Sam Tarry’s sacking from the front bench by Starmer means that I can no longer be a member of the Labour Party. Not In My Name – Sir Keir. Continued membership would suggest collaboration with a party actually blocking working class unity – a party founded on this principle and from which the Trade Unions emerged. This sacking is disgraceful, begging the question – what’s the party for? I’ve heard the ‘offending’ interviews. Sound fine to me. And yes, I get the thing about party solidarity…er…SOLIDARITY? Right! A fundamental value that formed the party in the first place. Politicians should also understand strategy and tactics. As a strategy this is as dumb as it gets, for there will no doubt be a flood of resignations. Will I vote Labour at the next election? Of course, but tactically. Is this the end of the Keir show?
Jan Woolf
This is reminiscent of my maiden speech when I became a Councillor on Oxford City Council in 2002. I was approached by a member of UNISON to speak on their behalf, as the Labour Party were refusing to allow leave for some members to attend the TUC conference (which was well within their rights). It transpired it was Blair’s orders issued from above rather than any opinions from the gathered Labour council members. I still have the speech in a notebook and to quote from it: “If the Labour Party won’t protect the rights of working people, then who will?”
As I stood in that council chamber, I wondered what my life-long Labour supporting Grandad would have made of it – me beseeching that same party to support the very people who helped form it and who put them there from the outset.
All these years on and it seems Labour have abandoned many other core voters too. Huge swathes across the country have been left adrift in terms of representation, seemingly due to the party campaigning on what they have no doubt been advised is on trend. In other words, issues which matter primarily to London-based voters and those in the Metropolitan media bubble. And they wonder why the Red Wall crumbled. It’s pretty obvious neither party is interested in “levelling up” and uniting the country. Just more power and money for the political elite, business as usual.
Claire Palmer
.
