The day after former/expelled Labour councillors, standing as Independents, won back their council seats in elections across the UK, against their former colleagues, this happened:

For those who can’t read the lettering in image files, part of the resignation letter states:

“Our views are not radical: surely our party shold look after the interests of working people and the vulnerable, rather than court big business. Public utilities should be publicly owned. The NHS should remain publicly funded, publicly-run and free at the point of use.

“But the Labour Party has drifted far from these principles towards a pro-Establishment position that no longer represents the values, aspirations and dreams we had of a massively transformed society in which everyone would have the opportunity to to a fulfilling life in a peaceful and fairer world.”

You can understand exactly why the group now calling itself the Mid Sussex Left has quit Labour by listening to part of what Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting said to Sky‘s Sophy Ridge on Sunday morning (May 7).  I’ve retained the tweet by “Frank Owen’s Legendary Paintbrush” because the opinion it puts forward is valid:

“You don’t go into a general election making promises you can’t keep,” said Streeting. But that’s not quite the issue – it’s the fact that his party leader, Keir Starmer, continually makes promises he has no intention of keeping.

His claim about the public finances is meaningless. Any UK government can do anything it wants, and magic up the money for it by getting the Bank of England to create it. That’s how all UK money is created, by the way. There is a limiting factor in inflation, but the answer to that is taxation and a Labour government should be redistributive – in other words it would tax the rich more than the poor.

So with Starmer’s pledge to end tuition fees, which he ditched last week, we see that there is no financial limitation stopping him from doing it. Just as there is no financial limitation stopping him from doing any of the other leadership election pledges he has since abandoned.

We see no indication from Streeting that his boss Starmer would do any of these things and must conclude that they simply aren’t priorities of these people; their interests lie elsewhere.

Streeting goes on to lie – or at least tell falsehoods about the platform on which Starmer stood for the Labour leadership. Getting Labour electable again after the 2019 defeat might have been a background aim, but it wasn’t one of his 10 pledges.

And is Labour electable again? Well…

I’m sure you take the point. Labour under Jeremy Corbyn was more electable than it is under Keir Starmer – until the people who are now Starmer’s supporters were trying to undermine him. And now Starmer and his cronies can’t get near the same level.

No wonder the principled politicians are leaving.

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