Ah. Tidings of comfort and joy.

The January issue of Total Politics has Grant Shapps as its cover star. The thought of the choice of centrefold is too horrible to contemplate…

Croydon Central’s Gavin Barwell has been named as MP of the month by Total Politics magazine, for his work on his mental health reform private member’s bill.

Well done Gav!

Inside Croydon has welcomed the reforms proposed by the bill, though has taken a somewhat more sanguine view of the “hard work” involved in picking up some already part-drafted legislation and then pushing at the open door of cross-party support for reform for such obvious measures.

Meanwhile, the congratulatory Total Politics article overlooks Barwell’s somewhat casual approach to using terms of abuse about people’s mental state to Croydon residents.

Nor does it mention how Barwell has been found to have broken data protection rules not once, but twice, escaping with what someone from the party of law and order would describe as a mere slap on the wrist (rather than the hefty, five-figure fine that was possible).

Maybe the Total Politics writers overlooked that Barwell spent most of November working on a failed and badly flawed election campaign in Croydon North in which he showed no hesitation in trying to set elements of the electorate against one another, “playing the race card” by blaming local unemployment on immigration.

It is worth noting that Total Politics was created by the Conservative journalist Iain Dale and is owned and published by his company, Biteback Media. Total Politics was launched with some financial backing from the then deputy chairman of the Conservative party, Lord Cashcroft, who owned a 25 per cent stake in Biteback Media.

It might be suggested that this funding of the magazine was paid for out of the many millions of tax which Cashcroft’s expensive accountants had enabled the Tory peer to avoid.

Total Politics has been said to have the goal of being “unremittingly positive about the political process” – a sort of Tory Glee Club.

Before he became an MP, Gavin Barwell held a senior campaigning position at Conservative headquarters where he worked very closely with… Lord Cashcroft.

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