Charlotte Leslie, Tory Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Bristol North West – now, incidentally, a Labour – Tory “super-marginal” due to boundary changes – writes from the comfort of her Chelsea home to the Evening Cancer to grab a share of the glory for saving the home care service.
Privately educated Charlotte, 28, who works for Tory intellectual David “Two Faces” Willets as a state education ‘expert’, is inviting us to believe that Cameron’s Tories give a toss about “the elderly and infirm”. Ha, ha, ha.
Don’t worry. Only another two more years of this skin-crawling bollocks to go before an election:
The following is a letter I have written to Bristol City Council’s leader, Councillor Helen Holland, following the meeting of May 22 (“We’re in charge”, Post, May 23).I was delighted that together Conservatives and Labour have worked to stop the misguided and damaging Liberal Democrat privatisation of home care in Bristol. I am sure that you will agree it is a victory, not for any political party, nor even for the home care campaign (impressive as it was), but ultimately for those vulnerable members of our community who are dependent on the service the council provides.
That is an example of politics at its best – when issues concerning the whole of Bristol are put before party politics in the Council House.
People tell me they are sick of seeing councillors engaging in introspective petty squabbling, and I think they are right.
A new administration means a new opportunity for Bristol; an opportunity to put its citizens at the heart of council business. You now have the responsibility of leadership and are in a position to make this happen.
Conservatives have given their support to the Labour group and enabled you to run the council as a minority administration. We have done this because issues like care for our elderly and infirm must come first.
And for the future, where we see the Labour group acting in the best interests of the public, we will wholeheartedly support you. But our support rests on that basis alone.
We have a duty to hold the council administration to account on behalf of our electorate, and we will steadfastly exercise that duty for the best interests of the public.
I sincerely hope that Tuesday night heralds a new chapter for Bristol City Council, and that we can work to restore the public’s trust in their publicly elected representatives.
Charlotte Leslie, Conservative Prospective Parliamentary Candidate, Bristol North West
Charlotte was also invited by the Labour Party and the trade unions – always keen to doff their caps to a toff – to address their mawkish ‘Celebration of care event at Bristol Cathedral recently.
Rather strange when you consider Charlotte is a very thinly disguised reactionary Tory crank and very much a part of David Cameron’s Eton dominated, ‘rich but dim’, West London set currently applying an amateurish Blair-style makeover to the party to make it appear electable.
She’s also, predictably, an Oxford graduate who’s spent time as a wonk at Michael Gove‘s irrelevant Policy Exchange thinktank and she currently edits the Bow Group‘s Crossbow magazine.
Despite these apparent intellectual credentials, her scant knowledge of the realities of local government finance and social services could see her cynical attempt to exploit the home care issue as a vehicle for her ‘compassionate Conservative’ agenda – originally touted by George W in his early days remember? – spectacularly backfire… And sooner than she thinks. But at least we now know who’s pulling the Tory strings down at The Council House.
Despite Charlotte’s current efforts to package herself as an intellectual heavyweight, her first – and only real – job out of Oxford tells you all you really need to know about her. Charlotte worked for the BBC on The Weakest Link!
Charlotte. You’re an over-privileged Tory cow. Fuck off.
Charlotte Leslie is a new phenomenon: the world’s first bleeding-heart Conservative. She is forever writing utterly cringeworthy and sanctimonious letters to the local press or some publicity vehicle or another.
Unfortunately she is symptomatic of the new wave of “right-on” trendy Tory children and disciples, who sadly will become more numerous as time goes on. Their ranks are alreay growing strongly in universities as we speak, especially Toff universities like Bristol.
They dont remember Thatcher, you see…
Not a new phenomenon at all, remember George W. Bush’s disciples used to talk about ‘compassionate conservatism’ once.
Ms Leslie is just riding populist bandwagons. Trouble is she spends all week in London with old ‘2 brains’ Willetts, so has to judge public opinion by reading the Evening Pist.
That’s why should took the line she did on both the Severn Beach Line, and home care. She’s bought the Labour/T&G propaganda about home care, because the (Daily Mail owned) Post promoted it. Had they taken the usual Northcliffe Thatcherite line, she’d have followed.
Does anyone remember ‘Our Friends in the North’ a few years ago? Well Charlotte reminds me of the female Tory MP that featured in that. All plummy voice and platitudes, but no substance.
Paul Wolfowitz is also well known for his “bleeding heart” outside of foreign policy and economics.
Like most neo-Cons he was a Democrat who followed Jean Kirkpatrick over to Reagan’s Republicans in the 70s.
One her ‘top’ suggestions as a Tory policy wonk on state education is to give taxpayers’ money to families in the catchment areas of failing schools to send their kids to public schools.
Personally, I’d rather give taxpayers’ money to failing schools to stop them failing… which no doubt they would do if they got the funding per head that public schools do.
That is essentially what the Lib Dems propose to do, The Watcher, with the Pupil Premium. What’s more the school gets more freedom to decide how it spend the extra money it gets for taking in kids from poorer backgrounds. So they might choose to invest in more teaching staff and cut class sizes, or hire more teaching assistants etc etc.
Interestingly enough, the Pupil Premium idea is pinched straight from a Policy Exchange pamphlet entitled ‘More Good School Places’ – co- authored by, yep, you guessed it, Charlotte Leslie. Funny that…
Charlotte is just the right person. Get Lost.
In reference to :”You’re an over-privileged Tory cow. Fuck off.” you make no argument to why being privileged is a bad thing. You make emotive statements, but you fail to explain how her being wealthier than you (I presume unless you want to apply your criticisms to yourself) harms anyone else. As wealth is a relative concept, you should also consider yourself “over-privileged” unless I have made the mistake of thinking you are not a starving African, when in fact you are one. Being in Bristol, I’m willing to risk making that mistake.
Let’s see: Charlotte is both “dim” and an Oxford graduate. You wouldn’t want to let logic get in the way of your sneering, would you?
Africa – the existence of poverty in Africa is not a disproof of the existence of a wealthy, privileged political elite in this country.
Oxford – attending Oxford is not proof of intelligence. It is proof of wealth, privilege and elitism.
You clearly have no experience of getting into Oxford. You have to be extremely intelligent to get considered, let alone get in. Oxford graduates come from all walks of life. It costs no more to attend Oxford than any other university.
Your statements about Oxford appear to be based on ignorance, envy or both. But certainly not on fact. And that’s a pity, because Oxford welcomes applications from intelligent scholars regardless of background or wealth. By perpetuating myths you do immense disservice to those who might attend but get discouraged by your nonsense.
Bristol Blogger if you are serious about defeating the Conservatives you might consider tackling their arguments and policy, rather than scattergun rantings about the privilege of Oxbridge and people who live in Chelsea (Charlotte Leslie doesn’t, by the way).
The resurgent Conservative Party is a big problem for the left at the moment, and if piss poor diatribes along the lines of this posting are the best you can offer, don’t be surprised if the Conservatives are returned at the next election as people consider the intellectual bankruptcy of the alternatives.
As I said on another thread a week ago:
The problem with “the left” – as you call it – is that it is an integral part of this privileged elite. Progressive politics needs to addressing this elite and the political class it spawns that unchallenged runs the government, parliament, the civil service, the judiciary, the BBC and the print media among others. Apologising for it or trying to pretend it ain’t there because we’re all meritocrats now is the biggest right wing con of all time.
Lots of argument above; not much in the way of logic.
1. Yes, Oxbridge take a high % of their students from private schools. What you tellingly fail to ask is “Why?” No small part of the answer is because people like you discourage able students from the public sector from even applying. (For completeness, that’s not the whole answer: private schooling as a rule is better than state education, although not always; parents who send their children to private schools on average value education more than those who don’t, although again there are many exceptions).
2. “Out of 24 Cabinet members, 12 went to Oxbridge.” One would hope so. Oxbridge is consistently recognised internationally as a place of academic excellence. Regardless of which party they belong to, I want bright, well-educated people running the country.
3. Several cabinet members are PPE graduates, you say. PPE is Politics, Philosophy and Economics. That would seem pretty sound training for a politician.
4. You claim David Miliband got into Oxford with two D grades and on the basis of this single example (if true) imply that good grades aren’t needed to get into Oxbridge. That simply isn’t true today. The overwhelming majority of applicants will need three A grades or better to get accepted.
As a whole your arguments are lacking in logic and fact.