‘I’ve been trying flipping hard to avoid doing it,’ said Heidi Allen today as she started her maiden speech. She hadn’t seen the point of speeches in the Chamber, she explained, because most people in the Commons were already wedded to their side, and there wasn’t much point in her adding to those speeches as they changed no minds.
But the reason she had decided to give it during the Opposition Day debate on tax credits ‘because today I can sit on my hands no longer’. She wanted to criticise the tax credit cuts. She wanted to intervene before it was ‘too late’ to stop the changes to tax credits, even though she didn’t want to support today’s motion from Labour because she disagreed with the party’s overall stance.
https://soundcloud.com/spectator1828/heidi-allen-delivers-her-maiden-speech-on-the-topic-of-tax-credits
She offered a detailed critique of the controversial cuts, asking how many of her colleagues really understood the challenge that would face those affected by them. ‘Too many people will be adversely affected,’ she argued. ‘Something must give. For those of us proud enough to call ourselves Compassionate Conservatives, it must not be the backs of the working families we purport to serve.’ And she claimed to speak for many of her colleagues as she argued that a government changing its mind could be a sign of strength.
Even though Allen won’t rebel tonight (on a non-binding Opposition Day motion), her maiden speech is perhaps the bravest and finest that was given from this new intake of MPs. Forget Mhairi Black’s very good maiden speech: this was a newly elected MP on the government side criticising a government policy. Not just a government policy, but one championed by George Osborne, the man many of her colleagues are desperately trying to curry favour with in order to advance their own careers. Nothing wrong with ambition, of course, but Allen has decided to publicly criticise an Osborne policy: an action that has cast other MPs into the political wilderness for many years. That is a truly brave maiden speech, and a well-argued brave maiden speech at that.
UPDATE: Here is a link to her speaking to LBC’s Iain Dale afterwards.
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