Chairman of the Conservative Party are not what they were

Time was when the chairmanship of the Conservative party was bestowed on some grandee of impeccable background. As I recollect Willie Whitelaw was one such leading Margaret Thatcher to famously say, “every leader needs a Willie”. These were men from the shires whose prime task seemed to be to take their leader aside when it was time to resign and hand them the pen for the resignation letter. These were men (I cannot recollect a woman apart from Baroness Warsii) of substance, men of background.

Oh how things have changed, the current incumbent who don’t let us forget is a paid by the taxpayer as a Cabinet Minister appears to be all that is wrong with the ruling class and government. I had better choose my words carefully here as he is known to be extremely litigious, and I know that my blog gets read in high places, you know who I am talking about.

As usual it is the cover-up what gets the politician. Grant Shapps, for it is he the Chairman of the Conservative Party was accused of having a second job as a sort of Internet marketer come guru after he was elected to parliament. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, totally legal. His problem was that on nationwide radio three weeks ago he denied this categorically, no ifs, and no buts. Then a national newspaper finds unequivocal evidence that he had a second job for at least a year after being elected to parliament. His response he had screwed up and “denied too firmly”. Ok we can forgive that, the guy made a mistake, he was obviously very busy, etc….

But hold on only last year he threatened to sue a political opponent who had claimed exactly the same thing on social media. Now I know that Mr. Shapps has considerably more money than I do, but before I challenged somebody using the full panoply of the law I think that I would check my facts. Heaven forbid that I was acting as a bully. This is not a detail in his live but a fairly critical moment.

Lastly the final nail in his coffin is that his marketing venture centred on a book called – How to Get Stinking Rich 3. This gets almost beyond parody. This is a man who the Conservative Party will put at the heart of their election campaign and they wonder why people are cynical about politicians. The only things those grandees of the past would market is the fishing rights on the salmon rivers flowing through their estates. Perhaps they were better days!!!