Excuse me, can I buy your vote?

[Workingman]

Jeez, we now have 'cash for constituencies' on the horizon.

Spreading spending fairly around the country is the right thing to do. Spending most of it in London, the South East and the big cities is wrong - no argument there.

However, using government spending as a 'bribe' to buy the votes of MPs in deprived 'Leave' areas, which is now being proposed, is about as low as politics can get. The funding issue has fallen on deaf ears for decades under governments of all shades and coalitions / pacts and it should not be used as a bargaining chip to get May's Brexit deal votes.

This form of politics should be illegal.

[cromwell]

The thought did occur that bribery is illegal in business, but in politics?
That said, I live in an ex-mining village and if they want to shove a couple of million my way....

[Workingman]

Regeneration of the mining belt south of Leeds and countrywide is a cracking idea and long overdue, but not with a bribe to buy votes.

Labour MPs like Flint, Cooper, Mann and Skinner should tell May to go do one. They have principles, don't they?

[Kaz]

Disgraceful! To be fair, Tom Watson was on BBC Breakfast this morning, ostensibly to discuss his huge 8st weight loss and subsequent campaign against fizzy drink. If course, they collared him about Brexit and he agreed that this would be accepting bribes!

[Suff]

Well if they want to throw money at Lincolnshire, where the vote was extremely high for leave then I'm all for that. The county could do with the cash.

Lincoln itself has a Labour MP, facilitated by students who didn't give a crap what Corbyn wanted so long as he "bought" their vote with a promise of removing student fees and dismissing student loan debt, If that is not "buying" the vote of students I don't know what is and that was right at an election.

They all do it and they all get away with it because they all set the rules which say they can do it.

Of course nobody on the BBC then attacked Watson and said "and what is promising to give money to students just before an election then? If not buying a vote". Naturally!

[Kaz]

How is that the same? Student debt is an incredibly unfair practice, and a manifesto pledge to stop exploiting youngsters is not the same as directly offering money for votes.

[Workingman]

Exactly Kaz, and let us not forget that it was a nationwide policy promise supported by many non-Labour voting mums and dads up and down the country.

Apples and lychees spring to mind.

[TheOstrich]

This money should have been allocated unconditionally to these deprived areas years ago. The biased London-centricity of our politics frankly stinks.

[Suff]

Not at all, it was a cynical attempt to buy young votes during an election. Borne out by the massive surge of young voters who switched to Labour, only to become massively disillusioned over the Corbyn Brexit stance and the way that they quibbled and qualified post election.

It had absolutely nothing to do with fairness, it was the attempt to use the public purse to buy an election. There is absolutely no difference here.

[Kaz]

Definitely, Frank!

Ossie, that's so true! Every time we go across to see the boys the differences become more and more apparent - Staines-Upon-Thames is doing very nicely, thank you!