A few days ago I wrote a blog which was also published in the Argus newspaper that focused on the shocking decision by most Tory Sussex MPs to vote to retain the Govia Thameslink Railway franchise and support their friend and colleague, Chris Grayling who having destroyed the probation service in a previous Ministerial role has now overseen the collapse of the rail service across the country but in particular up North and here in the South East where GTR runs the train service. Their vote was a surprise bearing in mind how critical of GTR many of them have been in recent weeks and years. Straight after the vote another debate organised by Nick Herbert, MP for Arundel and South Downs took place which focused on one particular station in West Sussex that is part of the GTR territory. Nick was one of the MPs who voted to retain the GTR franchise and yet he used this second debate to challenge the words Jo Johnson had uttered as he summed up why Chris Grayling and the GTR franchise should be retained in the previous debate:

NH: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. Before he experiences the fate of politicians and other public figures in Sussex who have particularly infuriated us and is burnt in effigy, may I ask him to reconsider his comment that services are “much improved”? I think what he meant was that they might be much improved when the new timetable is finally introduced and works properly, but he cannot say, and nobody can say, that the current level of service is much improved.

JJ: Indeed. I prefaced all my comments by saying that this was about what would happen once we are over this hump—the current difficulties—and once the timetable is fully bedded in and working to the levels that it should. Of course my right hon. Friend is right and I repeat what I said earlier: there has been improvement, as I hope he acknowledges, but there is significant room for further improvement, so that services are of the standard that his constituents and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham have a right to expect.

In reality there was no preface to Johnsons weird comments during the previous debate and so if Nick is right, his image may end up as a candidate for the effigy makers. However the really big concern is that Nick Herbert did not vote to deny GTR and Chris Grayling his support in that first debate, the same is true of Jeremy Quin the Horsham MP who Johnson refers to. One wonders if all 10 Tory MPs who voted to support Johnson and his boss will be considered as part of the problem, rather than part of the solution, not just by bonfire societies but by the rest of Sussex as we struggle to travel by train.