Rob Wilson's Westminster Diary, June 11, 2009

Rob Wilson MP • Published 11 Jun 2009 09:00 0 Comments

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I AM NOT sure I"ll see the like again of the past fortnight, however long I remain in Parliament. By any standards it"s been quite extraordinary.

We have now arrived at the point in this Labour Government"s life that the Conservatives reached in around 1996. I think it would be fair to say that in 1996 a fair proportion of Conservative MPs thoroughly disliked fellow Conservative MPs, even more than they disliked their Labour opposition.

This is now the position within the Parliamentary Labour Party. The briefings against each other are pure poison and many have accepted that a change of Government is inevitable. I spoke with one very recently resigned member of the Cabinet and he volunteered, and I quote, 'It"s over, finished'.

The Prime Minister has his fingers clasped to the door frame and won"t be prised out of No 10.

Nope, he doesn"t care how bad things get, he"s not going. It doesn"t matter how many members of the Cabinet resign, how many Ministers go, how far the economy goes down the tubes, how much the country dislikes him. He still believes he"s the only one who has the answers!

He must now be thinking how he can cancel the fast approaching general election and rule Britain on emergency powers.

The European elections were a disaster for both Labour and the Liberals in Reading East, while the Greens did very well to finish second to the Conservatives. In fact the Conservatives polled about the same number of votes as Labour and the Liberals put together.

The Labour proportion of the vote in the Reading borough part of my constituency was 15%, the same as its national polling, but that doesn"t include Woodley and Earley where it would have done much worse.

I accept that you can"t extrapolate from a European to a general election, but the stench of death is lingering around this Government, and Reading won"t buck the trend. I do like the Greens and was pleased to see them doing well.

It is up to the Conservative Party locally and nationally to keep proving we deserve the trust that people are putting in us.

This blog appeared in Reading Chronicle 11 Jun 09

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