Geoffrey Cox’s Politics are not my own. Many MPs have to be professional and represent the interest of Constituents whose views they disagree. A unique aspect of British Democracy is how good constituency MPs represents without fault or favor EVERY constituent, including those of opposite political views. I know this from one very wet summer living in Bideford where it rained every day all summer except one and local residents viewed this as normal (I hated it). Geoffrey Cox came into the office I was working in, with his agent, almost playing a part of Charles Laughton acting as a Barrister, full of blowhard charisma and instantly dislikable. But like many who write to their MPs or visit their surgery I was in private torment facing a Kafkaesque desperate situation and having nowhere else to turn apart from my MP.
The problem was I had recently returned to the UK from abroad and my Daughters passport had expired and I had tried to renew it. Which became a farce as the passport and its privatized agent VIA had lost all the papers (twice), I had every page of her old passport scanned and notarized by the foreign office in Beirut – which then lost all records of the case, and then returning to the UK the airline lost the suitcase in which my daughters passport was in – the Passport Office refusing to renew the original passport because there was no physical passport – they amazingly refused allow the passport number and photos of the passport as proof. The email addresses they gave were wrong (send only), as were the phone number (10 hours a go ringing unanswered). All of this, and the passport office ignoring a supreme court case on illegals actions in such cases, had trapped her outside of England for four years.
Desperate at this Kafkaesque turn of events I had no choice but to turn to Geoffrey Cox however much I instinctively disliked him. His response astounded me. Lets be clear, most of my time these days as a senior figure in UK town planning is writing briefings for Counsels opinions to barristers and receiving them. I have the greatest respect for their skills and know backwards a blowhard from an outstanding silk. Cox proved to be an outstanding silk who is clearly and obviously vastly underpaid. He wrote an outstanding many page letter in only a couple of days to the Head of the Passport Office, and cc’d to the Home Secretary, demanding action, leading to a quivering, pathetic, inaccurate and defensive response only a couple of days later.
The letter didn’t solve the problem, but it unlocked channels of communications that eventually led to my daughter then a full passport in all of SIX years after the renewal application. She now has just started big school in England her home country which she has been blocked for six years visiting. She is doing very well, voted head of school council and chief prefect by the entire school body despite being in year six only three weeks after starting, and her form teacher telling me she hasn’t made any friends and doesn’t talk to anyone (which tells me how much he notices about soft power in schools). I hope and I’m sure she will grow up to be an international lawyer earning several millions a year, after all even the Virgin Islands deserve proper legal representation. Sir Geoffrey your a star, and your silly critics can all go and royally fuck off. This is not at all like the diminutive MPs, however tall, of North Shropshire; Barrister MPs are different and their experience outside parliament vastly enhances legislative scrutiny. Sir Kier should prosecute a few more tough murder cases these days, he would be a vastly better leader of the opposition.
Decisions, Decisions, Decisions 