I don't do these things for the sake of tittle-tattle. What worries me is that the corruption of Johnson and others is so pernicious that the underpinnings of confidence in the state are being destroyed, as I am quite sure is their aim.
The question to be asked is how can that confidence be restored, most especially when we have an electoral system which is designed to not represent the opinions of most people within the UK or any country within it?
I know the SNP answer.
I know too the LibDem and Green answer.
I also know what Plaid Cymru have to say.
But hat of Labour? What are they going to say?
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I saw 80 % of Labour Constituency parties were in favour but the trade union vote stopped it being adopted.
Not knowing the internal workings of the party, I wonder how far the TU leadership is responsive to the wider membership.
It seems some still think Labour could win by itself. I think it is doubtful. I also see a growing desire for some sort of deal with the other parties. The result of PR would be that the Tories would never again rule by themselves, but, if course, neither would Labour.
Look.
We all know that the Labour leader is a Knight of the Realm. I mean ‘Who’s your Daddy’ right? He’s not going to upset those who made him.
There has always been an element of Establishment approval of a Labour government when we’ve had one.
Now the Establishment definitely don’t want one and will fight to keep the Tories in for as long as possible – 2008 and all that.
Starmer and his acolytes are fooling themselves if they think a tepid response from Labour will get them in with who really runs this country.
They need to fight harder and with new ideas because from what I’ve seen of Rachael Reeve’s response to the cost of living crisis, they have none. Zilch. Nada.
Come on, PSG – whatever you think of the Keir Starmer as leader of the Labour party (personally I remain on the fence on that), you are being very unfair on him. As I’m sure you know, he is not a hereditary peer – his ‘Daddy’ was a toolmaker and his mother a nurse and he attended a state grammar school. And, as long as the House of Lords exists, thank goodness there are some Labour peers.
I have to support Anrigourt above in his/her defence of Starmer. I had a little friendly exchange with PSR over this issue of Starmer’s title in a previous thread and my comments there warrant repetition here.
The notion that someone who receives an honour for notable achievements in public service, automatically rejects their past and signs up, thereupon, as an establishment stooge (i.e. either an overt or a closet Tory) is, in my opinion, unsustainable.
Furthermore, growing up in a place like Oxted, and having been prepared to become a Labour activist as a teenager, must have taken ‘some bottle’ and I suspect the frustration of having his vote count for nothing, under FPTP, in a safe Tory seat, will not have been lost on him either.
I am one of those who was instrumental in getting my local CLP to support the PR initiative at Conference in September (where 80% voted in favour) and I am fairly confident we will get there at the next push. I do not by any means see Starmer as an impediment to that objective but there is work to be done in winning over a couple of the bigger unions, especially those who abstained last year, so that they are on board at the next stage.
Labour will say – look at us, we’re the only realistic alternative, we’re ahead in the polls, we’re not as corrupt as them. That’s what the leadership will say and do absolutely nothing new.
It will need constituency level cooperation to persuade people to vote ABC which would deliver a hung parliament with Labour as the largest party. Then we might get some real action on PR, although each party has its own preferred option for PR that boosts the party rather than seeks real representation. FWIW I favour multiple candidate constituencies.
Just maybe, if started now, enough inter-party constituency level cooperation will scare Labour into talks before an election.
Only with a government elected by PR is there even a chance of returning confidence in the unelected powers that the Tories have so corrupted. Otherwise its a swap of our placemen for yours.
Compass, which I’m a member of Richard, is trying to do just that. They’re working on co-operation between progressive parties including a campaign called ‘Only Stand to Win’ which will change the ludicrous labour party rule that means they put up candidates in every seat, which splits the anti Tory vote and wastes resources that should be targeted on seats Labour can win from the Tories.
There are members of Compass in the Greens, Labour and lib Dems,working at grass roots level on a progressive alliance. Whether Labour can finally realise its the 21st century and FPTP should be confined to the dustbin of history remains to be seen. At least we’re trying.
I have known Compass for a long time and support them, although not a member because I need to avoid political association. Neal is an old friend.
Following the latest, scarcely surprising revelations (like an effcient, well-oiled, drip-fed Cummings election campaign(!)). It is worth reminding ourselves what is actually happening.
The world (including the Met) is waiting for the ‘Sue Gray’ report; which was set up to appear to be a judicial, independent review of the “facts”. For the avoidance of doubt, it is not a judicial review, it has no legal standing, it isn’t independent and of itself it decides precisely nothing. The whole thing is a political contraption, a trompe-l’œil; Sue Gray’s undoubted ‘integrity’ is not the point; she is being used. The Civil Service has been placed in an invidious position, deliberately as a cynical ploy by Government, to give the PM time and some kind of cover to hide from scrutiny; in the hope something turns up. The investigation is a misuse of the Civil Service (investigating both itself and the Government in what is unquestionably, solely a matter for the political domain). The investigation of a PM using this bizarre device is a constitutional outrage; a scandal in itself. To whom is Sue Gray reporting? To the person in charge – the PM? It is a circular firing squad, firing blanks, issued by the Cabinet.
The PM can answer all the most critical questions, for himself without aid – because the buck stops with him for the whole Downing Street operation. Period; that is how it works. It doesn’t work now, of a sudden, only because an 80-seat majority Conservative Party was simply unable to do ‘the decent thing’, even when they know the game is up with the electorate. They can’t take it. This isn’t politics. It isn’t even ‘Lord Jim’. It is now pure farce.
The farce is not even the responsibility of the PM; at least ultimately. It is in the end, the responsibility of the Conservative Party – alone. Suddenly, the denizons of the Conservative Party bilges are only now deserting the sinking ship; itself an unedifying spectacle; but none of them, including Douglas Ross escapes censure – because they chose Boris Johnson, they followed him, they indulged him, they ignored the scandals, they brushed aside the protests; and backed a man whose notorious reputation (including high profile sackings) went before him. The Conservative Party didn’t care. It cares now, but ony because the PM has been found out – which was inevitable – and they can’t kick it into the long grass. The Conservative Party is even now attempting to rewrite a disatrous Conservative government failure over Covid as the Great Boris Legacy (175,000 deaths [excess deaths stats], £37Bn Test and Trace disaster, ignoring pandemic planning, ‘eat-out-to-help-out’, late lockdown errors, the PPE scandal, the run down of Public Health services to destruction, low NHS resilience through austerity, the Operation Cygnus fiasco, and on and on and on); as a great and exclusive British Boris triumph because science and technology bailes the Government out (a great deal of it foreign). More blowhard farce from the Conservative Party.
The utter failure of basic, fundamental, obvious, human judgement of almost all the Conservative MPs, and vast swathes of the membership merely reminds us that it isn’t just Boris Johnson alone who is unfit for office; but the Government, the wretched cadre of MPs he nurtured, and indeed the Conservative Party itself. Period. The Conservative Party’s real nature has been revealed, and there is a comic absurdity in the attempts of Cabinet and MPs to cover its retreat (in which Jacob Rees-Mogg manages to reveal, only that he is still a child); if it was all in the least funny it still wouldn’t be funny. It is extraordinary that the Conservative Party’s lack of values or self-knowledge should be hallmarked by the one picture of their behaviour that will I promise haunt them, through the revulsion of their own elderly, grassroots membership: who will not soon forget the image of the Queen sitting alone at the funeral of her husband, while fetid Conservative idealogues and their dismal apparatchiks partied through the night in Downing Street; because in that image the Queen represented the feelings and the loneliness of ordinary people who suffered stoically, for the greater good, through the pandemic.
Sue Grey has an interesting past. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33431580
Not good, is it?
Andrew, your article on Sue Gray published by the BBC in 2015, seems to indicate that she may be trained by the MI5, if she is not a paid member of that policing organisation.
She clearly performs an important role which helps to undermine Government transparency and therefore Democracy.
The essential point here is not Sue Grey but that the Sue Grey investigation is solely a smokescreen ; purchasing time. It has no other purpose. Notice that the investigation does not appear to have turned up a single new ‘party’ to investigate; through its interrogatory powers, but simply reacts to the latest revelations in the media. That tells you all you need to know about the functional operation of this ‘investigation’.
The purpose of the Sue Grey investigation is not even to protect Boris Johnson (from the Conservative Party prespective, at the touch, he is just collateral damage, and so be it); the Sue Grey investigation is there to deflect focus and attention away from the culprit: the Conservative Party and the Conservative Government. The Conservatives will be thrilled if attention is turned to Sue Grey; because they know, that in Civil Service terms, like a Black Hole she sheds no light. Presumably that is why she was chosen.
Well said
In illustration, Andrew Bridgen MP, a leading ERG spokesman has continued, in the grand tradition of the Conservative Party’s long established, ‘sauve qui peut’ crisis strategy, suddenly calling for the PM’s resignation by arguing that Johnson: “needs to take responsibility and do the honourable thing and call it a day – for the country, the government and the Conservative Party.” The list is the wrong way round, but he would write it that way, only because for a Conservative, the Country IS the Conservate Party. If the country was more than an afterthought in this list, he would never have supported Johnson; but what really mattered to him is not the ‘country’, or ‘standards’, or what reasonable people believe to be the essence of ‘integrity’; but the ERG obsession with the disaster of Brexit, anti-EU xenophobia and neoliberal, fantasy-economics ideology.
John Warren,
Thank you for your posts. Very persuasive to my way of thinking and interesting about Sue Grey – I was always a bit suspicious of the universal touting of her vaunted integrity.
I fear the policy of BJ and his allies and of those in the conservative party who just don’t want to switch to a new leader now (no surprise there) will be to tough or bluff it out, and we must prepare for a series of dead cats to please the partisan, of which the first seems to be the announcement about the BBC licence fee.
Re Labour, PR and cooperation.
My understanding of the 2021 conference decision ( from attending conference ) is that a section of the unison delegation went against the agreed position of the delegation, and voted against PR, having met with Starmer the week before….
All Labour members I know and have discussed PR with, want PR. Many want to liaise with other parties and see the sense of ABC … ( anyone but cons) … but our rules subject us to suspension from the party, if we cooperate with other parties, support non labour candidates. Another difficulty is the long-standing reputation of the Lib Dem’s to not keep their word / be yellow Tories / and locally the Greens have followed the Lid Dems in using dodgy graphs about local voting…. So, whilst personally I wish to cooperate locally, other members definitely would not and ultimately the go ahead has to come from the top of Labour.
Do you have proof of a Green dodgy graph? Please give some details.
I should have – will look for it … we had correspondence from the local Green Party on the matter.
Sue, it’s encouraging to hear that all the people you’ve spoken to want PR, but infuriating to hear of Unison delegates voting against the agreed position of their own delegation, possibly in cahoots with Starmer. How is that any better behaviour than LD’s not keeping their words over something?
Given all the advantages the right have in England politically, it is absolutely vital that progressive parties co-operate to oppose them and, if elected, get rid of the grossly unfair FPTP and replace it with some form of PR.
Johnson will be gone before the next election, so Labour’s current poll advantage is illusory. The labour party needs to realise this, and so, by the sound of it, do some Labour members.
Yes, it was sickening for many activists, I agree with you!
I have said this before so no surprises from me, the electoral system can’t change endemic corruption which is part of the support system of Neo-Liberal power.
If you really are offended by corruption, call it out every time you witness it, and explain why supporting corruption by voting for Neo-Liberal politicians, sustains it.
The answer won’t come from the current leadership of the Labour Party, because they aren’t Labour, they are Neo-Liberal just like the Libdems and Tories, in other words, they are all in it together.
Back to Partygate. I just wish every journalist who interviews a Conservative MP would ask them when they were aware of what was rumoured to be going on. Those who claimed to have known nothing might be forced to resort to gibberish or offer a hostage to fortune. Johnson will be disposable whenever it suits, but it is the dishonesty of his party that needs to be shown up.
Just wondering. Did Sue Gray know nothing about the parties in Downing Street? Would she not at least have heard rumours? If she had, as a former ethics advisor, what would she have been expected to do?
Oliver Dowden said this morning that Johnson is determined to change the culture of Downing Street after the Sue Gray report is released. Not quite sure who is the bigger charlatan.
He looked like a scared rat
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/partygate-investigator-helped-shield-no10-from-scrutiny-over-grenfell/
Haven’t noticed this in the MSM. Has anyone seen anything about it in any newspapers?
It needs to get out to stop the idea that Sue Gray is ethical.
Dowden begged the questions he was asked. The Sue Grey investigation was and is irrelevant; see comments above, and the fact that it all must come back to Parliament for decision anyway. It need never have left. This is a political situation where the Civil Service and the Met fear to tread; it is too near dangerous boundaries of constitutional propriety. Grey was unnecessary (and should never have been given the task. That it was is itself a scandal). We already know enough to draw the approriate conclusions about where responsibility for the indefensible behaviour rests, all we need to know is that the PM actually answers questions in Parlaiment with straightforward candour. There is your problem. Nowhere else.
To whom will Sue Grey report? The PM. The whole thing is a concoction rustled up by the Conservative Party, and it is actually a scandal that it is trying to palm this farce off on the public, when Sue Grey is merely being used in order to excuse the Conservative MPs from being placed in the position of sacking their own PM, on the basis of their own judgement. If they don’t possess it, they shoudn’t be there. The excuse is a charade; it is there to provide them with cover that – ludicrously – they are in no better position to know what is going on, than the public. They are either taking the government’s shilling, or supporting the Government in Parliament; if they do not know what is going on they should know, or they are all too craven or too incompetent to know, then they are not fit to represent anyone in Parliament. Any way you look at it, they are all acting shabbily toward the public, who can see right through the Conservative Party; which is clealry full of hollow men and women.
Agreed
That she took on the job worries me
There are some comments above about what happened at LP Conference in September. I think
If you check you will find that Unison did not vote against PR. They abstained on the grounds that they had no official policy on the issue since they had not debated it.