Letter from Dave Knaggs, Penrith and Solway Labour member
1. 78 Tory MPs are quitting as MPs rather than facing the electorate – this beats the previous record of dropouts.
2. Sunak announced the election whilst drowning in torrential rain to the sound of the 1997 Labour anthem Things Can Only Get Better broadcast by a nearby protester.
3. Sunak attended a public question-and-answer session at a Derbyshire factory where two strategically planted questioners turned out to be Tory councillors.
4. When meeting workers in Wales, he asked whether they were looking forward to the Euro 2024 football tournament: Wales didn’t qualify so they won’t be playing.
5. Sunak went to Belfast where he visited the Titanic Quarter and was asked by a journalist whether he was captaining a sinking ship.
6. Within hours of Sunak pledging to introduce mandatory national service (young people spending a year in the military or doing volunteer work on weekends) it was rubbished by army chiefs and a former Conservative defence secretary. Admiral Alan West, a former chief of the naval staff, said it was a “bonkers” plan.
Sunak’s national service pledge was launched just two days after Andrew Murrison (Defence Minister) said that the government had no plans for national service in any form because it would do more harm than good.
The Tories said they would pay for the national service strategy (costing £2.5Bbn) with £1bn coming from cracking down on tax avoidance and £1.5bn from extending the UK Shared Prosperity Fund which was meant to regenerate underfunded towns around the UK. So, the announcement abandons ‘Levelling Up’ and recognises that they have done nothing to address tax avoidance over the last 14 years of their Government.
7. The Tories have about 190 candidates yet to select – excellent forward planning. Michael Gove and Andrea Leadsom announce they will be standing down – Leadsom considers submitting a letter of no-confidence in her PM.
8. Lucy Allan, the Conservative MP for Telford, defected to Reform and was suspended from the party – but she responded by saying that she quit first.
9. Steve Baker (MP for Wycombe and Minister of State at the Cabinet Office) has gone on holiday to Greece rather than stay on the campaign trail whilst an internal memo leaked to the Times shows that Tory party staff are worried that Conservative ministers and MPs had failed to “get behind” campaigning and had refused to knock on doors.
10. Zac Goldsmith (Conservative peer and former minister) accused Sunak of having “damaged the party almost beyond repair” and “The hope is that when Sunak disappears off to California in a few weeks there are at least some decent MPs left around which to rebuild”.
11. Sunak implies he may one day leave the UK when he told ITV that he would stay in the UK “for years” to come. Not permanently?!
12. Yesterday (27 May), Sunak announced a new £100-a-year tax break to pensioners by increasing their personal allowance in a shamelessly transparent bribe to pensioners. This unfunded £2.4bn, will, he says, be paid for by clamping down on tax avoidance and evasion. The Tories have had 14 years to stop tax avoidance and evasion!
13. Sunak’s campaign headquarters and candidates refuse to put Tory branding on their leaflets.
More tragic hilarity to come from the Tory General Election Campaign…..
