Heappey declares his hand
James Heappey, MP for Wells is the last but one of the Somerset Conservative MPs to say who he’ll back in the leadership race.
He has just come out to pledge his support for Rishi Sunak.
That now just leaves Ian Liddell Grainger to say who he will be backing. Remember David Warburton (Somerton & Frome) sits as an Independent and so does not get a vote in the Conservative Party Ballot.
Mr Heappey clearly wants to keep his place in Government. Personally, I think Sunak has no sense of ethical behaviour as he clearly thought it was right to keep his green card and for his wife to avoid taxes by use of non-dom status whilst he was Chancellor of the Exchequer presiding over the nation’s finances and living presumably rent-free or nearly so in Downing Street. He allowed huge sums to be paid as fraudulent furlough payments, and has done nothing to stop London becoming one of the world’s centres of money laundering. His claim when a young man that he knew no working-class people demonstrates breath-taking arrogance and insensitivity though presumably his parents employed a number of people and he now employs a chauffeur, cleaners, cooks, nannies and maintenance people who are clearly not worth his acquaintance. Hoi polloi, having had years of austerity, are now faced with further taxation at a time of substantial rises in the cost of living. Why would MPs choose yet another useless Oxford-educated idiot?
CONFESSIONS OF A EUROSCEPTIC:- ISBN 978 1 78159 048 5: DAVID HEATHCOAT AMORY*
*Few are better placed to write on the United Kingdom’s relations with the European Union than David Heathcoat-Amory. As a Member of Parliament, Minister of State and Privy Counsellor, he witnessed two Prime Ministers wrestling with the elephant in the room. He describes Margaret Thatcher’s struggles against EU control and the clashes with cabinet colleagues which split the Conservative Party and brought her down. Under John Major, in the Whips Office, the Treasury and Minister for Europe in the FCO, he played a pivotal role in the parliamentary battles over the Maastricht Treaty and events which kept Britain out of the Euro but created the devastating Eurozone crisis of today. He resigned as Paymaster General in 1996. In Opposition, Heathcoat-Amory was sent by the House of Commons to negotiate a Constitution for Europe, which he opposed with a small group of dissidents from other EU countries. As they predicted, the European Constitution was decisively rejected in referendums in France and Holland but forced through anyway, with Blairs Government refusing a referendum at home. The book includes his blueprint for a radically new relationship between Britain and the EU, based on the principles of democracy, internationalism and free trade. With leadership and ambition, the Author argues that this is now attainable with the final decision resting with the people in a referendum. In Confessions of a Eurosceptic, the Author, whose initial enthusiasm for the Common Market turned to hostility, gives an informed insider’s candid take on the most important political issue of our generation.
P152:- “There was another threat which I thought I could remove. The UKIP Candidate in Wells normally got about 1,600 votes, and most of these would have otherwise have come to me. In a close election this could cost me my seat”.