A letter, courtesy of Save the Labour Party website, from the Weston-super-Mare Constituency Labour Party to Gordon Brown:
At the last GC meeting of Weston-super-Mare CLP on the 3rd April 2008 there was a general consensus amongst the attendees regarding the poor performance of the Labour Party in government and unfortunately much of this criticism centered on you…
I refer to the appalling lack of foresight when it was decided to abolish the 10p rate of income tax which according to reliable sources will cause most harm to 5.3 million of the lowest paid – the very people that our Party should be protecting. No amount of assurances that millions will benefit can or should hide the fact that 5.3 million poorer people will be disadvantaged. This situation is further exacerbated by ministers publicly reneging on an agreement with backbenchers to re-assess the impact of this decision on the poorest in our society. The case for your tax policy is further damaged by the apparent stubbornness on your part to ignore the entreaties of the PLP at last weeks meeting; a stubbornness which will only serve to damage your and the Party’s reputation rather than portray you as a strong leader.
This error of judgment coincides with the calamitous decision to support the closure of Post Offices across the country – which emulates all that was worse about ‘Thatcherism’ – and will again affect those people whose well-being has always been the Labour Party’s crusade and if fully implemented will further impact on the electoral chances of many of our sitting M.Ps and make the task of the activists in the Party more onerous than it is at present…
Your performances in public are lacking in conviction and give rise to a feeling that you are out-of-touch with the pressing issues of the day and that your responses to questions seem to consist of political platitudes and vague references to topics which are of little or no interest to the man or woman in the street.
Ouch.
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12 Comments
Ouch indeed. Save the Labour Party feature a green ink whinge from the third party in Weston-super-mare. And this is news? Really??
Clegg and Cameron’s postbags don’t look like that. So yes, it’s news all right.
Of course, you could always jettison any local Labour parties who don’t approve of everything Brown does. Or who have the nerve to come third in their constituency. Or even who you, Chris Paul, don’t much like the look of and suspect of being insane because they have committed both cardinal sins mentioned above.
Yes, that ought to do it. Then you’d have a fully functioning Labour party again. All the stronger for THE GREAT MARCH TO ETERNAL GLORY, sorry, sorry, ahem…
Chris Bell:
“Ouch indeed. Save the Labour Party feature a green ink whinge from the third party in Weston-super-mare. And this is news? Really??”
Something for Mike Bell to put next to his bar charts.
Is it Labour Party practice to abandon the working-class in areas where it has no chance of electing MPs?
Hillarious comment from Chris Paul there! Perhaps we should ignore the Labour Party where-ever it is not in the top two?
I was impressed with Nick Clegg’s first leadership speech at our recent conference which was dominated by what we would do to create a more equal society.
Now that Labour are vacating that ground, now is the time for the Liberal Democrats to speak up and move in.
Is this copyright, or can we reprint it for election leaflets?
Print it anyway. Do you really think the Labour Party is going to drag that kind of thing through the courts and media just to get a retraction in your next Focus?? 😉
If anyone here thinks reprinting the mutterings of minor Labour person from Weston Super Mare – rather than of say retiring MP Alan Simpson, currently working their magic here in Manchester – on Lib Dem leaflets nationwide then I say go for it. Though really you should check with the author.
You lot really are priceless. No sense of proportion whatsoever.
How does Alix know what Clogg and Cameron’s post bags look like?
There is after all PLENTY of criticism of both Lib Dem and Tory leadership – including the current incumbents on Lib Dem and Tory blogs. Including here on LDV, as you well know.
Priceless.
So Labour supporters think creating illusions amounts to good politics, do you?
How’s about that for magic!
Oranjepan? Where does that name come from? Sounds like a pharmaceutical.
I think simply that changes in tax systems almost always have winners and losers. I don’t like this particular change myself but my point is that this letter – whether we agree with it or not – is extraordinarily NOT NEWS.
Similar criticism of LD leadership regularly appears on LD blogs including this one. This is just not news. It is trumped by MPs and Peers and others saying very similar things.
There is clearly a continuum in newsworthiness and to be blunt this is at the low news end of that.
It’s not even dog bites man.
The people of LD Liverpool are reeling under a LD budget with £62M of cuts in it, plus a 3.8% council tax hike.
Cover that.
It is actually possible that 11 seats could change hands in one election and the ten-year experiment of that city with Libdemology could be seeing an early bath.
Cover that.
The people of LD Rochdale have a council under investigation for dodgy consultations and suspect procurements. They have a dirty old councillor who showed porn to a WPC on their standards committee. And they fixed a re-selection shamelessly.
Cover that.
The members of Whalley Range Lib Dems have much stronger feelings about their councillors performance than our friend does about a budget decision of more than a year ago.
They are trying to hold the third seat, having lost two, one by defection, for an absolute buffoon who jeers and slags off local people’s efforts.
Cover that.
Chris Paul –
Winners and losers are created as a result of forced choices based on previous failures and a lack of imaginitive leadership.
Being fatalistic about creating such division ignores proper political responsibility. Your comment demonstrates a certain smug cynical schadenfreude, almost as though you are on a vendetta kick.
I’ll admit to you that I don’t think the LibDem regime in Liverpool has sold their programme particularly effectively, but in making criticisms we should also ask what alternatives are practicable.
By comparison Gordon Brown appears to suffer great anguish at breaking his habit of blaming all Labour’s difficult choices on the previous Conservative government – more than a decade (and a whole premiership) since John Major was kicked into touch!
I won’t bore you by exhaustively listing any or all Labour’s failings and failures, suffice it to say everyone is complicit to various degrees – so get off your high horse.
Chris Paul wrote:
“They have a dirty old councillor who showed porn to a WPC on their standards committee.”
Presumably we are asked to disregard the conduct of the Labour councillor in Ealing who crammed his Council supplied computer hard drive so bung full of pornographic images that the processor stopped working?
The reason I ask is Chris Paul seems to consider that only misconduct by Lib Dem councillors is to be condemned.
Gosh. I wonder what Chris would have found to say in support of T Dan Smith and Alderman Andrew Cunningham.
BTW, serving police officers don’t sit on Standards Committees.