Simon Jupp, the MP for the constituency centred on Exmouth, but who is standing as a candidate for our area in the election, is putting out this brochure in Colyton (sent to me by a resident) claiming to be the ‘local MP’, although in fact that is Richard Foord.
Inside, he also claims to be ‘working with health bosses’ to save Seaton Hospital, although of course it is Richard Foord who is doing that; it is Richard who is on our hospital steering committee, and it is Richard who is repeatedly raising the issue in Parliament.
This is deliberately misleading material, although not a surprise from Jupp, who likes to claim he lives locally, but only moved into the area to stand as MP.
What is a surprise is that the Gateway in Seaton has allowed Jupp a second slot presenting a quiz night. You’d have really thought that any local community enterprise would think twice before hitching itself so clearly to one side in the election, and especially to the party that caused the dismembering of Seaton Hospital in the first place.
Simon Jupp has, effectively, jumped ship from his present constituency centred on Exmouth. [ Ed: One wonders what his current constituents think of him abandoning them to focus elsewhere?] But as well as misrepresenting Devon’s NHS crisis, he is making a lot of the fact that he is now standing where he lives, in Sidmouth, and making out that because Richard Foord lives in Uffculme, a few hundred yards outside the new Honiton & Sidmouth constituency (which includes neighbouring Cullompton), Richard is somehow an outsider.
The truth is that Simon is a serial carpetbagger. He moved to Exmouth in 2019 so that he could take over from Hugo Swire in the old East Devon constituency, having been a special advisor to Dominic Raab in London.
And now Simon has moved to Sidmouth. I strongly suspect that he moved there because it’s in the new Honiton & Sidmouth constituency, which he decided was a better bet than the new Exmouth & East Exeter seat where most of his present constituents live. The voters will shortly have a chance to prove him wrong about that, and then he’ll be on the move again.
So isn’t Simon just the model of a local boy made good!
For more information on what is going on in the Seaton and Colyton communities, follow Martin’s blog: Seaton and Colyton MATTERS.
