No-Nonsense, Straight-Talking, Getting Things Done

I am in receipt of a leaflet on behalf of my incumbent MP, Mike Freer, the gist of which is that I ought to vote for him because some other people will be voting for him. Various local people are pictured and quoted upon the merits of Mike Freer, while Mike Freer himself spends a paragraph listing his local achievements and the "no-nonsense, straight-talking 'getting things done' style" on which he prides himself. Nevertheless, he retains his inexplicable reluctance to express pride in the local food bank, which appeared on his watch thanks to policies which he helped to vote through. Doubtless future missives will be equally forthcoming about Mike Freer's pride in the NHS crisis, the need for the army to stand in for the police, the wrecking of the justice system, the continuing degradation of the environment, and all the other results of policies Mike Freer helped to vote through.

Then again, perhaps this one missive is enough. One of Mike Freer's fans notes that he is "not obsessed with Westminster" which, translated from the tactful, means that Mike Freer is a dutiful little backbench flunkey who almost always votes for what's put in front of him. When the Bullingdon Club were campaigning against cutting the country off from our single biggest international market, Mike Freer was a passionate pro-Remainer, as were most of his constituents. Now that Tin-Pot Tessie wants to tank the economy by leaving the single market and putting Liam Fox, David Davis and Boris Johnson in charge of international relations, Mike Freer is meekly pro-Brexit. Mike Freer may not be obsessed with Westminster, but given a choice between those he supposedly represents and those in charge of the feeding-trough, it seems clear enough who receives the greater share of his disinterest.

The no-nonsense straight talk of Mike Freer and the Conservative Party is equally evident in the flyer accompanying the leaflet, which squeals that Jeremy Corbyn is going to increase inheritance tax on homes worth more than £425,000 - "half the homes in the Capital". The source for this number is the London Evening Osborne, whose new Head Boy is not exactly known for being frightfully good with figures. It is a little unclear why metropolitan élitists such as myself, who are faced with frozen salaries and rising prices and perforce choose the luxury of rental, should vote for Mike Freer on those grounds. In any case, why should a hard-working family worry about inheritance tax? Will home-owners' children not be capable of earning their own mortgages in turn, by the sheer, Churchillian gumption of their Britishness? Given a free ride by the taxpayer, will they not suffer a certain lack of entrepreneurial motivation?

The flyer nowhere mentions the Conservative Party, except in the very small print where a certain Alan Mabbutt lets slip, with pardonable lack of fanfare, that he is working for them; but it does implicitly equate the supposed calamity of a Corbyn win with Trump's presidency and the Brexit referendum, which demonstrates a healthy perspective on both of those undoubted catastrophes. In a particularly no-nonsense, straight-talking and pride-worthy touch, the names of Mike Freer and Theresa May do not appear at all.