Peter Gibson: can this government give us any hope?

But the first ten days of 2025 have been quite bizarre. The world’s richest man has described LibDem leader Ed Davey as a cretin, and the Prime Minister has described people calling for an inquiry into child rape gangs as “far right” while at the same time the Labour Party has pushed out an AI generated video with Brazilian lyrics advocating drug use and abuse of women.

For the grooming and rape of children to become a political football is a desperately sad reflection on our politics. I am sure that everyone would agree that the grooming and rape of children is a heinous crime and should be prosecuted and punished without fear or favour.

There have been many inquiries into child abuse, and the findings of earlier inquiries should be implemented and the lessons learned should be followed.

However, there is sufficient doubt that we fully understand the extent of the problem, and where the safety and protection of children is concerned, can we really afford to not find out the full extent of the problem? Would a two track approach of implementing the finding of earlier reports AND finding out the full extent of the ongoing problem be such a bad thing?

We should not lose sight that behind every abuse there is a victim and our elected politicians should do everything they can to protect them.

The story has been amplified by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, who also happens to own Twitter/X. Some say he shouldn’t be expressing views on our affairs. Strangely enough, those who say this seem have often in the past been only too happy to share their views on other countries’ affairs. You can’t have it both ways.

The turn of the year has also seen the news that a number more private schools have announced their closure, as a result of our new government’s VAT imposition on a charitable objective and the hike in Employers’ National Insurance. The government’s promise to allocate the VAT taken from private schools to public sector education sadly didn’t have the shelf life of a loaf of bread.

The cost of government borrowing is up, meaning the government needs to take more in just to keep doing the same thing, and that against a backdrop of declining business confidence, hiring freezes, and the prospects of recession on the horizon.

Things are not looking great.

Politics requires eternal optimism. Government requires optimism. And we all need hope.

We look to our leaders for hope and optimism that things will get better but sadly for our pensioners, our farmers, and our business owners, there seems to be very little hope on offer from our new government.

Locally, we have the prospects of the 200th anniversary of the railways to look forward to. We have seen £35m invested into Hopetown, we’ve bought and restored a replica engine, and we anticipate the return of Locomotion No 1 for part of the year, all of which I was pleased to be involved with during my time as MP for Darlington.