Not Just The Cover-Up But The Perpetration

Why was Ian Murray ever in the Cabinet? There are 37 Labour MPs for constituencies in Scotland, but only Murray had been due to be a founder member of Change UK before pulling out at the last moment. He is seen here at the dress rehearsal for the launch.

At least three of the Labour MPs who joined Change UK have rejoined the Labour Party, and one of those has a peerage. In what has always been the highly unlikely event that the United Kingdom would recognise Palestine while Keir Starmer was Prime Minister, a possibility that has been rendered negligible by his appointment of Yvette Cooper as Foreign Secretary, then what would they do? And in that case, what would Murray do? Meanwhile, at least three former Change UK MPs are now in the Liberal Democrats, whose present position would have been expulsionable from the Labour Party even under Jeremy Corbyn. Yet none of them ever says a word.

Next week may bring a reshuffle of the other ranks. Jess Phillips has pointedly not been promoted. On Tuesday, she told the House of Commons that, "South Yorkshire police should never have been left to investigate themselves in this matter [of the grooming gangs], and moving those investigations to the NCA is absolutely the right thing to do. I would be lying if I said that over the years I had not met girls who talked to me about how police were part of not just the cover-up but the perpetration." Read again those words of the Minister who refused a statutory inquiry, an inquiry that had been, and still is, demanded by the Muslim candidate whom she had beaten by only 693 votes at Birmingham Yardley, which he intends to contest again. Away with her.

Not that that mind-blowing admission was mentioned today by Nigel Farage. After all, how would he have known about it? He had spent this week, not at Westminster, but in Washington, and not the one in the Washington and Gateshead South that Reform UK was predicted to take from Labour. Phillips should be finished. Instead, she is benefiting from the most astonishing non-career-ending career-ender since Harriet Harman and the Paedophile Information Exchange.