In Order To Invite

What a disappointment Theresa May has been.

Not very long ago at all, hers was a programme of workers' and consumers' representation in corporate governance, of shareholders' control over executive pay, of restrictions on pay differentials within companies, of an investment-based Industrial Strategy and infrastructure programme, of greatly increased housebuilding, of action against tax avoidance, of a ban on public contracts for tax-avoiding companies, of a cap on energy prices, of banning or greatly restricting foreign takeovers, of a ban on unpaid internships, and of an inquiry into Orgreave.

Every point of which she had only ever adopted because Jeremy Corbyn was there. But even so. Oh, well, if you want any of those things, then you are just going to have to vote for him after all.

May could only have got this programme through with the votes of Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the SDLP (which had MPs at the time), the UUP (likewise), Caroline Lucas, Sylvia Hermon, and the DUP on certain points.

But she could have got it through. And it still needs to happen. Labour, in particular, still needs to find ways of proposing each of these measures in order to invite all MPs to vote on them.

My political background is on Lanchester Parish Council, and also around the old Derwentside District Council, which was run by an unofficial, but highly successful, coalition between the sensible wing of the local Labour Party, well to the left of the local government Leadership that we now have, and a body of Independents who were, I suppose, mostly Tories of a fairly generic sort.

No one party or caucus holds the majority of what are now the unitary County Council seats here in North West Durham. Those seats' occupants range across Labour, the Lib Dems, two Groups of Independents, and an Independent Independent who was in fact the Labour Leader of Derwentside District Council for decades.

So it is genuinely lost on me how some people find cross-party co-operation impossible, or even regrettable, and specifically how they claim that that attitude makes them left-wing. Left-wing to what effect, exactly? That is before we even begin about those who seem to pride themselves on their inability to take so much as a cup of tea with their political opponents.

They have obviously never been to North West Durham. They have obviously never been to Derwentside, where it was the Labour Right that took that view, a faction now very close to the similarly minded Leadership at County Hall. And they have obviously never been to Lanchester.

Yes, there are people who want to shut me up.