Friday 11 November 2016

Red Rust

There is a man in receipt of the Labour Whip in the House of Lords, and who served under Gordon Brown as a Minister in the House of Commons.

He had been elected as a Conservative MP at all five of the 1987, 1992, 1997, 2001 and 2005 General Elections.

He had served in the Shadow Cabinets of Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard.

But he has never so much as sought to election to anything whatever as a Labour candidate.

Given his ennoblement on retirement from the Commons, he has possibly never voted Labour at a parliamentary election.

He certainly cannot have done so any more than once in his 72 years.

Quentin Davies, for it is he, abruptly decided that "my party had left me" on 26th June 2007, the night before Brown became Prime Minister.

He was rapidly rewarded, and he has continued to be so.

Yet people are making a fuss about Peter Taaffe, Tony Mulhearn and Dave Nellist.

Fun though it is to speculate that those three might be given peerages, no one really expects that to happen. Do they?

Nellist, at least, is certainly active on Twitter as a supporter of a the Durham Teaching Assistants.

Leading one to wonder why he would even want to rejoin the Labour Party this side of its rout at the elections to Durham County Council next May.

On that day, all of the Lib Dems and the Independents must be re-elected, while all 57 of Labour's Clintonites must be Trumped.

(The Conservatives and the Labour absentees are less of a priority either way, although the former do deserve more credit than the latter.)

Call it a kick in the Rust Belt.

2 comments:

  1. There's only one Patrick J Buchanan.

    He lays out the plan of action for the Right

    Buchanan writes: ""There is nothing to prevent the new GOP from writing history.

    In his first months, Trump could put a seal on American politics as indelible as that left by Ronald Reagan.

    A partial agenda: First, he should ignore any importunings by President Obama to permit passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in a lame-duck session — and let the trade deal sink by year’s end.

    On Jan. 20, he should have vetted and ready to nominate to the high court a brilliant constitutionalist and strict constructionist.

    He should act to end interference with the Dakota Access pipeline and call on Congress to re-enact legislation, vetoed by Obama, to finish the Keystone XL pipeline.

    Then he should repeal all Obama regulations that unnecessarily restrict the production of the oil, gas and clean coal necessary to make America energy independent again.

    Folks in Pennsylvania, southeast Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia should be shown, by executive action, that Trump is a man of his word. And when the mines open again, he should be there.

    He should order new actions to seal the Southern border, start the wall and begin visible deportations of felons who are in the country illegally.

    With a new education secretary, he should announce White House intent to work for repeal of Common Core and announce the introduction of legislation to put federal resources behind the charter schools that have proven to be a godsend to inner-city black children.

    He should propose an immediate tax cut for U.S. corporations, with $2 to $3 trillion in unrepatriated profits abroad, who will bring the money home and invest it in America, to the benefit of our economy and our Treasury.

    He should take the president’s phone and pen and begin the rewriting or repeal of every Obama executive order that does not comport with the national interest or political philosophy of the GOP.

    Trump should announce a date soon for repeal and replacement of Obamacare and introduction of his new tax-and-trade legislation to bring back manufacturing and create American jobs.""

    Well, now, that would be a start.

    This is the blueprint.

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    Replies
    1. The neocons are already circling Trump. They are going to get him. I give it days after his inauguration, if it hasn't already happened by then.

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