debconnor 🇺🇦

OK everyone, gather round, here's a lovely little story for you all. Chris Ward - Keir Starmer's former chief of staff - was a longtime close friend. He stayed at my parent's flat in Edinburgh. We got drunk together, made repetitive Alan Partridge-based gags. We argued about politics a lot: understandable, given his love of Tony Blair and unrepentant support for the Iraq War. He was obsessed with becoming an MP in his hometown, Brighton. His greatest ire wasn't reserved for the Tories, but for the Green Party, not least @CarolineLucas, who was something of a demonic figure for him. We discussed his frustrations at his flatlining career, condemned to a years-long exile of being a parliamentary bagcarrier, until some new MP called 'Keir Starmer' scooped him up. During the 2020 Labour leadership campaign, Chris Ward regaled me with fascinating tidbits like 'Keir Starmer really wants John McDonnell to stay on as Shadow Chancellor!!" He would ring me up to promise me that pledges like 'increase tax on the top 5%' were ironclad. Needless to say I wasn't convinced by this, and didn't vote for his candidate, but there's an insight into just how pathologically dishonest that campaign was. He then went on to work for 'Hanbury Strategy', a corporate lobbying firm set up by two Tories, one of them the former PR lead for Vote Leave. What I would say is this. Lloyd Russell Moyle is a gay man - like all the politicians purged by Starmer so far, from a minority - and the first of his family to go to university, who has been purged from his seat with the help of a nicely timed vexatious complaint. As Starmer's allies carve up parliamentary seats like colonial administrators divvying up their spoils, Ward - like a vulture - is set to steal this seat with not a single local member voting for him. Those local members should feel furious. They had a principled, independent-minded MP. They now have a professional political operator turned corporate lobbyist who will be a stooge for whatever his old boss tells him to say or do, and they have no say over the matter. Well, I think Brighton deserves better. Vote @Elaine4Kemptown for the Green Party.