One of the MPs departing the Labour Party today is Angela Smith, MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge, and the Hen Harrier champion in Westminster.
I know Angela to speak to, and she attended the Hen Harrier Day rally in the Goyt Valley in 2015, and so I sent her a quick message of support today. A message saying that I admired her stand and that I might follow her eventually but I was sticking with Labour for a while yet – but I wished her well.
It will be hard for an independent MP to retain their seat in a constituency where they are lacking resources and up against the Labour Party candidate as well as all the other candidates.
As a pro-Europe MP she struggled to hold her seat in the 2017 general election, but just managed it, when the UKIP vote went over to the Conservative candidate. Who knows what will be the background to the next general election but Angela’s stand is brave because she may well lose her seat next time around.
Under such circumstances MPs sometimes become braver in what they say. There is plenty more that Angela could say on behalf of Hen Harriers in Parliament.
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How do you feel about Angela being Pro Tracking?
Adele – I assume that was Fracking? My experience is that everyone is many things – some good and some bad. If you look for people who agree with you on everything then you will look forever. Thanks for your comment.
What a sodding idiot she is, I hope next time she goes to peel an orange some of the juice squirts right in her eye.
Thanks, Angela, for sending those of us who are already in the crosshairs of the most evil and anti-disabled persons rights administration in British history, down the river with the next two decades of Tory rule. My contempt for her and her merry band of petulant assholes knows no bounds.
What a shame people comment in foul the terms used. I have to say I admire the move by Angela Smith and the courage it takes. I too am very disappointed in Mr Corbyn especially for not giving a much stronger lead in so many matters and for not supporting a second referendum on Brexit the demand for which is entirely reasonable for a lot of reasons.
If we are to improve the lot of our wildlife it won’t be done under a Tory Government they have little or no interest in it, it gets in the way of their vested interests and their record since the Second World War is very poor.
With the shambles that this Government is, the Labour Party if it had a good leader and moderate, slightly left of centre policies, should currently be miles ahead in the opinion polls. Instead they are struggling to stay up with the Tories. What a shambles from both Parties.
How do you feel about Angela being an inarticulate, racist halfwit?
https://twitter.com/MikeSegalov/status/1097487967730483201
de – not thrilled.
Or her stand on privatising water as pointed out by Ash Sarkar
https://twitter.com/novaramedia/status/1097508479487672320/video/1
https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2019/02/18/ash-sarkar-takes-down-a-resigning-blairite-mp-so-brutally-a-bbc-host-intervenes/
Oh look, the supposedly pro-EU and Anti-Brexit splitters have started their new party off on the perfect footing. Both feet, full of holes, and ensuring the news cycle is talking about them and not the jobs lost as Honda pulls out of Swindon because of Brexit. They’ve already made opposing Brexit harder, and the job of the Tories easier, just by existing. Well done, nice timing. If she and her mates had kept their heads down even one more day then there would have been more of a chance of stopping brexit and bringing down the tories because the Honda pull out would have been the key news cycle talking point and a club to beat May et al with. But, noooooooooooo; they had to make it all about them instead.
Andrea’s Stocksbridge and Penistone constituency contains much land used for DGS, it’s a black hole for Raptors as evidenced by Mark Thomas, Mike Price et al in British Birds last year. If she stands as an independent, splits the vote and let’s the Tory’s in Angela will have shot us all in the foot, not just herself. It’s a very distinct possibility. Yes we desperately need a new kind of politics but I’m not sure this is the way to achieve it. Petulant, posssibly. Misguided, definitely.
Shirley Williams rides again.
Nice that she supports hen harriers but she and her “chums” will not stand down and allow the people of their constituencies decide if they want these “independents” or an actual Labour MP. Nothing this group has done makes them brave, more like Tory stooges, helping to keep May staggering on.
I think its a terrible shame – but the blame, I fear, lies with Jeremy Corbyn who appears to have done little to heal the very obvious splits in the Labour Party. And from my point of view it is not to do with policy – most of the (limited) policy announcement’s I’ve seen seem eminently reasonable, and anything but the rabid, extreme left wing the right wing press portrays.
Exactly what the outcome will be remains to be seen – the thought that it might prolong the disastrous Tory Government is frightening – but to assume that from what has happened in the past could be a mistake in a period when all bets are off.
With Blair egging his cronies on behind the scenes to keep what he sees as his legacy intact, there doesn’t seem to be much Corbyn could have done. The rightwing of the party don’t want to accept that their left wing voters want something different from them. I mean, yes, Corbyn ought to have come out long before now as pro-EU, but that is really a side issue in all this.
It is about the rightwingers being upset they are not wanted, Blair egging them on from the background, and (according the the Gruan) a faction who want to remove Scotland’s voice at Westminster by having a new party usurp the SNP’s place at PMQs. Because far too many people in England hate Scotland, or at least hate it having an actual voice and say in how we are governed and not be England’s last colony; complete with forelock tugging natives.
The only way Corbyn could have healed the splits for these people would have been to move Labour to the Blairite right. I do blame Corbyn for not being tougher on these rebels in the early days, they have ben traitors to their party for far too long.
Oh, and according to the Grauniad it is apparently nothing to do with making principled stands, but an attempt to remove the SNP from having a voice at PMQs and reduce Scotland’s voice at Westminster. The sheer level of outrage the English establishment has at Scotland daring to have a voice in government never fails to horrify me. It oughtn’t to, the daily abuse and racist comments I got when I lived in England was horrifying too.
Sickening all around.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/feb/18/labour-mps-split-a-clear-attempt-to-start-a-new-party
Yesterday I was thinking that Remain Tory MPs might join the Independent group but I couldn’t see what there was to gain.
This is morning I think I get it. The Remain Tories wouldn’t switch to Labour while it is so weak on Remaining but a group of Ramain centralists is appealing. If enough of them could be persuaded to leave the Tories then it would create a minority Government even with C&S from the DUP.
It would signal to Theresa May that she will not be able to govern and pass legislation. Pressuring the Government to hold a General Election. And pressuring her to avoid a No Deal which could result in members of her Cabinet leaving the party and join. A Remain spilt of the party would be one of the things she would most like to avoid.
Another GE under those conditions would very likely result in a hung parliament which would give more power of negotiation to their group and the smaller parties who (other than the DUP) are supporters of Remaining.
To me this looks like a positive for EU friendly Labour supporters. If the left of the party should be angry at anyone it should be the Labour MPs who defeated Yvette Copper’s bill for wanting to appeal to UKIP voters in their constituencies.
Owen – good analysis. We’ll see.
So much for tolerance and the ‘broad church’ then Gerald. Labour are not ahead in the polls due to Corbyn’s intransigence and lack of ability/ flexibility in keeping Labour together. He is to blame, the ‘centre left’ is a more electable place to be than the far left, we need the moderates. This Country is facing the greatest national crisis in my lifetime and who is to save it? Too many ideologs, too little urgency, vision and leadership.