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You’re either in front of Guido, or you are behind…
Counter to the trend in corporate circles for woke Godless cards referencing culturally devoid “festive celebrations” or “seasons greetings” the Guido team have gone for a fully immersive traditional nativity scene on our card. Sporting renaissance style halos Max, Paul, and Ellie re-created the famous scene at the heart of the Christmas story. Merry Christmas to all our readers, whatever your faith…
George Osborne has jumped in on the attack against Labour’s £28 billion-a-year black hole, claiming on his Political Currency podcast yesterday that “their sums don’t really add up“. To be fair to Osborne, he was actually talking some sense about the confusing nature of Reeves’ ‘green growth’ plan. He pointed out that as Labour are expected to vote in favour of Jeremy Hunt’s National Insurance tax cuts whilst committing to reducing debt, then Labour “don’t have any way to fund the £28 billion Green Prosperity Plan…they’re [pledging] spending the money and they haven’t found a way yet to explain how they’re going to pay for it.” Guido is inclined to agree…
After all the chopping and changing over when the £28 billion a year target will actually be hit, and how it will be funded at all, even Ed Balls asked, “what’s the growth plan?”. If both a former chancellor and a former shadow chancellor are questioning the plans, perhaps Reeves’ should rethink them…again.
Local Tories in Bromsgrove are rumbling as the re-run of Sajid Javid’s Bromsgrove seat selection is penned in for mid-December. Local councillor Bradley Thomas was selected back in July, beating Onward’s Seb Payne by five votes. After association president Mark Jones made complaints, CCHQ launched an investigation into claims that some who voted weren’t actually eligible to. They finished their report, though it remains unreleased. Now a “confirmation vote” is taking place. Some wonder why the report hasn’t been made public…
Members were invited late yesterday afternoon to the new vote on 14th December. Local Tories are concerned CCHQ is trying to push Seb Payne in by dubious means. Officials involved in the first selection meeting, which formally confirmed Thomas as the candidate, allegedly weren’t even interviewed by CCHQ’s investigators. Guido readers may remember that back in July a ‘refer back motion’ to restart the selection was proposed – though eventually defeated. Safe seats are running out and candidates are meant to all be in place by January…
A member of the association tells Guido:
“It’s unbelievable that CCHQ has a report which it won’t share with anyone locally – including the chairman – after failing to interview any key witnesses, and after firing the first investigator for producing the wrong conclusion.
I don’t know what hold Mark Jones has over CCHQ, but he is the only person who made a series of complaints, and they all seem to have been upheld with no process at all.
I saw him storm out of the meeting, and he had to be blocked by the moderator from asking an unfair question which he targeted only to Bradley. He spent the weeks prior to the meeting campaigning amongst members for Seb Payne and telling everyone that it was what Sajid wanted and that they had to vote for Seb because he could attract good speakers for our fundraising dinners.
This will open the floodgates to SGM processes all over the country now. I’m not sure that’s what was intended here. I think the process works just fine, with local members choosing who they want – not having people parachuted in from London, or using dirty tricks like these to reverse the Party’s democratic processes“.
Murk and mire…
