![]() Mr Beales wants to uphold that tradition. One of the great bits about British politics is how accessible politicians always have been.” It’s not clear he’s doing advice surgeries. “People joke with me that he appears for his annual walk down Uxbridge High Street, waves, gets in a car, drives off. “What I’ve heard knocking on doors is people saying he’s not visible,” says Beales. The register of parliamentary interests shows Mr Johnson earned over £750,000 in November alone by giving speeches at corporate events, and has earned over £1m since resigning as prime minister. When i asked Johnson’s office in Uxbridge how many surgeries he has personally held in the past six months - since he resigned as prime minister - they did not provide an exact answer to the question, merely saying it was “regular”. When news of Johnson’s memoir broke, Beales tweeted it will be ‘a work of fiction from start to finish’ (Photo: Isabel Infantes/ AFP via Getty Images) And today he says, “Uxbridge and South Ruislip deserve a full-time MP.” Mr Beales recently joked on Twitter about Mr Johnson’s “annual trip to his constituency”. When news of Mr Johnson’s memoir broke, he tweeted it will be “a work of fiction from start to finish”. It wasn’t, ‘Oh, that Boris Johnson is standing there! I want to be against him!’”īut the swipes, however carefully executed, continue. “We need more people in politics who understand what life is like at the moment. “I felt this frustration, this anger, really, that things aren’t working as they should do, and we need a change of government,” says Beales, explaining why he applied to his party, after seven years as a local councillor, to be selected as a parliamentary candidate. I’m off.’ That’s cowardice.”Īs we talk, however, it seems Mr Beales is not interested in the Boris Show, or the dramatic prospect of him losing his seat. If he jumped ship somewhere else it’s clearly about, ‘Actually I might lose this. And that he isn’t a man of conviction, values, and beliefs. It’s all about personal career, not about public service. If he does, says Mr Beales, “It will confirm everything that people suspect: he isn’t interested in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, it was just a fast-track route to Parliament and No 10. ![]() Rumours suggest he might flit off to a safe seat elsewhere in the country before Rishi Sunak calls the next election. Johnson enjoys a moderate 7,000 majority, but after the most staggering demise in contemporary British politics, from an 80-seat majority to a scandal-laden resignation in just three-and-a-half years, his personal brand is wounded. More than 30 per cent of children in Uxbridge and South Ruislip were in poverty in 2020-21, according to Action for Children. Yet, unless Johnson decides otherwise, he and Mr Beales, 34, will face each other, probably next year, in the seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip, an outer west London constituency that voted Leave in the Brexit referendum. It’s one that bares so little resemblance to that of the former prime minister as to be almost a Dickensian study in divisions between rich and poor. This resolve amid pain or adversity – it transpires over several hours – is the story of his life. He sits askew - awkwardly - in a chair in his living room because he pulled his back so badly he’s been to A&E and in agony for days, but is determined to keep going. ![]() “Oh, don’t worry,” says Danny Beales, “there’s been far worse spilled on that…” The man Labour has selected to stand against Boris Johnson at the next general election flings open the front door to his ex-council flat, welcomes me in and apologises for only having soya milk for the tea he’s made.
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