The Labour Party — madness by another name

I begin with a paragraph from today's email from Labour List by Sarah Vine:

Owen Smith, the latest challenger for Corbyn’s crown, has manoeuvred to appeal to the hoards of young members who previously supported Corbyn by pledging a second referendum on the UK’s eventual Brexit deal. It’s a shrewd move - we could see Smith picking up votes from the pro-European members who are internationalist in outlook and would do anything to see the referendum result reversed. Also news that there is to be a legal challenge to Jeremy Corbyn's inclusion in the Labour Party leadership ballot without the support of 51 MPs/MEPs. Then, of course, the decision to ban all Labour Party branch and constituency meetings until after the Party's leadership election is over. I have yet to see anything about how, why and who actually made the decision. Nor is this madness confined to Westminster and the Labour Party's National Executive Committee, there are clear signs that it exists among Party members in Beeston, Broxtowe and elsewhere. In Beeston there are Party members who want some kind of grand alliance on the left of politics to campaign for a second referendum. It is a madness they share with Owen Smith and Angela Eagle. Perhaps by the time you read this Jeremy Corbyn will have joined them in this collective madness! I use the word 'madness' as shorthand for 'extremely foolish behaviour'. The latest post on Municipal Dreams, one of my favourite blogs, is about Harlow in Essex and ends with this paragraph: Harlow voted 67% to 33% for Brexit in the recent referendum — that's a metric we have come to recognise as a powerful measure of disillusion, and exclusion, from the more comfortable status quo enjoyed by many... this indicates a working class town which suffers the inequalities and deprivations class bestows'. Not to understand this and to label those who voted for Brexit as unworthy of Labour's attention and support, which is what a second referendum will do in their eyes, will be an act of political madness. Labour should be saying that it understands why many working class people voted out and that it will support them through this period of change. Theresa May understands this and her short speech outside No.10 Downing Street yesterday actually used the term 'working class' more than once and it was a speech I would have been happy to hear a Labour politician make. Political leaders of all parties are good at making such speeches, then not delivering, so we will have to wait and, dare I say, hope in the absence of a Labour victory at the next general election that May will deliver.  The fact that Labour Party remainers are talking about a second referendum has probably already ensured it will lose local government seats next May and a good few parliamentary seats at the next general election. In the fifty-six years since I joined the Labour Party I have never known a blanket ban on local meetings. This act in itself tells you the disdain which exists at a national level in the Party for its rank and file members. This act will have stopped countless local government prospective candidates' selection procedures for next May. For this reason alone the decision has to be challenged, but instead the money chases an effective ban on Corbyn being a candidate. At this moment, wherever I look in the Labour Party I see, with a few exceptions (e.g. Graham Allen MP), what I can only describe a collective madness. I believe I have cited enough evidence to prove my point. If you think otherwise, I suspect you are in a state of denial, refusing to recognise or accept reality. I would like to say I will look at all the Labour Party leadership candidates closely after ruling Angela Eagle because she supported attacking Iraq and bombing Syria. The trouble is Owen Smith will go the same way if he continues to support a second referendum, which leaves Jeremy Corbyn and I am hearing enough from other Party members I know and trust to wonder about his competence to lead the Party, which means right now Corbyn will get in by default and so the madness will continue! I do not want a Labour Party Leader to adore or who has the same views as me on every issue. I want a leader who will share wealth and power fairly, not just between classes, but between communities and regions, who will put building homes before HS2 type projects. I could go on, but my wants are modest and I know, from just listening to people, that the same can be said for the vast majority of us. FOOTNOTE, FRIDAY 15 JULY 2016: A link to a column in today's Guardian by John Harris, who I like. It is headed There's a fetid cloud of acrimony over Labour — it's the reek of death.  Click here to read.  Also a link to a post I made to my parkviews blog in May 2010, posted on the eve of that year's general election. Click here to read. It seems relevant to where we are today.

The Canary says it all: A fight to the death and an Iraq Inquiry footnote

From The Canary.

Says it all. It is a shame it has come to this.

The only reason the rebel Labour MPs don't want to defect is that they want the Party machine and money. Without it they will all, in time, go the same way as Jenkins, Williams, Rogers, Owen & co. 

Corbyn sets out his policies and strategy in The Guardian today and it offers a radical vision, which I am happy to go along with. I want more on returning power to local government, because I believe for socialism/green politics to flourish they need local examples of good government which can be adapted to individual communities.

You can be sure that Corbyn offers more than Eagle or Smith will, given their belief that Labour MPs trump members when it comes to policy and control. Maybe until, but not any more. 

I have been forced into being a Corbyn supporter. I did not start out as one. 

Right now, read my link to The Canary website.

The following link to The Public Whip website may be of interest. It shows the Labour MPs who wanted the Iraq Inquiry to have a wider remit and more parliamentary input. The MPs supporting this view lost out to those MPs who supported the Labour Government setting the terms of reference.

The Iraq Inquiry came about because of years of sustained pressure outside Parliament and inside by a small group of almost exclusively Labour MPs. I suspect you can guess what camps who was in, but it is a telling reminder of why Eagle will fail in her attempt to defeat Corbyn.

The only hope Eagle and Smith have is to keep Corbyn off the ballot paper and they are doing all they can to achieve that — which is why they have to be defeated! 

Chilcot, Iraq and a reminder

The following is what Ross Bradshaw, the owner of Five Leaves Publishing and Bookshop off Long Row in the city centre, put on his Facebook page (click here for link). It came to me via Susan and Chris Richardson, who both do Facebook:

I find Tony Blair impossible to watch. If I was the main character in a Chilcot Report (a tad unlikely...) and was so demolished I'd make a brief statement, answer a few questions, organise a sycophntic one to one interview with a patsy and vanish to spend time with my money. Even the redtops have turned against him. Yet there he is, dragging himself from TV studio to TV studio (and making life impossible for Angela Eagle and his mates in the Parliamentary Labour Party).

Blair will never be prosecuted, we need to give up on that one - the Report did for him and he damages himself further every time he opens his mouth. Corbyn came out of this well - I liked the way he ignored Ian Austin and never even mentioned Blair in his speech. I'd like to think that more of the MPs who voted in favour of the Iraq war will quietly admit they got on the wrong bus. I hope that the fallout from this will lead to a rapproachment between the "40" and the more level-headed of the other members of Parliament who genuinely want Labour to succeed.

Says it all.

Some MPs, like Gedling's Vernon Coaker and Nottingham East's Chris Lesley remain in denial and, if the Nottingham Post is to be believed, still believe they made the right decision at the time. Both are anti-Corbyn.

The Public Whip website shows how MPs voted in 2003 on the war motion (click here). I suspect it is at the root of so much of the hostility towards Jeremy Corbyn.

Among those voting for war were were Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper, Jon Cruddas, Angela Eagle, Margeret Hodge and Broxtowe's own Nick Palmer*.

On the anti-war side were Nottingham MPs Graham Allen and Alan Simpson, plus Jeremy Corbyn, Robin Cook and lots of others.

In total 256 Labour MPs (including two tellers) voted for war and 85 (including one teller) voted against attacking Iraq.

The Chilcot report damns Blair and in the process all those MPs who, in the words of Graham Allen, were 'bullied' in voting for war with Iraq. How did these people get is so wrong?

Susan has long held the view that something happens to Labour politicians when they get elected to Parliament. They have to prove themselves worthy of being part of the Westminster establishment and I have seen how MPs brown nose first hand. Two MPs, both now sadly passed on, who I knew, Philip Whitelaw and Harry Barnes, said much the same thing to me.

Add to this how many Labour MPs go onto accept peerages, knighthoods and honours, and you the evidence of this seduction stares you in the face. Kinnock is a towering example of this disdain and arrogance.

Oona King voted for war, couldn't beat George Galloway and ended up a peer, who nows wants another EU referendum because, a bit like Anna Soubry, she thinks voters are stupid. The reward for failure, if you brown nose enough, is a peerage and the right to vote in a undemocratic, unelected, House of Lords. It is to Labour's shame that it still exists and is a good measure of the majority of Labour MPs.

Becoming a peer or accepting a knighthood, should result in automatic expulsion from the Labour Party.

Rant over. I feel like Ross Bradshaw. Chilcot has reminded us why Corbyn is better than any of his critics in the Parliamentary Labour Party.

FOOTNOTE: * I know a good few, like Nick Palmer, have since recanted. A part of me was happy to accept this as enough, but the Chilcot report has led me to the conclusion that all those Labour MPs in 2003 who are still MPs now who voted for war on Iraq and the deaths of hundreds of thousands since, and so much more, should stand down and withdraw from public life. Their judgement was, and remains, deeply flawed.

Local not global deli days out and new Civic Society pocket companion map.

I have recently created a map for Jo at the Local not global deli on Chilwell Road (click to enlarge):

I was quite strict with myself and did not include Skylink days out because this would involve a walk down to Queens Road, whereas this map is all about where the buses and tram travelling along Chilwell Road in Beeston go. Add in Skylink and list grows by 50%:

Sawley Marina

Castle Donington Musuem

East Midlands Airport Aeropark

Donington Park Grand Prix Museum

Diseworth Museum

Kegworth Museum

Loughborough Town Hall Art Gallery

Loughborough Great Central Railway.

I have also created an extended version of my original Beeston & District Civic Society Pocket Companion map. The 2016 version includes an inset map for Stapleford town centre and the map has been extended to the west to include Toton and to the the est to include Wollaton. To do this on an A3 sheet of paper, the map has to be distorted if you want to include any detail.

I am thinking of including hotels and b&bs in the next version. Space is always the decider.

The Civic Society map will be made available this coming Saturday at the Beeston Festival and the Lakeside History Fair on the south side of the University of Nottingham main campus beside Highfields Park. It is a pity the two events are on the same day, but such is life!

Another version of the map will appear shortly with all the Heritage Open Days in the area this coming September marked. Watch this space.

Uncle Dave in Harlow, 1955, and municipal dreams

One of my favourite blogs, Municipal Dreams, has a post today about Harlow New Town in Essex, where I spent many of my school holidays throughout the 1950s staying with my Uncle Dave and Auntie Nannie. Uncle Dave was active in the Plumbers' Trade Union and Secretary of its Harlow branch.

I became a Labour Party Birmingham city councillor in 1971 and my Uncle Dave was elected to Harlow Council in 1972. It was one of the proudest days of my life. My Auntie Nannie also became a Labour councillor.

My aunt and uncle never bought their new town corporation/council house and lived in it until they died, my Auntie Nannie a couple of years ago. They were a living, shining example of what being socialists is all about.

I took the above photograph of Uncle Dave in 1955, when I was eleven with my first (second-hand) camera. We are standing on a roof overlooking Harlow town centre.

The reason I went to Harlow was to give my maternal grandmother a break from looking after me. I never lived with my mother.

If you have not yet visited Municipal Dreams, do it now! You will not be disappointed.

A letter to the Nottingham Post

On Friday 1 July the Nottingham Post published this letter which I sent to them. They published it in full.

Dear Letters Editor

I share Anna Soubry's disappointment with the result of the EU referendum last Thursday. I live in her constituency and happily admit to never being a Conservative voter. I suspect that I also qualify as one of her 'white working class', being 72, leaving school at 15 and without any qualifications. If only life was as simple as opportunistic soundbites.

Ms. Soubry supported the referendum and cannot complain about the result, nor can she blame it on the 'white working class'. The Conservative Party with its referenda promise was fighting for UKIP votes across England and won enough MPs to form a government, whilst Labour, to its credit opposed UKIP.

Of course some Labour supporters voted out, as did Conservatives and voters of all ages, and I understand why. I suspect for a good few it was a protest vote and they never expected to wake up on Friday morning having helped the 'out' campaign win - that is certainly my take on conversations I have had over the last few days.

As far as I understand it, the referendum was/is 'advisory'. If so, Ms Soubry and all the other MPs who are pro-EU could start earning their keep and choose to ignore the decision, buying some time until the next general election, when 'out' candidates can try to get a majority. I think they will fail.

What is unacceptable is Ms Soubry blaming the white working class for her own failure to take responsibility. I will vote Labour given the chance, for a party preferably led by Jeremy Corbyn and with candidates who share his agenda, but that is another argument for another day.

Yours

Robert Howard

Reading it again, it may seem to say that I think the decision to leave the EU should be thwarted and I don't believe that. My point was that Anna Soubray and all the other MPs in the remain camp could do something about the decision to leave the EU had they a mind to. Ms Soubray has already decided to support Theresa May in the Conservative Party leadership election. In other words she is happy to leave it to a pro-remain candidate to negotiate the best deal for Britain. I have no problem with her choice, but I will be amazed if Britain can still be part of the EU common market whilst restricting access to EU citizens.

I do not fall into the camp that believe Britain has suddenly become a racist country, but Susan and I are long-time friends of the HOPE not hate charity and campaign, and I used to deliver leaflets for them in Lenton. I share their concern at how the Labour MP Ruth Smeeth was verbally abused at the launch of the Labour Party report into anti-semitism within the Party. Ruth Smeeth has published a damning statement of what happened on her website (click this link). Jeremy Corbyn's behaviour was a big disappointment. He should have told her vile critic to leave the meeting and told him is attitude has no place in the Labour Party. Instead he actually spoke to the man at the end. Jeremy Corbyn is under a lot of pressure right now, but then so are Labour MPs and all of them are, in part, responsible for what is happening to them.

By any measure, these are sad sad days for the Labour Party, when we should trying to offer Britain a positive post-EU vision. The Labour Parties in England, Scotland and Wales have to have their own visions. Northern Ireland is SDLP territory and we should respect that. Of course, all the national parties need to work together, but there has not been a better opportunity in decades to campaign for a fairer, better England.

All those Labour MPs who championed the cuts in local government led services (led by Blair, Brown and Darling lest we forget) at a time when more and more people we coming to Britain from Europe to work are discredited.

The cuts were dressed up as necessary austerity measures at a time when, instead of funding more public housing and improving public transport, the same MPs were supporting HS2.

Blair and Co. blocked East Europeans from coming to Britain for two years whilst cutting local services. Labour politicians are as much to blame as Liberal and Conservative MPs for the cuts — which is why the electorate may well turn on them, having tasted blood so to speak in the referendum result.

Corbyn and a few others, like Alan Simpson, spoke out and vote against the cuts and this is something we should remember when voting for a new Labour Party leader, as we will have to.

Right now, Corbyn holds on, maybe in the hope that the Chilcot Report will remind the electorate of how right he was to oppose the Iraq war (and our earlier intervention in Afghanistan). A lot of Labour MPs must be squirming right now at how the focus will shift to them on Wednesday and I have heard it suggested that it was the real reason for the attempted coup by Labour MPs after the referendum.

A leadership campaign post-Chicot will sink Eagle and open the door to Owen Smith who, according to the media, has increasing support among Labour MPs. Perhaps he will emerge as a 'unity candidate'. Who knows?

I am not committed to Jeremy Corbyn and how he treated Ruth Smeeth makes me question his stength to manage the far left (for the record, I have never been a member of any Labour Party faction).

The coming days, weeks and months and years are going to be interesting. I hope I have another ten years in me to see what happens. I will be 82 then.

Corbyn's critics condemn themselves

It is a long time since I have commented on the wider political scene, but the aftermath of the referendum (in which I voted to remain a member of the European Union) has brought about a mass resignation from Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet. It seemed very orchestrated to me.

I voted for Corbyn to be Leader of the Labour Party only after my preferred candidate, Andy Burnham, joined the nasty brigade, when he saw his chances of winning slipping away.

What prompted the following analysis was a column in The Guardian by Tristram Hunt about how Corbyn had failed to show leadership etc. etc. and this from the MP for Stoke, where the remain vote was just 30.64%. If this TV historian could not persuade voters in his local authority area to vote 'remain', what right did he have to criticise Corbyn's leadership skills, whose local authority area voted 75.2% to remain.

Dame Margaret Hodge, the Labour MP for Barking in East London, who appeared to begin the attack on Corbyn, could only deliver a 37.56% remain vote in her local authority area (Barking & Dagenham).

If Corbyn's critics could not deliver 'remain' majority votes in their own back yards so to speak, why should I have any confidence in their ability to deliver a Labour government at the next general election?

As things stand we are talking about an exclusively English Labour Party, perhaps two if London decides to go its own way, led by Khan. Scotland's Labour Party has to have its own agenda and policies, as does Wales. The Labour Party as we have known it is dead. It has been overtaken by events.

Below is a table I have compiled showing how the resigned shadow cabinet members performed in the referendum. Of the twenty-one resigning according a Wikipedia list (see link here), eleven failed to deliver 'remain' majorities in their back yards and Corbyn outperformed all the resigning shadow cabinet members.

One final comment. I like Tom Watson, the Labour MP for West Bromwich, but he is in no position to advise Jeremy Corbyn about what he should or not do. West Bromwich is down at the bottom when it comes to 'remain' percentages. Now, he may have worked his socks off trying to persuade his constituents and others in Sandwell to vote 'remain'. Whatever he did, he did a bad job.

When it comes to voting for a new leader of the Labour Party, assuming we have a ballot, which seems very likely, we will have to see who the candidates are and I will be looking closely at how they performed in the referendum.

One thing is sure, the remain camp did not lose because of Jeremy Corby — which is why I have no time for those attacking him now, however much they dress up their behaviour.