Right-wing Labour MPs betray the UK by offering to prop up the Tory government
Together we’re… stabbing the UK in the back, it seems. At least, that’s what Tom Watson and a certain cadre of right-wing Labour MPs are doing.
If ever there was an argument that MPs should always be made to ask their constituency for permission to stand for re-election at the end of every Parliamentary term – mandatory reselection, as it’s called – it is this:
As Theresa May’s government floundered in chaos of its own making after years of dithering over Brexit, Labour MPs Mike Gapes, Ian Austin and Tom Watson swooped in – not to deliver the killing blow, but to offer help.
Thanks to the Conservative Party, the UK is now a country where critically-ill patients are left to die in hospital corridors because the government would rather give money to private companies than pay for clinical care.
Thanks to the Tories, the UK is a place where people with serious long-term illnesses and disabilities are forced off the benefits they need and ‘nudged’ towards death because the government would rather give money to private companies that persecute the poor than pay to provide them a decent standard of living.
Thanks to Theresa May, the UK is a place that deports its citizens for the heinous crime of being black.
It is in this context that the Labour MP for Ilford South, Mike Gapes, got on his hind legs in the House of Commons and suggested “that we work in the national interest together” – suggesting that Labour could actually work with the Tory parasites to form a government of national unity.
Mr Gapes even had the nerve to invoke the name of Clement Attlee in his speech.
Labour deputy leader Tom Watson compounded the crime by appearing on the BBC’s Today programme. He said: “Is the current meltdown in the government good for anyone? Well you know, obviously electorally it might help my party but that’s no good.”
What?
Why’s that, then, Tom?
Why would it be no good to get a government into office that might stop the deaths, destitutions and deportations that the Tories have heaped upon us?
Why would it be no good to get a government into office that might get the UK off its knees and back into working order?
Tell us, Tom!
He didn’t.
Instead, he appeared on TV to say, “It’s not a question of Labour trying to bring the government down; it’s actually a question of Labour trying to help the government get a good deal, and trying to stop the government bringing itself down.”
To this, the interview responded – as if it was scripted: “So a government of national unity then – that’d be quite good, wouldn’t it?”
No.
It is not the purpose of the Opposition Party to prop up a failed regime; these MPs should be demanding the dissolution of the current government and a general election.
And when that election finally happens…
Their constituency parties should ensure that none of the MPs who wanted a “government of national unity” should be standing – at least, not for the Labour Party.
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Horrifying
Is it because nobody wants to be left owning the BrexitShambles?
A giant fresh Brexs**tburger coming round the bend with our name on it!
Please don’t swear, John. I’m trying to run a nice, clean, accessible site here!
Instead of calling it deselection or reselection, let’s call it Performance Review.
Traitors.
Indeed, Tom Watson’s treachery is renowned, but he is not the only one looking to feather his own nest at the expense and detriment of those who put him in office. They have all betrayed the Labour Party voters and we need to demand that they are accountable. Mike is right, we need to ensure that these Tory reds are not able to continue as Labour candidates in the next election.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10156346415635256&id=672720255 Mandatory Reelection.
Ah the greedie ones the blairites need really to cross the floor but then they won’t listen deselect
Tories will always have their plants infiltrating Labour as long as Blairites still there.
They’re doing this because they reckon this is the only possible way to force through a Norway-style compromise on EU membership. They don’t think Corbyn would win (I think it’s an open question), and that a hard-Brexit Tory government would then take over – that would also be ideologically committed to turning the UK into a US Republican-style state, once it’s free of EU influence. You have to remember that that’s the ulimate aim of the Brexiters.
Given that they also think a victorious Corbyn govenrment would be no less lukewarm on Remaining, they think that trying to soften the consequences of the most reckless decision in a century of UK politics is worth stretching some party loyalty.
If you want it put into slightly more left-wing language, they believe supporting May at this juncture is actually the best way to keep the Tory party Civil War over Europe going.
I’m seeing how it pans out, and I think they are overly pessimistic, but i understand where they are coming from. And it depends entirely on how perilous you feel the UK’s situation is or might become before you start issuing pronomucements on the inadmissibility of governments of national unity.
We already have a good deal with the EU, it’s now just a question of how bad things are going to get when we lose it and who’s going to be left carrying the can.
Of course the nationalistic authoritarians, fascists and closet racists who swung the vote to leave will be readying their excuses and above all their scapegoat minorities.
“Thanks to the Conservative Party, the UK is now a country where critically-ill patients are left to die in hospital corridors because the government would rather give money to private companies than pay for clinical care.”
“Thanks to the Conservative Party, the UK is now a country where critically-ill patients are left to die in hospital corridors because the government would rather give money to private companies than pay for clinical care”
Except, as the BBC might say, for viewers in Scotland.
We have the SNP up here defending the (S)NHS from privatisation, not allowing fracking, and mitigating Tory cuts like the bedroom tax.
The SNP’s rise in popularity is as much through the failure of Labour to oppose Torydom in any effective way as through the SNP’s efforts..
Pains me to say it (as a Labour voter until 4 years ago) but England needs a new ‘Party of the people’ like Scotland has. It can be done. It has to be. Labour is too far down the Establishment alley to change as quickly as is needed.
Yeah?
We have the Labour Party in Wales defending the (W)NHS from privatisation, not allowing fracking, and mitigating Tory cuts like the bedroom tax.
But the problem is that sometimes we have to cross the English border in order to get care. As you do, in Scotland.
Don’t try to make this about the SNP being better than Labour because they aren’t. Simple as that.
These are NOT true Labour MPs; they are as has been stated already “Stabbers in the backs” and have no regard for the suffering of the ordinary man in the street that the Tory Brexit would bring. I would rather vote for Theresa May than any of them but, of course, that is just a figure of speech because I am a TRUE labour member and supporter and I am voting for Corbyn.