will be an announcement that “Jacob Rees-Mogg is out for another two weeks with a groin strain, Nicky Morgan will miss the rest of the season, and 250 other candidates have stress-related issues and are recovering in a secret location until 13 December.”
Johnson is determined to be seen as little as possible, and may even back out of the interview with Andrew Neil that every other leader had to endure.
But to make it fair, there was an item on the news in which Johnson was filmed buttering a scone, during which he was asked whether he put the jam or the cream on first. So all the leaders have been put under the same intense pressure.
This has worked out fairly, because Corbyn is quite reasonably and repeatedly asked to apologise for racism that comes from any Labour member, even if it’s a comment on Twitter from a parish councillor in Bodmin Moor on heavy medication. But it would be outrageous to ask Boris Johnson to apologise for racism expressed by far more marginal Conservative members, such as Boris Johnson.
To add to his list of jolly quips, a column of his has emerged in which he describes the children of single mothers as “ill-raised, aggressive, ignorant and illegitimate”. Some might quibble with the language, but at least it means he plans to be diligent in rooting out these feckless fathers who have children with such abandon they can’t even say how many they have. These bastards will be in trouble if Johnson wins the election.
And when he does speak in public, he always makes an impact. At a press conference he was asked about the fake “Factcheck” account set up by the Conservatives, and his answer, his actual real answer, was, “Um, well I’m afraid that the er the er the um the um the er but what I can say is I’m informed that I haven’t that I um that that that (long pause) that Labour have some sort of operation (long pause) uuuuuuuum um look I haven’t followed this I will I will I will I will I will but when it comes as I say when it comes to trust in politics, and er and er the facts there is one giant fact we continue to to to chase down, there is one like the hunting the snark or or or or or the quest the answer to Fermat’s last theorem or the rhythm of the Sphinx or the Bermuda Triangle er er er er the one the feel we feel the er the er the one fact that we wish to discover the one crouton in the minestrone of the Labour Party.”
What a shame Corbyn can’t be clear and concise like that. This is why we can trust Johnson on Europe: he’s simple to understand. He supported remaining in the EU, then wrote two columns, one in favour of remaining and one for leaving, voted to leave but opposed the deal to leave before supporting the same deal and then telling the DUP his own deal would include no border in Ireland which was true except for the bit about the border in Ireland. Short, simple and snappy – if only Corbyn could manage such clarity.
The problem is Johnson’s so articulate, this may make it difficult to actually Get Brexit Done. Because the negotiations will start with him saying, “with regard to beef quotas, in as of the wardrobe er wardrobe er wardrobe carpe diem as it were Spartans invaded Persia like like er like Pythagoras SMASHING the triangle Jeremy Corbyn more like a hexagon of referenda utter chaos excellent fly-half GET CATTLE DONE”.
Boris Johnson visited East Devon today rather than be at climate change debate
That’s it.
Made poor jokes he’s made everywhere else, mentioned the name of his candidate a couple of times, checked off his keywords, made promises he won’t/can’t/has no intention to keep and left.
End of.
Next stop – repeat.
Owl asked someone what Jupp is like. “Empty vessel,” he said sadly, “empty vessel”!
En elector speaks …
Comment on post reposted here:
“Had a leaflet arrive this morning from CCHG setting out (again) the already disposed of untruth that all taxpayers are due a £2400 hike in their taxes with a Corbyn administration. and making the proposal that it is best not to vote Labour.
In tiny writing on the front it says ‘vote for Simon Jupp’ . I had never heard of Simon Jupp until a week ago, and there is no other mention of him on this leaflet, which is impertinent enough to tell me to vote for him. No photo, no CV, no statement of suitability for office, no trace of a policy, no ideas, no website, no email address, no sign that Simon Jupp is a real person, or merits any attention whatever.
So, in order that I should consider voting for this Simon Jupp, who Owl has suggested is not sure who he works (or worked) for, or indeed, who he himself is, I pass on to the Conservative website, where I now see many photos of Simon Jupp, who at first I mistake for a tourist who likes to be photographed with random bystanders in as many places as possible with placards saying he is delivering something – maybe he’s on a zero hours for Hermes or whoever. Then I spot his ‘opinions’ posted with the photos. And it is clear enough he does actually think he is a candidate for election to the constituency of East Devon, I can no longer suppose otherwise. But his ‘views’ are dry recantations of Tory mythologies on Brexit (that they’ll ‘get it done’ – no they won’t), that they have saved community hospitals (no they haven’t – they’ve closed them) and on and on through the formulaic dissembling required of the modern Tory candidate.
I suppose with a record in government as bad as the Tories, there is little else to do bar slag off the opposition, and even that involves conscious deception and willful mendacity. In East Devon we have endured eighteen years of lacklustre representation from someone who was sent here for an easy ride and meal ticket. Simon Jupp looks like another one of those and by God we do not want any more of that. It really is time we voted in someone who knows the place and cares about it. And that is Claire Wright – no question.
The leaflet above did have a ‘return address’ in small on the front. So I duly Pritt Stuck the pages together, marked it ‘return to sender’, rewrote the return address to make it clearer for the posties, and popped it back in the post. Suggest you do the same.”
So far, Johnson has refused three different hustings debates
One on climate change tonight on Channel 4.
One with Andrew Neil who has interviewed all other party leaders.
One with the only person standing against him in his constituency.
By this shall you judge the man.
Anyone who votes for him or his candidates is selling us all out.
Words fail
“Boris Johnson Called Children Of Single Mothers ‘Ill-Raised, Ignorant, Aggressive And Illegitimate’ “
Would this apply to his mistress who had a daughter by him? Maybe not as she was married to someone else at the time and married someone else later!
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/drugs-love-child-affairs-new-18349295
“Single mothers were deemed “uppity and irresponsible” and working class men “feckless and hopeless” in a column which has now resurfaced. …”
“Tory candidates issued with attack manuals on how to smear rivals”
Taking their lead from the Trump playbook – tell the biggest porkies and the masses will fall for them.
What a dirty, dirty election this is.
“Conservative candidates in the general election have been issued with a detailed dossier on how to attack Labour and Liberal Democrat rivals which contains numerous rehashed and potentially misleading claims, the Guardian can reveal.
The documents accuse the Liberal Democrats of pushing “pro-pimp” policies and sex work as a career for schoolchildren.
They also reheat a discredited claim that Labour’s policy on free movement would lead to 840,000 migrants coming to the UK each year.
Drafted by the Conservative research department, the documents are designed to provide candidates with approved messages to use on doorsteps across the country.
One 17-page briefing note is specifically for Tories in seats where the main challenge comes from Labour. Another 19-page document is for candidates fighting a Liberal Democrat threat.
Many of the statements within them are sourced from comments made several years ago, or by local party members, and do not accurately reflect the current positions of opposition parties.
Some draw on pledges made in the run-up to the 2015 election, or take statements out of context. …”
“‘Support staff plugging nurse-shortage gaps’ “
“Failure to recruit enough nurses has left the NHS dependent on less-skilled support staff to plug workforce gaps, analysis by a charity has found.
The Health Foundation claimed there has been a “hollowing out” of the NHS workforce and said the country needs to recruit at least 5,000 international nurses a year until 2023-24 to prevent shortages impacting on patient care.
Although there was the biggest annual increase in overall workforce for a decade between March 2018 and March 2019, this “masks an ongoing shift” in the mix of clinical staff employed by the NHS, the charity said.
While there was 4,500 more nurses recruited in the year – an increase of 1.5% – there was a 2.6% increase in support staff doctors, nurses and midwives (6,500 more), according to the analysis.
Nursing vacancies also reached record levels at 44,000 in the first quarter of 2019 while NHS output – including the number of operations, consultations and diagnostic procedures – grew by 23% between 2010-11 and 2016-17.
“The figures suggest that in some cases, clinical support staff are effectively filling in the gaps left by the widespread shortages of nurses, raising questions of quality and safety,” the report added.
The Health Foundation also said figures show that in response to a “severe drop off” in the supply of EU nurses since 2016, the UK has ramped up its recruitment of nurses from non-EU countries over the last year.
Since the Brexit referendum nurses recruited from EU countries has fallen by 85% – from 6,382 in 2016-17 to 968 in 2018-19.
The charity noted there had still been recruitment from outside the EU in 2018-19 – including 1,791 nurses from India and 3,118 from the Philippines.
A similar trend occurred with doctor recruitment, where there was a fall of 1.6% between March 2018 and March 2019 of permanently employed GPs. The Health Foundation added: “It now appears impossible that the government’s original target of recruiting 5,000 additional GPs by 2020 will be met”.
Anita Charlesworth, director of research and economics at the Health Foundation, said: “Nursing shortages continue to deepen and are inevitably impacting on the front line.
“Services are being forced to make do with shortfalls of increasingly pressurised nurses and rely on less-skilled support staff to pick up the slack.
She added: “Two obvious solutions to the nurse staffing crisis would be to train more nurses in this country and retain more existing staff. But the UK is struggling to grow the numbers starting nursing degrees, and while there must also be action to address this – for example, by giving nurse students the cost-of-living support they need – it will take time to have a significant impact on the numbers of nurses.”
Charlesworth noted that clinical support staff played an important role but added there appeared to be an unplanned increased recruitment of such staff to fill nursing staff shortages.
The Conservatives have promised 50,000 more nurses if they win the election next month, although 19,000 of those will be retained rather than newly recruited.”
https://www.publicfinance.co.uk/news/2019/11/support-staff-plugging-nurse-shortage-gaps
(pay wall)
“New Statesman” profiles Claire Wright as real threat to Tories
“Rural revolt: The independent rebellion threatening Tory Devon.
A local campaigner called Claire Wright is fighting to end Tory rule in East Devon after 150 years, having turned the safe seat marginal over the last two elections.
For over 150 years, the coastal towns and rural villages of East Devon have been Conservative. Although the area has changed over the years to inherit some fragments of the Labour city of Exeter – a red droplet in the county’s sea of blue – it has never seen political upset.
Until today.
What was once a safe seat has been turning quietly marginal.
A local campaigner called Claire Wright, who’s never been a member of a political party, has been chipping away at the Tory majority for years.
The independent candidate first stood for parliament in 2015, when she came second place – a spot usually reserved for the Liberal Democrats. In 2017, her vote share increased by more than 11 percentage points. She racked up 21,270 votes to the incumbent Tory’s 29,306.
She’s not alone. In May’s local elections this year, independents took control of East Devon District Council from the Tories.
“It’s a sea-change,” she says. “Support for independents is mushrooming here.”
Having represented the seat for eight years, the Tory MP and former foreign minister Hugo Swire stunned Devon’s political scene in September by announcing he wouldn’t seek re-election.
Fighting her third general election here, Wright thinks she’ll win it this time.
“I want to win now more than I’ve ever wanted to win – probably because it’s more likely now that I can. I could never quite see myself winning but this time I sort of can’t see myself not winning. All I can see is me giving a victory speech, but we’ll have to wait and see,” she grins, while out doorknocking around the picturesque coastal town of Sidmouth. When she visits London, she feels a “frisson” if she walks past the Houses of Parliament.
A lurch to the Wright
Historically a fishing village, Sidmouth is a place of comfortable retirement, muddy wellies drying in sloping driveways, seagulls perching on gateposts. On average, the East Devon constituency is affluent and has a significantly older population, with 28 per cent of its residents aged 65 and above compared to 18 per cent across the UK.
Wright, 44, feels like a fresh face around these parts, particularly when compared to her erstwhile rival Swire (Eton, Sandhurst, multi-billion pound family business, a “Sir”). But she’s developed a profile and name recognition during a decade in local government.
Voters know her from, say, her campaign to protect overnight stays at the maternity unit in the local Honiton hospital, or bringing the first play park to the village of West Hill near Ottery where she’s lived for 13 years, having lived in Devon all her life.
A natural campaigner (“I even used to write letters as a ten-year-old!”), Wright was elected to Ottery Town Council in 2009, East Devon District Council in 2011 when she made headlines ousting its long-standing Tory leader, and Devon County Council in 2013.
Unlike your usual independent candidates, she is neither a single-issue drumbeater nor a naïve no-hoper. She has a comprehensive policy offer, building her manifesto partly from a local survey she ran in January in anticipation of a general election. It’s an anti-austerity, environmental pitch that focuses on restoring local services; rural England has been hit hard by cuts.
Wright’s main policy interests are the NHS, where she worked in media relations for ten years, and protecting the natural world (her love of wildlife started early, when she played outdoors as a child). She once campaigned so furiously to protect some oak trees from a construction project that the wife of one of the developers came around to her house to shout at her.
Tory blues
On the district council, as the youngest member surrounded by an overwhelming majority of Tories, Wright would endure desk-thumping, shouting and “patronising” sexist behaviour – but “most of it bounced off me because I had so much support” from the public who would come to watch. She wrote revealing blogs after council meetings, and circulated them to the local press, garnering attention and angering her opponents.
“People who have lived here for a long time remember all that stuff,” she says.
Indeed, almost everyone whose door she knocks recognises her during a full day of canvassing (“ah, you’re Claire Wright!” is a common response).
Not everyone has decided on their vote, however, though disillusionment with all parties is a common theme.
“This is the first time as a voter I feel embarrassed by Parliament, it’s a shambles – if they were in jobs they’d have been sacked ages ago, it’s a mess,” says a middle-aged school governor and business owner at one house.
“I want something to change. Labour and the Conservatives are lost. It’s so political – it’s not about doing a job, running the country and looking after people. They should’ve been sacked, they’ve got away with murder.”
Although he likes the idea of an outsider, he’s unsure how one would change much as an independent MP. Wright mentions the influence of the only Green MP Caroline Lucas, and her own experience working cross-party on councils.
Unlike the main parties, Wright doesn’t have to spend most of her stump speech defending an unpopular leader, or being pilloried for the behaviour of MPs in Parliament. She gets straight to her point: that she’s the “only option who can win against the Conservatives” – and, every candidate’s dream, a policy discussion.
On Brexit, she wants a confirmatory vote on Boris Johnson’s withdrawal agreement, and would campaign to Remain.
Although East Devon as a region voted Leave in the EU referendum, there are plenty of Remain voters in the constituency looking for an outlet. It’s the only place so far on the campaign trail where I hear residents express a positive opinion about the Lib Dems’ policy to revoke Article 50.
The angry school governor voted Leave but “I look back now and think it’s a disgrace that the country was asked to vote on that. I thought I was well-informed – I wasn’t. The public was ill-informed. It’s bollocks.”
Despite the area’s reputation as a conservative retirement resort, older residents respond positively to Wright and express disappointment in the Tories.
“We won’t be voting Conservative!” say an elderly couple who walk past Wright’s car that is crammed with campaign materials.
“How can you trust a person like Boris? He says the first thought that comes into his head,” says the husband, whose wife adds, “he wants to be a buffoon but he’s really a bully boy”.
Not long after, a white van sails past with a driver who honks his horn and pumps a fist out of the window in support. “I promise we didn’t set this up,” a member of Wright’s campaign team smiles.
Another older woman, whose driveway winds up to a spectacular veranda view of the green hills surrounding Sidmouth, is a disillusioned Tory voter who backed Remain.
“I always vote Conservative, I’m sick to death of it all. I’ve lost faith in them,” she says. “Sidmouth is deteriorating, everything is scruffy, it’s depressing.”
Because the council is so absent on her road, she sometimes sweeps it herself. “There are too many cutbacks on everything.”
This part of the country may have a well-to-do reputation, but a quarter of Devon’s children live in poverty and the county council faces a budget black hole of £32m for 2019/20 – stretching services including social care, mental health provision, special educational needs funding, road maintenance and street lighting. Fear for Devon’s community hospitals threatened with closure is prevalent here.
Not independent’s day yet?
In Exmouth, the largest town in East Devon, the Tory candidate Simon Jupp has a very different interpretation of this election.
Born in Plymouth, the local journalist-turned-special adviser to Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab says, “people are generally telling me, whether they voted Leave or Remain, they want to get Brexit done – I know that’s the soundbite that you expect from a Conservative Party candidate.”
Local issues also come up, he adds, mentioning community hospitals and opposition to parking charges. His own father’s life was saved in a community hospital two years ago.
Jupp’s longer-term aim is to boost East Devon’s tourism, walking me along an impossibly windy seafront to show me where a hotel, watersports centre, leisure complex and two-storey restaurant are planned. The existing windswept bowling green and retro amusement arcade with its modest crazy golf course could look very much like a carpark come the new developments.
“We’ve seen some of our traditional industries like tourism struggle. I want to see that reinvigorated, serving a new market,” Jupp says, pointing out the vegan cakes on sale in the café we settle in.
“New people can come here and it’s not just about being a bucket and spade area… not just the delicious cream teas we all know and love, but also vegan cakes, decent coffee, so it appeals to everyone.”
Jupp accepts there’s competition – but talks up the other candidates. “I think it’ll be a fair fight, but I don’t think people need to necessarily focus entirely on the independent candidate,” he says. “Also look at the resurgence of the Liberal Democrats in the southwest, and the Labour party as well. It’s not a two-horse race in my view. No seat is safe.”
Rural revolt
“There’s a lack of young people here, it’s a retirement town,” says resident Gillian Hancock, 59, who is walking her dog and used to work at the Royal College of Nursing in Exeter. “I can’t see it changing from Conservative, it’s an affluent area, really.”
Brexit is not a priority for her, and she is undecided – choosing between the Green party and Lib Dems. “They all promise so much but don’t always deliver,” she says, noting the “many empty shops” in the town.
Jade Howarth, 35, a ward sister at Exeter hospital, is on a walk with her three-year-old son who is enthusiastically towing a plastic cart along the pavement. She likes the idea of modernising the town as, “it would be a nice thing for the little ones”.
She is also undecided, calling the election “difficult and confusing”, saying she’s “switched off” from it. Having voted Leave, she “felt guilty because I hadn’t really thought about it”, she says. “Now I know the details I think we should have stayed in, I’ve changed my mind. We have to stand up for ourselves but I feel bad – I do think it needs to be changed.”
Outgoing MP Hugo Swire insists the Tories will win over half the vote in East Devon. But softer Tory voters in search of change make its future far from certain. Polling day could yet turn out to be a kind of independence day.”
East Devon Watch 