Grant Shapps MP

The Witchfinder covers the recent humbling of another accuracy-challenged member of Welwyn Hatfield’s appallingly useless local Labour Party, who has been forced into an apology to his hard-working local MP Grant Shapps. Matthew Hopkins argues that Welwyn Hatfield deserves better than Labour’s Z-list.

iPhones are a glory of the modern age. They allow us to stay online whilst we are on the go – to listen to music, read emails and to work as we sit on the train to work. They also have the inconvenient habit of auto-correcting words in unintended ways, so much so that there are whole websites devoted to the topic. An innocent word like ‘sinus’ for example, might become ‘anus’.

The Witchfinder suspects auto-correct might have been at work in Political Scrapbook’s recent headline – “Grant Shapps threatened constituent [sic][…]” where the letters “onstit” and “e” are clearly superfluous.

For those who do not read Political Scrap-Book (i.e. almost everyone in the world) some background might be in order. Grant Shapps MP has the good fortune to represent Welwyn-Hatfield, a Parliamentary constituency in which he has massively increased his majority for two key reasons –

1. Shapps is accepted by all and sundry as a fantastically energetic and hardworking constituency MP
2. Welwyn-Hatfield has one of the most comically, hilariously, risibly obnoxious and useless Constituency Labour Party organisations in England

Your inquisitor invites readers to view his past works about the misadventures of local Labour leader Councillor Kieran Thorpe, whose moronic twitter comments about the age of consent sparked pages of complaints from enraged members of the public.

This week, however, it has not been Kieran Thorpe machine-gunning himself in the foot but one of his junior colleagues, a singularly charmless gentleman called Dean Charles Archer. Dean is a former Labour councillor, a fact buried in the prose of the Political Scrapbook article, which described him as –

“former local councillor Dean Archer”

– notably omitting his political persuasion, albeit linking to an article about the reason he is an ex councillor. In fact Dean Archer is a failed local politician who was formally removed from his town council after failing to turn up for 6 months. Colleagues include Labour Borough Councillor Colin Croft who represents Hatfield Central Ward … from Yorkshire.

As Political Scrapbook breathlessly reports, Archer had posted some comment that – “referenced [Shapps] controversial alter ego”. The PS article notably omits the actual post Archer made, most likely because Shapps immediately threatened legal action and the pitiful Labour hack grovellingly apologised. As Archer admitted, “I recently made a post suggesting that Grant Shapps MP had lied over the use of a pen name. I now accept that such an assertion was entirely false […] I wish to apologise unresewedly [sic][…]”

The Witchfinder once suggested that Labour picked its councillors by hiding special tokens in those blue packets sometimes found in Walkers’ Crisps. He was clearly being too kind – a random selection of this nature would result in an average distribution of ability.

The fact is that some of Britain’s most famous authors use pseudonyms, such as J K Rowling the author of the Harry Potter Saga. No one should criticise Shapps for keeping business and politics separate – politicians are usually criticised for the reverse. Looked at objectively, Grant Shapps (like Welwyn Hatfield’s Conservative Councillors) lives in his constituency and turns up to work.

The people of Welwyn Hatfield are not stupid. It is not coincidence that a once marginal constituency has become a Conservative stronghold. Welwyn Hatfield deserves better than Labour’s Z-List. Leftist bloggers might do better to find a more credible Labour politician to champion.