Not so glib…
by Pseud O'Nym
I was listening to ‘The World At One’ earlier, at er, one’o’clock, and was stuck by something Chris Leslie said, him being one of the not so magnificent seven former Labour MP’s who have resigned from the Labour party for reasons that seem reasonable as a headline, but upon closer examination get an ‘F’.
He argued rather self-servingly that he was accountable not to the Labour party, on whose manifest he’d campaigned on , resulting in him being re-elected with an an increased majority, but to his constituents, both those who’d voted for him and those who hadn’t. This seemingly noble and principled stance was totally exposed for the hypocrisy it was when he was challenged seconds later on whether he would stand down as an MP, and thus trigger a bye-election.
No he wouldn’t.
Like most people who didn’t vote for Brexit and want a second referendum, he believes in democracy only when it suits him. In fact none of the not so seven have announced the’ll be standing down. Their commitment to democracy is that strong!
It’s not what the county needs with only six weeks to go until we’re due to leave the EU was his limp excuse. It would be a distraction. But weakening the Labour party isn’t, the timing of the announcement itself isn’t itself a distraction, one that only fuel talk about further defections. And MP’s wonder why the public have such a low opinion of them?
A dog on heat has more principles.
the brilliantly leaping gazelle 
it would seem that a huge trigger for this exodus is brexit and in chris leslie’s own words, the failure of the labour leadership to halt brexit…oh that would be the brexit that got a majority vote in the referendum, yes that brexit that was democratically voted upon….i see so chris leslie and cohorts who have a staggeringly arrogant stance on the democratic process in that they will quite happily oppose it when it doesn’t suit their agendas, will simultaneously not stand down and allow their constituents the opportunity to vote them back in or not, the gall of it, the sheer gall of it….what would i say to those seven pillars of hypocrisy…goodbye, good riddance and close the door on your way out
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What annoys me more than I can politely express is The Not So Seven asserting that the Labour party has become ‘extremist’ or has been hijacked by the ‘hard left’. Under Corbyns’ leadership, the party has returned to proper, decent and traditional socialist ideals. This helps explain why champagne socialists were comprehensively wrong footed at the last election, as Labour won a bigger share of the popular vote than they expected.
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Let’s not forget that under Blair, Labour repealed Clause 4 of its constitution – a commitment to nationalise key industries and bring them back into public ownership, in order to appeal to voters.
And whilst we reminisce, let us not forget the words of Margaret Thatcher, who when asked what had been her greatest political achievement, replied “New Labour.”
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