Ten days ago I was made aware of Mrs Stuart and her surprisingly sound views on the EU. I noted then that she was being taken to task by English loyalists such as the CEP and the England Project for her statement that her constituents had only recentlöy started to identify themselves as English rather British. The CEP has now posted a round up of reaction since it seems that the Birmingham post has received a lot of letters and they therefore wrote a follow up article. The main reason why I say good for Gisela is that part of the CEP's round up is her response, which was also printed in the Birmingham Post.
The fact that she responded is the first strike in her favour, too many of our elected representatives seem to think that they only need to talk to the general public at elections. The second strike is that she makes some good points, including the point I made yesterday about how the English have tended to "borrow" achievements and achievers from the rest of the British Isles. I don't think she is utterly correct throughout but both in that and in her stated support for a St George's Day holiday (unlike those nasty judges in Norfolk) she is closer to correctness than any other MP that I know of.
However politicians can (and frequently are) right about somethings but then depressingly on the wrong side the next time you read their name in the press. Sarkozy, Blair, Bush, practically every Tory and many (US) republicans are precisely of this mold. Typically one finds that either politicians are wrong about everything (George Galloway, l'Escroc, Vile Pin, John Kerry) or they are wrong at least 50% of the time. So to my great surprise I saw that Stephan Pollard has an article about the Henry Jackson Society which mentioned the name of Gisela Stuart:
... Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Tuesday’s gathering was that it was genuinely all-party. The event was hosted by two MPs, Michael Gove, a Conservative, and Gisela Stuart, a former minister under Blair. Denis MacShane, Europe Minister until June, is a signatory of society’s statement of principles.
The truth which I expose today is that the Henry Jackson Society is not a secret cabal designed, as one Guardian columnist put it last week, to create “a new governing consensus of the right” but quite the opposite. It has neoconservative members. But it also has social democrats and traditional conservatives. Socialists would feel comfortable with its aims - “the spread of democracy, using all realistic and available means - not only on idealistic grounds, but also because this is the surest guarantee of…security.” And it is not about American dominion but the very absence of empire. There is indeed a mission to change the world. But it is to rid it of tyranny and to give all people the liberty as we enjoy in the West.
I'm sure that at some point I'll find a reason to disagree with her but from what I'm seeing so far she seems to be precisely the sort of politician that we need more of, in England, Britain and, for what it is worth, in Europe and the world. Perhaps more to the point while I may well end up at some point disagreeing with her policy prescriptions I do think that we share many of the same values and that is enough to make me want to see her career progress.