Tory pursuit of Angela Rayner shows how low the party will stoop - Yorkshire Post Letters

Doctors swear the Hippocratic Oath; they promise to care for their patients. Did Tory MPs (and Tory Party members?) swear the Hippocratic Oath recently? Formerly the Conservative Party followed ‘the good chaps’ theory in politics. This committed MPs and Party supporters to principled behaviour with honesty and care for the ‘hard-working’ members of our society.

Now the Tories are prepared to get down in the political gutter where inflated derogatory attacks on political opponents, the use of false ‘evidence’ and neglect of essential issues is regarded as normal.

A prime example of the hypocrisy are the repeated attacks on Angela Rayner MP (deputy leader of Labour) claiming that she used the wrong address when putting her name on the Electoral Roll. The police have yet to find evidence on this and Ms Rayner assures any of the media that are not prisoners of conspiracy theories that she is not guilty.

For the Tories to spend so long turning an unproven minor ‘crime’ into the second most significant political topic of the week reminds us of the childish negativity they applied when they claimed that, during Covid Lockdown, Keir Starmer drinking a pint of larger with a pizza was identical to the uncounted booze-ups in Boris Johnson's Number 10 when wine bottles were bought in by the suitcase full.

Is one MP's possible Labour ‘crime’ the equivalent of the destruction carved through our democratic system by the Tories' Elections Law (2022) by which up to five million UK adults might be prevented from voting in Local and Parliamentary Elections? Corruption that ‘proves’ this law is necessary is shown by the Government's own stats: in the 2019 election only 26 possible cases of personal fraud were reported and only one individual was convicted. To prevent a repeat of this, the law states that to vote you must carry a photo document. Which photo documents can you use? Passports and Driving Licences (frequently not owned by poorer citizens) and Older Persons Bus Passes and London Oyster Cards. But the 16-25 Rail Card is excluded as is the 18+ Oyster Card. A March '24 poll (by Survation) shows that 25 per cent of the 18 to 34 age group aren't aware of the need for photo ID. Other groups very likely to be excluded by the new stipulation are the unemployed, the disabled, those renting cheaper properties and ethnic groups. And as these groups tend to vote Labour, isn't this an enormous electoral ‘crime’? An even more ‘significant’ political topic apparently is whether Ms. Rayner correctly declared the profit that she made when selling a small house in Stockport.

The accusation about her enormous tax fiddle (police enquiry unfinished at present - innocent till proven guilty?) was first made by Lord Ashcroft in a book he wrote published by one of his own companies.

He lives for part of the time in Belize (to avoid paying too much tax on his vast wealth) and was given his title after a considerable donation to Tory funds.

So applying the Hippocratic Oath, Tories pursue a relative wisp of supposed misbehaviour by a working class, Northern former single mother while the big guys go about their merry way.

False evidence from the Tories so far? In the London Mayor election campaign the Tories have claimed that Sadiq Khan ‘seized power’ although he has won the last two mayoral elections. They have also used film from New York to show that London is ‘the crime capital of the world’. If this is their approach in London, watch out for their ‘evidence’ in the Parliamentary election.