Monday 11 June 2012

The Impending Expulsion of Dan Hodges

Dan Hodges looks set to be expelled from the Labour Party. The wonder is that it has taken this long. If he and certain others had been anyone else, then they would have been deemed expelled ipso facto for adhering to another candidate against an official Labour one. For anything.

Many people are so used to the continuous chaos of the Conservative Party for nearly 30 years now, without a break ever since Heseltine resigned and counting, that it blows your minds when a political party acts like a political party. They have never heard of such a thing in your lives. People who say that Hodges would be happier as a Conservative are spot on. That is not a compliment to the Conservatives.

That said, in 2004, the Conservative Party expelled four fairly obscure Peers who had told people to vote UKIP at the European Elections. It did not, however, expel Lord Tebbit when he did the same thing in 2009. He, after all, is Norman Tebbit. Well, of course.

Likewise, Labour will expel Hodges and the other media types who told people to vote for Boris Johnson because they thought that, since they were in the papers, they were untouchable. They are not. It will not, however, expel Ken Livingstone over Lutfur Rahman. The man who is about to top the poll again for the constituencies section of the National Executive Committee, demonstrating again that he is the single most popular figure among "ordinary party members" (not union members, who vote for their own section of the NEC), really is untouchable. Well, of course.

Grow up.

2 comments:

  1. Some people have put forward a motion that might be debated at conference, it is not the same as expulsion.

    Members of a political party must have a sense of collective responibilty. That extends to supporting Party candidates, after selection has taken place.

    Members who do not have a sense of collective responsibility can join the Tories or be 'independent'.

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  2. Anyone who advocates voting against the official Labour candidate for anything, or in my personal experience so much as threatens to be or to support such a candidate purely hypothetically, is ipso facto expelled from the Labour Party. That is its Rule. Normally, it is just a simple letter from the constituency secretary informing one of the fact that one's membership has been cancelled.

    Hodges and the rest of Media Blairites for Boris think that they are bigger than that, that they are a different class of member. Shame on the shambolic London Labour Party for having treated them up to now as if they were.

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