1 June - Daniel enters the lion’s den
I didn’t know until a couple of days ago
that Councillor Daniel Francis has his own web domain name;
danielfrancis.uk,
but he has had it since last December 7th. Naturally it has come to life because
of his candidacy for the Bexleyheath and Crayford Parliamentary seat vacated by the long
serving Conservative MP David Evennett. Daniel has been my Councillor in
Belvedere for most of this millennium although in the Bonkers era my first port
of call has been Danny Hackett and more recently Sally Hinkley. (John Davey 2010
to 2014 but the least said about that the better.)
Sally was a big help to the local community while Crossrail was under
construction and we have stuck with each other since then despite our political differences.
I know Daniel mainly through observation at Council meetings since 2010 but he
was the driving force behind the campaign to
Save Belvedere Splash Park
when the Conservatives ran out of money to maintain it.
Daniel was Labour Leader for four years until Stefano Borella took over in 2021 and
throughout my years watching him at work from 2010 through to last month he always impressed with his
knowledge of a wide variety of subjects and particularly of the Council’s own rules and
regulations when the Conservatives might be twisting them to their advantage.
As has been reported here more than once there has never been any suggestion
that Daniel (or his colleagues) has been anything other than scrupulously honest and I would be among
the first to jump on him if he ever engaged in the sort of skullduggery for
which some Conservatives have been renowned.
From both observation and occasional tittle-tattle I am pretty sure he does his
best to curtail the activities of some of his more enthusiastic supporters,
those who have merited a mention here from time to time, who I have always felt let his party down.
Daniel’s new website is nicely presented and has nothing in it with which I could
reasonably disagree. I’d love to know more about how, as related on the Home page, he ensured the Elizabeth
line was brought to Abbey Wood because the relevant years are a big gap in my knowledge of that project.
Labour MP Teresa Pearce stood up for it In Parliament
at a time when Bexley Conservatives were campaigning against improved transport links. Cancelling Ken Livinstone’s bridge etc. Teresa
was a damned good MP who taught me that not every Labour MP has to be David Lammy in disguise.
The unswerving belief that Keir Starmer will lead us to the
Promised Land may or may not be genuine but what else can Daniel say? One of the website pages
is ‘Labour’s first steps for change’. if I wished to be critical I would say
that the first two and the fifth are pie in the sky aspirations and the sixth one
about recruiting 6,500 new teachers is not good enough. There are 30,000 schools in the
country and Labour’s policy is to squeeze Public Schools and displace many pupils into the state sector. Clever stuff!
So would I vote for Daniel if I was able to wipe my sixty years of political
memories and found myself sitting uncomfortably on the electoral fence? Maybe if
I was feeling particularly mischievous I would first remind myself of the letter from Bexley’s Chief Executive dated 15th October 2001 which accuses
me of making a ְ“petty” complaint when I asked why the Council Tax in Bexley was
rising much faster than in Bromley and Greenwich. “Please tell me which among
your current plans will result in lower expenditure? Surely you have one or two to be able to boast about?”
Apparently my language was “emotive” and any more of it and I would be labelled
vexatious. My admonition was copied to Councillor Francis and I have never quite
forgiven him (†) for not telling Mr. Duffield that he was a prat who hadn’t answered the question.
But then I might conclude that young Councillor Francis knew nothing about the
preceding correspondence and had better things to do. His party didn’t control
the deteriorating finances in 2001.
I suspect Daniel would make a good MP. Pity about the Party.
† Don’t take any of this too seriously.