Tonight, the only Labour Leadership candidate who will vote to defend the legacy of Tony Blair and New Labour will have been the single most rebellious Labour MP in each of the three Parliaments of Blair's Premiership.
He has just floored Iain Duncan Smith. He sounds like the Leader of the Opposition. That is the fault of the other three.
He has just floored Iain Duncan Smith. He sounds like the Leader of the Opposition. That is the fault of the other three.
I state it simply as a fact that if Andy Burnham does not vote against the Welfare Bill, then Jeremy Corbyn will win the Labour Leadership.
Think back five years, and try to imagine any mainstream figure's proposing that the child poverty targets be abolished, that ESA be downgraded to JSA, and that child tax credits be unavailable from the third child onwards.
Yet that was after the Crash, but before George Osborne had supposedly put it right.
This is not "the centre ground", and the acquiescence to the idea that it is on the part of three out of four Labour Leadership candidates will antagonise not merely the Far Left (most of whom were never in the Labour Party, while most of the rest left it a dozen years ago), but the great mass of that party's rank and file.
It is completely extraordinarily, and perfectly illiterate, to believe that a Conservative victory at a General Election places that party beyond opposition for five years. On any issue, never mind when it is trying to do something that it specifically promised the electorate that it would not do.
Burnham has agreed to do as he's told and abstain. Did you ever think anything else?
ReplyDeleteThe Tories election victory means they have the right and the duty to carry out their manifesto commitments, whch include repeal of the Human Rights Act, for instance.
Harriet is at least right on that. Or what are elections for?
You do not understand how a parliamentary system works, and she no longer cares.
DeleteThe Tories are not even attempting to repeal the Human Rights Act. Among an ever-lengthening list of other things.
Of course, Labour on its own could not stop any of those measures. Cameron never really wanted them, or his own party would never stand for them, or both.
Whereas the Welfare Bill contains measures that he either never mentioned in the Election campaign, or else, notably in the case of tax credits, that he explicitly and repeatedly promised not to do.
What does Anon. think the Opposition is supposed to do for five years? Did the Tories never vote against a government bill between 1997 and 2010?
DeleteHe is too young to remember that. For his benefit, they most certainly did vote against Second and Third Readings night after night. And why not?
DeleteA Government Bill has not been refused a Second Reading since Sunday Trading in 1986, but there is no reason why it ought not to be. It is entirely immaterial whether or not it was in a manifesto, or anything like that. The House decides.
On the Human Rights Act, on foxhunting, and probably yet on Sunday trading again, as even on the EVEL that would require nothing more than a Standing Order, Cameron avoids such defeats by simply not bringing the measures forward at all.