Saturday 19 May 2018

Take Back The City

With Sakina Sheikh out of the race for Lewisham East because of her ties to Take Back The City, Claudia Webbe it is, then. Failing that, Marc Wadsworth, who should have been ennobled yesterday, should put up as an Independent, right there on the South East London home turf of the Stephen Lawrence campaign.

Take Back The City? Is that all? On being welcomed into the Parliamentary Labour Party, Peter Temple-Morris, who died recently, had been elected as a Conservative Member of Parliament on no fewer than seven occasions. Robert Jackson had been so five times, Quentin Davies five times (including at all three of the General Elections at which Labour had been led by Tony Blair), and Alan Howarth three times. Shaun Woodward had managed it only once, but he had managed it. In view of the ennoblements of Temple-Morris and Davies upon their retirements, has either of them ever voted Labour at a parliamentary election? If so, then when, exactly?

Davies abruptly decided that "my party had left me" on 26th June 2007, the night before Gordon Brown became Prime Minister. He was rapidly rewarded, and he has continued to be so. He remains in receipt of the Labour Whip in the House of Lords, having served under 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.

Yet people are making a fuss about Take Back The City. In reality, we need supporters of economic equality to be elected to the City of London Corporation, as well as to the States of Jersey, to the States of Guernsey, to Tynwald, and to the legislatures of the British Overseas Territories. Labour has had some success in the City in the recent past, despite the jaw-dropping electoral system. And candidates for Mayor of London have to be nominated by at least 10 local government electors in each of the 32 Boroughs and in the City. Sadiq Khan, Siân Berry and George Galloway all managed that last year. Those 30 people are there.

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