28 April (Part 1) - Toryboy Danny
What’s
this? A crafty bit of Photoshopping? Afraid not, it really is Councillor Danny
Hackett (and Labour General Election candidate in 2019) on the East Wickham campaign trail on behalf of Bexley Conservatives.
Manifesto in hand. How can anyone explain that?
Easy actually.
I have known Danny for half his life and I think I can say that he has been a
very good friend, not just to me but to the wider community in Bexley.
(Fireworks, BexFest etc.) I don’t meet
him as often as I used to probably because of his family health problems, the
pandemic in general and the 50 year age gap.
He showed himself to be thoughtful and kind hearted when the Covid panic was at
its height by turning up at my doorstep every Saturday morning with my grocery
supplies while keeping my aunt in Newham supplied with her favourite ravioli,
not to mention satisfying her insatiable desire for paper handkerchiefs.
From time to time I have given him what I hope is good advice. Quit politics
Danny, you are far too honest to become a successful politician. (Circa 2014.)
Why don֦’t you become a Conservative, you are more right wing than I am? (Circa
2017.) Give up on Thamesmead East, an Independent cannot win against the party
machines. (Last year.) And please give up smoking and buy some razor blades. (Pretty much all the time.)
As his upper lip bears witness, he sometimes ignores me but eventually
came to admit that he is not really cut out to be a Labour politician. When his party
found out he was thrown out accompanied by reasons I have half forgotten. He confided in me at the time
and buried somewhere on this computer I have a set of emails which shocked me
deeply. The Councillors I thought of as being OK at least, no longer looked that way.
I attended the Code of Conduct Committee meeting where he was being made to face
up to spiteful accusations by his erstwhile friends. He had used the word bollocks on Twitter if I
remember correctly and he was in effect rescued from sanction by the straight
talking Tory; Councillor June Slaughter.
Not that it was the worst attack on him. Another saw him dropped into very hot water; with Bexley
Council’s conduct rules, the police and a scurrilous rag known as the News Shopper.
Danny saw this one coming and showed me the so called evidence before it all hit
the fan and this time it really was bollocks, a trap set by those who were no longer his friends who in
my opinion were themselves guilty of much of what they had reported. After several
stressful months the Council and the Police reached the same conclusion as I
had. A less forgiving soul might have resorted to legal action.
Is he now taking revenge on the former party colleagues who wrote such nasty things about him?
I don’t think that is the whole story but it may perhaps be a secondary reason. No politician is a total Saint!
When I first met him Danny was a Tony Blair nut, quite the reverse of me, and as
far as I know he still is. As such he is obviously very much anti-Jeremy Corbyn.
If you want his candidacy in Old Bexley in December 2019 explained you will have to ask Danny but
what he learned then must have been the beginning of the end for his Labour ambitions.
East
Wickham has not always been solidly Tory, it was Labour and Lib Dem in 2002 and
the Conservatives came within five votes of losing it again in the 2009
by-election.
In 2022 the Labour Group scents an opportunity and Danny is keen to put an end to it. Who can blame him?
The three incumbents have been decent enough Councillors. Steven Hall
was not my favourite Scrutiny Committee Chairman, Caroline Newton showed herself
to be an EU loyalist and succumbs to the occasional bit of political infighting and
Christine Catterall is low profile. Don’t go searching this website for evidence of them lying
because you won’t find any. They have never gone seriously off the rails or perhaps not at all by political standards.
They are up against three Labour candidates who operate under the auspices of
the Sidcup Association whose Secretary was so keen to hide her
constant unjustified complaining about Conservative Councillors, Danny Hackett and me, that
she resorted to legal threats to suppress her online diatribes.
Danny didn’t like that and doesn’t want to see any of her supporters elected, and nor do I.
Next Thursday I will grit my teeth and cast three votes for Labour. Here in Belvedere the
Labour candidates are all OK and and at least one, probably all of them, liked
what the Sidcup Secretary did last year no more than I did. The decision Is helped by the
Conservative candidates here having nothing at all going for them and a fair bit against.
In East Wickham it is very much the reverse. Three OK Tories and three
on the other side who support their litigious Secretary who repays them via Social Media. (See above.)
Tony Blair apart, if Danny says something is worth fighting for it probably is.
The former Labour Councillor is more comfortable having been given the sack, especially if it is a blue one.