Local Circumstances

Congratulations to my old friends Hilary and Carl Christer, mother and son, who have resigned from the Labour Party because of the additional cost of the new Stanley Town Council, set up to buy the vote of Kevan Jones in favour of ninety-day detention without charge (not trial, charge). Does anyone remember who was the Chief Whip?

There is a perfectly simple solution to this: now that the Town Council will be doing in Stanley everything that Parish Councils do elsewhere (or else why have or want it…?), the Council Tax now set by the new unitary authority should be reduced accordingly. Including, of course, in Stanley. Why has this not already happened? When will it?

Hilary and Carl were Derwentside District Councillors. As, indeed, were a lot of people. A meeting with another such old friend last Monday morning made me aware that three of them plan on sending a leaflet to every address in their former ward, complete with the Labour red rose, blaming the MP directly and by name. That MP is not Kevan Jones.

From a neighbouring ex-ward, Alex Watson, long-time Leader of Derwentside, now gives interviews about this area’s having been as betrayed by this Government as by the Tories in the Eighties. Strong stuff. But unanswerable.

And the three, like Alex and like so many others, are economically social democratic, morally and socially conservative British and Commonwealth patriots. All three have deep roots in the public services and in those services’ trade unions. One has deep roots in the co-operative movement. And the other two have deep roots in Catholic Social Teaching.