UNFANTASTIC FOUR BOTTLE VOTE

By Phillis Inboxes

CUMBRIA’S unfantastic four of Labour MPs fell into line with their party last night and walked through the NO lobby in the House of Commons.

Super heroes? More like super zeros!

Tone deaf to public outrage but all ears to their party Whips, they joined 360 like-minded career preservers to kill off a legal public inquiry into Britain’s rape gangs.

The MPs from Cumbria – all now vying for the Chronic’s inaugural “Shit of the Year” award before January has barely started – are as follows…

Josh McAlister (Whitehaven & Workington); Markus Campbell-Savours (Penrith & Solway); Michelle Scrogham (Barrow & Furness) and Julie Minns (Carlisle).

Britain still doesn’t know the number of victims of child sexual exploitation and Government pussy footers are desperate not to give our dirty linen another go on the hot wash.

And in light of last night’s co-ordinated cop-out, the Chronic has had a scroll through some awkward quotes from our four local MPs.

Because what they tell voters in their parish is so often contradicted by how they act for their party in parliament…as these “chestnuts” reveal below.

BARROW’S bolshie Michelle Scrogham, who perceives herself as a karate-chopping She-warrior, has previously boasted that she spent her banking career standing up to “bullying and harassment” in the workplace.

(Let’s see her try that on in the Labour whips office if she wants to vote against the Government?)

Adopting the gladiatorial language that Labour loves, Scrogham continues to tell visitors to her website:

“I’m never one to back down in the face of injustice!”

(Except when 360 of your mates are in full reverse ferret?)

Last year, Scroggers also stood up in the House of Commons and said that when it came to public scandals, she was tired of Britain’s “culture of defensiveness!”

(She might need to get used to it under Keirnocchio!)

Up the road in Carlisle, there’s no need to worry about bothersome things like industrial-scale grooming gangs. It’s words harming our “culture” that we need to be on guard for, according to its Labour MP.

As recently as 17th December, in a video to her Facebook followers, Julie Minns was encouraging viewers to challenge any (male) friends who spoke “words” harmful towards women.

In the video, Julie said not doing so: “Created a culture where violence against women and girls isn’t taken seriously.”

“We all have a part to play in challenging sexist and misogynistic behaviour,” she opined, frowning her best serious face.

(How she squares these statements with last night’s vote, only a seasoned spin director like Julie can explain!)

Self-appointed super-hero to Britain’s children and West Cumbria political climber, Josh MacAlister MP, was the biggest disappointment of all – given that he has working knowledge of the child sexual exploitation problem in Britain.

In the foreword to his own 2022 review of children’s social care, MacAlister, a loud parent of two dogs, proposed to Britain’s political establishment:

“Society’s first task is to care for children!” he wrote.

“How we care for our children is nothing short of a reflection of our values as a country.”

(In light of his eager “no” vote last night, these remarks from 2022 now sound incredibly shallow).

He knows it.

In Penrith and Solway, Markus Campbell-Savours keeps a respectfully low profile and, thankfully, doesn’t bore his constituents to death by living on social media.

But last month, even Shyness Campbell-Lipservice was crowing online that his Landslide Labour Government had set: “An unprecedented ambition to halve violence against women and girls within a decade.

“We will use all the levers available to us to deliver it,” Markus clunked in his wonky engineerial style.

(A public inquiry “lever” was available to Labour last night but the party chose not to pull it.)

If readers want to know the truth, it looks like we will all have to wait for the highly successful TV drama.

It’ll come out in 10 years, around the time that no-one can ever be held accountable for the scandal.

Cumbria’s other MP, Saint Timothy Farron, president of the Tim Farron Fan Club (Westmorland & Lonsdale Branch) did not vote at all.

Nor did any of the Liberal Democrats’ 71 other MPs, who presumably had better places to be rather than, er, being democratic in the place where democracy happens…

Saint Tim is usually first at the front of the queue when it comes to calling for Public Inquiries, but he is routinely disregarded.

He calls for public inquiries like we do for taxis. A public inquiry for the Cumbria Shootings; the 2002 Potters Bar rail crash; water company bonuses; the Grayrigg crash, sewage dumping.

He also called for a public inquiry into the West Cumbria Coal Mine.

But there are some holes even Parliament’s own poster boy for Christianity finds too dark to go down with his public inquiry klaxon.