Labour mutineer reduced to appearance in The Sun in bid to flood Labour with right-wing entryists
Gloria de Piero: Straight talking politics? More like weasel words.
Gloria de Piero, the Labour mutineer who failed as Shadow Minister for Voter Registration and whose constituency of Ashfield voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU in last month’s referendum, has written an article in The Sun, trying to get right-wingers to infiltrate the Labour Party and vote Jeremy Corbyn out of the leadership.
Why she thinks she’ll be more successful at this than at getting young adults onto the electoral register is anybody’s guess but, even though she doesn’t mention Mr Corbyn by name, his spectre is between the lines of her piece. See for yourself:
Less than 4 pounds a month is a small price to pay to rescue Labour and save our country from the horrors of the Tories.
It takes just a couple of minutes at join.labour.org.uk. I urge you to do it now.
By signing up you can help choose a leader who recognises that the Labour Party was founded to be a Party of Government and implement policies to improve the lives of working people. A party of protest doesn’t help a single person.
The country needs a Labour Party that can deal with the reality of our exit from the EU and ensure Labour values are at the heart of talks about our departure.
Sure, she wants people who’ve voted Labour in the past to sign up, but any reader of The Sun is invited to join up as a result of this article. Note also that, while she mentions “Labour values” several times, she never clarifies what she thinks those values actually are.
When I mentioned this article on Twitter, someone suggested I should look up the ‘No true Scotsman’ fallacy. I did; and recommend that you do, too. They seemed to be implying that I was refusing to accept that people who supported Labour could read The Sun.
It is true that, in the 1980s at least, a majority of the millions who read that rag were Labour supporters who enjoyed getting angry at it or mocking it.
But the fact remains that it is owned by Rupert Murdoch, the arch-neoliberal and far-right-wing medial mogul who works hard to ensure that he dictates who gets to be the UK Prime Minister.
The fact that she was writing in the tabloid that epitomises his values means she has laid the Labour Party open to right-wing entryism that may kill it off, as a political entity, far more effectively than anything Jeremy Corbyn might do.
It is heartening that, of the five comments listed on the web version of the story, four are pro-Corbyn. I particularly like this one:
I just ran this article through Google Translate and it came back as, “Murdoch is terrified that Corbyn might get in, so Sun readers should vote against their own interests in support of Murdoch.”
How strange.
Nice one, Gloria. Still, it’s only another failure to add to the list.
ADVERT
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
But I thought that the right-wing press encouraged their readers to join Labour and vote to get Corbyn elected, as this would ensure (they said) that the Tories kept winning… and now this is a call to the same set of readers for them to join up to prevent a vote for ‘a party of protest’ (which is to say Corbyn).
(The “I’m voting for Corbyn to keep Labour out” line is not looking so clever now.)
‘Protest’ as in against what Murdoch-influences and the right-wing have done or are doing to us. A Labour leader and party of which he would no longer be able to pull the strings and be the puppet master. A party which would really be giving people opportunities to do better in life.
A Corbyn/McDonnell government would not be led by the likes of Murdoch, and would set about closing up those tax loopholes and investing in industries, housing, education, health and real jobs with proper wages; while taking back from the profiteers our essential services.
By appearing in a Murdoch paper to beg for support for this not to happen, the likes of Gloria de Piero show their true blue colour. I hope her constituency and its Labour members, who she supposedly represents, are taking note.
Walk around any industrial workplace canteen or rest-room after lunch and the newspaper most likely to be left on the tables is the Sun. It is, sadly, the choice of many traditional Labour voters who distrust their Conservative oppressors, “the bosses”, but instinctively share or are receptive to many of their attitudes.
These traitors who wish to unseat Jeremy Corbyn are anti democratic that is a serious threat to our democracy which must be stopped in it,s tracks,. My father and millions more fought for democracy and died, . This anti democratic rump must be held to account for there treachery to those people, They opportunist Blairites trying to subvert our rights, they are worse than Tories,. disgusting
I did warn about the levels the Labour Right would stoop to to get rid of Corbyn. “tories should join the Labour Party pretending to be lefties and sabotage Corbyn’s chances of another leader election” is probably fair to middling for them.