I began Business of the House Questions this morning by discussing Lynton Crosby and his influence on government. I understand that on Tuesday evening the prime minister’s Australian election guru Lynton Crosby addressed the Tory parliamentary party on his strategy for the general election. I asked Andrew Lansley whether he agreed with me that for the sake of transparency, lobbyists like Crosby at the heart of Downing Street should publish their interests and their client lists? We have already had one scandal involving prime ministerial appointments at No 10 – surely we do not want another.
I followed on by discussing the upcoming EU referendum bill which is craved by the Tory backbenchers. I asked the leader of the House to confirm the obvious – that this is actually a Conservative party hand-out bill! I doubt James Wharton whose name the bill is under will have any control of its progress through the Commons; this is purely a ploy by David Cameron to appease his revolting backbenchers. This shows that the Tories are more concerned with pursuing partisan interests than the national interest!
I continued by raising my concerns over an increasingly bleak picture of a divided Britain under the Tories. New figures from Public Health England show that thousands more people are dying prematurely in the north than in the south. The shocking variations show that someone living in Manchester is twice as likely to die early as somebody living in Wokingham. A report from the TUC this week has shown wages have fallen by nearly eight per cent. This comes at a time when prices are rising and people are suffering unprecedented cuts to their living standards. The regional differences are shocking with the north-west and the south-west seeing pay packets shrink by more than 10 per cent. The chancellor used to say we’re all in this together, but these figures added to his millionaires’ tax cut make that statement laughable. I asked Andrew Lansley to schedule a debate in government time on divided Britain.
Earlier this week another MP added his request for a leadership contest to the growing pile in the 1922 committee files. Andrew Bridgen likened the Tory party to being in an aeroplane: he said that the Tories can either ‘do something about’ the prime minister, or ‘sit back, watch the in-flight movies and wait for the inevitable’.
I wondered what movies the cabinet might be watching while waiting for the inevitable to arrive. Eyes wide shut? Clueless? Or Les Miserables? Or perhaps they’ve just been instructed to watch the Wizard of Oz? Luckily for the prime minister the home secretary took the opportunity to lecture him about his ‘motives and values’ last night and his fellow Bullingdon boy Boris Johnson rushed to undermine him by calling him a ‘girly swot’. As a self-proclaimed ‘girly swot’ myself I reminded the mayor of London that being a woman and being clever is not an insult. In fact, if the prime minister had a few more ‘girly swots’ in the cabinet he wouldn’t be in the mess he’s in now!
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Angela Eagle is MP for Wallasey, shadow leader of the House of Commons and writes the weekly Business of Parliament column for Progress. She tweets @AngelaEagle