Jeremy Corbyn: if Keir Starmer is determined to stop him standing as a Labour Parliamentary candidate, will he form a Peace & Justice Party? If so, he’ll have no shortage of members.
The Mail online is reporting that Mary Creagh is on a shortlist of female Labour candidates set to challenge Jeremy Corbyn for his Islington North Parliamentary seat in the next general election.
It is an indication that Labour leader Keir Starmer is determined to deny Mr Corbyn the opportunity to stand again as a Parliamentary candidate for that party.
In response – according to theTelegraph – Mr Corbyn is said to be (at last) considering forming a political party of his own in order to defend his seat.
This is terrific news.
Mr Corbyn has been an icon of the UK Left since his shock election as leader of the Labour Party in 2015.
Opposition by right-wing factionalists within Labour is said to have sabotaged the party’s chances of winning a general election under his leadership – but this is unlikely to be a problem in a party that he forms and leads.
And he’ll certainly have no shortage of candidates for membership:
If @jeremycorbyn starts a new party he'd better have some solid servers ready for those memberships, because thousands have been waiting a long time for it. #DoItJez
— Damien Willey #YourNHSneedsyou (@KernowDamo) January 9, 2022
I do have a doubt about the possible name: The Peace and Justice Party. The PJ Party? Won’t that lend itself to critics calling it the pyjama party? Or am I the only one who made that link?
Whatever the new organisation is called (if it comes about at all), This Writer certainly hopes Mr Corbyn enters into talks with the leaders of the other splinter parties that have broken off from Labour since Keir Starmer began his hugely destructive and divisive reign of terror there.
My understanding (from a dialogue with a representative) is that the Breakthrough Party is actively discussing an alliance with left-wing political parties, trade unions, campaigns and other movements to form an alliance.
I would certainly hope common ground could be reached with Chris Williamson’s Resist, that has also announced an intention to form a political party.
They wouldn’t have to merge, or lose any of their individuality – just find enough similarities to share a platform at election times.
They could brand themselves the Progressive Alliance; it would be the first time the title was used correctly.
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Boris Johnson: “Today I have mostly been combing my hair with a toffee apple and drinking Special Brew” (not This Writer’s comment but it seems to sum up his reaction to the loss of North Shropshire).
You’ve already read my opinion on the North Shropshire by-election (or you can if you click on this link), but that’s no reason not to have fun reading the many other comments that have sprung up since the result was announced!
I’ve enjoyed seeing people dissecting the Liberal Democrats…
Of course it's great that Johnson's been humiliated.
But the LibDems? They got into bed with Cameron, gave us austerity, betrayed their tuition fees pledge, supported bombing Libya, refused to work with Labour to stop a no deal Brexit… How many times will people fall for it? pic.twitter.com/aTmVdDqIEA
It seems only fair to remind people of what the Yellow Tories did with the Blue Tories – for five years between 2010 and 2015.
But that’s not to let Labour off the hook for its failure in the present day:
Driving away traditional Labour voters in the thousands with flags, fatherlandism, and insipid Thatcherite "trickle down" bollocks, in order to deliver "soft-Tories" into the hands of the Lib-Dems!
A disastrous result both for Johnson and Starmer in North Shropshire. Labour came 2nd in the last 3 general elections but has dropped back to 3rd place. Preventing the candidate who was runner up three times from standing was a huge mistake. It should have been a labour gain.
(Was the candidate the previous three times a socialist, by any chance?)
In North Shropshire Jeremy Corbyn's Labour received 17,287 votes (11.2% swing to Labour) in his first election campaign. Keir Starmer's Labour just polled 3686 votes – a 12.4% swing away from Labour. Even with tactical voting that's shocking (Starmer still campaigning last night)
Labour won just 3,686 votes in the North Shropshire by-election.
This is down from 12,495 votes in 2019.
The main story will obviously be a truly remarkable gain for the Lib Dems over the Tories, but you cannot underestimate just how shambolic this result is for Labour as well.
I would like to congratulate @Keir_Starmer for achieving the lowest Labour vote share in North Shropshire’s history. By some margin too, impressive.#NorthShropshire#StarmerOut
Keep this receipt handy if any Labour MPs start saying Labour was never going to win North Shropshire. The party was 2nd there twice under Corbyn. Anyone spinning this has some kind of tactical success for Labour doesn’t want Labour to win or is an idiot. pic.twitter.com/yuWLZGN9Tb
A Lib Dem win in North Shropshire should of course send shockwaves through this Tory government. Even worse than that it should ask questions of ‘Her Majesty’s Official Opposition’ why they have failed to make the ground? Time to start offering some opposition perhaps!
This morning’s timeline is definitive proof that for many Corbyn supporters, defeating the Conservatives comes a long way behind the real priority which is defeating Keir Starmer
For Corbyn supporters, the real priority has always been defeating the Conservatives. They were foiled in that aim by people who now support Starmer. And Starmer himself has proved unwilling to fight them; the North Shropshire result is a symptom of this.
So defeating the Conservatives requires Starmer to step aside – or be removed – and Labour to adjust its policies so they fall in line with what the majority of people actually want. Sadly those are long-term goals at the moment. It’s how Sir Keir and his supporters want it.
So it seems clear that Mr Corbyn, and his supporters, aren’t the problem. They never were. The problem is Starmer and his people. They are the Tory enablers.
It’s time people like Mr Hopkin, above, realised this – or accepted that they’re pushing a lie.
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It must take years – maybe decades – of practice to be this ignorant.
After Liberal Democrat Helen Morgan humiliated the Conservatives in one of their heartlands – North Shropshire, defeating their candidate with the seventh-biggest vote swing in by-election victory, Tory chairman Oliver Dowden appeared on the morning media round, telling us all that his party had heard voters’ message “loud and clear”.
He then demonstrated, loud and clear, that his party was ignoring the message of the by-election and would carry on as though nothing had happened.
According to the Mirror,
he claimed the circumstances were “unique” and Boris Johnson “has the vision to get us through this period. He added: “Voters are clearly fed up and they want us to get on with the job and focus on the job.”
Oh, really?
Be prepared for a massive push, speed up, to remove barriers to re-election. Voter suppression, end of FTA, boundary changes and harsh sentences for any sort of protest. Less comeback for individuals through neutered courts.
Co-chair of Tory Party, Oliver Dowden, rolling out line today that lesson from N Shropshire by-election is that voters want the Government to focus on getting the job done.
They’ve been in Government for 11 years. You’d think they would know that by now.
On BBC Breakfast, Dowden said, “Voters … were fed up with a byelection that was called because of sleaze allegations; they were fed up with all the sort of stories that are going on at the moment.”
I see Oliver Dowden suggests this is a one off because of sleaze. The thing is, Oliver, sleaze didn’t disappear with Owen Paterson. Sleaze pervades the Tory party from top to bottom.
Elsewhere, 78-year-old Tory veteran Sir Roger Gale told the BBC’s Today programme that Boris Johnson had taken “two strikes” this week, with his own party’s rebellion against him over new Covid-battling measures and the by-election: “One more strike and he’s out.”
He said: “The Conservative Party has a reputation for not taking prisoners. If the Prime Minister fails the Prime Minister goes.
“We got rid of a good Prime Minister to install Mr Johnson.” [If he really thinks that, then perhaps he should go, too. Theresa May was considered the worst British prime minister since Lord North.]
“Mr Johnson has to prove he’s capable of being a good Prime Minister, and at the moment it’s quite clear the public don’t think that’s the case.”
Clearly, even though he was taking a harder line, this MP was showing that he hasn’t got the message either.
Voters don’t want Boris Johnson to have another chance because they know he’ll only mess it up and create worse problems for us. We want him to go now.
On the social media, members of the public are sending messages to their Tory MPs, saying Johnson has done enough harm to the UK – after the by-election result was announced, they were being called “unforced errors”.
Certainly the scandals over his alleged Christmas parties, over his redecoration of the Downing Street flat he occupies, and over corruption (that led to the resignation of Owen Paterson and the calling of the North Shropshire election) were all such “unforced errors”.
And while Dowden was happy to trot out the sad old 2019 election line that Johnson managed to “get Brexit done”, we now know that his Brexit is a huge attack on our living standards that will reduce the UK economy by four per cent – double the effect of the Covid pandemic that caused whole industries to collapse overnight.
This Writer would certainly encourage anybody who’s had enough of Johnson to write to their MP – if that person is a Tory – and ask them to hand a letter of ‘no confidence’ in to the chair of the backbench 1922 Committee, who will call a vote on it if 54 such notes are received.
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Helen Morgan: the newly-elected Liberal Democrat MP for North Shropshire.
Liberal Democrat Helen Morgan has taken North Shropshire from the Conservatives in a shock by-election result that is a hammer-blow to Boris Johnson, asking serious questions about his right to continue as prime minister.
The Liberal Democrats turned a Conservative majority of almost 23,000 in the 2019 election into a majority for them of nearly 6,000.
That is a massive swing from the Tories to the Liberal Democrats – apparently the seventh-biggest in by-election history.
It was more than just another by-election – it was a referendum on the leadership of Boris Johnson, and the result was decisively against him.
Sure, turnout was down from the general election’s 67.9 per cent – but high for a by-election at 46.3 per cent.
Looking at both election results in terms of proportion of the electorate voting for the different parties – which is better when the number of people voting varies, in 2019 Conservative Owen Paterson won the support of 43 per cent of the electorate, while Labour had 15 per cent and Liberal Democrat Helen Morgan just 6.9 per cent.
Yesterday (December 16), the same Liberal Democrat candidate was supported by 22 per cent of the electorate, while the Tory candidate had 14.8 per cent. The Labour vote evaporated almost entirely, with that party’s candidate gaining just 4.5 per cent of the possible vote.
The Conservatives lost nearly 24,000 votes – 28.9 per cent of the possible electorate – in a stroke.
Ms Morgan gained many of those Tory voters, along with many Labour supporters who lent her their votes in order to send a clear message to Boris Johnson: “You are not wanted here.”
The winning candidate elaborated on this in her speech. She said Johnson was “no leader”, that his government is “run on lies and bluster” giving the UK a “nightly soap opera of calamity and chaos” and that, for him, “the party is over”.
But it seems clear that the party may also be over for Keir Starmer, over at Labour.
Starmer didn’t bother much with North Shropshire. He certainly didn’t put the campaigning effort into the constituency that the Lib Dems and the Tories did – possibly because he agreed that the Lib Dems stood a better chance of defeating the Tories (even though Labour came second in 2019).
He seems to agree with other parties an awful lot. This seems to be coming across to voters as a lack of confidence in his own party that is putting them off supporting it.
And the Liberal Democrats seem to have become the palatable alternative. They used to be considered the middle-of-the-road party for people who weren’t as right-wing as the Tories or as left-wing as Labour; now it seems they’re the opposition to two right-wing parties that are suddenly finding they can’t take their tribal voters for granted any more.
I don’t think the Liberal Democrats are going to jump to over-optimistic conclusions about this result; they know this was a protest vote that may not be replicated in a general election unless their new MP makes a big impact, standing up for her constituency in Parliament.
But both Labour and the Conservatives have to be scared by this result because it means the public don’t like the direction taken by either main party.
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This is what you get if you vote Tory: Boris Johnson partied it up (he’s seen here asking Christmas Quiz questions for groups of Downing Street workers at a Christmas party last year) while millions of people cancelled their own celebrations and hundreds more died alone because of his social distancing demands. Do the people of North Shropshire want another party boy, or would they rather try to have an MP who actually represents them?
Does Westminster really need another rule-breaking Tory who’ll rave it up at parties rather than work for the interests of everybody in the UK?
That’s the question that should be on the minds of every voter in North Shropshire as they head for the polling stations today (Thursday, December 16, 2021).
The Conservative candidate may have said he does not approve of what is alleged to have happened – but then, Boris johnson said last night that he follows the rules, and if you believe that, then you were born yesterday and shouldn’t be allowed to vote!
Some political agitators are claiming that the Tories who are already in Parliament aren’t guilty of committing crimes because the Metropolitan Police, run by a woman who owes her job to the Tory government, are refusing to investigate the rule-busting Christmas parties last year.
Well, workers at the Met had a bit of a surprise recently, when a mobile billboard used by the media organisation Led By Donkeys broadcast the facts of the case at them in their Scotland Yard offices, to great public interest.
Take a look at the message yourself:
Damning – of both the Met and the Tories.
Do the people of North Shropshire want a member of Parliament who will represent them? Or do they want to send another sponger off to have a party while hundreds of people die?
Owen Paterson and the reason he resigned: his second job for a pharmaceutical firm prejudiced his behaviour as an MP – and that’s not allowed.
It seems the Liberal Democrats are polling neck-and-neck with the Conservatives to win North Shropshire in this week’s by-election, that was triggered by the resignation of Owen Paterson.
Good luck to them – they’ve put the effort in, which is more than Labour seems to have done.
This Writer’s Twitter feed has been full of Liberal Democrat promotion, and party leaders have been seen in the constituency regularly.
Labour’s candidate seems to have been abandoned by his party’s leadership, despite the fact that Labour polled second in the 2019 general election and could probably have taken the constituency if Keir Starmer had a clue.
He doesn’t, though. He has a haircut and a focus group, and that’s all.
Personally, if This Writer lived in North Shropshire, I still wouldn’t be able to vote for the Liberal Democrats. The memory of 2010-15 is far too vivid for that. If not for the Liberal Democrats, the UK would not be in the state it’s in now.
The vote tomorrow (December 16) won’t be about the Lib Dems or Labour, though.
It will be a referendum on Boris Johnson, his Christmas parties last year, and his disastrous last-minute-scramble Covid-19 ideas.
If enough people in North Shropshire are happy to be governed by an incompetent and corrupt liar then they’ll have another Tory MP.
If not, they’ll just have a Tory dressed up in another colour. Hobson’s choice!
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Public opinion is swinging wildly against Boris Johnson over the allegations that a huge Christmas party was held in 10 Downing Street last December. But how far does it have to swing before his Tory colleagues stab him in the back and find another leader?
We all know what’s happened by now: a video clip has been made public, showing Downing Street staff laughing about a party at Downing Street on December 18, 2020, and discussing how to lie about it if questions are ever asked.
The revelation that government officials, and possibly ministers, were whooping it up at a time when the rest of London was in Tier 3 lockdown and people were dying alone because of social distancing restrictions they had helped impose, has provoked a wide variety of responses.
Some have been humorous (be warned that the first clip includes part of the Wham! track Last Christmas, so if you’re playing Whamageddon you may not wish to hear it. The second clip is also based on that track but isn’t the track itself so you should be okay):
Let me get this right. The Cabinet Secretary is going to investigate a party which didn't happen, but which he attended. He will then take his findings to Spaffer, who will decide whether to take the report to the Met – who have already decided not to investigate!!!😂😂
— Sarah Pegg🏴#RepublicofScotland (@sarahpegg9) December 8, 2021
If you’ve got the power to check security tapes and visitor logs
Funny how the media can find Matt Hancock having a fumble in a locked room, yet 50 people can have a party in actual 10 Downing St and not a single lobby journalist hears about it for a year.
John Bercow – "I'm sorry to say it, but I've known 12 Prime Minister's in my lifetime & by a country mile Boris Johnson is the worst… this guy stinks in the nostrils of decent people" #GMBpic.twitter.com/V2PIUAVF6M
This is a reversal of the usual situation, which puts the Tories on around 40 per cent and Labour in the low 30s. Keir Starmer has certainly done nothing to make this happen so the responsibility lies entirely with Johnson.
And with the media full of people in North Shropshire telling us how they’re planning to turn their back on the Conservative by-election candidate because of Johnson, it may be only a matter of days before Tory MPs decide to ditch him.
It’s what they always do, when a leader becomes a liability. And there’s ample evidence that that is what he has become.
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Pack your bags, Johnson: with Tories lining up to stab him in the back, it would be prudent for the prime minister (for now) to be ready to move out of Downing Street. And he definitely shouldn’t have any parties there before going.
If there’s one thing the Tories hate, it’s a leader who becomes a liability.
Edward Heath discovered that to his cost when Margaret Thatcher stabbed him in the back.
Thatcher herself had the same treatment a decade and a half later.
Theresa May stepped down amid a clamour for her to do so, having failed to convince the nation about Brexit.
And now the knives are out for Boris Johnson – and he well deserves them!
Johnson is facing public calls for his resignation after it was revealed that a packed Christmas party took place at 10 Downing Street on December 18, 2020, when London was in Tier 3 Covid-19 restrictions and around 500 people died, forcibly separated from their loved ones.
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan summed up public feeling very well during Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday (December 8):
Prominent among Johnson’s detractors is Dominic Grieve, a former Attorney-General who was ejected from the Conservative Party for daring to criticise Johnson’s Brexit plans in 2019. Two and a half years later we can all see that Grieve, and the score of Tories who went with him, was right.
See if you don’t think he’s right about this, too, from a BBC interview yesterday. The clips overlap a little but they present his view very well:
Former Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, throws shade on Boris Johnson, exposes his weasel words and truth twisting and calls him "a consummate liar" "a serial liar who will say anything that comes into his head to get him off the hook". pic.twitter.com/uSX3AaqQcA
Tory peer and former Conservative chair Baroness Sayeeda Warsi demanded the resignations of everybody who took part in the party – in any small way, including the cover-up:
Those that make the law must obey the law. If consequences do not follow a breach of the law by law makers we send a green light to the public that laws and rules don’t matter. This is dangerous territory for us as a nation.#theruleoflaw#downingstreetpartyhttps://t.co/WgR6v2g62q
Her words, “If consequences do not follow a breach of the law by law makers we send a green light to the public that laws and rules don’t matter,” are particularly pertinent after Johnson tried to distract us all away from the Downing Street party with new rules on Covid-19.
As This Site pointed out yesterday, people are unlikely to pay attention to any new rules that don’t suit them – and defend themselves by saying they’re following the prime minister’s example.
Former Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson has also gone public with her anger – and she hasn’t been forced out of the party:
And today's "we'll investigate what we've spent a week saying didn't happen and discipline staff for rules we continue to say weren't broken" was pathetic. As a Tory, I was brought up to believe in playing with a straight bat. Believe me, colleagues are furious at this, too. 2/2
Sir Roger Gale, MP for North Thanet in Kent, told BBC Radio 4’s The World At One, “It’s worrying, isn’t it, that the man at the top of the tree doesn’t appear to know what’s going on in his own building two floors below him – I find that of concern.
“I don’t find it particularly attractive that the Prime Minister doesn’t know what’s going on in No 10 Downing Street, or doesn’t ask the right questions of his senior staff to find out what’s been going on in Downing Street, if something wrong has been going on. That’s worrying in itself.”
It indicates that he knew perfectly well what was going on but wanted to give himself at least a veneer of innocence. Well, we all know how that has turned out for him!
Duncan Baker, MP for North Norfolk, said leaked footage of Downing Street staff joking about how to cover up the party having taken place gave him great concern: “It signals such an utter lack of responsibility, whilst people throughout the country were abiding by the rules and sacrificing so much.
“There has been no proper explanation, or any effort to show understanding to how this sort of behaviour lacks empathy to how many people feel.”
Newton Abbot MP Anne Marie Morris, herself no stranger to controversy after she used racist language to discuss Brexit, tweeted: “Clearly there were rules in place that most of us were diligently following (despite how difficult they were) and they decided to break them. It’s not on and, at the very least, they should admit their blatant error and apologise for breaking the rules they imposed on society.”
Others are more cagey about being identified, but are still being reported. The following comments are from this Guardian article, for example.
“I’m blowed if I’m ever listening to No 10 on comms strategy again,” one cabinet minister said.
“My views aren’t fit for broadcast, so I will just refuse,” an ex-minister added.
Johnson’s “unreserved apology” was met with near silence. “It was lies. No one believed him. Ministers didn’t believe him. They weren’t even nodding,” the former minister said. “This is not how you do an apology. We are constantly misled – and we were still in limbo about new Covid restrictions. This would never have happened under [Theresa] May and [David] Cameron.”
The Scottish Tory leader, Douglas Ross… said [Johnson] should resign if he misled MPs. “If the prime minister knew about this party last December, knew about this party last week, and was still denying it, then that is the most serious allegation.
“There is absolutely no way you can mislead parliament and think you could get off with that. No one should continue in their post if they mislead parliament in that way.”
Reality check: we know that Johnson has been misleading Parliament since he became prime minister, if not for many years previously. Veteran columnist Peter Oborne once said he had counted 400 direct lies to Parliament in the early months of the current Parliament.
It seems this will all come to a head in North Shropshire.
The Conservatives will be defending the Parliamentary seat there next week in a by-election triggered by the corruption-related resignation of Owen Paterson last month, and even senior Tories are sharpening their knives in anticipation of the loss of what should be a safe seat.
Many Tories, including cabinet ministers, have indicated that they do not intend to help campaigning efforts in North Shropshire.
On Wednesday, the Lib Dems created a campaign leaflet contrasting a crying elderly woman last Christmas with Johnson surrounded by festive drinks. “We’re going to lose North Shropshire and it’ll all be his fault,” [a senior Tory] MP said.
Most MPs believe few have as yet submitted letters of no confidence, but said the balance could tip if the election is lost. “In the new year, minds will focus on the next election – especially those who think he won them in his seats. And they will think about whether he is the right person to take us into the next election,” one said. “Things could start to move quite quickly.”
“In the new year”?
The way things are moving now, Johnson could be out before Christmas. And it won’t be a moment too soon.
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… but it turns out he has been making similar comments in public since at least 1987, according to The Independent.
The newspaper has listed sexist, racist and homophobic comments from 1987 and 1993 – all of which should have disqualified him from ever being considered a suitable candidate for a Parliamentary seat.
He was elected into Parliament in 2005. Presumably some Tory sponsor thought he had lived down his words after 12 years. Little did they know what would happen 12 years later… or, indeed, now.
And what has happened now?
Well, we’ve found out what he said all those years ago. Probably the most offensive part – to the most people – is the classist statements (below):
Michael Gove celebrates 'stamping on toothless face of northerners' in resurfaced speech pic.twitter.com/ANWGBPydYT
Yes – it’s worse than the sexism and racism because the North will hate being pigeonholed so offensively and the South will hate being assumed to hate the North.
At the very least, it’s not good for sales.
The real question about this scandal is what Boris Johnson will do about it.
Gove is currently Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, which doesn’t mean a lot. But he’s tipped to become either Foreign or Home Secretary in a mooted Cabinet reshuffle.
If Johnson goes through with the alleged plan to give Gove a more high-profile job, after these revelations came to light, he’ll upset millions of people…
… and show that he couldn’t care less about the feelings of the “happy” South (ha ha) or the “cruel, dirty, toothless” North. Electoral suicide.
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Jake Berry: he thinks art is for cultured southerners, while northerners consider their culture to be football.
Jake Berry may have an ordinary-sounding name but he’s as entitled – and dim-witted – as all the other Tory toffs.
He recently exhibited his staggering Tory ignorance while actually trying to do something decent – appealing for government cash to help northern football clubs.
The trouble was not in the intention, but in the delivery of the appeal. He suggested that people in the south of England consider the Royal Opera House and the ballet to be “at the heart of their culture”, while those in the north consider their culture to be housed in their local football stadia.
He could not see how insulting this is.
He was basically saying that northerners are uncultured louts whose principle joy in life is seeing a leather bladder being kicked around a field on a Saturday afternoon, whereas southerners are refined, and are therefore able to appreciate exclusive art forms like music and ballet.
A put-down was in order – and has been duly delivered:
Yes. As a person who lives in the South, I can confirm this. Many of us actually live inside opera houses and communicate solely in the form of arias and recitative. Swarms of ballerinas are a daily menace on the streets, and we're warned never to feed them. https://t.co/4zMT7jRdvb
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