Richard Spring MP
Member of Parliament for West Suffolk

Politicians, as a breed, get on pretty well together both across party and national divides. They enjoy each others’ company. I, for one, have no personal animosity towards my opponents; there are a few who suck up in a revolting way to Cabinet Ministers, but everybody holds them in contempt. There are many Labour MPs who are genuine and decent – Tom Watson was kind about me, which I wholeheartedly reciprocate. I cannot feel any personal dislike whatever for the affable Prisons Minister, Gerry Sutcliffe, with whom I am in contact over the absconding (sorry – licence failure) Mark Ryder. Who would want to be a Minister in this Home Office — it is a foretaste of purgatory.

As we know from Charles Clarke, David Blunkett and others, the Government front bench strongly resembles the Addams family. Nobody exemplifies this more than Gordon Brown, who is like some oversized Chelsea tractor crashing through the undergrowth when speaking in the House of Commons.

Today, thanks to effective needling by George Osborne, he lost it – he hurled his notes across the despatch box in a rage. This hardly ever happens, because almost all Members of Parliament know the limits of personal tantrums.

Oh dear! Our view of Gordon will never be quite the same again. 

I have just been in the chamber of the House of Commons, speaking in support of my parliamentary colleague, John Gummer, MP for Suffolk Coastal, who secured a debate on the subject of the NHS in Suffolk.As all the Conservative MPs in Suffolk have recently signed a letter to the new Chief Executive of the Suffolk PCT, this was a good opportunity for us to restate the case to the Health Minister, Andy Burnham, that Suffolk is not getting a fair deal under the NHS funding formula. We have one of the oldest populations in England – one in five is over 65 - and yet the money we receive from the Government does not reflect this and instead is considerably below the national average.We had the opportunity to ask the Minister: Is it any wonder that every NHS organisation in Suffolk is suffering with millions of pounds of deficits because we don’t get the money we need, or indeed, the money we deserve.

We raised important points such as the long list of threatened community hospitals, the shortage of carers in Suffolk and the difficulty of signing up with an NHS dentist.

Regrettably, there appears to be a correlation between political representation and the closing of community hospitals. All the closures, barring a few in Liberal Democrat seats, have been in Conservative held seats. As with so much with this Government, money flows to areas, especially metropolitan urban areas in the North, where its political support is strongest.

I told the Minister that we have a genuine passion about this huge problem. I paid tribute to the staff in Suffolk. The collapse in the morale amongst our wonderful doctors, nurses, ancillary workers and carers is devastating and I wanted him to know this.

Hopefully, if we all keep the pressure up on the local NHS management and the Department of Health, we might just have a chance of redressing the unfortunate imbalance in health funding in Suffolk.

But I am not holding my breath…  

One of the wisest pronouncements made on political life was that “all political careers end in failure”. Yesterday, at Prime Minister’s Questions we witnessed this being played out before us as Tony Blair struggled to save the remaining shreds of his ebbing leadership.

There was a genuine feeling, across all sides of the House, that here was a Prime Minister who had lost respect and credibility as the leader of the country stumbling his way through the first big event of the new Parliament.

At one point, I thought someone would have to call the RSPCA as the humiliation and torture for Tony was more like “bear baiting”.  Bearing in mind that Blair has said he will not be Prime Minister in a year’s time, why prolong the agony for himself and the embarrassment for the rest of the Labour party.

Throughout Parliament, after that performance, there was a feeling that Blair should go now.

Will Tony finally take the hint, or do we have to endure the sight of more such performances? Even Gordon yesterday must have had mixed feelings!