For Lauren Townsend, becoming an MP was an obvious choice. Born in Milton Keynes to a working-class family, she has lived in the city all her life, working in a variety of jobs, including as a waitress for TGI Friday where she led a campaign for fair tips for restaurant staff. In 2019, Townsend was elected as a local councillor, and later became a council cabinet member. In October, she applied to be Labour candidate in the seat of Milton Keynes North — and that’s when her party career came to an abrupt end.
The opinion polls suggest Keir Starmer is heading for a majority at the next election, with a Labour victory in Milton Keynes North. Given the party only has 202 seats, securing a majority will require the biggest influx of new Labour MPs since 1945 — roughly 140 new MPs to get up to the 340 mark, which would entail a majority of about 30. Add to this the usual “retirements” — perhaps 40-50 existing MPs — and the current selection processes taking part across the country will determine not just the texture of Starmer’s forces in the Commons, but also the pool of MPs from whom his ministers would be appointed.
Starmer’s team knows this, and is quietly managing the process in minute detail. This battle is being overseen by Labour’s election campaign director Morgan McSweeney, who worked on Starmer’s leadership campaign and was briefly his chief-of-staff. McSweeney “doesn’t have room for compromise with the hard Left”, says his friend Nick Forbes, a former leader of Newcastle City Council. “He thinks they need to be eradicated from the party because they are so dangerous.” This ruthlessness now underscores every Labour selection process, as Lauren Townsend discovered last month.
Townsend was backed by six major trades unions, which would normally have guaranteed her a place on the long-list. But Labour’s National Executive Committee panel blocked her. Among the reasons given was that Townsend had “liked” a tweet by Nicola Sturgeon in 2021 in which the Scottish First Minister announced a Covid test she had taken was negative. Her offence, it seems, was “supporting other parties”. Townsend was also accused of being involved with the Green New Deal campaign, whose policies go further than Labour’s official Green New Deal. “I feel gutted,” Townsend said after she was blocked, “not just for me but for what this says to the wider membership of our party and especially to other young women and/or mothers who desperately want to get more involved in politics, but find it an impossible and somewhat intimidating prospect”.
Bigger names than Townsend have been purged too. Lisa Forbes, who was MP for Peterborough until she was unseated in 2019, was kept off the long-list this time round. Emma Dent-Coad, another prominent Left-winger who was MP for Kensington from 2017 to 2019, was also kept off the long-list for her old seat, despite building a formidable reputation for her response to the Grenfell fire tragedy in her constituency just after she was elected.
Meanwhile, Labour’s Candidates Team is busy working in the background, deciding seat-by-seat who they do want. They have to operate surreptitiously, as local parties guard their independence and do not like to be pushed around. Nor does it do a candidate any good to be known as the choice of the Leader of the Opposition’s Office — the LOTO contender. But in most selections, it doesn’t take much to work out who LOTO is backing.
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SubscribeGood. It’s one thing when they’re just the opposition but with a near 100% chance that Labour will win the next election now is not the time to be pandering to the fanatics. Labour already have a bunch of utter clowns as MPs, they don’t need any more of them.
It’s baffling how you can acknowledge the need for “experts on the economy, foreign policy and defence” and then think the solution to that would be more left MPs, rather than less. You only have to listen to any of the existing left Labour MPs to realise they’re dangerously detached from reality on all three of those issues.
It’s not just that Labour MPs should be centrist and left wing, it’s that they shouldn’t all be former councillors who went to Oxbridge who have never actually worked a proper job all their life
They need people who will get elected… I left the Labour Party when Tony Blair and his cronies took power and drove the centrist agenda rather than the socialist agenda that grass roots members supported. Nothing much has changed. I won’t vote Labour outside Scotland because of the politics of the leader which is more right wing than some Tories. If you only put forward middle class university educated people, they won’t get votes from the people they profess to care about and we will have another Tory government at the next election.
There hasn’t been a Tory government since
Mrs Thatcher.
Bizarre. 8 people have linked this comment. Do you deny Churchill was a Tory too? After all he was pro Europe?
Everyone is Pro Europe.
The EU is not Europe, just as the
Democratic National Committee
is not America.
You are getting confused.
Churchill never proposed that Britain should join a shady outfit like the EU.
Don’t try and rewrite history.
I can easily drag up Churchill’s quotations
regarding Europe and the open sea.
Most people would understand what I am referring to.
Dear oh dear, you know the Right’s in trouble when they start pinning for dear old Winnie. Of course forgetting he only became PM in May 40 because of the Labour party, and as soon as VE over public dumped him spectacularly. They knew something many forgotten.
May 40 he deserves eternal respect but the hagiography about the rest is missplaced.
..but a few might realise you’re being very selective and a tad distorted in your views!
Dear oh dear, you know the Right’s in trouble when they start pinning for dear old Winnie. Of course forgetting he only became PM in May 40 because of the Labour party, and as soon as VE over public dumped him spectacularly. They knew something many forgotten.
May 40 he deserves eternal respect but the hagiography about the rest is missplaced.
..but a few might realise you’re being very selective and a tad distorted in your views!
Churchill was ‘pro-Europe’ for nations on the Continent not GB, as I am sure you are aware.
No, but he was, by his OWN admission virtually educationally sub-normal.
Harrow Entrance Exam: Zero.
No possibility of Oxbridge, like his father, even with the possibility of colossal nepotism from the Marlborough gang.
Three attempts to get into the Army, then only at the bottom of the list, and thus the ‘people’s cavalry’.
However he did have other talents, but a Tory? Who knows he was a Liberal when it suited him, let us NOT forget.
Churchill was merely a late developer. If you think he was a dullard, I suggest you read some of his prodigious output of history, journalism, biography and memoir. I doubt even Thatcher had a greater intellect than WSC. With the possible exception of DLG, I doubt any Prime Minister of the past 120 years has had as fine and powerful a mind as Churchill.
What that charlatan DLG? You must joking Mr Joy!
Give me WEG any day.
As for WSC, a fine journalist I’ll grant you but otherwise ‘intellectually challenged’ as his CIGS Alan Brooke made quite clear.
However fiscally hopeless, his private life being continually on the cusp of bankruptcy, and thus he bankrupted the rest of us!
And for what?
Or did they not teach you that at Pirbright/Mons/ Sandhurst? Or wherever?
At least DLG s family are nice unlike WSC!
Yes indeed.
BTW did you ever come across a Mr Joy during your time in the Household Division?
I had the privilege of seeing Joy Division live, at a Rock Against Racism gig in the Rainbow in Finsbury Park a few weeks before Ian Curtis’s tragic demise.
I had the privilege of seeing Joy Division live, at a Rock Against Racism gig in the Rainbow in Finsbury Park a few weeks before Ian Curtis’s tragic demise.
Yes indeed.
BTW did you ever come across a Mr Joy during your time in the Household Division?
At least DLG s family are nice unlike WSC!
What that charlatan DLG? You must joking Mr Joy!
Give me WEG any day.
As for WSC, a fine journalist I’ll grant you but otherwise ‘intellectually challenged’ as his CIGS Alan Brooke made quite clear.
However fiscally hopeless, his private life being continually on the cusp of bankruptcy, and thus he bankrupted the rest of us!
And for what?
Or did they not teach you that at Pirbright/Mons/ Sandhurst? Or wherever?
Churchill was merely a late developer. If you think he was a dullard, I suggest you read some of his prodigious output of history, journalism, biography and memoir. I doubt even Thatcher had a greater intellect than WSC. With the possible exception of DLG, I doubt any Prime Minister of the past 120 years has had as fine and powerful a mind as Churchill.
I think Churchill may have been a Liberal for most of his career.
Everyone is Pro Europe.
The EU is not Europe, just as the
Democratic National Committee
is not America.
You are getting confused.
Churchill never proposed that Britain should join a shady outfit like the EU.
Don’t try and rewrite history.
I can easily drag up Churchill’s quotations
regarding Europe and the open sea.
Most people would understand what I am referring to.
Churchill was ‘pro-Europe’ for nations on the Continent not GB, as I am sure you are aware.
No, but he was, by his OWN admission virtually educationally sub-normal.
Harrow Entrance Exam: Zero.
No possibility of Oxbridge, like his father, even with the possibility of colossal nepotism from the Marlborough gang.
Three attempts to get into the Army, then only at the bottom of the list, and thus the ‘people’s cavalry’.
However he did have other talents, but a Tory? Who knows he was a Liberal when it suited him, let us NOT forget.
I think Churchill may have been a Liberal for most of his career.
Surely the term ‘authoritarian’ is a more accurate term for a Thatcherite govt.? After all, the word ‘conservative’ means conserving current policies/systems/laws etc.? Surely Maghie did the exact opposite, ripping up all such things rarher than conserving them? Or is the worderely a fig leaf for brutal class war?
Bizarre. 8 people have linked this comment. Do you deny Churchill was a Tory too? After all he was pro Europe?
Surely the term ‘authoritarian’ is a more accurate term for a Thatcherite govt.? After all, the word ‘conservative’ means conserving current policies/systems/laws etc.? Surely Maghie did the exact opposite, ripping up all such things rarher than conserving them? Or is the worderely a fig leaf for brutal class war?
The modern Labour Party is largely indifferent to the concerns of the working class. It has abandoned its roots in favour of the priorities of the metropolitan elite.
There hasn’t been a Tory government since
Mrs Thatcher.
The modern Labour Party is largely indifferent to the concerns of the working class. It has abandoned its roots in favour of the priorities of the metropolitan elite.
He has a point though. Labour was supposed to represent the lower classes. The metropolitan luvvies should go elsewhere.
Since when have Labour represented the lower classes ?
People like Starmer only encounter such people on window cleaning day.
I vaguely remember, back in the mist of time, when it had some real people in its ranks.
It did and and may have one or two even now.
Kate Honey was one and Graham Stringer is still hanging in there.
Stringer is the only Labour MP with a STEM degree as far as I know.
It did and and may have one or two even now.
Kate Honey was one and Graham Stringer is still hanging in there.
Stringer is the only Labour MP with a STEM degree as far as I know.
You seem not aware that Starmer comes from an ordinary working class background himself. he may not be now of course. And Labour always represented ordinary people, if not well at times. Most of the legislation to the benefit of the ‘lower classes’ of the last 100 years has been from Labour.
I don’t care about Starmer’s class,
race or background.
This intersectionality B/S pushed by the Left
is what is so destructive.
But the problem is, it’s not just ‘the Left’ that is pushing it: it’s the whole State-Establishment Blob, from Chief Constables right through to the Archbishop of Canterbury numerous ‘Conservative’ MPs and even senior military staff and the Permanent Secretary at the MoD. This is no longer just the province of smelly, donkey-jacketed Trots and weirdo academics. It has become the new puritan religion of the whole Anglosphere establishment.
But the problem is, it’s not just ‘the Left’ that is pushing it: it’s the whole State-Establishment Blob, from Chief Constables right through to the Archbishop of Canterbury numerous ‘Conservative’ MPs and even senior military staff and the Permanent Secretary at the MoD. This is no longer just the province of smelly, donkey-jacketed Trots and weirdo academics. It has become the new puritan religion of the whole Anglosphere establishment.
Starmers background is as working class as Edsel Ford.
His father may have started as a toolmaker, but he wound up a Director and large shareholder of the company.
How else would he have afforded the fees for Starmers education? (Reigate grammar was only state funded for the first year of Starmers attendance. Current fees are nearly eight grand a term)
Starmers father was also a well known local patron of the arts.
Starmers father was clearly an admirable man. It was Starmers denial of his fathers success that led to their falling out for years -not exactly the close family Starmer likes to pretend.
He doesn’t actually. His father was a managering director. Starmer misrepresented him as a “worker”, rather than someone who exploited workers.
I don’t care about Starmer’s class,
race or background.
This intersectionality B/S pushed by the Left
is what is so destructive.
Starmers background is as working class as Edsel Ford.
His father may have started as a toolmaker, but he wound up a Director and large shareholder of the company.
How else would he have afforded the fees for Starmers education? (Reigate grammar was only state funded for the first year of Starmers attendance. Current fees are nearly eight grand a term)
Starmers father was also a well known local patron of the arts.
Starmers father was clearly an admirable man. It was Starmers denial of his fathers success that led to their falling out for years -not exactly the close family Starmer likes to pretend.
He doesn’t actually. His father was a managering director. Starmer misrepresented him as a “worker”, rather than someone who exploited workers.
About 1926. when Ramsay Macdonald sold them out, or so some would say. More reasonably perhaps, the transformation took place during 1963-83, as Britain’s unionised heavy industries collapsed and the huge expansion of the Polys and Universities took place, resulting in the horny- handed, practical sons of toil being displaced in local Labour parties by the soft-handed, abstract-minded activist bourgeois twutocrats who have run them since.
I vaguely remember, back in the mist of time, when it had some real people in its ranks.
You seem not aware that Starmer comes from an ordinary working class background himself. he may not be now of course. And Labour always represented ordinary people, if not well at times. Most of the legislation to the benefit of the ‘lower classes’ of the last 100 years has been from Labour.
About 1926. when Ramsay Macdonald sold them out, or so some would say. More reasonably perhaps, the transformation took place during 1963-83, as Britain’s unionised heavy industries collapsed and the huge expansion of the Polys and Universities took place, resulting in the horny- handed, practical sons of toil being displaced in local Labour parties by the soft-handed, abstract-minded activist bourgeois twutocrats who have run them since.
Since when have Labour represented the lower classes ?
People like Starmer only encounter such people on window cleaning day.
Meeaiooww!!
They need people who will get elected… I left the Labour Party when Tony Blair and his cronies took power and drove the centrist agenda rather than the socialist agenda that grass roots members supported. Nothing much has changed. I won’t vote Labour outside Scotland because of the politics of the leader which is more right wing than some Tories. If you only put forward middle class university educated people, they won’t get votes from the people they profess to care about and we will have another Tory government at the next election.
He has a point though. Labour was supposed to represent the lower classes. The metropolitan luvvies should go elsewhere.
Meeaiooww!!
The only real difference between Starmer and the hard left is that the tankies aren’t lying.
Can you elaborate?
Can you elaborate?
I’ve a lot of sympathy with what you are saying.
Any selection system that ensures the likes of Dent Coad are never selected must be a good thing. I’d like to see an old style Labour Party given a chance but that requires a massive improvement in their MPs.
Yes, but the trouble with that is that – while it’s exactly what you’d expect for Labour and the SNP – it is shady, corrupt, fraudulent and makes a mockery of local democracy and the very notion of the political party in this, a party-based Parliamentary system. It’s not even half a step from that to claiming that, say, ‘any system that ensures the likes of Brexiteers aren’t elected is a good thing’.
No. I won’t have that. If the new, Davos-backed Labour leadership gang of Starmer – which ‘won’ election, btw, fraudulently on the basis of a leftist manifesto it now says it has no intention of carrying out (and never did) – can’t provide candidates who can win selection honestly, then it has no business being in post. And as the article states, this sort of shameless, sheity corruption so as to achieve their ends bodes ill, very ill, for the sort of 15- or 20-year junta they are likely to be.
SHEITY? Or do you mean:-
SHEISTY :A modern adjectival outgrowth the noun “shyster.” The original term refers to someone who behaves in a disreputable or unethical fashion. Thus a “sheisty” …
Or perhaps something rather ruder?
Did you learn that at Pirbright? Or with the Pioneer Corps?
SHEITY? Or do you mean:-
SHEISTY :A modern adjectival outgrowth the noun “shyster.” The original term refers to someone who behaves in a disreputable or unethical fashion. Thus a “sheisty” …
Or perhaps something rather ruder?
Did you learn that at Pirbright? Or with the Pioneer Corps?
Yes, but the trouble with that is that – while it’s exactly what you’d expect for Labour and the SNP – it is shady, corrupt, fraudulent and makes a mockery of local democracy and the very notion of the political party in this, a party-based Parliamentary system. It’s not even half a step from that to claiming that, say, ‘any system that ensures the likes of Brexiteers aren’t elected is a good thing’.
No. I won’t have that. If the new, Davos-backed Labour leadership gang of Starmer – which ‘won’ election, btw, fraudulently on the basis of a leftist manifesto it now says it has no intention of carrying out (and never did) – can’t provide candidates who can win selection honestly, then it has no business being in post. And as the article states, this sort of shameless, sheity corruption so as to achieve their ends bodes ill, very ill, for the sort of 15- or 20-year junta they are likely to be.
There is a distinction between ‘pandering to the fanatics’ – classic straw-manning there – and brazenly corrupt election-rigging, in open defiance of the Party’s own rules and pretensions to party democracy and probity. And with an absolute confidence of impunity in so doing. But considering Arise Sir Keir Starmer’s conduct at the CPS and the manner in which he and his gang took control of the party in the first place, it’s hardly surprising.
A bit of ruthlessness to purge Corbynista’s – people are going to like and welcome that. Not allowing himself to be dragged at same time into a Blairite position. Avoiding gifting the Tories some obvious pot-shots. Track record as a Prosecutor. And increasingly showing he may not be blessed with buckets of charisma but he’s his own man. Like it.
And it’s borne out from the less favourable comments here – they are really struggling to land punches so default to nonsense about his background. So boring. And furthermore however they play it he compares well to a much richer man who’s family avoided tax.
..interesting take on matters.
Of course all political parties interfere with local selections.. to suggest it’s solely a Labour thing is misleading.
..interesting take on matters.
Of course all political parties interfere with local selections.. to suggest it’s solely a Labour thing is misleading.
The effect is usually softened using 3 balancing inputs:
1. Buy in experts as consultants / advisors.
2. Collective responsibility of the Cabinet.
3. The Civil Service experts who are generally conservative (small c)…
So I wouldn’t panic. Once they don’t have a big red button on the desk (Truss style) you’ll be OK.
Your 3 is comedy gold. Civil servants are all woke lefty turds nowadays.
Your 3 is comedy gold. Civil servants are all woke lefty turds nowadays.
Exactly! We have zero idea about what this new cohort actually believe in!!! Keir cannot mask his beliefs so well. Are we to assume they are all Middle class friendly Neo Tonys? Proto Liz Truss types who look on in absolute horror at the deranged identity politics of the current Lab MPs?? We have no idea!!! LThe fact that declaring yourself anything but a nurse or social worker with zero connection to the world of — God I feel sick even writing the word ‘business’ – is a taboo tells us a lot. A new army of scrubbed up studenty social justice Corbyny Wokester warriors – all still Tory Scum Hating & Confused about Gender – are poised to fill the chambers of Westminster while the Union arm creates mayhem outside. How could it come to this…
It’s not just that Labour MPs should be centrist and left wing, it’s that they shouldn’t all be former councillors who went to Oxbridge who have never actually worked a proper job all their life
The only real difference between Starmer and the hard left is that the tankies aren’t lying.
I’ve a lot of sympathy with what you are saying.
Any selection system that ensures the likes of Dent Coad are never selected must be a good thing. I’d like to see an old style Labour Party given a chance but that requires a massive improvement in their MPs.
There is a distinction between ‘pandering to the fanatics’ – classic straw-manning there – and brazenly corrupt election-rigging, in open defiance of the Party’s own rules and pretensions to party democracy and probity. And with an absolute confidence of impunity in so doing. But considering Arise Sir Keir Starmer’s conduct at the CPS and the manner in which he and his gang took control of the party in the first place, it’s hardly surprising.
A bit of ruthlessness to purge Corbynista’s – people are going to like and welcome that. Not allowing himself to be dragged at same time into a Blairite position. Avoiding gifting the Tories some obvious pot-shots. Track record as a Prosecutor. And increasingly showing he may not be blessed with buckets of charisma but he’s his own man. Like it.
And it’s borne out from the less favourable comments here – they are really struggling to land punches so default to nonsense about his background. So boring. And furthermore however they play it he compares well to a much richer man who’s family avoided tax.
The effect is usually softened using 3 balancing inputs:
1. Buy in experts as consultants / advisors.
2. Collective responsibility of the Cabinet.
3. The Civil Service experts who are generally conservative (small c)…
So I wouldn’t panic. Once they don’t have a big red button on the desk (Truss style) you’ll be OK.
Exactly! We have zero idea about what this new cohort actually believe in!!! Keir cannot mask his beliefs so well. Are we to assume they are all Middle class friendly Neo Tonys? Proto Liz Truss types who look on in absolute horror at the deranged identity politics of the current Lab MPs?? We have no idea!!! LThe fact that declaring yourself anything but a nurse or social worker with zero connection to the world of — God I feel sick even writing the word ‘business’ – is a taboo tells us a lot. A new army of scrubbed up studenty social justice Corbyny Wokester warriors – all still Tory Scum Hating & Confused about Gender – are poised to fill the chambers of Westminster while the Union arm creates mayhem outside. How could it come to this…
Good. It’s one thing when they’re just the opposition but with a near 100% chance that Labour will win the next election now is not the time to be pandering to the fanatics. Labour already have a bunch of utter clowns as MPs, they don’t need any more of them.
It’s baffling how you can acknowledge the need for “experts on the economy, foreign policy and defence” and then think the solution to that would be more left MPs, rather than less. You only have to listen to any of the existing left Labour MPs to realise they’re dangerously detached from reality on all three of those issues.
Maybe Starmer has an overriding desire to return Labour to the party whose main objective is to support the working class. He won’t achieve that by importing “culture war grifters”
Quite.
Not the first idea what your code is meant to mean.
Did you read the article? The people who have been ruled out are not ‘culture war grifters’, something that is really a Right Wing phenomenon, but local community activists. They would absolutely get elected.
What nonsense!
Where were you educated Ms Harries?
State educated! Heaven forfend!
The country is in the state it is in today thanks to the constant cadres of expensively educated rissoles displaying precisely such bigoted arrogance.
I usually agree with everything you write, but, oh my! Honi soit qui mal y pense (and I suppose that’ll have to apply equally to my state-educated self, too).
.
Guilty as charged !
I thought it fun to ‘ wind up’ our Welsh Wizard’, Ms Harries.
My sincere apologies if it inadvertently offended you.
You need to wash your mouth out (or your keying finger/s) if you ‘generally agree with everything’ Charlie S says! He’s a bit.. how shall I put it? …not very fair minded is as bland as I can make it!
Guilty as charged !
I thought it fun to ‘ wind up’ our Welsh Wizard’, Ms Harries.
My sincere apologies if it inadvertently offended you.
You need to wash your mouth out (or your keying finger/s) if you ‘generally agree with everything’ Charlie S says! He’s a bit.. how shall I put it? …not very fair minded is as bland as I can make it!
Indeed. Another “convenient” avoidance of reality from the woke. When their culture war attacks get rebuffed, they just blab” well you started it ….”
State educated! Heaven forfend!
The country is in the state it is in today thanks to the constant cadres of expensively educated rissoles displaying precisely such bigoted arrogance.
I usually agree with everything you write, but, oh my! Honi soit qui mal y pense (and I suppose that’ll have to apply equally to my state-educated self, too).
.
Indeed. Another “convenient” avoidance of reality from the woke. When their culture war attacks get rebuffed, they just blab” well you started it ….”
‘Community activists’, or yet another bunch of low-calibre, white collar Blairite chancers on the make. Each set are complete strangers to any experience of physical labour and from a now floating voter’s point of view, I don’t which I find more repugnant.
Is there now a single former manual worker to be found anywhere in the Parliamentary Labour Party or candidates’ list?
Lisa Forbes, briefly MP for Peterborough following the dismissal of Fiona Onosaya for good and sufficient cause was a typical example – a Blairite activist employed by the NHS in a union official capacity.
Lisa Forbes, briefly MP for Peterborough following the dismissal of Fiona Onosaya for good and sufficient cause was a typical example – a Blairite activist employed by the NHS in a union official capacity.
Yes I did. The author seems to have conveniently avoided mentioning the large number of more Trotskyite or ultra woke) candidates that Labour has/must keep out in order to be elected.
It’s curious is it not that ultra right-wing, Davos-driven, worker-hating, bankophiles never seem to be despised on the other side irrespective of THEIR (proven) ability to wreck the economy? Somehow they destroy in a ‘good way’ it seems.
It’s curious is it not that ultra right-wing, Davos-driven, worker-hating, bankophiles never seem to be despised on the other side irrespective of THEIR (proven) ability to wreck the economy? Somehow they destroy in a ‘good way’ it seems.
..elected yes. But form part of a cohesive, effective govt.? Maybe not.
What nonsense!
Where were you educated Ms Harries?
‘Community activists’, or yet another bunch of low-calibre, white collar Blairite chancers on the make. Each set are complete strangers to any experience of physical labour and from a now floating voter’s point of view, I don’t which I find more repugnant.
Is there now a single former manual worker to be found anywhere in the Parliamentary Labour Party or candidates’ list?
Yes I did. The author seems to have conveniently avoided mentioning the large number of more Trotskyite or ultra woke) candidates that Labour has/must keep out in order to be elected.
..elected yes. But form part of a cohesive, effective govt.? Maybe not.
No point in being a ‘clean’ opposition. Gotta git in there and get down and dirty!
Quite.
Not the first idea what your code is meant to mean.
Did you read the article? The people who have been ruled out are not ‘culture war grifters’, something that is really a Right Wing phenomenon, but local community activists. They would absolutely get elected.
No point in being a ‘clean’ opposition. Gotta git in there and get down and dirty!
Maybe Starmer has an overriding desire to return Labour to the party whose main objective is to support the working class. He won’t achieve that by importing “culture war grifters”
Unfortunately, Labour has to be elected. It serves as a natural correction to force the ‘normal’ types of MPs to think more.
The whole party system is shocking. There is no democracy. The people who get elected are idiots and they are given air-time to spread their idiocy. I suspect that well over half of the electorate doesn’t listen to anything relating to politics. I know several people who always vote Labour “because of Margaret Thatcher” and several who always vote Tory for the same reason. I think it would help if contributors to UnHerd stopped falling back on the words ‘left’, ‘leftie’, ‘left-leaning’, which are totally meaningless, and instead we had some kind of wokicity scale from 1 to 10 where extreme wokedness scores a 10.
The main thing really is trying to decide who will win Strictly.
Bravo, well said!
????
“The people who get elected are idiots and they are given air-time to spread their idiocy.”
Do you disagree with that sentiment?
“The people who get elected are idiots and they are given air-time to spread their idiocy.”
Do you disagree with that sentiment?
No difference between LavaTories and Labour.. both ” reound veowel seound” terylene clad, woke lower line manager over promoted lower middle class, self promoting Pooteresque, otherwise unemployable detritus.
Stop beating about the bush and tell us what you really think please
How many have served in the Household Division I wonder?
I doubt you did.
Did you?
Gdsmn Joy 33 Welsh Guards?
Test him out with a tin of kiwi, blow torch, bees wax and a yellow duster!
Holts Damp Start was far easier.
Holts Damp Start was far easier.
I served in the Boy Scouts: does that count?
Not quite!
How about the IRA?
Grandfather yes*, me no. Father as a medic during the Emergency (you call it WW2). As a pacifist I regard killing to sort out rich and powerful people’s disagreements as the ultimate in stupidity.
As Napoleon said: “I have discovered something amazing: men will die for ribbons!”.
What grovelling idiots they are to do so!
* For you a terrorist for me a freedom fighter – he worked in intelligence in Michael Collins’ resistence movement against our foreign rulers at the time (to visualize, imagine Nazi Germany had invaded GB: you might perhaps do the same: if you had the courage: I doubt it: you’re more the armchair warrior).
BTW he refused to carry a gun lest he use it. Willing to die but not to kill. I guess he too was a pacifist, like his son and grandson after him. So, now you know Charlie!
Did ‘we’ execute your grandfather I wonder?
It might explain why you are so irredeemably’chippy’.
Did ‘we’ execute your grandfather I wonder?
It might explain why you are so irredeemably’chippy’.
Grandfather yes*, me no. Father as a medic during the Emergency (you call it WW2). As a pacifist I regard killing to sort out rich and powerful people’s disagreements as the ultimate in stupidity.
As Napoleon said: “I have discovered something amazing: men will die for ribbons!”.
What grovelling idiots they are to do so!
* For you a terrorist for me a freedom fighter – he worked in intelligence in Michael Collins’ resistence movement against our foreign rulers at the time (to visualize, imagine Nazi Germany had invaded GB: you might perhaps do the same: if you had the courage: I doubt it: you’re more the armchair warrior).
BTW he refused to carry a gun lest he use it. Willing to die but not to kill. I guess he too was a pacifist, like his son and grandson after him. So, now you know Charlie!
Not quite!
How about the IRA?
Gdsmn Joy 33 Welsh Guards?
Test him out with a tin of kiwi, blow torch, bees wax and a yellow duster!
I served in the Boy Scouts: does that count?
Did you?
Still a good few Tories, but I suspect no l***a… There was that nice MP who was a Scots Grey?
‘Tam’Dalyell?
‘Tam’Dalyell?
I doubt you did.
Still a good few Tories, but I suspect no l***a… There was that nice MP who was a Scots Grey?
What you’re really saying is you too think any of them are wonderful?
Stop beating about the bush and tell us what you really think please
How many have served in the Household Division I wonder?
What you’re really saying is you too think any of them are wonderful?
????
No difference between LavaTories and Labour.. both ” reound veowel seound” terylene clad, woke lower line manager over promoted lower middle class, self promoting Pooteresque, otherwise unemployable detritus.
May I repeat my friend’s proposal that UK citizens be allowed to vote in either political elections or reality television shows in any given year, but not both?
I take it you paint all parties with the same brush?
Bravo, well said!
May I repeat my friend’s proposal that UK citizens be allowed to vote in either political elections or reality television shows in any given year, but not both?
I take it you paint all parties with the same brush?
Unfortunately, Labour has to be elected. It serves as a natural correction to force the ‘normal’ types of MPs to think more.
The whole party system is shocking. There is no democracy. The people who get elected are idiots and they are given air-time to spread their idiocy. I suspect that well over half of the electorate doesn’t listen to anything relating to politics. I know several people who always vote Labour “because of Margaret Thatcher” and several who always vote Tory for the same reason. I think it would help if contributors to UnHerd stopped falling back on the words ‘left’, ‘leftie’, ‘left-leaning’, which are totally meaningless, and instead we had some kind of wokicity scale from 1 to 10 where extreme wokedness scores a 10.
The main thing really is trying to decide who will win Strictly.
Max Headroom has nothing to say and will not address the problems that the UK and the rest of the West faces.
He cannot even say what a women is, as if the question was complicated. He is dangerous because because to
low information voters,
he looks ” reasonable ” compared to the out and out Marxist, Corbyn.
Then there is the front bench, Abbott, Rayner, Nandy, et al. Everyone of them ridiculously and hideously incompetent.
I despair of the Tories but a Labour government will make the Tories look like geniuses.
My sentiments exactly. If you lack the courage or the intelligence to state what a woman is, then you have no business being in politics or, indeed, law.
Especially while taking the knee …
The official term for one who indulges in such self-abasement is GROVELLER.
Abasement, so appropriate.
Abasement, so appropriate.
The official term for one who indulges in such self-abasement is GROVELLER.
Can you explain the political importance of avoiding an idiotic question please? Only a woke idiot would (a) pose the question and (b) answer it.
Anyone with an ounce of commonsense would ignore the question. It’s akin to ssking: “Is it true you’ve stopped beating your wife”!
Especially while taking the knee …
Can you explain the political importance of avoiding an idiotic question please? Only a woke idiot would (a) pose the question and (b) answer it.
Anyone with an ounce of commonsense would ignore the question. It’s akin to ssking: “Is it true you’ve stopped beating your wife”!
Anyone who “makes the Tories look like geniuses” deserves some kind of recognition surely. To achieve that would be to achieve the utterly impossible!
It beggars belief that a significant proportion of British voters think the Tory party are anything otjer than stupid, greedy, self-opinonated, entitled degenerates. Apart from what Tory party members are like: what in God’s name are those who elect them like? I refer to the average British bloke (not the chinless, Etonian, well healed, self-satisfied, greedy, smug cretin)..
My sentiments exactly. If you lack the courage or the intelligence to state what a woman is, then you have no business being in politics or, indeed, law.
Anyone who “makes the Tories look like geniuses” deserves some kind of recognition surely. To achieve that would be to achieve the utterly impossible!
It beggars belief that a significant proportion of British voters think the Tory party are anything otjer than stupid, greedy, self-opinonated, entitled degenerates. Apart from what Tory party members are like: what in God’s name are those who elect them like? I refer to the average British bloke (not the chinless, Etonian, well healed, self-satisfied, greedy, smug cretin)..
Max Headroom has nothing to say and will not address the problems that the UK and the rest of the West faces.
He cannot even say what a women is, as if the question was complicated. He is dangerous because because to
low information voters,
he looks ” reasonable ” compared to the out and out Marxist, Corbyn.
Then there is the front bench, Abbott, Rayner, Nandy, et al. Everyone of them ridiculously and hideously incompetent.
I despair of the Tories but a Labour government will make the Tories look like geniuses.
It’s very hard to imagine how the inclusion of some of the more fanatical candidates into an incoming Labour cabinet would lead to increased government competence.
Just look at some of the existing shadow cabinet ….
In what way were the people mentioned above “fanatical”? And who in the shadow cabinet is “fanatical”.
Nearly all of the them, like your good self Ms Harries.
In short, chippy Marxist nutters of no consequence.
I don’t know you or glyn harries (Ms??),so pray tell what does your extraordinary remark refer to. Surely not related to any contributions so far in this thread.
Nothing.
I just find Ms Harries too tempting a target!
My apologies if I have offended you.
You make the fatal mistake of taking Charlie S seriously. He’s interested in one thing and one thing only: sh¡t stirring!
“Takes one to know one!”
That maxim rareley holds up Charlie: but here’s a conundrum for ye:
Is one who stirs shit stirrers a shit stirrer too? By proxy as it were?
That maxim rareley holds up Charlie: but here’s a conundrum for ye:
Is one who stirs shit stirrers a shit stirrer too? By proxy as it were?
“Takes one to know one!”
Nothing.
I just find Ms Harries too tempting a target!
My apologies if I have offended you.
You make the fatal mistake of taking Charlie S seriously. He’s interested in one thing and one thing only: sh¡t stirring!
I don’t know you or glyn harries (Ms??),so pray tell what does your extraordinary remark refer to. Surely not related to any contributions so far in this thread.
My comment was not limited to the people mentioned in the article …..
I think those are very fair questions! Why the downticks? ..or is it just a game of anything stupid you say I can say stupider?
Nearly all of the them, like your good self Ms Harries.
In short, chippy Marxist nutters of no consequence.
My comment was not limited to the people mentioned in the article …..
I think those are very fair questions! Why the downticks? ..or is it just a game of anything stupid you say I can say stupider?
In what way were the people mentioned above “fanatical”? And who in the shadow cabinet is “fanatical”.
It’s very hard to imagine how the inclusion of some of the more fanatical candidates into an incoming Labour cabinet would lead to increased government competence.
Just look at some of the existing shadow cabinet ….
Gasp! Main Parties (I include the Lib Dems as a courtesy) revealed to be operating as machine politics fiefdoms. If your political face doesn’t fit you do not get a place at the trough.
It would seem that by conspiracy or c**k-up you have to be Davos Approved© to get on in politics. Can anyone see a problem with that?
Gasp! Main Parties (I include the Lib Dems as a courtesy) revealed to be operating as machine politics fiefdoms. If your political face doesn’t fit you do not get a place at the trough.
It would seem that by conspiracy or c**k-up you have to be Davos Approved© to get on in politics. Can anyone see a problem with that?
Michael Crick is a political writer I respect. Here in Hastings & Rye we have experienced the ruthless Prospective Parliamentary Candidate selection process where a Merton Councillor, friend of the Kinnocks was imposed upon us in a fixed selection procedure of two people. Two excellent local candidates were not allowed to stand. The Hustings was worse than Poland under martial law. Not allowed to ask any questions. The Party has sunk from 2000 members in 2016 to around 800 now -about 40 active in the whole Borough, and nobody goes to meetings any more. If you question Helena Dollimore, the PPC who talks a lot and has no local roots at all, she has primed a friend to shout ‘bullying’ at every challenge. Subsequently the Labour Council has been told it cannot make any policy without passing it by Starmers’ political henchmen and no Labour councillors may stand who have not been pre-approved. I am sickened but not surprised. When I worked for Mandelson, ruthless was a favourite word. It was Mandelson who recommended Mattinson (who he worked with as part of the shadow communications agency in the 80s at Walworth Road) the key Starmer strategist. I would not use the word ‘verge’ to describe the trajectory of the corruption. It is full-scale corruption and has been since Summer 2015 when McNichol was the Genral Secretary. Interesting on McSweeney. I’ve seen the vile bodies come and go in my time, and he will end up either a Baron when Starmer realises he can’t get rid of the Lords so easily, or covered in ignominy.
Yep. Today’s Labour is a soulless, fake, astroturf WEF-stooge party franchise full of soft-handed, abstract-minded, narrow-horizoned, low-quality hacks and chancers – just like the post-Michael Howard ‘Conservatives’.
Not Joy of Bentley, Hants by any chance?
But really good people apart from that: right?
But good apart from that, right? Lol.
Not Joy of Bentley, Hants by any chance?
But really good people apart from that: right?
But good apart from that, right? Lol.
Ha, I was at Oxford with Dollimore. Thoroughly nasty piece of work, and an obvious career grifter in the making. Knew it was only a matter of time before she was parachuted into a safe seat.
It would have been more honest of Mr Crick to refer to the many other (flawed) candidates that Labour need to keep out.
This type of convenient exclusion is what we have come to expect from those at C4 and the BBC.
Yep. Today’s Labour is a soulless, fake, astroturf WEF-stooge party franchise full of soft-handed, abstract-minded, narrow-horizoned, low-quality hacks and chancers – just like the post-Michael Howard ‘Conservatives’.
Ha, I was at Oxford with Dollimore. Thoroughly nasty piece of work, and an obvious career grifter in the making. Knew it was only a matter of time before she was parachuted into a safe seat.
It would have been more honest of Mr Crick to refer to the many other (flawed) candidates that Labour need to keep out.
This type of convenient exclusion is what we have come to expect from those at C4 and the BBC.
Michael Crick is a political writer I respect. Here in Hastings & Rye we have experienced the ruthless Prospective Parliamentary Candidate selection process where a Merton Councillor, friend of the Kinnocks was imposed upon us in a fixed selection procedure of two people. Two excellent local candidates were not allowed to stand. The Hustings was worse than Poland under martial law. Not allowed to ask any questions. The Party has sunk from 2000 members in 2016 to around 800 now -about 40 active in the whole Borough, and nobody goes to meetings any more. If you question Helena Dollimore, the PPC who talks a lot and has no local roots at all, she has primed a friend to shout ‘bullying’ at every challenge. Subsequently the Labour Council has been told it cannot make any policy without passing it by Starmers’ political henchmen and no Labour councillors may stand who have not been pre-approved. I am sickened but not surprised. When I worked for Mandelson, ruthless was a favourite word. It was Mandelson who recommended Mattinson (who he worked with as part of the shadow communications agency in the 80s at Walworth Road) the key Starmer strategist. I would not use the word ‘verge’ to describe the trajectory of the corruption. It is full-scale corruption and has been since Summer 2015 when McNichol was the Genral Secretary. Interesting on McSweeney. I’ve seen the vile bodies come and go in my time, and he will end up either a Baron when Starmer realises he can’t get rid of the Lords so easily, or covered in ignominy.
Michael Crick, yet another Long March neo-Marxist and Oxbridge PPE graduate, lately of the BBC & Channel 4 seditious wokerati, writing selective and wilfully misleading garbage.
Today’s Labour party is far and away the most extreme hard left bunch of anti-British traitors ever to be considered a ‘mainstream’ party in the UK.
There is no such thing as the Labour right. They’re all globalist communists, every single one. The only difference is how well they hide it from the gullible fools who vote for them.
You need help. You know who are traitors? Those who sold off the state institutions and industries, often into the hands on foreign companies. Tories. Btw you know the Manchester Arena bomb was the fault of the Tories for allowing Libyan terrorists to move freely – because they were ‘on our side’.
You should seek help Ms Harries, it may not be too late!
Sadly, I fear that it is.
Sadly, I fear that it is.
..these guys hate truth! ..only bile, bigotry, invective, distortion, lies and hyperbole win upticks on this platform: especially with the like of …I’d better not name them. Sure it’s blatantly obvious who they are anyway.
If you dislike this platform so much, back to the bogs with you.
You’ll be so much happier there, as you well know.
That’s so typical of you Charlie: small, mean and above all stupid. I like this platform but there are some on it who should be banned! But it seems, racism, xenophobia, bigotry, misanthropy and every other mean-spirited invective is permitted: otherwise you’d be banned permanently wouldn’t you?
As the blessed Oliver said” For God’s sake GO!”.
And as the not so blessed Ian Paisley said: NO SURRENDER!
I had the ‘pleasure’ of arresting Mr Paisley once. We did contemplate shooting him, but decided it would be all together too messy.
I had the ‘pleasure’ of arresting Mr Paisley once. We did contemplate shooting him, but decided it would be all together too messy.
And as the not so blessed Ian Paisley said: NO SURRENDER!
As the blessed Oliver said” For God’s sake GO!”.
That’s so typical of you Charlie: small, mean and above all stupid. I like this platform but there are some on it who should be banned! But it seems, racism, xenophobia, bigotry, misanthropy and every other mean-spirited invective is permitted: otherwise you’d be banned permanently wouldn’t you?
If you dislike this platform so much, back to the bogs with you.
You’ll be so much happier there, as you well know.
I never mentioned the Tories you hate-filled lefty clown. Get a job.
You should seek help Ms Harries, it may not be too late!
..these guys hate truth! ..only bile, bigotry, invective, distortion, lies and hyperbole win upticks on this platform: especially with the like of …I’d better not name them. Sure it’s blatantly obvious who they are anyway.
I never mentioned the Tories you hate-filled lefty clown. Get a job.
..a tad extreme perhaps? ..and if so entirely irrelevant I fear? Next! ….