Chris Bryant: ‘I don’t think Sunak knows what a mortgage is’
‘BRITAIN DESERVES BETTER’: Labour MP Chris Bryant, left, with Lena Sutherland and fellow Labour MP Emma Hardy
By Phil Ascough
A catastrophic Conservative Government which is haemorrhaging MPs at an historic rate took a hammering from Labour heavyweight Chris Bryant during a visit to Hull.
Bryant tore into the Tories’ record on the NHS, public sector pay, vote rigging and more as he addressed a gathering of Labour Party faithful.
Acknowledging the story behind his surroundings – the region’s only Ukrainian restaurant – Bryant also called for the seizure of billions of pounds worth of Russian state assets still sitting safely in British banks.
And at the heart of his anger was the litany of government lies and corruption and what he said was the dereliction of duty by the country’s Prime Minister, with Rishi Sunak repeatedly running away from his responsibilities.
Bryant’s latest book comes out in August. Code of Conduct – Why We Need to Fix Parliament, draws on his experiences as chair of the Commons Committee on Standards and, for two years until last summer, the Commons Committee of Privileges.
He chaired the committee that recommended a 30-day suspension for Owen Paterson after he was found to have broken lobbying rules. But he recused himself from the investigation into Boris Johnson and Partygate. The Commons vote on that report kicked off another momentous week in British politics, which continued with a 13th successive increase in interest rates by the Bank of England and concluded with a report on how many people were prevented from voting by the requirement for photo ID.
Sitting in Emma Hardy’s office for an exclusive interview with The Hull Story, Bryant said: “The idea of the book is that there are lots of things we can do to fix Parliament. Some of them require real guts and party political leadership and I wanted to put all of those out in the run-up to the General Election because Britain deserves a better Parliament than we have got.”
He revealed that he had to wait for publication of the report into the shamed former Prime Minister Johnson before he could put the finishing touches to the book. The surprise is that it only runs to 240 pages – that’s barely ten pages for each of the miscreant Tory MPs who have been suspended, or who jumped before they were pushed.
‘EMMA IS ONE OF THE BEST MPs ON THE LABOUR BENCHES’: Chris Bryant, right, with Emma Hardy
But Bryant wasn’t in Hull to promote his book. He came to visit the Hull West and Hessle patch which Emma Hardy has represented since 2017, following in the footsteps of Alan Johnson by winning universal acclaim for putting her constituency first.
Bryant, the MP for Rhondda since 2001, said: “I’m here to see Emma because she is one of the best MPs we have on the Labour benches.”
We requested an audience because of his work with standards and privileges, the ongoing antics of the Government and the desperate response by many Tory voters in hiding behind the claim that “all politicians are the same”.
We met just a couple of hours after I’d attended a business meeting at which delegates groaned in response to the news of yet another rise in interest rates. Sunak then appeared before the TV cameras in a blue-collar work place – the trademark environment for under-pressure politicians with the media in tow.
“All of you need to have trust in your politicians,” he said.
Bryant has some helpful stats.
He said: “The danger of the Boris Johnson stuff is that we have now had 23 MPs in this Parliament who have been suspended for a day or more, or who fled first. The danger is that people think all politicians are the same. They all lie, they are all duplicitous. That feeds into the narrative that people in power are only in it for themselves.
“I try to establish a distinction between Keir Starmer, who said if he was fined he would resign, and Sunak, who didn’t bother to turn up for the vote this week or for Owen Paterson. With lying and corruption, Sunak hasn’t got a view.”
‘PEOPLE SHOULD ASK THEMSELVES IF THEY FEEL BETTER OR WORSE OFF UNDER THE TORIES’: Chris Bryant
Of those Tory MPs who did turn up, Lia Nici shone for her abject failure to see the blindingly obvious, for speaking in desperate, muddled support of Boris Johnson – and then abstaining. Another, Nick Fletcher, left observers aghast with his suggestion that only fellow Tories should sit in judgment over matters of wrongdoing by a Tory MP.
We look forward to him applying the same standards next time a Just Stop Oil activist goes to court – should be easy enough to persuade fellow protestors to end their action by allowing them to select 12 good men (and women) and true to sit on the jury. That’s the sort of logic that made Britain great.
Back to Bryant: “You can tell the character of a party when their instinct is to let the market decide and let the poor people go to the wall. The rules don’t apply to them.
“Let’s cut public services to the bone and wonder why we have problems with crime, antisocial behaviour and local road links. I get the feeling – and I know Tory MPs think this as well because you only have to sit with one in the bar for five minutes – that the people of Great Britain have made their minds up and the Tories are clinging on now.”
Another stat logged by Bryant is the 177 Tory MPs who have served as ministers in the last two years.
“They said if Ed Miliband had been elected it would have been chaos,” Bryant recalled.
“They are bringing chaos into disrepute! I think Sunak’s plan is to do nothing and just hope nobody notices. He thinks his ship is safest when the sea is calm but it’s when a ship is in the doldrums that the sailors get scurvy.”
He then reminded us of some of the greatest hits of a Prime Minister who only got the job because the other candidates dropped out: “He is, personally, completely out of touch. He doesn’t know how to put petrol in a car or use a contactless card. He doesn’t use cash and I don’t think he knows what a mortgage is.”
HOST: Lena Sutherland addressing the gathering at her restaurant
Nor did Bryant forget that Sunak was Boris Johnson’s right-hand-man as Chancellor when the disgraced former PM declared in February 2022 that inflation was nothing to worry about.
He said: “I hate the idea that Sunak thinks he’s entitled to a clean slate. He’s been at the scene of the crime throughout this Parliament. They completely botched Brexit. The NHS hasn’t got enough staff to cope. I don’t think either Sunak or Jeremy Hunt understand what it is to put together a household budget every week or every month.
“They lie about pay rises for teachers or nurses affecting inflation but there’s no economic basis for that at all. Everybody in the public sector has seen a massive fall in their standard of living over the last 13 years – I’d put up a poster across the country asking people if they feel better off or worse off.”
He also spoke about the voting system on the eve of publication of a report by the Electoral Commission which showed that 14,000 people were prevented from voting in the local elections because they didn’t have photo ID. The true figure is thought to be higher because others might have been turned away before their presence was recorded, and some will have decided not to bother.
“There are a lot of things I’m angry about and one of them is trying to rejig the electoral system to stop Labour people from voting,” he said.
“Making it more difficult to register, more difficult to vote and rejigging the constituencies to create more Tory seats. That’s why it’s all the more important for people to get registered, sort out photo ID and be ready for a General Election whenever it may come.”
And on that the two MPs set off to knock on a few doors in the streets of Hessle Road, and to visit Paul Spence, the remarkable man who founded PAUL for Brain Recovery after being left with severe injuries as the victim of a one-punch attack in 2002. Bryant went to visit the charity in the city centre as part of his work on developing a national strategy for acquired brain injury (ABI).
He said: “I know there is some great work being done here and I want to see some of that and find out what we need to put in the strategy document. There are 1.4 million people in the UK living with ABI from causes such as strokes, traumatic brain injury, carbon monoxide poisoning, hypoxia.
SUPPORT: Chris Bryant, left, visits the PAUL for Brain Recovery Centre, with founder Paul Spence and Emma Hardy
“Sometimes it’s very misunderstood in schools, kids suffering from terrible fatigue, they get thrown out of the school system, they self-medicate. Nearly 70 per cent of prisoners arrive there with a brain injury, and 70 per cent of women in prison who have brain injuries sustained them in cases of domestic violence. Then there are the issues with concussion in sport.”
Having used our chat as a warm-up, Bryant was then ready with his “fire in your belly, steel in your heart” rallying call to Labour Party members and supporters.
He told of the first time he encountered the fakery of Johnson, who walked into the loos at Oxford University smartly dressed, neatly groomed, only to then ruffle his blond locks, pull out his shirt from his groaning waistline and trot off to impress his gullible public.
“They are a bunch of utter charlatans and have run this country since 2010,” said Bryant.
“The biggest lie they told was about austerity and then Covid, that we were all in this together. In actual fact they didn’t think the rules applied to them. They believe it’s absolutely fine for them to not be in this together.”
Lena Sutherland, now 70, ran a Ukrainian deli in Hull for 20 years. She came out of retirement last year to open Lena’s Ukrainian Kitchen, serving the food of her homeland, raising money to send to support the war relief effort, and providing work for refugees from her country. The restaurant in Bond Street was well known for nearly 30 years as the Italian dining destination Operetta, and Lena’s hope is that she can build up her own following, with many in the room making their first visit.
The MPs were impressed, thanking Lena and her team. Bryant recalled warning the Foreign Secretary at the time, William Hague, that Putin’s invasion of Crimea would not be the end of the matter.
He said: “There is something like £23bn of Russian state assets sitting in British banks. We should seize it and send it to Ukraine so they can rebuild.”
Code of Conduct – Why We Need to Fix Parliament, by Chris Bryant is published on August 17.
“Nobody knows how parliament works – and how it doesn’t – better than Chris. It’s a delight watching him take a bulldozer to the crumbling edifice of parliamentary standards.” – James O’Brien.
“A terrific read. From outmoded customs that strangle the chamber, to committees with no teeth, Chris Bryant not only provides insights into what’s wrong with parliament but also suggests sensible solutions that might one day lead to a democracy fit for purpose.” – Hugh Bonneville.