Bright eyed optimists and seasoned hacks alike are now becoming weary of the chaos engulfing the Labour party, and this week’s tantric reshuffle represented the latest self-inflicted disaster in what now feels like an internal war without end.
I’ve never attacked Jeremy Corbyn personally – in common with scores of Labour members of parliament. I have never met him and my letters go unanswered – my objections to Jeremy are rational, principled and in the best interests of my constituents and the party. They are not, and never will be, personal.
John McDonnell, however does not reciprocate. He has this week called for loyalty from the shadow cabinet at the same time denouncing Labour MPs, and our very own Progress as a ‘hard right’ faction with a ‘conservative agenda’. John is in no position to call for loyalty having been serially disloyal to successive Labour leaders for decades. It is an impossible request; he cannot seek that which he never gave others. This illogicality is one of many inevitably fatal weaknesses upon which the ‘new politics’ is built. Illustrating this fact is not a personal attack, but a matter of record.
As we logically examine our collective condition, the events of the past fortnight cannot be ignored. It is a matter of fact, verifiable by many in the Westminster political lobby, that spin doctors in the Labour leader’s office personally briefed the imminent sacking of Hilary Benn across the traditionally slow news cycle of the Christmas break. For the leader’s office to deny this to the very same people whom they briefed is extraordinary, and foolhardy. You can forgive any lobby journalist dealing with the Labour leader’s office this week for being reminded of Democratic senator Al Franken who famously asked the question ‘When will these lying liars stop lying to me?’
The reshuffle reminds us of the plentiful and recent episodes of self harm: the national anthem, ‘solidarity’ with France, ‘no place to hide’ for Labour MPs, ‘shoot to kill’, women in the shadow cabinet…the list goes on and on.
A desire to remedy this shambles does not amount to disloyalty; it’s the simple application of logic.
Neil Kinnock again made the point this week that the British public has never voted for a party committed to unilateral nuclear disarmament. The truth is that they never have and they never will. To believe otherwise is a fantasy.
Worse, every single decision relating to Trident renewal will have been taken by 2020. Whatever your view on the renewal of Trident – and I am passionately pro – the knowing damage being caused by the Labour leadership to the party and to those who need a Labour government by pursuing a policy that is not only unachievable but which is guaranteed to deliver electoral defeat is a betrayal of our voters. Logically, such is the consequence of a unilateralist policy; it’s a betrayal of everything we claim to want to achieve. Logically, if we wish to form a government we must retain the policy and principle of multilateralism.
It isn’t logical to brief against members of your shadow cabinet, to then be exposed as lying when you deny making these briefings and to then expect loyalty from the same people you have briefed against.
Nor is it logical to expect Labour MPs to keep their heads down and their mouths shut when they are confronted with a leadership that acts in this way – to do so is a betrayal of Labour voters. A continuing shambles can only secure successive Conservative victories. Where is the loyalty in that?
———————————
Jamie Reed MP is member of parliament for Copeland. He writes The Last Word column on Progress and tweets @jreedmp
Everyone is frustrated but Corbyn is the leader and somehow the PLP have to get their heads around the fact – However naive or badly is team are currently behaving. I, like many long term members voted for Corbyn because I wanted a change from the ‘me too’ policy of the last few years. At the very least Trident is worth re-examining; a pointless and expensive weapon which is undermining our defence policy taking funds from the real (and underfunded) armed forces. Austerity is a destructive lie which Labour have failed to challenge and the PLP should be getting on with that.
The PLP are a bunch of professional politicians and need to behave like that. I would take all of you off twitter for a few months, make you read the recently published Election of 2015 book and think about what is going wrong….in private. If you are falling out I don’t want to hear about it and I certainly don’t want read about it in the Mail, Sun or Telegraph. Professional politicians resign quietly – not timed to help the opposing party at PMQs.
And finally a cliche. United we stand divided we fall. And if any section of the party feels they would be better off without the others they would be sadly mistaken.
“The PLP are a bunch of professional politicians and need to behave like that. I would take all of you off twitter for a few months, make you read the recently published Election of 2015 book and think about what is going wrong….in private”
I suspect that the majority of the PLP have read the book, or at least the findings of why Labour lost.
http://labourlist.org/2015/08/labour-lost-because-voters-believed-it-was-anti-austerity/
It’s because we had no answers on immigration and welfare, and we were seen as wanting to borrow more and more. It’s not the PLP that’s ignoring why we lost, but the leadership. Until we have believable alternatives to the Tory answers on the economy, welfare and immigration then we will not get back into Government. Oh and since the leadership election you can add national security to the list of weaknesses.
But you’re right – a divided party won’t get anywhere. Corbyn needs to compromise with the electorate, as well as the PLP finding common ground with some of his agenda.
Neil Kinnock again made the point this week that the British public has never voted for a party committed to unilateral nuclear disarmament. The truth is that they never have and they never will. To believe otherwise is a fantasy.
No party has proposed it since before the fall of the Soviet Union.
Are flood defences and nuclear power not also important in Cumbria? Why you want the money spent on this instead?
Apart from the Greens. Who stood in almost every constituency in 2015, on a similar platform to Corbyn’s, on Trident and many other things. How many seats did they win again..?
No party that matters, of which there are two.
Of course Neil Kinnock defends his gutless decision to abandon his principles and to reject unilateralism. That never got him elected either. The policy position has been maintained by not allowing the Party members to discuss the issue for years – through a stitch up with senior union leaders at the Policy Forum (often in contradiction to their union’s democratically established policies). You have a right to your views on this – but you don’t have a right to say others are not allowed to have different views, or to accuse them of causing an election defeat … which is pure speculation.
“I’ve never attacked Jeremy Corbyn personally”
No you chose to attack: via the Progress website, on TV, using press articles and on Twitter, both during the Labour leadership election campaign and pretty much every week, to date!
John Rentoul helpfully revealed, in an extremely rare bit of journalism on twitter, that the ‘Revenge Reshuffle’ briefings, by right-wing individuals within the Labour Party, can be traced back to the 5th December 2014, when they appeared in The Guardian.
Interestingly, in the same article, it states that the Labour leadership were aware of the identity of those MPs, within the shadow cabinet, who had been anonymously briefing against them and pleas for unity were made. The BBC and other broadcasters had been fed a number of stories, that later proved to be untrue but don’t appear to have learned their lesson yet.
http://tinyurl.com/hntsqph
There is currently controversy at the BBC over both the orchestration of the resignation of Stephen Doughty (a former vice-Chair at Progress), the deleted editorial blog on this triumph plus potential misreporting/content creation issues. One problem is that there appears to be no ‘on the record’ examples of these briefings and instead we have examples such as the following:
1.Whether the: “One senior figure told me on Monday night: “The shadow cabinet is almost unified in opposing moving Benn. There will have to be a climbdown or there will be carnage.”
Was this actually a member of the shadow cabinet and if so were they part of the leadership team, a backbench dissident politician or even just another political journalist?
2.”I’m told she made clear she would resign if the leader fired her team, and that if Hilary Benn were fired, a significant number of the shadow cabinet would walk in protest.” Another unnamed source, position unknown.
This account was contradicted last night, on the BBC This Week programme, by Isabel Hardman from The Spectator. It appears that some degree of fibbing/misinterpretation may have taken place; either by misrepresenting what was said (or not) by any of the (anonymous) sources or perhaps by implying that these came from the leadership team, in order to fit a particular narrative.
The one thing in the recent Laura Kuenssberg article on which perhaps everyone can agree is: “And without a polygraph, it is impossible to tell exactly what really happened.”
As no sources, for any of the alleged briefings have yet been revealed it is up to the reader to assess the veracity and integrity of the reporting..
I suspect that the Isabel Hardman article may be rather closer to the truth and today’s Laura Kuenssberg piece is actually a bit of a climbdown, following yet another failure by the BBC to adequately filter out disinformation. This is getting to be quite an embarrassing habit for Laura K and her reputation may be negatively impacted. There is unfortunately some previous form, from 2010 but this is not evidence of current behaviour. :
“Although the BBC Complaints Unit have reluctantly conceded that Ms Kuenssberg’s remarks were inaccurate they have denied there was any bias despite all the facts pointing that way.”
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2…
There is a considerable list of people who have written/currently write for Progress, who have devoted huge efforts to attacking the Labour Leadership/membership, see Peter Mandelson’s latest diatribe but not sure if “Hard Right” is entirely correct, as a justifiable counterweight to the multiple “Hard Left” comments that emanate from these bitter individuals.
A belated New Year Resolution for certain Progress MPs might be to attempt to engage constructively and stop appearing to be whining media whores – you know who you are!
Some of the other arguments in this article don’t hold water: There is a major difference between being a shadow minister and a backbencher in terms of collective responsibility – argue your points vigorously within cabinet but don’t be serially disloyal, by briefing against your colleagues and feeding a largely hostile media. There is evidence that some of this briefing duly reported was actually disinformation, likely to harm the Labour Party.
As for the shambles, and your efforts to argue that this in effect justifies a coup against the democratically elected leader; the only shambles is that created by right-wing MPs who have attacked Jeremy unremittingly since the day it became clear he had a chance of winning. If Miliband or any other leader had had this level of opposition and disloyalty shown – having been elected with a clear mandate – those responsible would have been out of the Party before they could whistle. John McDonnell’s “disloyalty” – his disagreement in principle with the leadership on many issues – has never seen him launch public attacks on the leaders. And he has accepted the price that he would not be called to hold office in the Party. The current band of shits. who write paid articles attacking the party, bandy around abusive terms like Trots, religious cult, terrorist sympathiser, politburo, etc.. have attacked the leadership from Day 1 using any excuse. When the press wanted to show they were being “balanced” they could always rely on Woodcock, Mann, Danczuk, Spellar, Philips, for a rent a quote attack on the leadership – legitimising often petty issues. (Look at your own pathetic list!) When the right of the Party got a slap in the face because of the Oldham By-election result, you shut up for about a day, before finding something new. You demand that people holding shadow cabinet and junior shadow minister positions should have the right to attack the leadership with impunity, and stay in their positions. Well it isn’t going to happen. if think you can rip the party apart with a coup, and still get elected for 2020 then you better go for it – but most of you know you can’t take the Party with you, and you will be out on your arse come polling day
A few days ago new McLaren F1 subsequent after earning 18,512$,,,this was my previous month’s paycheck ,and-a little over, 17k$ Last month ..3-5 h/r of work a day ..with extra open doors & weekly paychecks.. it’s realy the easiest work I have ever Do. I Joined This 7 months ago and now making over 87$, p/h.Learn More right Here
gv..
➤➤
➤➤➤ http://GlobalSuperEmploymentVacanciesReportsMoney/GetPaid/98$hourly…❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦
A few days ago new McLaren F1 subsequent after earning 18,512$,,,this was my previous month’s paycheck ,and-a little over, 17k$ Last month ..3-5 h/r of work a day ..with extra open doors & weekly paychecks.. it’s realy the easiest work I have ever Do. I Joined This 7 months ago and now making over 87$, p/h.Learn More right Here
vq…
➤➤
➤➤➤ http://GlobalSuperEmploymentVacanciesReportsJobs/GetPaid/98$hourly…❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦.❦
An official complaint has been made to the BBC over the orchestration of the Stephen Doughty resignation.
http://tinyurl.com/jswpklk
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/reshuffle-hysteria-concocted-make-us-think-theres-crisis-corbyns-labour-1536274 They have found your out Jamie Reed
“Neil Kinnock again made the point this week that the British public has never voted for a party committed to unilateral nuclear disarmament. The truth is that they never have and they never will. To believe otherwise is a fantasy.” Or is the ‘fantasy’ to talk about ‘the British public’ but then not include in that Scotland whose public have voted in their millions for a party committed to… unilateral nuclear disarmament?
Yet all polls indicate that more voters in Scotland support Trident renewal than are against it?
Which actually John backs up my point even more. If that is true then it would clearly indicate that unilateralism was not seen by Scottish voters as a key ‘negative’ when it came to voting for an openly unilateralist political party that won 56 out of 59 parliamentary seats last May, even in a situation where there are the lots of jobs currently related to Trident subs in Scotland. In other words the pro-nuclear WMD supporters in my view overstate the situation as regards the electoral impact of something like Trident by some distance. And back to the article, Kinnock may now like to pretend that unilateralism was the reason for our defeat in 1983 but those of us who were there know, as he surely does, that there were much bigger issues by far at play in that election such as the ‘Falklands factor’ as just one example.