Politicians are putting image first and politics second, says Ann Widdecombe

Politicians these days care too much about image and not enough about politics unlike Lady Thatcher (Image: GETTY) The quality of Parliament has been declining for 25-odd years. Where are the Thatchers, Lawsons, Heseltines and Clarkes of today? Where are the Barbara Castles, Betty Boothroyds and Shirley Williamses? There are multiple reasons why this has happened and will go on happening to the detriment of Britain unless the parties wake up or a new political party emerges. One of the biggest factors in the decline is the obsession by all parties with image and identity politics. I can say with hand on heart that nobody has ever told me on a doorstep that they’re not voting a particular way because there are too few women/gays/ethnics/whatever on the green benches. Yet both Conservative and Labour implemented positive discrimination which put identity before merit. Labour adopted all-women shortlists and the Tories the rule that there must be equal numbers of men and women on those lists. I myself witnessed a selection where the Conservative Central Office agent told us that we could not select on merit alone, the shortlist must be evenly balanced. Furthermore, the control exercised by party HQs prevented constituencies from making their own choices based on suitability for particular seats. The next factor in the decline is the move in the press and media from unthinking deference to unthinking contempt coupled with a love of melodrama rather than fact. Why would any serious person want to join a profession where everything he or she does is held up to ridicule or malicious misinterpretation? So, where a high achiever in his 50s or 60s was looking to give something back, there was a time when public service through Parliament would have been a natural first choice. Now such a person looks elsewhere. Then there’s the loss of privacy. Nobody comes into public life with an expectation of escaping scrutiny but increasingly this has been applied to families as well. A son of a colleague was expelled from school and a national newspaper ran a piece on it. No other kid would have got two lines in his local rag. And we all remember what happened to Euan Blair at 16. Finally, there is a slow change in the role of an MP from dealing with national affairs to being a glorified social worker. True, the constituency work is immensely satisfying but one can understand that it might not appeal to more strategic minds. The result is a profoundly second-rate Parliament. Give it another 10 years and it will be third-rate. Driven to distraction by misleading car policy U-turn Petrol cars become prohibitively expensive by 2030 (Image: GETTY) Beware a politician bearing gifts. When you have stripped off the wrapping what is underneath may not be what was promised. Like most of the rest of the country, I welcomed what seemed like a move towards common sense with the pushing back of the wholly unrealistic 2030 deadline for banning sales of petrol and diesel cars. It promised to save so much expense and I cheered when I heard ministers actually using the word ‘proportionate’. ‘At last,’ I thought, ‘at last’. For a couple of days, I continued in this cloud-cuckoo land of approval, fooling myself that the Conservative Party was showing some signs of listening to Reform UK which opposes Ulez and also arbitrary time limits for reaching net zero. Then someone chucked a bucket of cold water over me by pointing out that yes, car retailers could now sell petrol cars after 2030 but as there is a target of 80 percent of sales being ZEVs (zero emission vehicles) by that year, it means that petrol cars become prohibitively expensive. The 80 percent target needs to move back to 2035 to make any sense of the policy U-turn. Just can’t trust ’em, can we? Congratulations, Angela! Congratulations to Angela Rippon (Image: GETTY) Congratulations to Angela Rippon. I did not see Strictly on Saturday but that photograph of a high kick at 78 is everywhere. I only hope the NHS waiting lists are not now swelled by OAPs trying out such antics. Most of us are just lesser mortals for whom some gentle Pilates is more than enough. Why won’t GWR accept my claim? Why won’t GWR accept my claim? (Image: GETTY) On September 9, I travelled from Newton Abbot in Devon to London Paddington to attend Falsely Accused Day. The train before the one I was due to catch in the morning was so late that I caught that instead and by the afternoon and early evening all was chaos. I caught the 16.35 to Paignton which finally arrived at Newton Abbot shortly before 21.30, 117 minutes late. The GWR website bears this out. My claims for compensation are as rare as hen’s teeth (I can remember only one previous occasion) and I regularly just ignore delays of 20 minutes or half an hour, but a delay of two hours tried my patience too far. Accordingly, I submitted a claim but stupidly put Paignton as the destination because that was the train I caught. Nevertheless, I uploaded my ticket which said Newton Abbot. The claim was refused. Having realised what was wrong, I filled out a new claim which was also refused on the grounds that I had already submitted an ‘identical claim’. Dear GWR, the following are facts: I caught a train which was delayed, according to your own information, by 117 minutes. I have the tickets, the receipt and the texts arranging a taxi to meet me to prove it. Your computer will not accept the claim. Perhaps we should settle this in the small claims court? Love, Ann. So now we know what Sir Keir Starmer will do Starmer will will try to take us back into European control by the back door (Image: GETTY) Deprived of the second referendum he advocated, he will try to take us back into European control by the back door, avoiding the one thing that Brexit was supposed to do, which was to allow divergences from Europe. Does that mean no more trade deals on our, rather than EU, terms? Accepting free movement of people? Putting up with France’s smirking shepherding of boats from their waters to ours? Expect to see Gina Miller invited to No 10 within five minutes of any Labour victory.