Though Cowards Flinch

Deep in the bowels of the new localism bill, at Pt 1, Ch. 1, Section 18,  there is this new criminal offence:

Offence of breaching regulations under section 17

(1) A person who is a member or co-opted member of a relevant authority commits an offence if, without reasonable excuse, the person—

 (a) fails to register a financial or other interest in accordance with regulations under section 17,

 (b) fails to disclose an interest of a kind specified in such regulations in accordance with such regulations before taking part in business of the authority relating to the interest, or

 (c) takes part in business of the authority to which an interest disclosed by virtue of such regulations relates contrary to a prohibition or restriction imposed by such regulations.

 (2) A person who is guilty of an offence under this section is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale.

 (3) Where a person is convicted of an offence under this section, the court may by order disqualify the person, for a period not exceeding five years, for being or becoming (by election or otherwise) a member or co-opted member of the relevant authority in question or any other relevant authority.

 (4) A prosecution for an offence under this section is not to be instituted except by or on behalf of the Director of Public Prosecutions……

The background to this brand new councillor offence, punishable by a level 5 fine of up to £5,000, is the abolition of the Standards [Board] for England, a QUANGO set up after the Local Government Act 2000 and responsible for the ‘ethical standards’ of councillors, though much of the work was delegated to councils.

This abolition, and the decentralisation of such matters to local councils, is no bad thing in itself.  Standards Board guidance had become overly cumbersome, and there was an awful lot of box-ticking. 

There is some sense in just letting councils get on with their own systems for registering members’ financial and other interests, and ensuring that councillors declare these interests (and where appropriate take no part in decisions). This is notwithstanding the fact that the Secretary of State will still be providing councils with  ’regulations’ (section 17) to to councils about all this, thus somewhat defeating the object of the abolition.

But what was good about the Standards Board was that it created a system where councillor ethics and behaviour were a civil matter, whereby councillors could be punished for breaking the rules, but not generally through the criminal courts.  The common law offence of Misconduct in Public Office, as well as other appropriate legal provision, have to date been seen as sufficient to deal with any extreme examples of corruption and misdemeanour.

Now, though, we have an offence under which councillors are specifically targeted, and which potentially creates a serious threat to councillor recruitment to both local authorities and parish councils.

This is not least because it doesn’t appear to be too hard to get caught out by the new law.  The most important requirement under the new ‘regulations’ at section 17 is the one

requiring any member or co-opted member of a relevant authority who has an interest of a specified kind to disclose that interest before taking part in business of the authority relating to the interest.

Failure to do so is potentially a criminal offence under section 18.

The problem is it can actually be quite easy to disclose a relevant interest, depending on what that interest is.  Currently, a ‘personal interest’ is defined , inter alia and at its broadest, as being where

a decsion in relation to that business might reasonably be regarded as affecting your well-being or financial position or the well-being or financial position of a relevant person  to a greater extent than the majority of other council tax payers, ratepayers or inhabitants of their ward, as the case may be, affected by the decision.

So let’s just say I’m sitting on a Parish Council, and the Parish Council decides to reburbish the play equipment at the park, and I vote in favour of that expenditure because it’s a good idea.  Then I take my young children straight down the park to play on the new equipment. 

That could, if someone wanted to, be interpreted as against the law, given that the majority of the people in the Parish do not have young children.  Neither I nor my kids make any money out of it, but the ‘well-being’ notion covers that.

I have loads of such ‘personal interests’ here in Bickerstaffe/West Lancashire, including trusteeships of charities, and I generally take a common sense view on whether a personal interest needs declaring.

The criminalisation of this declaration process, though, may change everything. 

Prosecutions will of course be quite rare, but it is the possibility of a prosecution which may deter people from seeking elected office. 

And of course, as ever when it comes to access to the law, money talks.

The new legislation, it seems to me, is a sledgehammer to crack a nut, and it reflects a general readiness in government, already noted by Simon Jenkins in his sound analysis of the localism bill, to think the worst of people who seek to represent their ‘communities’ through elected office. As Jenkins says:

What are these communities? Like Labour, the Conservatives can hardly bring themselves to mutter the word “elected”. To suggest that a ballot box might share power with Whitehall’s gilded ones is still treasonable in Westminster circles. While the bill’s guide does mention “elected local representatives” (let alone the despised word “councillors”), they are merely on a long list of those designated as “best placed” to represent the new communities. Others equally blessed with community legitimacy are “public service professionals, social enterprises, charities, co-operatives, community groups, neighbourhoods and individuals”.

The long-awaited Localism bill finally made it to the parliamentary website today.  At 430 pages, it’s going to be a good bedtime read.

First stop in my reading was the General Power of Competence for Authorities, not only because it’s first in the bill, but because I’ve been tracking its progress for some time.

Gone completely from the bill is the Tory-run Local Government Association’s attempts to give it the same weight as the Human Rights Act.  This would be a good thing, if there wasn’t something even worse in store.

This comes at Part 1, Chapter 1, Subsection 5 (1):

If the Secretary of State thinks that a statutory provision (whenever passed or made) prevents or restricts local authorities from exercising the general power, the Secretary of State may by order amend, repeal, revoke or disapply that provision.

What this boils down to, as far as I can see through the legalese, is that Pickles is awarding himself and any of his successors simply to scrap any and every statutory provision (whereby a statutory duty is imposed on an authority) at the request of any (Tory) council who doesn’t feel like abiding by it.

So local authorities will, with Pickles say-so, simply be able to dump their duty to promote the educational achievement of Looked After Children.

Local authorities will be able to dump their statutory duty to offer free advice and support to those who are homeless or at risk of being homeless.

As this pre-election Tory blogpost makes clear, the abolition of hundreds of statutory duties is something the Tories have been keen on for ages. 

This is because, to a signficant extent,  the hundreds of statutory provisions developed piece-meal over the years are actually about ensuring minimum standards and provision for the most excluded and with the least voice in our society (though of course that’s not what they’re all about, as this statutory duty on stiles and gates shows). 

Make no mistake. The Tories know what they’re up to here, as they set about dismantling the welfare state.   As I set out here, the most rabid Tory councils have been making plans for some time to exercise their new freedoms in ways which limit the lives of the poorest in their dominions.

Soon, very soon, there’ll be a ‘consultation exercise’ about what statutory duties might be abolished in the name of freedom, but in the interests of the rich against the poor.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Tories up and down the country will this morning be arguing that the cuts to local government amount to an average of 4.4%.

They do not. 

They are much higher than that.

This BBC piece actually sets out the case quite well:

In the House of Commons, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said councils would see their “spending power” reduced by on average 4.4% next year, with no authority facing a decline of more than 8.9% for any of the next three years.

These figures – published for every council - are smaller than the overall 9.9% because they include all other grants and income that councils get, such as council tax and NHS funding.

Taking my own council just as a fairly middling example – not as badly hit as Burnley in Lancashire but but much worse hit than councils in Surrey – the following figures apply.

The central overnment grant in 2011/12 is reduced by 14.8% from 2010/11.  This is the real reduction in central government funds coming in.  However, the Tories will be peddling a figure of 6.8% as the reduction in ‘spending power’. 

This ’spending power’ figure is something that our very ‘straight’ borough treasurer has described as the government’s ‘new concept’ , and it includes projections for Council Tax income. 

It is not rocket science to project that in areas facing massive public sector cuts, that council tax income will be reduced.  If you put, say, 1,000 people in the dole, you pretty well automatically reduce your council tax income by a hefty direct chunk (see comments #1 and #2 below), and this is before you start to work out the negative multipliers.

This is only part of the story. My borough treasurer puts it pithily enough:

On the [spending power] basis grant cuts will amount to 6.8% reduction in spending power.  However other spending, inflationary and income pressures identified through the budget process will also need to be considered in determining the scale of the financial gap facing the Council.

Finally, the Tories have also tried to conceal the scale of the cuts by capping these nebulous ‘spending power’ reductions to 8.9% in the two year settlement, through the use of a ‘transition grant’ costing a total of £85m nationally (a relative pittance).

This transition grant is in itself part of the lie, as it is only temporary. The underlying cuts are much greater, and especially so in poorer parts of the country. The underlying grant cut for Burnley, for example, is from £14.5 to £10.4m, or around 28% in the first year.

Don’t be fooled by the ‘spending power’ mantra you’ll hear in the next few days and weeks.  Tory ‘new concept’ that it is, it’s based on a lie.

Bad news for the spin doctors at the Daily Mail this week.

The above poll asking readers if they still supported students after this weeks “riots”, found that 63% said they did, whilst only 37% didn’t.

Nice to see the Fleet St propaganda mill isn’t as all persuasive as it likes to think it is.

I guess they’ll just have to try harder. After all, they’re pretty adept at “proving” whatever it is they feel like telling people.

But more importantly, the thought that this might have resulted in some Mail hack losing their temper, upon realising they didn’t get the answer they wanted, is extremely satisfying!

Now that I know I’m too rubbish to be an MP, it’s time to slip back into my more usual role as key policy adviser to the Labour party.

With this in mind, it’s interesting to see Shadow Transport Secretary Maria Eagle distancing the party from a commitment to high-speed rail, and the terms in which she argues the case for doing so.  As the Guardian reports:

David Cameron has claimed that high-speed rail will narrow the north-south divide but Eagle, who represents the Garston and Halewood constituency in Liverpool, said the prime minister should reinstate regional development agencies if he wanted to boost northern England.

This looks as though it may the start of a more considered review than we saw from Labour in government, when it appeared caught up by the need to demonstrate its ‘vision’ for the future with a prestige project, whatever the opportunity costs, and whatever the possible negative consequences of relying solely on high-speed rail, in terms of transport infrastructure, for economic development in North. 

This is  what I warned in February 2010:

There is a real risk, I contend, that the building of a high speed rail link through a country which is already both quite densely populated along the length of the line, and heavily integrated, will actually have major negative unintended consequences; intra-regional inequalities will grow as those towns on the line ‘suck in’ prosperity, and the majority of the people living more than a few minutes travel from the few stations will end up not just worse off in relative terms, but perhaps also in absolute. 

So I hope this is the start of a genuine revival in Labour’s interest in intra-regional and local transport infrastructure development as the key route to sustainable and equitable economic development.  I’m not against high-speed rail, but it will only work as part of a package of transport investment.

As ever, my door is open to Labour ministers wanting serious input on serious policy matters.

Nick Griffin has kicked this years BNP conference off with the promise of forthcoming “militancy” from his Party, in the face of protests from groups such as “Muslims Against Crusades”, during parades of returning British troops.

In his speech to a dinner at the Party Conference, Griffin said;

We are going to start attending homecoming parades of British troops, and when the Islamic militants abuse our troops and threaten them, we are going to physically stand in their way,

But more worrying I think, is the indication that such “protests” will also take place where there is efforts to construct Mosques.

The concerns are obvious.

Violence between members of the Muslim community, and BNP members trying to ferment racially motivated violence for political advancement, will pose a major threat to social cohesion wherever it happens.

Bizarrely, Griffin also says;

The British people have already shown that they are willing to start supporting the British National Party in increasing numbers

Perhaps he’s forgotten about the battering they took in May.

This could be one of two things.

It’s entirely possible that this was simply intended as a crowd pleasing rant for members of an increasingly demoralised and fractured Party. A futile attempt at lifting the spirits of a group of people doomed to fail in the near future.

But it could also be an acknowledgment that the BNP’s efforts to legitimise itself, and add a little professionalism to its electoral efforts have failed. In which case this could be the first signs of a change in strategy to something reminiscent of the National Fronts heyday. Perhaps it is an attempt  to tap into what they perceive as an appetite for a more confrontational approach, such as that which has defined the EDL.

They’re changing the logo too. Maybe there’s a full re-branding taking place?

Just not good enough. 

That’s me, that is.  Just not good enough even to get on the longlist, never mind the shortlist, for the Oldham East & Saddleworth byelection vacancy.  The interviews for those longlisted were in London today.  I wasn’t invited.

Some people are suggesting that there may have been a stitch up. There are even reports emerging that the election co-ordinator that

Mr Wright [possible election co-ordinator] has already held informal conversations with some of the potential candidates, well before the Woolas case was resolved.

But I don’t believe any of that. 

I ‘m just not good enough to get on the longlist.  I mean, take a look at the (standard format) 2 page CV I submitted – clear evidence that I have no skills or experience relevant to the role. 

I wish the  candidate selected on Sunday all the best, and will be out campaigning for her/him.  I may be useless, but at least I’m loyal.

My application for Oldham East & Saddleworth selection, for what it was worth (not much)

Labour Party experience:
Branch Secretary, West Lancashire CLP 2001-ongoing; Local Government Committee secretary, West Lancashire CLP, 2002 -2006; Elected as local councillor in ‘unwinnable ward’ with 600% increase in Labour vote, 2007; Labour group secretary and treasurer, West Lancashire Borough Councillor 2007-2009; Labour group leader, West Lancashire Borough Councillor, 2009-ongoing.

Other life experience:
Registered General Nurse with experience in multi-cultural urban settings, 1986 – 1991; Trade unionist, Branch Chairman of a large hospital branch of the National Union of Public Employees (now UNISON) while still a student nurse, and key player in industrial action which led to 15% nurse pay rises etc.., 1986-1990; Aid worker, focusing on primary health care in South Asian slums and subsequently micro-finance, community development and rural livelihoods in Bangladesh, India and Tanzania, 1991-1996; Urban regeneration, community development and social enterprise researcher/practitioner, 1996-ongoing; Governor, Edge Hill University, 2002 – 2007; Non-Executive Director, West Lancashire PCT, 2003 – 2006;  Director, The Pensions Trust, 2007- 2008; Trustee, Lankelly Chase Foundation, 2007- ongoing; Magistrate, West Lancashire, 2002 – 2007; Vice Chairman, Lancashire Schools Forum, 2002 – 2006; Treasurer/Chairman, West Lancashire Homestart, 2004 – ongoing; Chair of Finance, Bickerstaffe C of E Primary School, West Lancashire, 2000 – 2006; Director, Bickerstaffe Children’s Services, West Lancashire, 2005 – ongoing: ;Trustee, West Lancashire Young Carers, 2008 – ongoing; European funding appraiser, West Lancashire LSP Funding Management Group, 2004 – 2010.

Knowledge:
In the section above is appropriately reflected, I hope, a wide range of experience across the private, public and not-for-profit sectors.  This is in addition to my successful political career to date.

This wide-ranging experience has equipped me with a good deal of knowledge in many important economic and social policy areas, and I do consider myself a genuine policy ‘all rounder’.  This was reflected in the run up to the May 2010 election when Ed Miliband commented on my rapid fire (twitter) manifesto suggestions, to the effect that I appeared to know about pretty much everything. If pressed, I would say that I specialise currently in community development, job creation, democratic engagement, and 21st century socialism.

I know the Oldham East & Saddleworth constituency well. Married life took me to West Lancashire, but my mother and sister live in Shaw. I am a regular visitor, and while I do not claim to be an expert, I know enough about the area’s recent political and socio-economic history, to be a quick learner should I be selected.

Communication skills:
I am an experienced public speaker, leading the Labour group in Full Council in vibrant and increasingly effective opposition to the current Tory administration.

I have excellent written communication skills, including weekly press releases on council matters and drafting of ward and borough leaflets/newsletter, in addition to my blogs (see below). I speak fluent French, and decent (though now rusty) Bangla from my time in Bangladesh

Campaigning and party development skills:
In 2007 I won Bickerstaffe ward (West Lancashire), until then considered the most ‘unwinnable’ seat in West Lancashire, for Labour. I did so with a 600% increase in the Labour vote, and on a turnout of 53%, amongst the highest 1% in the country for that year.  This was in a year when Labour lost hundreds of council seats up and down the country.  I am told the report I wrote on my campaign has been widely read in the party.

After 2 years as an industrious group secretary, I became leader in 2009. In the first elections under my leadership we won four seats from the Tories, and are on course to take control of the administration in two years.  I am now leader of a Labour group once renowned (including appearances in Private Eye) for its internecine tendencies, including a major split in 2002 which led to the Tories taking control. 

In the 18 months that I have been leader, the group has instilled in itself the belief that it can and will take back control of the council.  This led to a gain of four seats in my first year as leader (May 2010), followed by two by-election victories in September 2010.

Representational and problem solving skills:
As a local councillor and community activist, I have a solid reputation for vigorous, well-researched action in the interests of my constituents; it is this willingness and capacity to engage and persevere which led to my election in a supposedly ‘unwinnable’ ward (see above).  Alongside regular casework, I have, for example, brought about speed limit restrictions on many roads in the ward – a key local priority – overcoming council/consultant inertia; I have defended my community against the closure of a village school and work with governors to ensure that its role has nearly doubled in four years; I have helped residents set up a Parish council. In short, I have established a ‘can do ‘environment in which local people come together to represent themselves, and solve problems, with my support where need be, but now more often than not independently.

Interpersonal, teamwork and liaison skills:
I’m easy to get on with.  I don’t do airs and graces.  I’m as comfortable talking with the so-called ‘hard to reach’ about what they might really want out of life and how they might actually go about getting it – that’s what I was doing before I sat down to write this parliamentary CV – as I am talking with Shadow Ministers (ask Ed Balls if he know who I am).

It is this ability to get on ok with whomever comes through the door, to get people working together, fused with my ability not to get TOO close to people, which would make me an effective MP. In the end my guiding mantra, however high an mighty I might get, is the old nursing maxim ‘Pain is what the patient says it is.’

Other skills:
I write regularly at two blogs, The Bickerstaffe Record and Though Cowards Flinch.  The Bickerstaffe Record was voted No.2 best councillor blog in the country in the 2009 Total Politics awards, while my Though Cowards Flinch articles are regularly cross-posted to Liberal Conspiracy, the most popular Centre Left blog in the country.   I do therefore already have a reasonable profile in the ‘blogosphere’ and the left-liberal political media, and would be able to bring this profile to bear both in terms of election campaign support from activists from across the country and, beyond the election, in highlighting and lobbying on issues relevant and/or specific to the Oldham East & Saddleworth constituency.

In my political blogging ‘career’ I have written a great deal about how Labour MPs might engage with their CLPs on a more equal footing, with financial power and MP’s powers properly devolved to members.  I have the all-round skills to put such aspirations, if shared by Oldham East and Saddleworth members, into practice.

It’s not going to achieve much, when it comes to actually preparing the student movement and their allies in the teachers’ unions to take on and beat the cuts the Tory government demand, much less give them the class consciousness needed to take their struggle beyond a win for Labour (and their little better “graduate tax”) at the next election.

It was a risky proposition in that it may have ended up hurting people who have done nothing wrong, per se. But I bet bricking that Rolls Royce felt bloody good to those involved – and from even a cursory glance at the imagery involved, one can see why, when elected politicians are simply disregarding what they were elected promising to do.

Bad enough that wealthy men who are sucking ever so hard on the public teat themselves – whilst having enjoyed free university educations for the most part – are preparing to let university students get into massive debt, this was the monarch-to-be travelling in a car that is the last word in luxury to a gathering of immeasurably wealthy and self-satisfied celebrities who will never have to worry about such trivialities as paying for university education, blissfully unaware as the mere plebs created disorder.

Until that brick.

Some other imagery to consider. In parliament, the vote to raise top up fees passed by 21 votes. Twenty-seven Lib-Dem MPs voted to raise the fees. So the Lib-Dems are essentially responsible for the rise in top-up fees. An impressive feat for a party which promised – all 57 of its elected representatives promised – to vote against top-up fees. Let’s have a look at some of them.

Danny Alexander, educated at St. Anne’s College, Oxford – for free.
Norman Baker, educated at Royal Holloway – for free.
Alan Beith, educated at Balliol College, Oxford – for free.
Tom Brake, educated at Imperial College, London – for free.
Jeremy Browne, educated at Nottingham University – for free.
Malcolm Bruce, educated at Queen’s College, St. Andrew’s – for free.
Paul Burstow, educated at South Bank Polytechnic – for free.
Vince Cable, educated at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge – for free.
Alistair Carmicheal, educated at Aberdeen University – for free.
Nick Clegg, educated at Robinson College, Cambridge – for free.
Edward Davey, educated at Jesus College, Oxford – for free.
Don Foster, educated at Keele University – for free.
Stephen Gilbert, educated at University of Wales, Aberystwyth – for free.
Duncan Hames, educated at University of Oxford – for free.
Nick Harvey, educated at Middlesex Polytechnic – for free.
David Heath, educated at St. John’s College, Oxford – for free.
John Hemming, educated at Magdalen College, Oxford – for free.
Norman Lamb, educated at the University of Leicester – for free.
David Laws, educated at King’s College, Cambridge – for free.
Michael Moore, educated at Edinburgh University – for free.
Andrew Stunell, educated at the University of Manchester – for free.
Sarah Teather, educated at St. John’s College Cambridge – for free*.
David Ward, educated at Bradford University – for free.
Steve Webb, educated at Hertford College, Oxford – for free.
Read more…

Direct involvement with politics almost always results in a move away from the man in the street and a move towards a rather specialised environment with its own vocabulary, its own points of reference and its own intrinsic assumptions. This isn’t a criticism; the same is true of joining a book club or a rugby team.

Yet it’s helpful to go back and look at some of the assumptions and points of reference every so often. For example, media bias. Almost everyone involved in politics considers the media to distort the truth; whether it’s the anti-BBC privateers or the Murdoch conspiracy theorists. So let’s look at this subject again.

For me, the explanatory power of Marxist analysis is its major attraction. A major bone of contention I have with the media, however, is the increasing prevalence of reporting for the sake of it, without any attempt at explanation, or sense of proportion for that matter. A recent BBC article about Italian politician Nichi Vendola highlights what I mean.

It states, ‘[Vendola] has been criticised for how he has managed Puglia’s health budget, which runs a deficit, and for his opposition to the privatisation of the water supply system.’

The article does not tell us who criticised him for opposing water privatisation. Nor does it set the attempt to privatise water supplies into either a national or global context. In fact it explains nothing about this criticism but uses it anyway. Such unattributable remarks are unacceptable in a Wikipedia article, so why is it acceptable in our national news and broadcasting service?

There are other parts to the article which seem to me objectionable. For example, in discussing Mr Vendola’s homosexuality and Catholicism, it states:

‘He is also a devout Catholic, and has no problem combining his faith with his sexuality. “Catholicism is like my homosexuality, like my political beliefs,” he says, “All these things are part of my identity.”

The quote is simply a reformulation of the original sentence. There is no attempt to actually explain how Mr Vendola reconciles these things. Since the article has chosen to highlight this element to the story, about an up-and-coming governor from Puglia and his beliefs, I think it hardly unreasonable to expect this.

Similarly, when attempting to ‘balance’ the article with some people who do not believe that Mr Vendola is the next Obama, rather than actually investigating the criticisms rendered by the chosen opponent, Rocco Palese, it simply gives over space to polemic, which goes unchallenged by the author of the piece.

I am indifferent to Vendola. I suspect that he is just another social democrat with a communist past and a fetish for identity politics, but I don’t know. My point in raising these issues was not to slap the BBC about for being left-wing or right-wing; it was to criticise the quality of reporting and the style of writing. It is my view that such an approach is near-universal when it comes to reporting on foreign countries. Rather than actually explaining, it simply asserts.

This approach to studying history has left us with endless vapid truisms about how Hitler and Mussolini ‘did some good things’ (often a reference to the autobahns and the trains running on time). Addressing foreign affairs in the same way is likely to leave us little better armed with understanding.

I’m not sure how many people consistently read news from abroad, except perhaps for the odd war or famine. My impression is that it isn’t that many. So what does it matter?

Superficiality encourages superficiality. Not everyone is an original thinker (certainly not me). It should surely be a consideration that, imbibed in quantities however small over a period of years, this damages any attempt at a consistent, collective approach to politics? This is how people end up professing love for the NHS and social welfare but joining the far right, whose real record when in office shows them to be more gung-ho privateers than the Tories. Repetition of assertion rather than explanation is plain dangerous.

It is even more dangerous than the annoying and endlessly self-referential witterings of Polly Toynbee, Martin Kettle and Jackie Whatserface, who are at least aiming at an audience already involved in their cosseted little world. Though, it must be said, they are equally dangerous in restricting the political consciousness of the Labour-voting type, not to mention by name any prolific young Labourite bloggers.

We can return to the Marxist trope that being determines consciousness – and in a great many cases that is true. Class background, the conditions of current struggle, how isolated one is from that and other formative influences all have a much greater part to play than the media do, I believe. But that small part is still worth focusing on, just as we focus on everything else – actual injustice, workers’ rights or discrimination – as a means to lay the path to a better future.

Yes, I know I really  shouldn’t be wasting blogspace on this kind of thing from Nadine Dorries, a Tory MP of little repute, but I’m a bit short of time at the moment and I need a filler.

I’m not sure whether Dorries is actually just a bit dim, or whether it’s some kind of clever self-parody.  If the latter, she pulls it off quite well.  The last sentence in her rant about how worthless higher education is, for example, is such utter nonsensical gibberish that I find it hard to believe she intends to be taken seriously:

Remember the note ‘the money has all been spent’? That was the note that really read ‘the end of the tax payer subsidising Mickey Mouse courses’. And amen to that.

Not only is what I assume to be  Liam Byrne’s joke-note incorrectly quoted, but there is simply no logical connection with the next pretend quote.  Weird.  Does she not have google? Does she not do basic logic?

But there’s worse higher up the piece:

The number of students who dropped out in the first year was never reported.

Erm, yes it was.

This information, and a good deal of other information and analysis on student retention, is published annually by the Higher Education Statistics Authority, and took me about 30 seconds of googling to find.

And there’s plenty of press comment. Here’s just one example.

On balance, I think she’s probably just a bit thick.