Correspondence with our MP, Rt Hon Caroline Nokes

Over the past several months, we have become increasingly disenchanted with the Johnson Government, especially its incompetence and deceit in handling the Coronavirus crisis.

We also have strong feelings on the role of Cummings in the government, the likely policies of further austerity hitting the weakest in society yet again in the post Covid19 recovery, and the major issue that actions on the climate crisis will be deferred or watered down.

The letter is here: https://ejwwest.wordpress.com/letter-to-my-mp-caroline-nokes/

This was her reply:

Dear Dr and Mrs West
Thank you for your detailed letter of yesterday’s date and I appreciate that your political views are at odds with my own and the Government.

You will hopefully be aware that as a backbench Member of Parliament it is my duty to hold the Government to account and to scrutinise legislative proposals coming forward. Please be assured I try to do that diligently and not only have a solid record of asking questions in the House and contributing in debates, but further as a Select Committee Chair I have the privilege of being able to directly question the Prime Minister as a member of the Liaison Committee.

I hope you will at least concede I did that robustly at the recent televised Committee hearing. The PM is next scheduled to appear before us in September when I hope I will be selected to participate again. I also (every week) apply to the ballot to ask the PM a question in PMQs but sadly have not come out of the ballot since January, please be assured I will continue to try.

Given that I am a Conservative MP and was elected in a democratic election in this constituency with 54% of the vote I hope you will understand I am not going to pursue your particular political agenda. Much as you clearly dislike it the Government has a mandate.

Yours sincerely

Caroline Nokes

Rt Hon Caroline Nokes MPMember of Parliament for Romsey and Southampton North

The first and final paragraphs concerned us deeply as many issues we raised transcend party politics. So, we replied:

Dear Mrs Nokes…
Thank you for your quick response, though I doubt you have really taken enough time to absorb many of the important points we were making.

You end by saying “ Given that I am a Conservative MP and was elected in a democratic election in this constituency with 54% of the vote I hope you will understand I am not going to pursue your particular political agenda.“

It is true that, under the arcane FPTP system, the Tories won a mandate. However, they, and you, stood on a manifesto. Nowhere in that manifesto did it commit to:

1. Governing incompetently
2. Blatantly lying to the country
3. Giving an unelected and unaccountable person, Cummings, unfettered powers
4. Bypassing long established rules and procedures for preventing corruption
5. Ending the Brexit transition period without a deal

In the fourth section of our letter I remind you of the commitment you stood on to address the climate crisis. It’s not our “political agenda”:  it’s what you, and all MPs apart from the DUP, stood on. We were seeking assurances from you to ensure the government delivers the commitments YOU stood upon, in the post Covid recovery.

Nowhere in the manifesto did you commit to spending hundreds of billions of pounds in state support of the economy. Indeed, you vehemently opposed the party and leader who you claimed was proposing to do much less than that. But the circumstances required that the government do that, and the third section of our letter merely asked that in recovering from this crisis people who could not have been expected to plan for this crisis not be “left behind”. Again. That’s not our “political agenda” but common sense.

So, we politely recommend you re read the letter and seek some common ground with the standards you committed to as an MP, the manifesto you stood upon, and the changing circumstances we find ourselves in. I’m sure many of the 54% of constituency voters would be surprised to learn they voted for the incompetence, deceit, corruption we are seeing in practice. Many merely voted against Corbyn.

Yours sincerely
Dr EJW and Mrs KM West

What concerned us in her response was the implication that “we won, and I got a majority of votes in my constituency, so we can do what the hell we like and act as an elected dictatorship”. In particular, that the government was entitled to govern incompetently, with deceit, without accountability, corruptly, simply because it had obtained a majority and that objecting to them doing this had a “political agenda” in opposition to that alleged mandate.

On 17th July we received the following response which can be summarised as a strawman argument and an ad hominem attack. She’d clearly misunderstood the purpose of our opening which was intended to convey that, contrary to many voters at the time of the EU referendum who claimed they’d never voted (or hadn’t for a long time) as they saw no point as they never got what they wanted, we have always voted despite our votes “never counting”. We engage in the process.

Dear Dr West 

 

Thank you for your further email and I am sorry you appear to have jumped to the assumption that I did not read your initial email properly.  

 

To point out some uncomfortable facts:

 

You commenced your letter by explaining you have never had a Government of your choice, that is democracy, you may not like it, but please do point to the system you think would be better. You have gone on to criticise first past the post, but the 54% rather does speak for itself, even with any form of proportional representation I would have still won this seat in 2015, 2017 and 2019. I am prepared to concede that the outcome in 2010 when I only received 49.7% of the vote might have been more up for grabs under PR.

 

It was your political agenda to start a letter saying how unhappy you had been with the outcome of every election in your adult lives and yet appear to have taken umbrage with me pointing out that in a democracy the will of the majority prevails.  I am sorry you don’t like the Government, sorry that you feel the Government should not have acted in a crisis to prioritise support to the economy and to families who needed it, and sorry you appear to be hankering after Jeremy Corbyn as PM, the majority disagreed with you.

 

Yours sincerely

 

Caroline Nokes #

To which we replied as follows, asking her to answer the sepcific points rather than making untrue allegations against our political motivations.

 

Dear Mrs Nokes,

I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood the context of our letter. In particular we have never supported Corbyn or voted for his party and it would be a mistake to misrepresent our views as continuity Corbynism or even “Remoaners”. We have always understood how Democracy in the UK worked but this assumed it operated according to a set of norms that transcend political allegiance. Our anger is at recent developments under the Johnson government where those norms have been discarded or undermined, leading us to question the legitimacy of its mandate.

 

Our political views are in fact pretty central (or what until recently was regarded as central): pragmatic economically, socially liberal. What has happened in recent years is these views have been discarded in favour of polarised politics and offering easy solutions to complex problems. Which is why we rejected both Corbyn and Johnson. Politics is far more nuanced but seems to have been taken over by a public school led clique who’ve never had a real job in their lives offering quick solutions.

 

As our MP you have a responsibility and duty to represent all of us, not just the 54% of voters who voted for you, or what you assume their motives were at the time. If the government is acting in a manner that undermines trust and confidence because it rejects long standing norms and the rule of law, your duty is to call that out, not argue they have a mandate to do it. That would be an elective dictatorship, not democracy.

 

Can you honestly say you are unconcerned at the blatant lies at the Despatch box (and in press briefings) from, in particular, Johnson, Hancock, and Gove? Can you honestly say you agree with an unelected “Special Advisor” wielding power without accountability? Can you honestly say you agree with the bypass of long standing rules designed to prevent corruption and ensure value for OUR taxes? Can you honestly say you are unconcerned at the general incompetence exhibited by the government which has led to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths?

 

Just as you stood up to Johnson on questions of the adverse impact of the current crisis on women, we expect you to scrutinise him on these broader questions.

 

These were the key questions we asked of you in our original letter. Together with some thoughts, again which we think are largely uncontroversial politically, at least in principle.

 

We suggest you reread the letter and seek common ground in holding the government to account for its handling of this crisis, and, in its increasingly flawed approach to Brexit. And in the post crisis world seeking the best ways of ensuring our grandchildren can live in a secure, sustainable future. Again, you stood on a platform to do that.

 

As a constituency MP we have generally found you to be responsive, diligent, and frequently independent, in handling issues raised by us, even when we disagree with the outcome. We thank you for that. But we did not take some considerable time offering you our thoughts and concerns only for them to be easily dismissed as the rants of Corbynistas or opponents of democracy. We’re sure, especially given the treatment of Julian Lewis, that it can’t be comfortable being a Tory backbench MP with independent thinking. But, that’s your job.

 

Yours sincerely

 

Dr EJW and Mrs KM West

We await her response. This is now our third attempt to ask some fairly straightforward questions concerning the government’s record of competence, accountability, honesty, and corruption that at any other time would be uncontroversial in terms of political disposition. Maybe Mrs Nokes will answer them this time rather than dismissing them strawman arguments and ad hominem attacks, to deflect from the government’s record. But we’re not holding our breath. 

 

It’s been nearly a week and still no response from Mrs Nokes. She has admitted to us that in both the 2017 and 2019 elections much of her sizeable majority was due to anti-Corbyn rather than pro Tory voters. Indeed much of the Tory campaign in 2019 was based on the (dubious) premise that a vote for anyone but the Tories was a vote for Corbyn. It appears she, as well as Johnson, have forgotten that Corbyn is no longer there.