Chris Wallis: Labour candidate for Marple South and High Lane

[Dave]

Well said Chris - an eloquent and cogent analysis of the Brexit catastrophe. And I'm afraid I agree with you when you write:

there is now a deep division in the country, and I think people are politically exhausted.

Some of us are far from exhausted, but I fear we are in the minority. A large number of people are just fed up with it, bored stiff, and just want the politicians to get on with it. Madness, of course, but you only have to look at the headlines on the tabloid newspapers to judge what is on most people's minds:   Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, and then there's the laughable Daily Express headlines (today's is beyond parody: 'Eat salad to avoid dementia') 

As wheels says, what the country desperately needs is for Labour to come out clearly and firmly against Brexit, because it will be disastrous for 'the many not the few'.  But Corbyn is anti-EU, and always has been........

Wheels also writes:

stopping Brexit is so important it will colour how many vote in May.

Will it? I'm not so sure. Do major national issues really have that much effect on how people vote in local elections? 

[wheels]

Chris, first of all let me thank you for a sensible and lengthty response which treated your audience with respect. I think you would have won we over had it not been for the conclusion you reach that we are divided and tired of all this and we will just have to make the best of it.  Stopping Brexit is what is driving millions of people to local action both on a personal and organised level. We need people like you to stand up and say this is all nonesense and that the plug should be pulled on the whole process. Unfortunately your party and leader is badly letting the country down in this respect as many Labour members will privately acknowledge.

At the very lest we have to committ to a referendum on the terms with an option not to proceed.

Clearly in the past I might have agreed with you about localism but stopping Brexit is so import it will colour how many vote in May.

[chriswallis labour]

 andrewbowden - yes, a pity though. Localism should be what it's about.

[andrewbowden]

Of course, always worth remembering when casting your vote, that the average councillor doesn't really have much input into the ins and outs of the Brexit process...

[chriswallis labour]

Hi Wheels

I'm entirely with you that it was a deeply flawed process, for all the reasons I cite and we all know. But there is now a deep division in the country, and I think people are politically exhausted. Clearly the Brexit process is paralysing government, but I think, whatever the logic and the facts, that re-running the referendum would just make things worse. Until marches of the kind that were against the Iraq war start happening - huge public displays of disaffection, and in places that voted Leave - I don't think it's a runner. I am a Scot, and I have lots of friends in Scotland who were deeply affected by the independence referendum. Families divided, couples not speaking, and no one speaks about it now. Like the Spanish Civil War, which no one in Spain talks about as you have no idea whether your next door neighbour's family killed your disappeared father, etc. So I think we just have to do it as efficiently as possible.

It did occur to me watching QT the other day that the obvious thing to do is a series of local audits of industry and other organisations to determine what leaving means for them. Most people are amenable to logic and if it discovered that the effects would be economically disastrous, that would change most minds. It would also uncover the people who are suffering because of membership. It would be reasonable to assume that an intelligent government would already have this stuff at their fingertips, but  judging by their performance, it would appear not.

The folk whose minds won't be changed - the one's who write to newspapers saying they don't care if the economy collapses as long as we get our sovereignity back - a kind of deluded longing for a bygone golden age - there's nothing to be done about that. But they are in the minority.

Chris

[wheels]

Excellent response Chris except for the last sentence.  We're leaving ...... Rather I'd like to see you and Labour say, as you did, that the referendum was a deeply flawed decision making process and you want us to Excite Brexit.

[chriswallis labour]

Hi Victor

I voted Remain. I work in an industry that benefits hugely from membership of the EU - European Cities of Culture, for instance, and open borders that mean we don't have to open our van for customs checks every time we take a show abroad.  Until you've had a French customs officer going through your props skip you have not lived. Many years ago I went to a meeting of my trade association where it was pointed out that if you went to France with £1, and changed it at every border into the local currency, with conversion charges by the time you got to Turkey it was worth 17p. Hence the euro and its benefits for business, although Gordon Brown was absolutely right to keep us out.

But I understand why people might vote the other way. My sister who has a PhD in History, lives in East Kent and is training to be a vicar, voted Leave. She has a sophisticated analysis about international capital and the hegemony of the elites, and she sees the consequences of open borders every day in Dover and Folkestone where the Albanian mafia apparently do very well. But I'm still with Yaris Varoufakis, we should have stayed in to improve it.

My cleaner - now retired - and my builder both voted Leave. Their stated reasons were immigration and being fed up with being pushed around by Europe as in the straight banana fiasco. The Daily Mail and its lies have a lot to answer for. They had both had treatment for cancer, and no one had told them about our involvement in Euratom, the EU wide organisation that is responsible for atomic research and safety, including the isotopes used to treat carcinoma. And I have a great deal of sympathy with the people of Lincolnshire who feel inundated by Romanian migrant workers who, they say, are undercutting local wages.But there are plenty of laws governments of all political hues could have used to control the effects of the free movement policy, they just couldn't be bothered. And it was all going terribly well until the crash.

I go to London a lot as I work there from time to time and my partner lives there. It's another country. You can feel the miasma of wealth engulf you as you get off the train at Euston. It's very difficult not to get caught up in it. If you own a three bedroom house in North London you're probably a millionaire, although lots are asset rich and cash poor. In those conditions, if you were already a member of the elite that went to Eton, it's easy to see - although incredibly incompetent - how you might decide to solve a little local political difficulty by offering the nation a binary choice about the EU.

The matter is far too complicated to be given as a binary choice, as is becoming obvious with the negotiations. But if you watched Question Time from Burnley last week you can't help but be concerned about the level of emotion being expressed by people who don't seem to have any idea how complicated this all is. We live in dangerous times. My concern is that we will leave, and the economy will nosedive, and poor Leavers will feel it most, but they'll blame it on Remainers for interfering in the negotiations. The Daily Mail 'Traitors' headline about the Tory rebels shows how confused some people have become. Members of the QT audience shouted it at Nicky Morgan (I never thought I'd feel sorry for a Tory, especially Nicky Morgan) until it was pointed out that the Leave vote had been about sovereignity, about returning the ability to make decisions to the politics of Westminster, and that's what this was.

The whole thing is a social, economic and political disaster. The electorate were lied to, inadequately informed, and encouraged to believe it could be a swift process. Interestingly there's a government document that says that the referendum was only consultative and not binding - I've seen it on facebook and if I can find it I'll post it here -  and it didn't help that David Dimbleby said, when the result was announced, 'Right, we're out', and continues to say 'The British People voted Leave' at every opportunity. 17.4 million voted leave, on a 72% turnout of a 46.5m electorate - 37.5%, hardly the British people, but Thatcher got in with 32.2% of the electorate in 1987 and hey, that's democracy.

So we're leaving, and we need this mess clearing up, and I'd much rather Labour did the job, as they'll do it for the many, not the few.

Chris

[Victor M]

Chris, where do you stand on Europe?

[chriswallis labour]

Thanks to you, Mark, for creating this opportunity to publicise our candidacies. A little about me:

I've lived in Marple for 25 years. My children went to school here - Ludworth and Marple Hall - and I run my business, radio and theatre production, from here. My company is called Watershed Productions and you may have heard my work on BBC R4 Book At Bedtime or Classic Serial, or taken your children to see one of my shows at the Waterside in Sale.

I should be a Tory. I'm an entrepreneur who invests in that most precarious of ventures, theatre. I employ actors, designers, directors, marketing people, and lots of others, and I risk my capital in the hope of making a profit.  But I support the Labour party because I believe it is in my interest as a citizen for everyone to be well housed, well educated, healthy, employed with proper remuneration, and adequately supported if they cannot work. Only Labour, which created the NHS, free Secondary Education to age 16, council housing, and unemployment and disability benefit, will deliver that.

I’m standing for the Council because I believe that a Labour-controlled council will make decisions about the distribution of the Council’s money, our money, in favour of all the people of Stockport better than any of the other parties.

When our family arrived here in 1992 our new Labour-supporting friends said ' We don't vote Labour here, we vote Lib Dem to keep the Tories out.' That was true then, for General Elections at least, and Andrew Stunell, a respected Lib Dem councillor who became MP, kept the Tories out until he retired in 2015. That changed everything. In 2015 we got a Tory MP who received 41% of the vote, and he increased his share in 2017 to 45%.

In that context it’s very exciting that in the 2016 elections Labour became the largest party on Stockport Council for the first time in twenty years, and now forms a minority administration. However, we only have two more seats than the Lib Dems, 23 to 21. The Conservatives have 14 seats, Independent Ratepayers (Heald Green) 3 seats, and Stockport Residents 2 seats.

Consequently we are vulnerable to the Lib Dems, so if you are a Labour supporter, please don't be taken in by their 'Vote Lib Dem to keep the Tories out' mantra. It doesn't work any more, and they know that. They were reduced to producing misleading graphics in their literature in 2016 which showed their lead over Labour much greater than it actually was - a disappointing tactic for a national party, particularly one with a mathematician as the local candidate.

It’s important that anyone who supports Labour votes Labour, to help us maintain our lead on the Council.

Labour is experiencing something of a renaissance in Marple. Local Labour members want to tackle the 'vote Lib Dem' mantra. We have set up an active Facebook group – Marple Labour Supporters - which is encouraging Labour supporters in Marple to stand up for our beliefs, and offer ideas about how Labour might improve local campaigning and our voter base.  If you support us, please join.

Chris Gleeson – our candidate in Marple North - and I will be posting more in the New Year and addressing specific local issues, so please don’t hesitate to get in touch with anything you would like to bring to my attention.

chriswallislabour@gmail.com