Give A F**k

There is a tidy version of John Healey. St Peter's School, York. Christ's College, Cambridge. Twenty nine years in Parliament. Now the Chancellor, signing the cheques, setting the budget, deciding what you are allowed to keep. There is another version. It is not tidy. In 1997 he took a Rotherham seat. For the sixteen years that followed, in the streets he represented and the schools he walked past, fourteen hundred girls were being passed around by men the state had quietly decided not to notice. Some of them twelve. One was doused in petrol and told to burn if she talked. He was their MP. He had a seat, a voice, a vote, and the standing to make a noise. He made none. In 2012 the Times finally broke it and demanded an inquiry. His own website still carries the verdict. He had an open mind. He was "not convinced this would help the abused girls." Not convinced. Fourteen hundred of them. One of the few men in the country who could have forced the truth out, and he wanted more time. Then he sued the woman who said so. A UKIP MEP, Jane Collins, accused him and two colleagues of knowing and doing nothing. They took her to court and won. Fifty four thousand pounds each. Healey pocketed his. He did not give it to the girls. He kept it. He had been called out for inaction and he turned it into income. The pattern held. Forty thousand pounds from two donors whose addresses the register lists only as "private," while he lectured Farage on secret money. His own council tax, on his own second home, unpaid, an administrative error, and he meant to claim the fifteen hundred back from you while his party took the winter fuel payment from millions of pensioners. Then, in June, he resigned as Defence Secretary with a letter that buried Keir Starmer. Six weeks later Starmer was gone. Burnham moved in. And Burnham made Healey Chancellor. The knife went in. The chair was warm. The reward was the Treasury. Now he wants to tax the banks, because a war abroad has emptied the purse and the IMF has told him to cut spending instead. He has run out of other people's money and he is going through the City's sofa cushions. Meanwhile the legacy gathers dust. The Child Trust Fund, his idea, one point six billion pounds of children's own money left to rot in forgotten accounts while the City takes a hundred million a year in fees. Housing, where he decided families renting rather than owning was "a good thing." A children's charity he vouched for, whose founder was later convicted of child sexual abuse. In Rotherham. Of course. The girl who was twelve is thirty seven now. She lives with it every day. He was not convinced her rape was worth an inquiry. And now he decides how much of your money you keep. That is the Chancellor.