Grrrrrrrrrr-rr

The Good Doctor, Dr Rob. is my hero.

This man, I truly believe, was put upon the earth with one blinding talent. He could upset a Tory at 50 paces. He could reduce experienced denizens, veterans of decades of vicious local politics, to ciphers of gibbering rage with but a few sentences on a variety of subjects any one of which would struggle to retain a normal person’s attention beyond the first comma.

So it has come as a particular delight to be privileged to watch a glorious, current example of the genre being played out live.

And not only that, the Dr has managed to combine two incidents into one issue of the Sutton News, a long term instrument of Tory encouragement.

It gets sweeter.

Rob has been enthusiastically busying himself with the plans to regenerate the Town Centre. The Party have championed the idea that the moribund branch passenger railway line through the Park might be reopened with the intention, of course, of bringing large numbers of high spending ABC1s into the shopping centre. Having forced this upon Liam Byrne, ambitious Minister for the West Midlands, Rob found the party gatecrashed by the unlovely Hazel Blears. Hazel is not everybody’s favourite but she is big. Well, not big, but she is powerful. We are talking Cabinet Miinister.

And Rob only gets a one to one with HB and then the Press Release talks about securing a measure of true (that means a budget) devolution for the Town. And he invites the Tories, who have been in power since Greater Tusked Mamooths roamed the Park, to join with him in a serious effort to bring real local power to the community.

They want this so badly, they can taste it. They have long regretted their catastrophic flight to Birmingham when Ted Heath thought they might deliver a big city to the Tories.

But, given Rob’s involvement, they are even now entertaining that wonderful ultimate free choice. Nose, or Face?

And then. Let joy be unconfined. Rob and Ken Rushton have wrapped themselves in the Royal Charter – fallen by the wayside since the Borough Council failed properly to register it. The message again is – Join with us, rescue the charger, exploit the positive branding.

It is at this point that crimson stars explode around the Tory beetle brows. To have the Labour Party come within a country mile of the sainted Charter. This is the source of the Royal in ‘Royal Town’, and to have Rob utter the sacred word is itself a heinous misconception which must quickly be corrected. This is tantamount to Trevor Francis managing the Villa or the Blues playing one touch football.

Watch the reaction. This is free, deliciously entertaining. And it will run for weeks.

Be there.


Nightwatchman