SIR STUART BELL’S MIDDLESBROUGH CONSTITUENCY is a prime example of a safe seat where Labour voters would vote for a chimpanzee to represent them if it wore a red rosette. Therefore they have little to complain about if their ennobled representative abuses the dispensation given him by dyed in the wool Labour voters who’s votes are nothing more than barnacles, permanently attached to the Labour hull.
As for Sir Stuart, he can afford to ride out any controversy, knowing that his position can only be placed under threat by his constituency party or Labour’s NEC. Both these options seem unlikely, unless the Labour voters of Middlesbrough decide at the ballot box to end their MP’s 28 year reign.
He is being criticised for having never held a constituency surgery in 14 years - but is, however, available by phone: although his local newspaper, the Middlesbrough Gazette had called his office 100 times over the summer without reply. At least after claiming £85,000 in “staff costs” according to the Daily Mail – part of which, £35,000, goes every year to his wife who manages his “office”, you would have thought an exchange of a few pleasantries with the editor of his local newspaper would be the least he might be prepared to do.
Sir Stuart Bell received his knighthood in 2004, followed in 2006 by being appointed a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur; France’s highest honour; which was presented to him by President Chirac - who is now, by the way, under investigation for corruption while mayor of Paris.
Sir Stuart also seemed to play the part of parliamentary shop steward during the expenses scandal that degraded even further the popular reputation of our political class. He did much to diminish his own reputation by appearing to blame the parliamentary overseers for the many noses dipped deeply in the trough.
For his reputation was formidable. For instance, after being promoted by Neil Kinnock in 1984 to the frontbench as a spokesman on Northern Ireland; he resigned after the Cleveland child abuse scandal broke. For the next two years he took on Cleveland’s social services in support of Cleveland’s children; and this, if nothing else, earned him is knighthood. He thus became one of the few to receive the honour who can proudly boast that it was well merited; and not a political reward for services rendered.
BUT WHAT THE CASE OF Sir Stuart Bell, and now, it seems, the former MP for Luton South, Margaret Moran proves; is that the “safe seat” is the modern equivalence of the old Rotten Boroughs. For whoever stands in such seats need never fear the electorate, but need only to pay close attention and fawn over, like Dickens’s Uriah Heap, their constituency parties; who will remain loyal long after the cell doors have been slammed shut.
There should be no safe constituency in this country. Each and every member of our parliament should feel insecure. They should not be allowed to countenance the good life at the tax payer’s expense; they should not feel that they are in an invulnerable position freed from the electorate’s will. If the electorate will not change their ways, then, demographically speaking, the ways must be changed for them if they wish to see their confidence in our political class restored. It is no use complaining about the likes of Sir Stuart Bell or Margaret Moran, if you are not prepared, voluntarily, as voters, to put an end to it yourselves.
We are still, in many areas, a class bound country with class loyalties that will not be shaken by any one individual’s behaviour, providing that individual represents the party they have, for generations, given their loyalty too.
It is the people of Middlesbrough that need to change. Their loyalty is to a party and not an individual. As long as Labour returns an MP for Middlesbrough, it matters little about character or criminality short of murder; and it matters little to the party unless they detect a backlash among loyal Labour voters in Middlesbrough. Then, and only then, will the party they have been pre-programmed genetically to support change its ways.
A safe-seat can become an excuse for laziness, as it appears Sir Stuart Bell’s has become. In such circumstance it neither befits the current representative, or his party. He has become sluggish and languorous, about his duties to the people of Middlesbrough.
To have never consulted with his constituents in 14 years, can have only been accomplished by a politician who knows that he sits, democratically at least, almost immovable from his position as an MP: an MP who knows that when he is eventually driven out of office; it will be to the House of Lords, and given further opportunity for making money.
TODAY OUR POLITICIANS, AS A CLASS, are venal and third rate. They seek out rewards for their families quite legitimately under Green Book rules, and have little or no serious background for being politicians.
Their minds are third rate; they have little knowledge of this island’s history other than what they were taught at school; and as far as the Left is concerned, the ordure of every page presented to them to study naturally finds only the utmost contempt.
There must be an overhaul of this country’s voting demographics. In America party allegiances are not so profound as they are in this country. If a political leader in America, fighting for his party’s acceptance as a presidential candidate cannot garner enough support, he or she is quickly disposed of; because power is the first need of any party.
Sir Stuart Bell is not alone within the political parties. All of the parties have safe-constituencies which face little opposition at election times. The House of Commons needs reform. It needs a reduction in the numbers of its members by a third, and as a result, a redrawing of constituency boundaries.
Sir Stuart Bell will be offered the Lords by Ed Milliband before the next election, and the offer will be gratefully accepted by this latter day Rip Van Winkle.
There he will sit out his remaining days, dining well; until he passes away on the red benches, and is carried finally from the mother of all parliaments by several bewigged parliamentary officers wearing black tights. At last the noble Lord will be free from his persecutors and the spite of an ungrateful nation.
