Into Disrepute

Plenty of people at any given Labour Party Conference disagreed profoundly with Tony Blair, but he was only ever heckled once in all those years, that was over Iraq, and the late, great Walter Wolfgang was not suspended from the party. Plenty of people at any given Labour Party Conference disagreed profoundly with Jeremy Corbyn, but he was never heckled, and imagine what the reaction would have been if there had been the slightest punishment of anyone who had done so. But Keir Starmer was heckled by several people yesterday, and now the Labour Party is suspending them.

Variously, they had dared to call for the £15 per hour minimum wage that Conference had unanimously supported in line with 65 per cent of public opinion while only 14 per cent was opposed, for the proper payment of NHS staff, for opposition to the privatisation of the NHS, for facing up to the fact that Starmer's Brexit policy had caused the scale of Labour's defeat in 2019 (in fact, it had caused that General Election to be held at all), for the long overdue publication of the Forde Report, for an end to the party's toleration of the abuse of Muslims, for an end to its toleration of anti-black racism, and for an end to its toleration of racism against Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people.