Or so it can often feel. For more than 50 years, if Europe has been the issue, then you have never known what you were voting for if you voted Labour. The same is true today. From Harold Wilson to Jeremy Corbyn, every Leader has felt compelled and constrained by the requirements of party management.
"How can we keep both Roy Jenkins and Tony Benn at the table?" has become "How can we keep both Keir Starmer and Richard Burgon at the table?", via free votes for Ministers in the 1970s, via Shadow Cabinet members whose Election Addresses professed them in favour of the Common Market contrary to manifesto policy in 1983, via the three-line whip to abstain on Maastricht, via the um-ing and ah-ing of the Blair Government over the euro, and so on, and on, and on, and on, and on.
And here we are today. Every vote for either Labour or the Conservatives today is purely mechanical and tribal. There can be no other reason for it. Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.
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