The BBC's idea of political impartiality is an absolute farce

The Question Time panel for Thursday September 13th 2018 is a clear demonstration that the BBC claims of political impartiality are absolutely ludicrous.

They've managed to stuff their panel with four right-wing pro-austerity figures, countered only by a single left-wing pro-investment figure (and by far the lest famous of the five to boot).

The four right-wing panellists are the Tory government minister Rory Stewart, the Tory party donor Theo Paphitis, the hard-right Daily Mail polemicist and Brexiteer Julia Hartley-Brewer, and former Labour Shadow Chancellor and one of the chief architects of Labour's disastrously unappealing austerity-lite strategy that lost them the 2015 General Election.

Chris Leslie is such an anti-Corbyn right-winger that he's actually starred in a Tory attack ad, which features one of his trademark economically illiterate rants against Labour's agreed manifesto policy of investment-based growth strategies and in favour of even imposing even more ruinous hard-right Tory austerity dogma!

Putting Chris Leslie on the panel means that any discussion of Labour's fantastic manifesto commitment to actually invest in the economy will be marred by the sight of a rebel right-wing pro-austerity Labour MP dynamiting his own party's economic policies!

The one left-wing panellist is the virtually unknown Faiza Shaheen from the centre-left think tank CLASS.

At the 2017 General Election the UK public was absolutely split down the middle when it came to right-wing austerity dogma with the number of people voting for right-wing pro-austerity parties almost exactly matched by those voting for pro-investment parties.

Ever since then the popularity of right-wing austerity dogma has been waning further, with ever more people cottoning on to the fact that austerity was always just a massive Tory wealth transfer con to enrich the mega-rich at the expense of the rest of us.

But the BBC remains absolutely determined to keep the Tory austerity con going by stacking the Question Time panel with as many right-wing pro-austerity figures as they can get away with.

There's little doubt that they'll resort to their usual trick of planting Tory party Councillors/activists in the audience to be given the opportunity to ask ridiculously loaded questions too.

It's absolutely impossible to imagine the BBC ever stacking the Question Time panel 4-1 in favour of left-wing pro-investment figures, but a panel loaded 4-1 in favour of right-wingers is depressingly unexceptional by the BBC's ridiculously biased standards.

The decision to cobble together such a transparently biased Question Time panel makes an absolute mockery of the BBC's claims to political impartiality.

Such transparent political bias at the BBC is unacceptable because they're a public service broadcaster with a duty to impartiality. They're not like the right-wing billionaire-owned propaganda rags like the S*n and the Daily Mail, and they're not like small independent blogs like this one either. They're funded by licence fee payers and they have a public service duty to avoid displays of overt right-wing pro-austerity bias like this.

But the BBC know that the Tory party control their purse strings, and appoint their Board of Directors, so they're going to ignore their obligation to political impartiality, and continue actively promoting hard-right Tory austerity dogma just as hard as the right-wing propaganda rags do.

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OR

Not-voting is not revolutionary

  

The 2018 local elections are looming and the "don't vote" brigade are once again out in force. I don't actually have anything against the concept of not voting, the people who annoy me are the ones who go around actively propagandising for other people to not-vote, as if they're participating in some kind of heroic anti-establishment revolution.

Not-voting isn't wrong in itself

Back in 2013 a friend of mine received their local election postal ballot but found that the only two candidates were a Tory (part of the coalition government they despised) and a Lib-Dem (part of the coalition government that they despised). I think their choice to tear the ballot paper into little pieces and send them off in the return envelope was perfectly justifiable.

The problem I have is with people who utter sub-Brandian platitudes like "if only everyone stopped voting then ..." because the huge glaring fault with this kind of assertion is that it's an exercise in extremely juvenile wishful thinking.

It's profoundly annoying that so many people keep repeating this kind of ludicrous appeal for everyone to "stop voting" based on the idea that revolutionary political change can be achieved through a vague hope that the powers that be will suddenly take notice if we all begin protesting against them by ... err ... doing nothing.

The PCC elections

A look at the results of the utterly farcical 2012 PCC elections in England demonstrate why this idle wish for mass non-participation doesn't have a hope of succeeding.

The average turnout for these ludicrous elections across the whole of England was just 15%, yet not a single one of the "winning" candidates refused to take up their cushy £65-£95,000 per year salaries because of their appalling lack of a democratic mandate. Several of the PCCs actually took up their positions with the backing of less than 5% of the eligible electorate in their constituencies!

The 2012 PCC elections were absolute proof that a lack of mandate from over 95% of the electorate still wasn't enough to prevent politicians from taking up their jobs. This leaves us with the question of how anyone thinks that wishfully appealing for everyone to just stop voting could ever result in revolutionary social change?

Even in the extraordinarily unlikely scenario that 99% of people refused to vote, it's still certain that the politicians themselves and their inner-circles of supporters would just cast a few dozen votes to "win" the election for themselves.

Not-voting is not revolutionary

There's nothing clever, or contrarian, or heroic about telling other people not to vote as if it's a revolutionary thing to do. It's a stupid stance that is literally indistinguishable from outright apathy when the voting statistics are compiled. 

If you want to make yourself indistinguishable from the hopelessly apathetic lumpenproletariat in the electoral statistics that's fine by me, but don't think that there's anything clever or revolutionary about telling other people to do it. There isn't.

Revolutionary social change certainly doesn't come about by taking the exact same non-action as the hopelessly apathetic. It comes about through direct action.

Social progress has always been achieved when people have come together in solidarity to demand change from the powerful, when people educate themselves and educate each other, and when they cause enough economic disruption to cause the powerful and wealthy to give in to some of their demands (one of the best ways to frighten the wealthy and powerful is by threatening to hit them in the pocket).

Demographics

A look at the demographics from the 2017 General Election reveals a lot of interesting information about those who did and didn't vote. Old people are an awful lot more likely to vote Tory than young people, and they're also a lot more likely to actually vote too. The very wealthy are a lot more likely to vote than the very poor, and a lot more likely to actually vote Tory too.

Given these demographic trends is it any wonder that we ended up getting stuck with Tory governments that endlessly panders to the very wealthy and shield pensioners from the most brutal of their austerity measures, while they deliberately load the burden of their economic attacks on the poor, the young and the disabled?

If just a small fraction of the 31.2% of people who didn't bother to vote at all (either through apathy or disillusionment with the system) had've voted for anyone but the Tories, this extremely malicious and desperately incompetent government wouldn't have even been able to cling onto power by bribing the DUP bigots with £1 billion in taxpayers' cash for the support of their 10 MPs. They would have been unable to continue their long-term project of tearing up long-standing British values and turning the UK into one of the most right-wing authoritarian state in the developed world. And they would have been unable to continue imposing their ruinous hard-right austerity fanaticism or their policy of deliberately repressing workers' wages.

Voting obviously isn't the "be all and end all" of politics

I'm sceptical that revolutionary political change can be achieved through voting alone. Politics is about far more than scrawling a mark on a piece of paper every few years and then sitting back and waiting for the next paper scrawling exercise. The best way to effect political change is undoubtedly to demand it outside of the ballot box. 

However I do believe that voting is important because votes do determine who the custodians of political power are while progressive change is being demanded from those who are determined to achieve it.

The system is a mess, but not-voting won't fix it

The current system in the UK is an absolute disgrace, I know that this is the case because I spend so much of my time trying to expose the appalling malice, incompetence and corruption that's going on. 

However typing platitudinous "if only everyone would stop voting ..." type comments on political threads is definitely not the way to resolve the appalling problems we face, because it's absolutely clear that under the system we have, not-voting simply transfers even more political power to those who do vote.

Under the ludicrously unrepresentative Westminster voting system we suffer from, the sheer number of non-voters meant that the Tory party only needed 24% of the registered electorate to vote for them in order to gain a majority government in 2015!

As far as I'm concerned, anyone who thinks that simply not-voting is the route to revolutionary political change is even more delusional than the person who thinks that sticking a bit of paper in a box every few years is an adequate level of political engagement. 

Conclusion

If we want serious political change we need to educate ourselves, articulate it, demand it, fight for it.

Sticking a bit of paper in a box every few years is extremely unlikely to lead to revolutionary change, but it can help to ensure that things aren't quite as bad as they could be while we build solidarity and take the direct action that is needed to promote the actual changes that we want to see.

If anyone thinks I'm wrong about not-voting doing nothing more than transferring more political power to those who do vote, I'd really like to see someone attempt to explain the exact mechanism by which an individual not-voting supposedly achieves revolutionary political change.

Make sure you are registered to vote

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

Isn't it amazing how short some people's memories seem to be?

Isn't it amazing how short some people's memories seem to be?

Of Course the Labour MP Jared O'Mara's bigoted comments about female celebrities and gays back in the early 2000s were unacceptable, and he's done the right thing by apologising for making them, explaining that his views have changed and then resigning from the Equalities Committee in shame.

However it's impossible not to notice the opportunism of point-scoring Tories like Sarah Wollaston who was literally dripping with hypocrisy when she decided to tweet "Hard to see how anyone with his views was selected and retains the Labour whip. Sheffield Hallam deserves a By-election".

Is it remotely possible that Wollaston has completely forgotten about the furore over the candidate the Tory party fielded in Darlington in the election just four months ago?

Has she really forgotten how it was revealed that the Tory candidate Peter Cuthbertson had written a load of quite extraordinary blog posts attacking the women's movement, LGBT activists and ethnic minorities, praising bigots and homophobes, criticising gay public figures, and whipping up outrage about gay couples adopting children?

Does she seriously expect anyone to believe that she's completely forgotten how Theresa May (who had even made personal visits to Tory target seat of Darlington in order to support Cuthbertson) leapt immediately to his defence by insisting that "Peter has made it clear that his views have changed"?

How, other than rank partisan hypocrisy, is it possible for points-scoring Tories like Sarah Wollaston to think it fine for Cuthbertson to remain their candidate in Darlington because his views from the early 2000s have changed, but bitterly attack O'Mara for his comments in the early 2000s, despite the fact he's apologised and explained how his views have changed?

If Wollaston is serious in calling for O'Mara to be punished by the Labour Party for what he wrote 15 years ago on a Morrisey fan page, surely she should have immediately demanded Cuthbertson's resignation as the Tory parliamentary candidate for the numerous displays of much more calculated bigotry he had posted on his blog "Conservative Commentary"?

Of course Wollaston would never have called for a fellow Tory party candidate to resign in the middle of a general election because it would have harmed the Tories' election campaign by drawing much more attention to a dirty little scandal the Tories were busy trying to bury.

It shouldn't really matter whether you think politicians should be harshly punished for the things they wrote on the Internet long before they became parliamentary candidates, or whether you think they should be given the benefit of the doubt when they express regret and state that their views have changed.

What matters is consistency. If you're going to howl outrage over the issue, then be consistent. Howl just as much outrage even when it's a member of your own political party. And if you're going to give your political allies the benefit of the doubt, then you absolutely must give the benefit of the doubt to your political foes too.

Anything else is just the worst kind of cheap partisan point-scoring. And worse too; it's an example of hypocritically piggybacking your personal political biases onto important issues like women's rights and the LGBT equality movement that affect the lives of millions of actual people.

In my view this kind of grotesquely hypocritical grandstanding from the likes of Sarah Wollaston is actually much more sickening than the fact that a couple of politicians said bigoted things years before they decided to stand for parliament, but now claim to have grown up and moved on from their bigotry. 

This kind of point-scoring hypocrisy is worse because it exists in the present moment, not in the early 2000s like Cuthbertson and O'Mara's bigoted comments, and because this kind of integrity-deficient and highly partisan party political point scoring is one of the ugliest and most apathy inducing things about the current state of British politics.

Another issue to consider is why nobody in the mainstream media has bothered to draw parallels between these two remarkably similar cases. It's almost as if there's a deliberate agenda to create a narrative of Labour Party bigotry, which means a remarkably similar story of Tory party bigotry from just four months ago needs to be flushed down the collective memory hole, because noting the similarities would obviously destabilise the intended narrative.

Aside from clocking the repulsive hypocrisy of opportunistic Tories cashing in on this O'Mara scandal when their own party leader was making excuses just four months ago when one of their own Tory colleagues got busted for posting much more calculated examples of bigotry, and the remarkably suspicious forgetfulness of the mainstream media, there's also an important lesson for all of us.

Be careful what you post on the Internet kids. Because who knows what direction your life might have taken in a decade or two, and who knows who might consider it beneficial to go trawling through your Internet history to find damning comments you'd all but forgotten about making.

Whether it's a future political opponent, a disgusting muck-raker like Guido Fawkes, a potential employer digging around in your past, or someone with an interest in forcing you out of your job or wrecking your personal relationships. It should be pretty damned obvious that any careless/tasteless/bigoted/intolerant/extreme-right comments you make today could always come back to bite you in the arse in the future, because the Internet doesn't forget.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

What's worse than 7 years of impoverishing women with discriminatory austerity dogma?

I'm going to start off by saying that Labour's Clive Lewis did something really stupid. It doesn't matter that he said the word "bitch" to a man, any elected politician should be aware that gender specific insults are not fine.

It's important to note that Lewis has admitted his mistake, issued an unequivocal public apology and he certainly won't be making the same error of judgement again. 

Now we get to some of the people kicking up a stink about Clive Lewis' use of the word "bitch".

I'm certainly not the first to point out that the right-wing slobs at the Guido Fawkes blog have built a castle on quicksand when it comes to manufacturing outrage about the use of the word "bitch". The Guido Twitter feed is absolutely littered with uses of that word, and they have a sickening track record of dishing out misogynistic abuse against women, including Paul Staines posting a picture of himself in bed with a cardboard cutout of Diane Abbott, attempts to ruin the lives of two very young female Labour Party activists (1 & 2), and an absolute tide of misogynistic abuse hurled at Dawn Foster by Guido acolytes just because she was sitting next to Clive Lewis at the time.

The synthetic outrage from the Tory benches is even more sickening than that of the hypocritical Guido Fawkes shit-slingers.

Tories don't actually give a damn about women and feminist issues, if they did they wouldn't have imposed 86% of the burden of their hard-right austerity dogma onto women. They wouldn't have introduced the vile "rape clause", and they certainly wouldn't be championing a misogynistic throwback who believes in forced pregnancy for the victims of rape and incest as one of their frontrunners to replace Theresa May when they finally decide to stop using her as a human bullet shield.

All the Tories care about is weaponising feminist language in order to smear their political opponents. 

If they really care so much about use of the word "bitch" that they want an urgent debate on Clive Lewis for using the word at a man, where were all the calls from Tory MPs for an urgent debate on misogynistic language when the Scottish Tory MP David Mundell was filmed calling Yvette Cooper a bitch last year? Where were the calls for an urgent debate on misogyny when Theresa May decided to quote a vile misogynistic extreme-right Twitter troll in parliament in order to score cheap political points against Jeremy Corbyn?

Of course these opportunistic Tories don't care that one of their colleagues was filmed calling a woman a bitch, or that their leader thought it fine to quote a depraved extreme-right misogynist in parliament. Because to them countering misogyny isn't the point.

Of course the Tories don't care that Clive Lewis has already apologised. Because to them a man learning a lesson about the continued pervasiveness of sexism and sexist language in the 21st Century and apologising about it isn't the point.

Of course the Tories don't care that Clive Lewis has done more to try to actually improve women's lives than they ever have (or ever will) by consistently opposing their ideological obsession with misogynistic austerity dogma. Because to them actively working to improve the lives of ordinary women isn't the point.

They don't care because literally the only value feminist issues actually have to them is as an excuse to launch opportunistic political attacks on one of their opponents before they immediately get back to their day job of actively and consciously impoverishing millions of ordinary women through their obsession with austerity dogma, and forcing rape victims to recount their trauma or face financial punishment.

Hopefully this desperately cynical opportunism backfires on them. Firstly because feminism is the kind of "social justice warrior" stuff that sickens the regressive tabloid-reading hard-right Blue-kipper demographic (which makes up a significant proportion of their voter base these days). And secondly because any remotely sensible feminist knows that a Labour politician using the word "bitch" at a man and then apologising for it is absolutely outweighed by the disgraceful Tory track record of spending seven punishing years actively discriminating against millions of ordinary women with their sexist austerity policies.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

The Tory strategy for winning the youth vote is hilariously inept

The Tories are terrified of Labour's appeal to the younger generations, but instead of trying to appeal to these demographics with some actual policies that would improve their lives in any way, they've decided to try to drive the under-40s away from Labour by lying to their faces and deliberately spreading links to hard-right propaganda sites where young people are treated with absolute disdain!

The lie

The lie that the Tories have settled on is that Labour are supposedly breaking an election "promise" by saying that finding a way to write off all student debt is an "ambition" rather than an official policy.

There is no policy in the Labour manifesto to write off all student debt, in fact the Tories have implicitly admitted this fact by harking on about an interview Corbyn did with the NME instead of highlighting the non-existent passage of the Labour manifesto promising to write off all student debts. 

The problem of course is that Corbyn didn't promise to write off all student debt in that NME interview at all either (as can be seen in the extract).

What Corbyn did say was that the massive debt situation is a problem, and that he's looking at ways of reducing the unsustainable and economically damaging student debt levels.

There is no inconsistency whatever between what he said about wanting to do something about the problem in the NME interview, and the subsequent statements from Labour politicians saying that a total write-off of all student debts in their entirety is an "ambition" rather than an official policy.

We'll win the youth vote with a dose of Guido Fawkes!

The official Tory CCHQ Twitter account has been banging on about this fictional broken promise for three days now. 

They even went as far as tweeting a link to the fanatically right-wing Guido Fawkes blog.

Just imagine being so out-of-touch with reality that you imagine that sharing a link to a fanatically right-wing blog is going to win over the youth vote!

Just imagine thinking you're going to herd the youngsters onto the Tory bus by sharing a blog with a comments section full of bigoted, foul-mouthed, anti-intellectual, disgustingly right-wing Tory blowhards ranting on bitterly about how young people are "idiots", "dimwits", "useless members of society" and "snowflakes" full of "entitlement" and "cultural Marxism"!

The under-40s massively rejected the muck-raking, shit-flinging, smear-mongering of the right-wing propaganda rags, but the Tories are so catastrophically out of touch with the public mood that they think that sharing a link to a fanatically right-wing blog that uses the exact same divisive smear-mongering tactics as the right-wing propaganda rags is a way to win the youth vote!

They're so immersed in their familiar right-wing echo chambers of hate that they're simply incapable of seeing how toxic these extreme-right cesspits of bile are to people with progressive social values, or even any kind of basic human decency whatever.

The senselessness of it

If the Tories had any sense whatever they'd keep very quiet indeed about student debt.

Their introduction of £9,000 per year tuition fees has created the situation where students from the poorest backgrounds are leaving university with £57,000 worth of debt, and a staggering 75% of all graduates are projected to never pay off their student debts despite a lifetime 9% aspiration tax on their disposable income.

Labour have a policy of scrapping these extreme fees and implementing a system like Germany where education is considered a benefit to all of society, not just to the individual who receives it.

Labour have also said that they intend to do something about the shocking scale of student debt while the Tories are only making the situation worse by scrapping maintenance grants for low income students and scrapping NHS bursaries too.

Another thing the Tories would be extremely quiet about if they had any sense whatever is broken political promises. Not only did they begin tearing pages out of their own manifesto before the 2017 General election happened, there's also the scandal of their 2010 "Contract with the electorate" which they completely deleted from their website once it became clear that they had broken every single promise it contained!

Smug Tory superiority

One of the big problems with the Tories is their innate sense of absolute superiority over ordinary plebs like us. 

They think they can lie to us with impunity because they believe we're too damned thick to actually read the Labour manifesto or the NME interview for ourselves to check that what they said was an accurate account of what was actually stated, rather than an obvious deception.

Not only do they expect us to mindlessly believe their lies, they also assume that we're way too thick to remember the basic details of who created these mountains of unpayable student debt in the first place with their £9,000 fees, or the fact that the Tories have a shocking track record of actually breaking their own election promises.

The Tories have resorted to their tired old tactic of lying to the public and whitewashing their own disgraceful track record in actually creating the problem in the first place, which is an illustration of exactly why they're so toxic to the younger generations: They've got nothing whatever to offer us except more of the lies, and spin, and smears, and deceptions that we so firmly rejected on June 8th.

Conclusion

Don't believe the Tory lies. 

Whenever you hear a Tory or any of their attack dogs in the mainstream media saying anything about a Labour Party policy, any other party policy, an interview, official statistics, the conclusions of a report, or whatever - the responsibility is on you to find the manifesto, that interview, those statistics, or that report, and check for yourself what was actually said and how it differs from the Tory interpretation.

The Tories think you're thick and gullible enough to outright lie to your face. 

They think you're too thick to use Google to establish the facts for yourself. 

They think you're too thick to realise they're not actually offering you anything except more austerity dogma, more student debt, more unaffordable housing, more wage repression, and more asset stripping of the national wealth to distribute to their chums at knockdown prices.

You can either accept this archaic view that you must be subservient at all times to your Tory lords and masters and never question what they say, or you can start from the more logical position of being highly sceptical of anything that is said by people with proven track records of lying through their teeth and speaking down to the public with a load of demeaning economic baby-talk as if we're a pack of absolutely gullible numbskulls.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

A list of all the MPs who voted to carry on with wage repression

Over the last few months countless Tory MPs have repeatedly praised emergency service workers. After the Westminster attack; after the Manchester Arena atrocity; after London bridge; and after the inferno at Grenfell tower.

But then when they had the opportunity to end the seven year long campaign of wage repression against public sector workers they voted it down, and then actually cheered themselves for doing it.

Here is the full list of MPs who voted against the opposition amendment which called for an end to the public sector pay cap: 

• Nigel Adams (Conservative - Selby and Ainsty)
• Bim Afolami (Conservative - Hitchin and Harpenden)
• Adam Afriyie (Conservative - Windsor)
• Peter Aldous (Conservative - Waveney)
• Lucy Allan (Conservative - Telford)
• Heidi Allen (Conservative - South Cambridgeshire)
• Stuart Andrew (Conservative - Pudsey)
• Edward Argar (Conservative - Charnwood)
• Victoria Atkins (Conservative - Louth and Horncastle)
• Richard Bacon (Conservative - South Norfolk)
• Kemi Badenoch (Conservative - Saffron Walden)
• Steve Baker (Conservative - Wycombe)
• Harriett Baldwin (Conservative - West Worcestershire)
• Stephen Barclay (Conservative - North East Cambridgeshire)
• John Baron (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
• Guto Bebb (Conservative - Aberconwy)
• Henry Bellingham (Conservative - North West Norfolk)
• Richard Benyon (Conservative - Newbury)
• Paul Beresford (Conservative - Mole Valley)
• Jake Berry (Conservative - Rossendale and Darwen)
• Bob Blackman (Conservative - Harrow East)
• Crispin Blunt (Conservative - Reigate)
• Nick Boles (Conservative - Grantham and Stamford)
• Peter Bone (Conservative - Wellingborough)
• Peter Bottomley (Conservative - Worthing West)
• Andrew C Bowie (Conservative - West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine)
• Ben Bradley (Conservative - Mansfield)
• Karen Bradley (Conservative - Staffordshire Moorlands)
• Graham Brady (Conservative - Altrincham and Sale West)
• Jack Brereton (Conservative - Stoke-on-Trent South)
• Andrew Bridgen (Conservative - North West Leicestershire)
• Steve Brine (Conservative - Winchester)
• James Brokenshire (Conservative - Old Bexley and Sidcup)
• Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
• Robert Buckland (Conservative - South Swindon)
• Alex Burghart (Conservative - Brentwood and Ongar)
• Conor Burns (Conservative - Bournemouth West)
• Alistair Burt (Conservative - North East Bedfordshire)
• Alun Cairns (Conservative - Vale of Glamorgan)
• James Cartlidge (Conservative - South Suffolk)
• William Cash (Conservative - Stone)
• Maria Caulfield (Conservative - Lewes)
• Alex Chalk (Conservative - Cheltenham)
• Rehman Chishti (Conservative - Gillingham and Rainham)
• Christopher Chope (Conservative - Christchurch)
• Jo Churchill (Conservative - Bury St Edmunds)
• Colin Clark (Conservative - Gordon)
• Greg Clark (Conservative - Tunbridge Wells)
• Kenneth Clarke (Conservative - Rushcliffe)
• Simon Clarke (Conservative - Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland)
• James Cleverly (Conservative - Braintree)
• Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Conservative - The Cotswolds)
• Thérèse Coffey (Conservative - Suffolk Coastal)
• Damian Collins (Conservative - Folkestone and Hythe)
• Alberto Costa (Conservative - South Leicestershire)
• Robert Courts (Conservative - Witney)
• Geoffrey Cox (Conservative - Torridge and West Devon)
• Stephen Crabb (Conservative - Preseli Pembrokeshire)
• Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
• Chris Davies (Conservative - Brecon and Radnorshire)
• David T. C. Davies (Conservative - Monmouth)
• Glyn Davies (Conservative - Montgomeryshire)
• Mims Davies (Conservative - Eastleigh)
• Philip Davies (Conservative - Shipley)
• David Davis (Conservative - Haltemprice and Howden)
• Caroline Dinenage (Conservative - Gosport)
• Jonathan Djanogly (Conservative - Huntingdon)
• Leo Docherty (Conservative - Aldershot)
• Julia Dockerill (Conservative - Hornchurch and Upminster)
• Michelle Donelan (Conservative - Chippenham)
• Nadine Dorries (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
• Steve Double (Conservative - St Austell and Newquay)
• Oliver Dowden (Conservative - Hertsmere)
• Jackie Doyle-Price (Conservative - Thurrock)
• Richard Drax (Conservative - South Dorset)
• James Duddridge (Conservative - Rochford and Southend East)
• David Duguid (Conservative - Banff and Buchan)
• Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative - Chingford and Woodford Green)
• Alan Duncan (Conservative - Rutland and Melton)
• Philip Dunne (Conservative - Ludlow)
• Michael Ellis (Conservative - Northampton North)
• Tobias Ellwood (Conservative - Bournemouth East)
• Charlie Elphicke (Conservative - Dover)
• George Eustice (Conservative - Camborne and Redruth)
• Nigel Evans (Conservative - Ribble Valley)
• David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
• Michael Fabricant (Conservative - Lichfield)
• Michael Fallon (Conservative - Sevenoaks)
• Suella Fernandes (Conservative - Fareham)
• Mark Field (Conservative - Cities of London and Westminster)
• The liar Vicky Ford (Conservative - Chelmsford)
• Kevin Foster (Conservative - Torbay)
• The disgraced Liam Fox (Conservative - North Somerset)
• Mark Francois (Conservative - Rayleigh and Wickford)
• Lucy Frazer (Conservative - South East Cambridgeshire)
• George Freeman (Conservative - Mid Norfolk)
• Mike Freer (Conservative - Finchley and Golders Green)
• Marcus Fysh (Conservative - Yeovil)
• Roger Gale (Conservative - North Thanet)
• Mark Garnier (Conservative - Wyre Forest)
• David Gauke (Conservative - South West Hertfordshire)
• Nusrat Ghani (Conservative - Wealden)
• Nick Gibb (Conservative - Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)
• Cheryl Gillan (Conservative - Chesham and Amersham)
• John Glen (Conservative - Salisbury)
• Zac Goldsmith (Conservative - Richmond Park)
• Robert Goodwill (Conservative - Scarborough and Whitby)
• Michael Gove (Conservative - Surrey Heath)
• Luke Graham (Conservative - Ochil and South Perthshire)
• Richard Graham (Conservative - Gloucester)
• Bill Grant (Conservative - Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock)
• Helen Grant (Conservative - Maidstone and The Weald)
• James Gray (Conservative - North Wiltshire)
• Chris Grayling (Conservative - Epsom and Ewell)
• Chris Green (Conservative - Bolton West)
• Damian Green (Conservative - Ashford)
• Justine Greening (Conservative - Putney)
• Dominic Grieve (Conservative - Beaconsfield)
• Sam Gyimah (Conservative - East Surrey)
• Kirstene Hair (Conservative - Angus)
• Robert Halfon (Conservative - Harlow)
• Luke Hall (Conservative - Thornbury and Yate)
• Philip Hammond (Conservative - Runnymede and Weybridge)
• Stephen Hammond (Conservative - Wimbledon)
• Matt Hancock (Conservative - West Suffolk)
• Greg Hands (Conservative - Chelsea and Fulham)
• Mark Harper (Conservative - Forest of Dean)
• Richard Harrington (Conservative - Watford)
• Rebecca Harris (Conservative - Castle Point)
• Trudy Harrison (Conservative - Copeland)
• Simon Hart (Conservative - Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire)
• John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
• Oliver Heald (Conservative - North East Hertfordshire)
• James Heappey (Conservative - Wells)
• Chris Heaton-Harris (Conservative - Daventry)
• Peter Heaton-Jones (Conservative - North Devon)
• Gordon Henderson (Conservative - Sittingbourne and Sheppey)
• Nick Herbert (Conservative - Arundel and South Downs)
• Damian Hinds (Conservative - East Hampshire)
• Simon Hoare (Conservative - North Dorset)
• George Hollingbery (Conservative - Meon Valley)
• Kevin Hollinrake (Conservative - Thirsk and Malton)
• Philip Hollobone (Conservative - Kettering)
• Adam Holloway (Conservative - Gravesham)
• John Howell (Conservative - Henley)
• Nigel Huddleston (Conservative - Mid Worcestershire)
• Eddie Hughes (Conservative - Walsall North)
• Jeremy Hunt (Conservative - South West Surrey)
• Nick Hurd (Conservative - Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner)
• Alister Jack (Conservative - Dumfries and Galloway)
• Margot James (Conservative - Stourbridge)
• Sajid Javid (Conservative - Bromsgrove)
• Ranil Jayawardena (Conservative - North East Hampshire)
• Bernard Jenkin (Conservative - Harwich and North Essex)
• Andrea Jenkyns (Conservative - Morley and Outwood)
• Robert Jenrick (Conservative - Newark)
• Boris "£350 million" Johnson (Conservative - Uxbridge and South Ruislip)
• Caroline Johnson (Conservative - Sleaford and North Hykeham)
• Gareth Johnson (Conservative - Dartford)
• Joseph Johnson (Conservative - Orpington)
• Andrew Jones (Conservative - Harrogate and Knaresborough)
• David Jones (Conservative - Clwyd West)
• Marcus Jones (Conservative - Nuneaton)
• Daniel Kawczynski (Conservative - Shrewsbury and Atcham)
• Gillian Keegan (Conservative - Chichester)
• Seema Kennedy (Conservative - South Ribble)
• Stephen Kerr (Conservative - Stirling)
• Julian Knight (Conservative - Solihull)
• Greg Knight (Conservative - East Yorkshire)
• Kwasi Kwarteng (Conservative - Spelthorne)
• John Lamont (Conservative - Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk)
• Mark Lancaster (Conservative - Milton Keynes North)
• Pauline Latham (Conservative - Mid Derbyshire)
• Andrea Leadsom (Conservative - South Northamptonshire)
• Phillip Lee (Conservative - Bracknell)
• Jeremy Lefroy (Conservative - Stafford)
• Edward Leigh (Conservative - Gainsborough)
• Oliver Letwin (Conservative - West Dorset)
• Andrew Lewer (Conservative - Northampton South)
• Brandon Lewis (Conservative - Great Yarmouth)
• Julian Lewis (Conservative - New Forest East)
• Ian Liddell-Grainger (Conservative - Bridgwater and West Somerset)
• David Lidington (Conservative - Aylesbury)
• Jack Lopresti (Conservative - Filton and Bradley Stoke)
• Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
• Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)
• Craig Mackinlay (Conservative - South Thanet)
• Rachel Maclean (Conservative - Redditch)
• Anne Main (Conservative - St Albans)
• Alan Mak (Conservative - Havant)
• Kit Malthouse (Conservative - North West Hampshire)
• Scott Mann (Conservative - North Cornwall)
• Paul Masterton (Conservative - East Renfrewshire)
• Theresa May (Conservative - Maidenhead)
• Paul Maynard (Conservative - Blackpool North and Cleveleys)
• Patrick McLoughlin (Conservative - Derbyshire Dales)
• Stephen McPartland (Conservative - Stevenage)
• Esther McVey (Conservative - Tatton)
• Mark Menzies (Conservative - Fylde)
• Johnny Mercer (Conservative - Plymouth, Moor View)
• Huw Merriman (Conservative - Bexhill and Battle)
• Stephen Metcalfe (Conservative - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
• Maria Miller (Conservative - Basingstoke)
• Amanda Milling (Conservative - Cannock Chase)
• Nigel Mills (Conservative - Amber Valley)
• Anne Milton (Conservative - Guildford)
• Andrew Mitchell (Conservative - Sutton Coldfield)
• Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
• Penny Mordaunt (Conservative - Portsmouth North)
• Nicky Morgan (Conservative - Loughborough)
• Anne Marie Morris (Conservative - Newton Abbot)
• David Morris (Conservative - Morecambe and Lunesdale)
• James Morris (Conservative - Halesowen and Rowley Regis)
• Wendy Morton (Conservative - Aldridge-Brownhills)
• David Mundell (Conservative - Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale)
• Sheryll Murray (Conservative - South East Cornwall)
• Andrew Murrison (Conservative - South West Wiltshire)
• Robert Neill (Conservative - Bromley and Chislehurst)
• Sarah Newton (Conservative - Truro and Falmouth)
• Caroline Nokes (Conservative - Romsey and Southampton North)
• Jesse Norman (Conservative - Hereford and South Herefordshire)
• Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough)
• Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
• Guy Opperman (Conservative - Hexham)
• Neil Parish (Conservative - Tiverton and Honiton)
• Priti Patel (Conservative - Witham)
• Owen Paterson (Conservative - North Shropshire)
• Mark Pawsey (Conservative - Rugby)
• Mike Penning (Conservative - Hemel Hempstead)
• John Penrose (Conservative - Weston-super-Mare)
• Andrew Percy (Conservative - Brigg and Goole)
• Claire Perry (Conservative - Devizes)
• Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)
• Christopher Pincher (Conservative - Tamworth)
• Dan Poulter (Conservative - Central Suffolk and North Ipswich)
• Rebecca Pow (Conservative - Taunton Deane)
• Victoria Prentis (Conservative - Banbury)
• Mark Prisk (Conservative - Hertford and Stortford)
• Mark Pritchard (Conservative - The Wrekin)
• Tom Pursglove (Conservative - Corby)
• Jeremy Quin (Conservative - Horsham)
• Will Quince (Conservative - Colchester)
• Dominic Raab (Conservative - Esher and Walton)
• John Redwood (Conservative - Wokingham)
• Jacob Rees-Mogg (Conservative - North East Somerset)
• Laurence Robertson (Conservative - Tewkesbury)
• Mary Robinson (Conservative - Cheadle)
• Andrew Rosindell (Conservative - Romford)
• Douglas Ross (Conservative - Moray)
• Lee Rowley (Conservative - North East Derbyshire)
• Amber Rudd (Conservative - Hastings and Rye)
• David Rutley (Conservative - Macclesfield)
• Antoinette Sandbach (Conservative - Eddisbury)
• Paul Scully (Conservative - Sutton and Cheam)
• Bob Seely (Conservative - Isle of Wight)
• Andrew Selous (Conservative - South West Bedfordshire)
• Grant Shapps (Conservative - Welwyn Hatfield)
• Alok Sharma (Conservative - Reading West)
• Alec Shelbrooke (Conservative - Elmet and Rothwell)
• Keith Simpson (Conservative - Broadland)
• Chris Skidmore (Conservative - Kingswood)
• Chloe Smith (Conservative - Norwich North)
• Henry Smith (Conservative - Crawley)
• Julian Smith (Conservative - Skipton and Ripon)
• Royston Smith (Conservative - Southampton, Itchen)
• Nicholas Soames (Conservative - Mid Sussex)
• Anna Soubry (Conservative - Broxtowe)
• Caroline Spelman (Conservative - Meriden)
• Mark Spencer (Conservative - Sherwood)
• Andrew Stephenson (Conservative - Pendle)
• John Stevenson (Conservative - Carlisle)
• Bob Stewart (Conservative - Beckenham)
• Iain Stewart (Conservative - Milton Keynes South)
• Rory Stewart (Conservative - Penrith and The Border)
• Gary Streeter (Conservative - South West Devon)
• Mel Stride (Conservative - Central Devon)
• Graham Stuart (Conservative - Beverley and Holderness)
• Julian Sturdy (Conservative - York Outer)
• Rishi Sunak (Conservative - Richmond (Yorks))
• Desmond Swayne (Conservative - New Forest West)
• Hugo Swire (Conservative - East Devon)
• Robert Syms (Conservative - Poole)
• Derek Thomas (Conservative - St Ives)
• Ross Thomson (Conservative - Aberdeen South)
• Maggie Throup (Conservative - Erewash)
• Kelly Tolhurst (Conservative - Rochester and Strood)
• Justin Tomlinson (Conservative - North Swindon)
• Michael Tomlinson (Conservative - Mid Dorset and North Poole)
• Craig Tracey (Conservative - North Warwickshire)
• David Tredinnick (Conservative - Bosworth)
• Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Conservative - Berwick-upon-Tweed)
• Elizabeth Truss (Conservative - South West Norfolk)
• Tom Tugendhat (Conservative - Tonbridge and Malling)
• Edward Vaizey (Conservative - Wantage)
• Shailesh Vara (Conservative - North West Cambridgeshire)
• Martin Vickers (Conservative - Cleethorpes)
• Theresa Villiers (Conservative - Chipping Barnet)
• Charles Walker (Conservative - Broxbourne)
• Robin Walker (Conservative - Worcester)
• Ben Wallace (Conservative - Wyre and Preston North)
• David Warburton (Conservative - Somerton and Frome)
• Matt Warman (Conservative - Boston and Skegness)
• Giles Watling (Conservative - Clacton)
• Helen Whately (Conservative - Faversham and Mid Kent)
• Craig Whittaker (Conservative - Calder Valley)
• John Whittingdale (Conservative - Maldon)
• Bill Wiggin (Conservative - North Herefordshire)
• Gavin Williamson (Conservative - South Staffordshire)
• Sarah Wollaston (Conservative - Totnes)
• Mike Wood (Conservative - Dudley South)
• Mr William Wragg (Conservative - Hazel Grove)
• Jeremy Wright (Conservative - Kenilworth and Southam)
• Nadhim Zahawi (Conservative - Stratford-on-Avon)

• Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
• Nigel Dodds (Democratic Unionist Party - Belfast North)
• Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Democratic Unionist Party - Lagan Valley)
• Paul Girvan (Democratic Unionist Party - South Antrim)
• Ian Paisley (Democratic Unionist Party - North Antrim)
• Emma Little Pengelly (Democratic Unionist Party - Belfast South)
• Gavin Robinson (Democratic Unionist Party - Belfast East)
• Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
• David Simpson (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
• Sammy Wilson (Democratic Unionist Party - East Antrim)

The opposition parties gave all of these Tory and DUP politicians the opportunity to rebel against Theresa May's malicious and economically ruinous austerity agenda and end the repression of public sector wages, but they all refused the chance, and then had the absolute gall to cheer themselves for voting to continue impoverishing our emergency service workers.

So from now on if you ever hear any of these politicians talking about how much they value our emergency service workers, you know for sure that they don't actually care at all, and that they're just lying through their teeth to convince intensely gullible people into supporting their malicious hard-right coalition of chaos.

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