Friday, 1 May 2009

Shame

How Charles Clarke thinks that losing an Opposition Day motion or a House matter (which is always a free vote) is some sort of killer blow, I honestly cannot imagine. Mortifying to Georgia Gould or Georgia Osborne, perhaps. But Gordon Brown is a big boy. As is Charles Clarke. Or so we had thought.

Not very long ago at all, any MP who stated publicly that he was ashamed to be in the Labour Party would have been told that that was all right, because he was no longer in it. Close the door on the way out. Twenty years ago, or thereabouts, two Trotskyist MPs were expelled from Labour. And forty years before that, or thereabouts, so were half a dozen Stalinist MPs.

The old Stalinist Clarke and the old Trotskyist Stephen Byers should at the very least have the Whip withdrawn, probably taking Haze of Dope with them, and possibly also a couple of others such as John Reid. The Mandelsons, Milibands and Huttons inside the tent could then take the hint.

How many parties are there on the Labour benches? Supposedly, there are two: the Labour Party and the Co-operative Party. The maintenance of any third has historically been crushed without mercy. Why is that not happening today?
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4 comments:

  1. JohnJGMooney1 May 2009 at 18:12

    Oh I think "Irish" Catholics, notably in South Lancashire and West of Scotland make up (or in your view MADE up) a significant strand within the Labour Party.
    I deplore their passing (although I would not write the obituary just yet.....Des Browne, John Reid and technically Ruth Kelly (born in County Derry of course) are still alive and well.
    I dont quite understand your dismissal of them.
    Trendy lefties back in the 1970s (you probably dont recall "Bill Brand" a TV series starring Jack Shepherd and Arthur Lowe as an unlikely Wilsonian Prime Minister.

    It has become the fashion lately to have "Catholic" values in the House of Commons represented by the likes of Edward Leigh, John Selwyn Gummer and......Anne Widdicombe. A sad decline.

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  2. David Lindsay1 May 2009 at 18:14

    "I dont quite understand your dismissal of them"

    I don't quite understand why you think that I have dismissed them.

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  3. JohnJGMooney2 May 2009 at 15:38

    You appear to have identified two "parties" on the Labour benches. Labour and Co-Op.
    In doing so you have minimised the contribution of other strands of Labour opinion.
    The Christian Socialist/Catholic "Irish" tradition, not to mention the Trade Union contribution, not to mention Fabianism.......all distinct trends within a known Labour "coalition".
    One might add the puerile Polytechnic "lecturer" syndrome of the 1970s and the Islington Mafia that was "New Labour" thankfully both consigned to the dustbin or cess pit of history.

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  4. David Lindsay2 May 2009 at 15:45

    But none of those was or is a distinct organisation, literally a party within the party. Militant was, although it was far smaller than people generally think it was. So was the CPGB entryist faction in the Forties. And so is this.

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