My week ahead, 2 - 8 August 2015

Sunday 2 August, 5pm – Meeting with Stella Creasy

Tuesday 4 August, 6pm – meeting with Angela Eagle

Wednesday 5 August, 7pm – Charity Indian meal, the Alishan Pavilion, Kesgrave

I see it is a compliment that in less than one week, three of the candidates for Deputy Labour leader are coming to speak to Labour members in Ipswich. It shows that in Ipswich we have a strong local party with a reputation for hard campaigning plus we still seek to help our colleagues in the rest of Suffolk and North Essex.

The race for Deputy leader will be very close and i have been impressed by all of the candidates so far.

But it is the Labour leadership election that is making most of the headlines, I tweeted last week that many local Tories seem only want to talk about it. This was further highlighted this week when our Tory MP decided to use his alst column before his (long) holiday to give us his view on the race to be Labour leader.

He seems to have decided the result and was very critical of Corbyn (a paragraph after being complimentary about him!) – Gummer description of Corbyn – “who is republican and a sympathizer of Communist and extremist organizations elsewhere in the world”

Thank you for that Mr Gummer, but not sure I need your help in deciding who I will vote for – But if you wish I will repay you the compliment in 2019 and tell you who to choose to take over from Cameron.

But as you seem to be critical of him because of his supposed support for extremist organisations, then would like to know what he thought of Mrs Thatcher and her support and friendship of a certain General Pinochet?

But what Mr Gummer does not mention in his last column is anything about the crisis in Calais, he mentions he is going on holiday, guess it is not by ferry or eurotunnel? But this is an important issue to many of us in Ipswich, those whose businesses are being damaged by the events in France, those who are going on holiday via Kent and also the many who are concerned about the plight of those migrants trying to enter the UK, but the thousands who are risking their lives to cross from Africa into Europe.

Cameron and the Tories have failed miserably to help anyone – his use of the word ‘swarm’ did not help the situation and his comments just seemed an attempt to appease the right wing of his own party. The mess we left Libya in is one of the contributing factors to the mess in Calais and Southern Europe. But the biggest failure of Cameron and the Tories has been the failure to help remedy the Syrian refugee situation.

18 Months ago, wanted to go to war with Syria, Parliament stopped him but since then we have had (UN figures) over 3 million refugees leave Syria, mainly to Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan – we (Cameron) promised to help – so far the UK has taken 185 refugees – and we wonder why there is a problem in both the Mediterranean and Calais. Cameron should hold his head in shame. Maybe after your holiday Mr Gummer you may wish to use your column to tell us why you seem happy we have taken so few refugees and give us your opinion on the Calais crisis rather than advising Labour members who they should choose to be our next leader.