Pinocchio is back and on form!

Thought he’d gone for good? Perhaps we all did, especially after he became Sir Pinocchio – although modestly he doesn’t seem keen to use his title on the literature he sends out to his former constituents! He prefers the more ‘democratic’ Ed – which is kind of him – really!

After two years silence he’s at it again. Back in 2010 he launched the famous scare over the ‘closure’ of the Maternity unit and A&E at Kingston Hospital. Remember? I was at Kingston Hospital last week and A&E seemed to very busy still, seven years later! I can’t comment on the Maternity unit from first hand experience but I understand it still runs too.

And he promised students he would end tuition fees – but the last I heard they were still paying them seven years on and after he and his party supported an increase! And there was the old favourite about rezoning Surbiton station which he used to trot out every four or five years but never, somehow, seemed to make any progress between General Elections.

Now he’s promising a ‘soft Brexit’ – or is it a rerun of last June’s Referendum on EU membership? It isn’t altogether clear. I don’t know if he himself knows what he means by this but I do know that he hopes that people who voted ‘Remain’ last June will fall for the idea that he will deliver them a second Referendum so that the ‘Leavers’ can repent and give the ‘right’ answer this time in the elegant way things are usually done in the EU.

So Sir Ed, who was our local MP and said nothing when Gordon Brown signed the UK up to the Lisbon Treaty without any vote in Parliament or a Referendum in the country – the very Treaty which contains the Article 50 Theresa May has now activated after a Referendum and votes in both Houses of Parliament – is hoping the electors of Kingston and Surbiton will again fall for the formula that worked for him in1997, 2001, 2005 and 2010. I think not!!