Dirty Rotten Troubadours

I doubt that Jared O'Mara and I would have much to talk about. But since when did Guido Fawkes and the BBC get to determine who could or could not receive the Labour Whip in the House of Commons? Since when did Guido Fawkes set the news agenda for the BBC? What has O'Mara said or done that was any less acceptable than any of numerous sayings or doings of Boris Johnson?

The agenda here are perfectly apparent. The only people who are to be allowed to stand for Parliament are those who have been primed for it from birth, such as the New Labour grandes dames who have been as forthright against O'Mara as they were against Clive Lewis, one of the Owen Jones set of which, again, many of us are decidedly wary. "Embarrassment to the Labour Party" seems not to include Harriet Harman's links to the Paedophile Information Exchange, or Jess Phillips's abuse of Diane Abbott, unseating of Dawn Butler, and allegation that British Pakistanis imported wives for their disabled sons. Primed from birth, indeed.

Moreover, it is now compulsory, not merely to hold today's consensus views on homosexuality and the law, but to have held those same views 15 years ago, when hardly anybody did so. In those days, the members of a Labour Government stood at the Despatch Boxes of both Houses of Parliament and not only asserted, but explained, why that Government would never introduce same-sex marriage, as indeed it never did. That is before we even start about attitudes to the transgender question, which have been changing rapidly and drastically over a far shorter period than that. The Morning Star regularly carries articles that would now preclude their authors from being Labour parliamentary candidates. No doubt, that is the point.

The Conservatives are still very sore indeed at having lost their overall majority. If the hype had been correct, then they would have taken back Sheffield Hallam, which it beggars belief that they ever lost, and it would have been they who had unseated Nick Clegg. But instead, they were leapfrogged into third place. Third place in a constituency as wealthy as that. Third place in a constituency that they had held from its creation in 1885 until a by-election in 1916, and then again from 1918 until 1997. Third place in a constituency that had never previously returned a Labour MP, and which the Labour Party, as such, had barely fought even this year.

Oh, well, let them have their spiteful little kill. But the Left needs to press its advantage on the National Executive Committee and elsewhere. It needs to insist that precisely the punishment meted out to Jared O'Mara will also be meted out to Jess Phillips.