Labour Party Splits
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There is in fact a provision in UK law to recall an MP. Under the Recall of MPs Act 2015, if an MP has committed a series breach of parliamentary rules or is given a prison sentence of less than a year (more than a year then you are out automatically), a petition signed by 10% of the registered electorate and drawn up within six weeks can provoke a by-election. This has only been attempted once, in the case of the Reverend Inane Paisley’s son who had done something wrong (taken bribes, I think, without declaring them). It nearly succeeded but didn’t reach the 10% in the six weeks. Another attempt may be made to provoke such a by-election, in Peterborough, whose Labour MP is in prison for a few months for lying about a motoring offence.
There is nothing in our Rulebook about recall (but there doesn’t need to be specifically as a minimum number of branches can call a Party Poll to do this).
Re elections, our Rulebook says that a Socialist MP or councillors would be answerable to the EC or the local branch which could, presumably, deselect them. I am not sure this is perfect from a democratic point of view since, more logically, this ought to be in the hands of those who elected them, i.e. including non-members who had voted for socialism, but how? Nor is it clear how it could be enforced if the offending MP refused to resign, though my union at work used to insist that its candidates for the staff committee sign and undated letter of resignation. I don’t think that would work either. Leaving deselection as the only way.
Just noticed the attack on “delegate democracy” as Leninist in the editorial in today’s Times:
“The alternative notion that officials are mere delegates does have a philosophical lineage. It is to be found in Lenin’s The State and Revolution. This revolutionary blueprint was a guarantee that Russia would become a totalitarian state, for it had no concept of how to mediate between incommensurate values and competing interests [whatever that means].”
Two points here. First, it wasn’t Lenin who thought up this. Second, he might have preached it but he didn’t practice it.
Lenin did indeed write of “all officials, without exception, elected and subject to recall at any time” (his emphasis) but he was expanding on Marx’s description of the Paris Commune of 1871 in his The Civil War in France:
“The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms.”
Marx recommended that this is what the working class should bring about immediately on winning control of political power. The Communards weren’t socialists but radical democrats and what they did was already practised in Switzerland and in some of the states of the USA where the “right of recall” still exists in their constitutions. Indeed, this sort of thing is reflected in the US Constitution which lays down that the House of Representatives shall be re-elected every two years (the British MPs who have betrayed their mandate can sit for a further 3 years; in the US they’d be out in less than 2 years).
It’s a simple, basic radical democratic demand — which of course Lenin never implemented or had any intention of implementing. Power in Bolshevik Russia was in the hands of the unelected Bolshevik Party whose officials were not elected by universal suffrage nor subject to recall (at least not by the electorate though they were by the Party hierarchy as were non-party state officials). And of course one of the first things the Bolsheviks did was to abolish the Constituent Assembly that had been elected by universal suffrage. No attempt was made to organise the state in Russia along the lines of the Paris Commune.
So, whoever wrote the editorial in the Times is either ignorant or dishonest or both.
Unflattering biographies of the Tiggers.
Sounds as if the ex-Labour MP for Peterborough just released from prison for telling a lie would make a worthy member of this new band of discredited and discreditable professional politicians. In fact, compared with the other ex-Labourites in it, she’s almost a saint.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-47410564
Chuka Umunna has been named as the spokesman.
Umunna said as it was not a political party, it would not have a leader.
Other roles agreed for its members are:
Sarah Wollaston: responsibility for “new colleagues”.
Heidi Allen: welfare and pensions, social care, and business
Luciana Berger: home affairs, health, and digital and culture
Ann Coffey: children and education
Mike Gapes: foreign affairs and defence
Chris Leslie: Treasury and trade
Joan Ryan: group business manager and international development
Gavin Shuker: group convener
Angela Smith: transport, local government and housing, and energy, environment and rural affairs
Anna Soubry: Brexit and justice (and assisting on defence)Chuka Umunna on his politics. Make of it as you wish
I wasn’t going to bother to read this but thought I had better since he’s a local MP in the area where our Head Office and we have a collection of his leaflets. These show what a hypocrite he must have been when he was the Labour MP. Here’s what the Socialist Standard had to say about him in May 2015.
Since he never disguised the fact that he stood for a “better capitalism” I don’t know why felt out of place in the Labour Party:
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/06/chuka-umunnas-speech-better-capitalism-full-text
Having read that NS speech and his repetition of the virtues of coops, I wonder why he did sign up to the Cooperative Party. Or are the differences between Labour and them make-believe? A distinction without a difference.
Four of the gang of eight were Lab & Coop MP’s but I don’t think that represents any ideological commitment merely that their election campaigns were financed by the Cooperative Party. Like all Labour MPs what they wanted was a “better capitalism.” And still do of course.
I don’t know where that party gets its money from, not from me as a member of the co-op I hope.
The Petition to recall Fiona Onasanya, the ex-Labour MP for Peterborough just released from prison, has been launched:
https://www.peterborough.gov.uk/news/council/notification-received-from-speaker-on-recall-petition/
They’ve got 6 weeks from 19 March to get the signatures of 10% of the electorate (about 7300 names). Be interesting to see how and if this works. The last one, in North Antrim, failed because they only got 9.4% of electors to sign in the time period. If they get the 10% the MP will be recalled and a by-election held.
Meanwhile the Gang of Eleven, who have betrayed their mandates (rather than merely lied to the police about a minor traffic offence), get away with it and can keep their seats (and their salaries) till the next General Election (scheduled for May 2022).
So he repeats the justification for no by-election is that the constituency votes for the individual and not the party. Yet he ignores that the individual is elected on a party manifesto.
Yup, for him it’s the face and not the case.
I’m sure you will have something to say on this issue in April Fools Day Socialist Standard.
Media Lens analyses the anti-Corbyn campaign
The Fake News Nazi: Corbyn, Williamson And The Anti-Semitism Scandal
“…He has been smeared for not bowing low enough, for not singing loudly enough, for hating women, for disrespecting gay people, for consorting with terrorists, for refusing to unleash a nuclear holocaust, for being a shambolic leader, for being a shambolic dresser, for leading Labour towards certain electoral disaster, for being a Putinite stooge, for aping Trump, and so on. Now, finally, someone widely admired for thirty years as a decent, socialist MP, has been transformed into an anti-semite; or as game show assistant and political commentator Rachel Riley implies, a ‘Nazi’…But the smear campaign against Corbyn is not rooted in concern for the welfare of Jewish people; it is not even about blocking a political leader who cares about Palestinian rights. It is about preventing Corbyn from undoing Tony Blair’s great achievement of transforming the Labour Party into a second Tory Party, thus ensuring voters have no option challenging corporate domination…”
They sniff an election in the air.
“The Independent Group of MPs is to formally register as a political party called Change UK in time for potential European elections”
The group will register as Change UK – The Independent Group.
“A new party will shake up the two-party system and provide people with an alternative that can change our country for the better,” Umunna said. “This is what Change UK will be aiming to do at any European elections if our application for registration is accepted in time.”
“We in Change UK, as we hope to be known, don’t just dream about a fairer and better future for our country, we are determined to unleash it through hard work, passion and shared endeavour.” former Conservative MP Heidi Allen, interim leader, said
Another organisation has claimed that the new party has usurped their name. I don’t think the victims of this will get anywhere with the Electoral Commission as they are not a registered party. But what a silly name the renegades have chosen. That won’t get them very far. Another seven-day-wonder party, as if there weren’t enough useless, reformist parties led by professional politicians (even though after the next general election most of this party’s MPs will be forced to change profession).
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