There are plenty of left-wing campaign groups and trade unions to give “a voice”. However the Labour Party is explicitly constituted to be a parliamentary party (Labour Rule Book clause I, paragraph 2).
I think I’d prefer another John Smith
Not for nothing do the French call spanking the “vice anglais”.
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Yeah, I couldn’t seem to make anyone see the advantage of getting to vote the party you actually wanted as your first choice, and the party you were willing to accept as your back-up choice. I kind of think that this form of election might have helped groups like the Greens, who people don’t vote for, because they “have” to vote Labour to keep the Tories in check. If I could vote Green, with Labour as my back up, I wouldn’t mind people voting BNP with Tories as their second choice.
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It was a heavily sabotaged referendum, hence the difficulties I also faced trying to explain to people.
@Enkita
Is that true? How amusing. Rosbif et la vice Anglais.
Cool name for a band.
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You do realise that sitting MPs can’t simply be replaced like that, right? You have to wait for the next election.
I always associated “Red Tory” with people whose principles put them at odds with the political parties, rather than people who opportunistically took over one political party.
They’re in Parliament until the next election (unless they can be convinced to resign; not likely with this lot), but the preselection contests are happening well before then. Incumbency gets you onto the preselection shortlist, but it isn’t an automatic win.
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My old MP was one who got deselected, after falling out with, well, everyone. It’s definitely rare, though.
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http://www.drweevil.org/archives/000216.html
Or you can believe my French teacher.
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I suspect that it’s about to get a lot less rare:
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I wouldn’t say he’s seeking to restore the Soviet Union, but when he assassinated the journalist who kept finding and reporting evidence pointing to the FSB’s involvement in the apartment bombings that started the Second Chechen war it was pretty clear he was evil (and the likely cause of the terrorism he’s fighting). The invasion of Ukraine reinforced that view strongly and added a bit of “power mad.”
The current troop buildups, fortification of bases, and creation of new military installations around the Baltics might be out of an imagined threat by NATO, but a military buildup along a border isn’t inherently defensive, and Putin’s already shown he’s willing to invade neighbors.
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The US (and others) are supposedly already committed to supporting the Baltic states. NATO, remember?
The thing that brought this to major attention was when Trump started rambling about how he’d unilaterally violate the treaty if the Baltic states were attacked.
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It’s not certain that Putin directly had Anna Politkovskaya assassinated. Many specialists estimate it may have been the deed of mobsters willing to please the “tsar” - an old Russian custom, it would seem.
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Given the extensive list of journalists in Russia whose deaths were convenient to Putin, while most have the same official story of mysterious contract killers that are never found or prosecuted, the number of dead journalists criticizing the regime is still surprisingly high. Maybe the Russian mafia bosses are trying to earn a lot of favors, but the Russian state’s surprisingly interconnected with the mafia in ways that suggest that’s less of a compelling excuse than it first sounds.
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I think you are well advised to use the word “supposedly”. It is amazing how alliances shift and treaties become elastic when people actually start shooting. Do you really believe WW3 with ICBMs would have started the second the first Russian tank rolled into West Germany? Contrary to popular belief the military isn’t stupid, despite years of banging their heads on their political masters.
New Labour unironically wore purple ties (see pictures of Blair) - purple is a combination of red and blue.
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What? The Labour leader voting process is slightly byzantine, I’ll give you that; but it’s weighted so that full-time members, unions and other constituencies get a larger say compared to random Joe Bloggs that have just paid a few quid (£25, this time) to join. JC got more than 60% of votes in all constituencies (excluding sitting MPs, of course), not just the “rabble” of everyday members. He’s massively popular among the lower rank-and-file, who’ve been starved and browbeaten by 20 years of unrepresentative “Third Way” mafia; he’s popular among the unions, who are desperately trying to be relevant again; and he’s popular among the wider electorate to the left of Labour. The people who don’t like him are MPs and other politics-as-profession figures (Chuka Umunna, Angela Eagle, Owen Smith, Alastair Campbell and so on), people who think they own the party by birthright (like Kinnock’s and Benn’s sons, the Milibands, other Labour “bluebloods”), and opportunists like Alan Johnson.
There is no “internal party dissent” – pretty much all local Labour chapters are behind Corbyn at all levels. It’s the top figures and their professional dependants, occupying top-heavy centralized structures that Blair put in place (mirroring the traditional Tory setup), that hate him, because he’s outside the bipartisan Oxbridge circles of back-scratching and revolving-doors that ensure nothing will really change in the fundamental underpinnings of British society.
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Fuckin’ A.
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