This Once Great Movement Of Ours

[CumbrianLefty]

Harriet Harman retiring. Despite having many opinions about her she will be a lose for Parliament.

Others retiring include Barry Sherman, Margaret Hodge and Alex Cunningham. I expect we’ll see a fair few more- boundary changes, the stress of the last 5 years and the safe knowledge that they can hand over to successors of their choice will all be a factor.

The less said about Harman's second acting spell as leader the better.

Indeed, execrably bad. And very much a contrast to her first.

[CumbrianLefty]

It played a significant part, beyond doubt.

Though those campaigns also reflected the collective psychosis that had overtook most of the PLP that Labour had lost in 2015 because Ed M was some insane left winger.

[CumbrianLefty]

A rather distant 3rd, but yeah.

Of course a Corbyn win in 2015 but by only a modest margin was maybe the ultimate "banter" result.

[CumbrianLefty]

Actually the Labour left are split a few ways on this - some (like Burgon) have been Zero Covid fans whilst others have tended to general scepticism over government powers (even if not in as extreme a fashion as Jez's brother, whose crankery on this is a genuine fringe position)

[CumbrianLefty]

Though the underlying sentiment - "we must learn to live with Covid" - is more widely shared.

[CumbrianLefty]

Walker was regarded as one of the more "normal" within the 2017 intake, believe it or not.

[CumbrianLefty]

And his partner is now (I think) a Labour councillor in Portsmouth.

[CumbrianLefty]

He didn’t happen to mention that the largest number come from Iran.

https://mobile.twitter.com/PressTV/status/1473211328986767366

Given who he was talking to, is that a surprise?

[CumbrianLefty]

Yes, the social liberal v social democrat thing is underrated as a factor in internal Labour politics. It is indeed not totally untrue to say that many of Corbyn's most fervent supporters are actually very left wing liberals at heart, rather than from the democratic socialist tradition.

[CumbrianLefty]

Though there still seems to be quite a lot of interest in it whenever a sitting MP retires/resigns/dies.

[CumbrianLefty]

A good start would be to abolish the PPE degree for example.

Something where many on the left fully agree with Mr Cummings. And absolutely correctly.

[CumbrianLefty]

When is the EP ever going to be moved to a single permanent location? That's what I want to know.

(and the fact it moves around the place like it does was a gift to pro-Brexit people here)

[CumbrianLefty]

It has been noted that the MP for Stockport, a previous Corbyn loyalist, had been promoted to the front bench in the micro-reshuffle following Dromey's untimely demise.

One of a few recent signs that the "we need to expunge everybody to the left of Ed Miliband from the party" Neil Kinnock Reenactment fantasists seem to be losing the internal battle for Keir's ear.

Hopefully this will continue.

[CumbrianLefty]

Hmm, looks like former Corbyn front bencher Barry Gardiner has got into an unwise "entanglement".

[CumbrianLefty]

Those two are always amusing as, in practice, their politics aren't that far removed from his lmao. Ah, the Labour Party.

Trickett's brain has sadly been melted by the Corbyn years.

He's certainly not alone there, though more have been melted in the other direction.

[CumbrianLefty]

Rosa Luxemburg isn't just admired by fringe ultra-leftists tbf.

[CumbrianLefty]

Rosa Luxemburg isn't just admired by fringe ultra-leftists tbf.

The spartacist uprising is way too over mythologized as well as the narrative of the SPD betrayal.

She was far from perfect, but her recognition that socialism could only be achieved under democracy went sadly unheeded by certain others of her political stripe.

[CumbrianLefty]

Ah, the Ebert stans have logged on

You know, at least a bit of nuance about these things might be appreciated.

[CumbrianLefty]

Its fairly easy to sort out the genuine reservations about Wakeford from the bad faith ones (you can detect the latter pretty well by simply asking - how would the same people have reacted to a Tory MP going Labour in the Corbyn era?)

But one benefit of getting old is that you can recall pretty much exactly the same things being asked about Alan Howarth back in the day - and he quickly fitted pretty well into Labour.

[CumbrianLefty]

Though in this case, its stuff he advocated for more vocally than that which is causing concern.

But people do change their minds on things, even as MPs.

And yes, a lot of the opposition to this is classic bad-faith performativeism.

[CumbrianLefty]

While I understand there are reservations about Wakeford, given his conservative voting record, I remain amazed by the ability of Labour factions to not only look a gifthorse in the mouth, but to demand the gifthorse be immediately turned into glue.

Between Momentum, Young Labour and Co, there seems to be a number of calls demanding Wakeford either resign, or face immediate deselection, within hours of his defection. Very Twitter-brain.

I understand even less the Tories (and some on the left) calling for an immediate by-election as some sort of own, as if the incumbent wouldn't win comfortably in current circumstances.

I do think it's the honourable thing to do and should probably be legislated to be mandatory.

It sounds good, but the practicalities of enforcing it haven't gone away.

[CumbrianLefty]

The online left have retreated totally into their own self-reinforcing bubble - amongst other things this shows that having to look outwards just a bit (as was unavoidably the case when "one of their own" led the party) was genuinely beneficial.

Now its just an extended "Corbyn would have won a LANDSLIDE but for the Labour right, who are far worse than the Tories" betrayal myth.

As for the practical questions of an automatic byelection on changing parties - yes it seems obvious in a case like Wakeford's - but what about someone who goes independent? Somebody who has had the whip removed or even been expelled (and maybe only actually switches parties after that)?? Truth is, there are plenty of potential grey areas and opportunities for abuse by the unscrupulous.

[CumbrianLefty]

You have simply restated a view that most will not agree with.

I do agree with you that the Speaker should have a "symbolic" rather than real constituency - but the argument has been it benefits them to still do some "ordinary" political work.

[CumbrianLefty]

Since you mentioned the Speaker, do they do constituency work?

Since they are still constituency MPs, very much so.

[CumbrianLefty]

Since you mentioned the Speaker, do they do constituency work?

Since they are still constituency MPs, very much so.

yeah and that's one of the biggest problems I have with the Westminster system, being an MP is a full-time job and so is being a minister. They are both compensated as such and most MP's treat it as such. We can't expect someone to be doing two full-time jobs without that affecting their perfomance. In most cases, the job of a constituency MP for a minister is in effect outsourced to a staffer but that is neither democratic nor fair.I don't agree with Cummings at all but his idea of parachuting ministers into the house of lords has some merit to it.

Well tbf it is hardly "his" idea, and has indeed been tried before - with mixed results it is fair to say.