Where’s Wolly?
And what do the people of Totnes think of their defecting MP?
LLOYD EVANS
‘T
otnes? It’s hippie central.’ A friend
warned me what to expect when
I visited the affluent, left-leaning
town in south-east Devon to assess public
opinion about the local MP, Dr Sarah Wol-
laston. In March she left the Tories to join
Change UK and she now sits as a Liberal
Democrat. I equipped myself with a photo
of her and wandered the streets last Mon-
day. A chap in the Wild Fig Deli told me that
her disloyalty would terminate her career.
‘You can change party, all right, but you
hold a by-election. She’s lost her credibility.’
In 2011 Wollaston backed a private mem-
bers’ bill requiring MPs who change parties
to stand for re-election. She has yet to meet
this obligation herself.
A woman soaking up the sun outside
a jewellery shop recognised my Wollaston
photo. ‘But I’m Labour,’ she said, ‘I voted
Remain.’ ‘Do you think we’ll leave by 31
October?’ ‘Yes,’ she said firmly, ‘I wanted to
stay but we’ll be out.’ I asked if Remain might
snatch victory at the last minute. ‘No chance.’
A nurse in uniform bustling between two
shops looked at my photo in puzzlement.
‘She’s the local MP and a doctor,’ I prompted.
‘Never heard of her.’
A man of about 40 in an upmarket knick-
knack shop told me: ‘She’s well liked and
well respected here.’ I asked if Brexit was
likely to happen on 31 October. He squinted
at me silently for several seconds as if I were
mocking him. ‘We will leave,’ he said heav-
ily. ‘We’ve just got to get on with it because
it’s horrendous for the economy being stuck
in limbo.’
Two Brummie women with deep tans and
costly hairdos squinted in bemusement at
my Wollaston picture. ‘Recognise her?’ ‘No.’
‘Do you live here? ‘No.’ ‘Are you interested
in politics?’ ‘No.’
Do you even care about Brexit?’
‘I’m caring less,’ said one, ‘I just want to
get on with it even though I voted Stay.’ She
pointed out that a prosperous market town
in Devon was very different from the Mid-
lands. ‘There’s a lot of immigration where
we’re from, because that’s where the work is.
We’re not racist, but we can’t look after the
whole world.’
Her friend told me she worked with ‘a lot
of Spanish and Italians and they’re leaving
the country because of Brexit’.
Are they not aware that their rights will
be protected?‘Yes but they see Britain as racist. Don’t
quote us, by the way.’
Over lunch I chatted to a friendly wait-
ress who knew Wollaston by sight. I asked
if she rated Wollaston’s chances of being re-
elected. ‘Maybe, if she can find any Lib Dems
around here,’ she said sceptically, as if Lib
Dems are as rare as zebras in Devon. ‘This
is a very Conservative constituency.’ She
echoed the complaints of many locals who
felt that Wollaston was an absentee MP. ‘The
last one, Anthony Steen, was a Tory but at
least we seen him.’
The Conservative Club was holding a
car-boot sale, where I met a Leaver who
shrugged sourly when I mentioned Wollas-
ton. But he refused to say anything against
her. He was very perky about Brexit,
how ever. ‘Boris is doomed if he doesn’t getus out. Which is a good thing. It’s like play-
ing poker against someone who’s all-in. You
know he means it.’
Another clued-up Tory told me the ref-
erendum should never have been held with-
out supplementary conditions. ‘We needed
a threshold of 60 per cent for victory. But
David Cameron said a majority of one will
take us out of the EU. And he’s supposed
to be an intelligent man. We’ll get through
it, though, it’s nothing like world war two.
The Germans may not like us but they’re
not actually trying to kill us.’
At Birdwood House I met a self-pro-
claimed ‘socialist painter’ in his mid-sixties
who was selling acrylics of industrialised
Britain. He said the Brexit process had left
him ‘despairing of all politicians. It’s a dis-
grace. I don’t trust Corbyn that much either.’
The Conservatives, he told me, were guilty of
long-term failures. ‘Selling off council houses
should never have been allowed. The rent was
fixed. The tenants were happy.’ He knew who
to blame for the referendum and the result.
‘David Cameron’s got a lot to answer for.’
As a footnote, I noticed many Remainers
used the word ‘Stay’ to describe their vote in
the referendum. An interesting distinction.
‘Stay’ suggests comfort, safety and homely
reassurance. Perhaps Remain lost because
they chose the wrong word.‘You can change party, all right,
but you hold a by-election.
She’s lost her credibility’Blowing against the windPresident Trump was ridiculed for
suggesting that hurricanes could be
impeded on their passage across the
Atlantic by bombing them. Yet there is
nothing new in trying to stop or reduce the
power of hurricanes by artificial means.
— Between 1962 and 1971 the US
government ran an experiment called
Project Stormfury to try just that. The
idea was to spray the eye of a hurricane
with silver iodide crystals in the hope that
it would stimulate the development of a
second ‘eyewall’ of cloud, in competition
with the first, thereby helping to break up
the storm. The method was tried on four
hurricanes over eight separate days.
— Following four of those events wind
speeds were measured to have fallen by
between 10 and 30 per cent, and in the
other cases wind speeds were unchanged.
— The project was formally stopped in
1983, when the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration concluded
those results had been down to chance.Fire figuresAre global forest fires really getting worse?
(Number of forest fires in millions, Jan-Aug)
2019 3.04m
2018 2.81m
2017 2.71m
2016 2.95m
2015 3.03m
2014 2.92m
2013 2.84m
2012 3.33m
2011 2.93m
2010 3.08m
2009 2.93m
2008 3.11m
2007 3.23m
2006 2.91m
2005 3.29m
2004 3.21m
Source: globalforestwatch.com, using data from
Nasa MODIS satellitesPorky piesA pork-pie maker from Melton Mowbray
questioned Boris Johnson’s claim that the
town exports pies to Iceland and Thailand.
— Melton Mowbray’s association with pork
pies has been traced back to 1831 when
Edward Alcock, described in a directory as
a ‘pork and veal pie manufacturer’, started
making them in his shop in Leicester Street.
— In 1890 another manufacturer, Evans
and Hill, reported receiving a large order
from Borneo, though it is unclear how the
pies were preserved on the journey.
— The first world war ended much of the
international trade in pork pies. But in 2016
Mintel reported that British shoppers spent
a total of £165.3 million on the product.BAROMETER