The Progress annual conference on Saturday will be at, of all places, Congress House, and it will feature Maurice Glasman, Neal Lawson, Owen Jones, Steve Hart of Unite, Paddy Lillis of Usdaw, Cat Hobbs of We Own It, and Hywel Lloyd of Labour Coast and Country.
The conference's media partners are Labour List and Left Foot Forward.
I have long said that both Progress and Movement for Change ought to affiliate to the Labour Party. I fully expect them to do so in the near future. Things are clearly looking up in London.
But not, sadly, up here.
One week after the Conservatives took a quarter of the vote in the North East, experienced a net gain in seats here, massively increased their majority at Stockton South, and also did so at Carlisle, which is likewise covered by Labour North, has anyone been sacked? Has Neil Fleming been sacked?
It is not as if this was a one-off. 12 years earlier, Fleming had not only lost Labour a district council seat of some long standing, but he had taken down with him a very senior and distinguished councillor.
Six years earlier again, I as a Sub-Agent had won Labour an overall majority of the total vote on a four-way split in that traditionally Tory ward. I do not regret that. Tony Blair was a relatively good first-term Prime Minister, and he might have been a great one-term Prime Minister. The re-election of the Major Government in 1997 would have been a national catastrophe.
If Fleming was a party member at all that long ago, then it was strictly under the tightly controlled aegis of a student club. He had never shown the slightest interest in political activity when he was in the year above me at school and living around the corner.
Rather more recently, his maîtresse-en-titre was likewise unable to secure election to what had become the unitary county council.
Nominally a Press Officer, in 2010 he announced himself the Labour candidate for this seat one day before the National Executive Committee imposed an all-women shortlist.
But promotion to the level of his more than demonstrable incompetence has continued apace.
In common with a large proportion of the Labour Party's paid staff, last Friday was the happiest day of Neil Fleming's life.
At last, the Heir to Blair had his overall majority. At last the man who had patriotically stood up to Murdoch, the energy companies, the neocon war machine and the Israel Lobby was laid low.
Fleming is not the only one who needs to be given his cards. But he would be a very good place to start. And then Iain McNicol? I mean, what use has he been? But then, what use did he want to be?
Eric Wilson will have plenty of time to polish his MBE once Tom Watson is Deputy Leader.
And so it goes on.
Such are the people who are apparently vetting voluntary contributors of the political levy, the only people likely to pay their wages for quite some time to come, to see of they are fit to be registered as Labour supporters and granted a vote in the Leadership and Deputy Leadership Elections.
It is vox populi that they are doing so for, as, and on behalf of Progress. But they are not. They are doing so for, as, and on behalf of themselves. And look what selves those have turned out to be.
Neil Fleming showed me that the Labour Party of that time and place was a football-obsessed drinking club that practised glorified school bullying against anyone who had the temerity to read books or serious newspapers, or to watch or listen to the news. Is it still?
In the days when I had an ileostomy, I did seriously consider naming the bags after Fleming, and saying "Good morning, Neil" each time that I put on a new one, or "There you go, Neil" each time that I emptied it. But no. Neither that, nor the naming of my walking stick after him now that I am increasingly immobile with arthritis.
Instead, his is the name that I have reserved for any malignant tumour that might afflict me. Should I ever be visited with such a thing, then I shall name my cancer "Neil Fleming".
The conference's media partners are Labour List and Left Foot Forward.
I have long said that both Progress and Movement for Change ought to affiliate to the Labour Party. I fully expect them to do so in the near future. Things are clearly looking up in London.
But not, sadly, up here.
One week after the Conservatives took a quarter of the vote in the North East, experienced a net gain in seats here, massively increased their majority at Stockton South, and also did so at Carlisle, which is likewise covered by Labour North, has anyone been sacked? Has Neil Fleming been sacked?
It is not as if this was a one-off. 12 years earlier, Fleming had not only lost Labour a district council seat of some long standing, but he had taken down with him a very senior and distinguished councillor.
Six years earlier again, I as a Sub-Agent had won Labour an overall majority of the total vote on a four-way split in that traditionally Tory ward. I do not regret that. Tony Blair was a relatively good first-term Prime Minister, and he might have been a great one-term Prime Minister. The re-election of the Major Government in 1997 would have been a national catastrophe.
If Fleming was a party member at all that long ago, then it was strictly under the tightly controlled aegis of a student club. He had never shown the slightest interest in political activity when he was in the year above me at school and living around the corner.
Rather more recently, his maîtresse-en-titre was likewise unable to secure election to what had become the unitary county council.
Nominally a Press Officer, in 2010 he announced himself the Labour candidate for this seat one day before the National Executive Committee imposed an all-women shortlist.
But promotion to the level of his more than demonstrable incompetence has continued apace.
In common with a large proportion of the Labour Party's paid staff, last Friday was the happiest day of Neil Fleming's life.
At last, the Heir to Blair had his overall majority. At last the man who had patriotically stood up to Murdoch, the energy companies, the neocon war machine and the Israel Lobby was laid low.
Fleming is not the only one who needs to be given his cards. But he would be a very good place to start. And then Iain McNicol? I mean, what use has he been? But then, what use did he want to be?
Eric Wilson will have plenty of time to polish his MBE once Tom Watson is Deputy Leader.
And so it goes on.
Such are the people who are apparently vetting voluntary contributors of the political levy, the only people likely to pay their wages for quite some time to come, to see of they are fit to be registered as Labour supporters and granted a vote in the Leadership and Deputy Leadership Elections.
It is vox populi that they are doing so for, as, and on behalf of Progress. But they are not. They are doing so for, as, and on behalf of themselves. And look what selves those have turned out to be.
Neil Fleming showed me that the Labour Party of that time and place was a football-obsessed drinking club that practised glorified school bullying against anyone who had the temerity to read books or serious newspapers, or to watch or listen to the news. Is it still?
In the days when I had an ileostomy, I did seriously consider naming the bags after Fleming, and saying "Good morning, Neil" each time that I put on a new one, or "There you go, Neil" each time that I emptied it. But no. Neither that, nor the naming of my walking stick after him now that I am increasingly immobile with arthritis.
Instead, his is the name that I have reserved for any malignant tumour that might afflict me. Should I ever be visited with such a thing, then I shall name my cancer "Neil Fleming".
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