Chris Green MP: Hopeful for a period of recovery after tumultuous 2022

It has been rather chilly lately but it was good for the kids to make snowmen and have a few snowball fights.

It was amusing to see reports, over the summer period, trying to scare us with how hot it was getting and that global warming was causing a crisis.

Well, it became amusing when the clarification came that the 40 degrees centigrade temperature was recorded for a few minutes at an airport shortly after a jet taxied.

For some reason, the media did not report this heat spike and superheated jet exhaust happened in the same place and at the time.

Parliament has been just as odd though perhaps less amusing this year.

We started off with Boris Johnson as Prime Minister and finish with Rishi Sunak.

Liz Truss had a turn for 50 days which saw how efficient and effective the British political system in general – and the Conservative Party in particular – can be in dealing with problems that do emerge.

Thinking of problems, Gordon Brown believes that, with all the challenges we are facing, now is the right time for him to thrust himself into the heart of Labour’s political consciousness and start a debate about the future of the House of Lords.

As Chancellor and then as Prime Minister, his constitutional meddling fuelled the separatist problems in Scotland when he said that it would end the debate.

I fear that his devolution agenda will lead Labour into the constitutional dead-end debates that the Liberal Democrats so enjoy.

The run up to last Christmas saw a huge effort to impose another national lockdown but the attempt was defeated and we saw the start of our return to normality.

Obviously, shutting down the economy for so much time, excluding so many children from school and restricting access to essential health care will take years to fully recover from.

The Prime Minister and I know that the Government needs to be fully focussed on recovery but it will need a great deal of understanding, from everyone, to get through it.

If we thought that the after effects of Covid-19 and the lockdowns was bad enough, Russian president Vladimir Putin sending his armies to invade Ukraine made the situation so much worse.

Russia is Europe’s biggest energy producer and Ukraine is Europe’s biggest food producer so this has had a terrible impact upon the wider European economy.

The devastation that the Russians have wrought in Ukraine is awful to behold but I am relieved that our Prime Ministers Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and now Rishi Sunak have determined that Britain will be resolute in supporting her people.

I did not anticipate that the Government would have to face such significant external problems but I can hope that we enter a period of recovery rather than having more global shocks.

I would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.