Wednesday 30 May 2018

Battle Lines

The Labour Right's candidates for their party's National Executive Committee have taken a break from their heavy schedule of attack on Jeremy Corbyn to sign a letter in today's Guardian demanding that Westminster extend the abortion law to Northern Ireland, and that Labour whip its MPs to support that move. Quite why Corbyn should listen to them of all people, they do not explain.

Meanwhile, the RMT has today voted to realign with the Labour Party, stopping short of reaffiliation so that it does not have to fund MPs such as those of whom the Guardian signatories approve, or parliamentary candidates such as several of them seek to become.

The battle lines in the Labour Party are therefore clear. On one side are those who, like most Conservative MPs and supporters, want to extend the abortion law to Northern Ireland, but who in many or most cases disagree with most Conservative voters in that they do not want to renationalise the railways.

On the other side are those are those who may or may not want to extend the abortion law to Northern Ireland, but who have no interest in whipping MPs on the issue, and who are in any case far more concerned with renationalising the railways, on which they would most certainly impose a three-line whip.

Nothing about the first lot would keep them out of any party, and certainly not out of the one that was currently in government.

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