My old mate Liam Carr has been selected as the Labour candidate for Hexham. The seat has never returned a Labour MP, and the party came third last time, with only 19 per cent of the vote. But Liam is a fighter, and the Coalition has changed the weather. If you were ever minded to do so, then why vote Liberal Democrat now?
For that matter, why vote Conservative? Catastrophic cuts in rural jobs, incomes and services? Cruel cuts in our
conventional defence? Impending ruinous cuts in provincial disposable
incomes by the abolition of National Pay Agreements? Vote Conservative for any or all of those?
The further deregulation of Sunday trading? The replacement of Her Majesty’s Constabulary with the British KGB that is the National Crime Agency? The devastation of rural communities by the allowing of foreign companies and even foreign states to buy up our postal service and our roads? Vote Conservative for any or all of those?
Royal Mail privatisation, which has robbed the taxpayer blind while severing the monarchy’s direct link to every address in this Kingdom? The return of the East Coast Main Line, the only publicly owned railway in Great Britain and the one requiring the least subsidy from the taxpayer, to the private sector from which it has already had to be rescued twice? Vote Conservative for either or both of those?
There was no recession in this country on the day of the last General Election. Every time that there is mention of a recovery, remember that Labour left a situation from which there was no need to recover.
In the three years since, we have never approached the level of growth that was bequeathed by Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling. But we have borrowed more than in the preceding 13 years.
This is hardly surprising, considering that the last Conservative Government repeatedly took the United Kingdom into recession, and that it quadrupled the National Debt.
Labour is, so to speak, making the weather on energy prices, with David Cameron humiliatingly exposed as a pitiful fraud who pretended to be opposed to a freeze even while secretly begging the Big Six to implement one until the General Election.
70 per cent favours renationalisation, the inexorable logic of the position that Labour has successfully compelled both parties to adopt. 75 per cent favours renationalising the railways, which over the course of a Parliament could be done for free.
Labour supported a massive expansion of nuclear power when David Cameron was calling it “a last resort”, and Labour is once again emphatically committed to the exploitation of our vast reserves of coal. Such are the fruits of the trade union link.
Labour forced George Osborne to U-turn completely on the allegedly impossible cap on the rates of interest on payday loans.
Every single Labour MP voted against military intervention in Syria, setting off the chain of events that has led to the settlement with Iran, a breathtaking achievement for an Opposition party.
Labour wants to outlaw employment discrimination against military reservists, whereas the votes of the Conservatives have already kept such discrimination lawful.
Labour is campaigning to retain the cap on Romanian and Bulgarian immigration that it successfully negotiated but which the present Government is too incompetent, and too in thrall to big business rather than having links to the trade unions, to protect.
Never mind some referendum at the end of time: every single Labour MP voted to demand a real-terms reduction in the British contribution to the EU Budget, right here and right now. The number of Conservatives who voted with Labour was lower than the number of Liberal Democrats in the House of Commons. David Cameron has wholly failed to deliver that reduction.
Labour is the force for the Union against separatism on at least three fronts. Moreover, the vast area of England where Labour now massively predominates would secede from any Thatcherite rump state. However, the whole of England has been removed from the United Kingdom without our consent by the dismantlement of our National Health Service.
That defining aspect of British identity still exists everywhere else. In the commercial interests of its Chairman, the BBC is blacking out this scandal. Only Labour supports England’s NHS, and thus England’s British identity as everyone beyond a barely British Loony Right understands the term.
Labour’s poll lead is always large enough to deliver a comfortable majority even if the boundaries were as the Conservative Party would arbitrarily wish them to be, which in any case they are not and are not going to be.
Liam would make an excellent MP. Even granted that local Labour Parties in Tory areas are well to the left of those in Labour ones, it is notable that he, firmly of the Labour Left, has been selected as an example of his generation and mine, currently in our middle thirties.
As set out above, that makes him a natural candidate both of the mainstream of the Labour Party, and of the mainstream of Britain. Including the mainstream of Tory England. For example, Hexham.
The further deregulation of Sunday trading? The replacement of Her Majesty’s Constabulary with the British KGB that is the National Crime Agency? The devastation of rural communities by the allowing of foreign companies and even foreign states to buy up our postal service and our roads? Vote Conservative for any or all of those?
Royal Mail privatisation, which has robbed the taxpayer blind while severing the monarchy’s direct link to every address in this Kingdom? The return of the East Coast Main Line, the only publicly owned railway in Great Britain and the one requiring the least subsidy from the taxpayer, to the private sector from which it has already had to be rescued twice? Vote Conservative for either or both of those?
There was no recession in this country on the day of the last General Election. Every time that there is mention of a recovery, remember that Labour left a situation from which there was no need to recover.
In the three years since, we have never approached the level of growth that was bequeathed by Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling. But we have borrowed more than in the preceding 13 years.
This is hardly surprising, considering that the last Conservative Government repeatedly took the United Kingdom into recession, and that it quadrupled the National Debt.
Labour is, so to speak, making the weather on energy prices, with David Cameron humiliatingly exposed as a pitiful fraud who pretended to be opposed to a freeze even while secretly begging the Big Six to implement one until the General Election.
70 per cent favours renationalisation, the inexorable logic of the position that Labour has successfully compelled both parties to adopt. 75 per cent favours renationalising the railways, which over the course of a Parliament could be done for free.
Labour supported a massive expansion of nuclear power when David Cameron was calling it “a last resort”, and Labour is once again emphatically committed to the exploitation of our vast reserves of coal. Such are the fruits of the trade union link.
Labour forced George Osborne to U-turn completely on the allegedly impossible cap on the rates of interest on payday loans.
Every single Labour MP voted against military intervention in Syria, setting off the chain of events that has led to the settlement with Iran, a breathtaking achievement for an Opposition party.
Labour wants to outlaw employment discrimination against military reservists, whereas the votes of the Conservatives have already kept such discrimination lawful.
Labour is campaigning to retain the cap on Romanian and Bulgarian immigration that it successfully negotiated but which the present Government is too incompetent, and too in thrall to big business rather than having links to the trade unions, to protect.
Never mind some referendum at the end of time: every single Labour MP voted to demand a real-terms reduction in the British contribution to the EU Budget, right here and right now. The number of Conservatives who voted with Labour was lower than the number of Liberal Democrats in the House of Commons. David Cameron has wholly failed to deliver that reduction.
Labour is the force for the Union against separatism on at least three fronts. Moreover, the vast area of England where Labour now massively predominates would secede from any Thatcherite rump state. However, the whole of England has been removed from the United Kingdom without our consent by the dismantlement of our National Health Service.
That defining aspect of British identity still exists everywhere else. In the commercial interests of its Chairman, the BBC is blacking out this scandal. Only Labour supports England’s NHS, and thus England’s British identity as everyone beyond a barely British Loony Right understands the term.
Labour’s poll lead is always large enough to deliver a comfortable majority even if the boundaries were as the Conservative Party would arbitrarily wish them to be, which in any case they are not and are not going to be.
Liam would make an excellent MP. Even granted that local Labour Parties in Tory areas are well to the left of those in Labour ones, it is notable that he, firmly of the Labour Left, has been selected as an example of his generation and mine, currently in our middle thirties.
As set out above, that makes him a natural candidate both of the mainstream of the Labour Party, and of the mainstream of Britain. Including the mainstream of Tory England. For example, Hexham.
A Labour win in Hexham? In a way, it's a shame the boundary review was cancelled, actually, as I wouldn't put it past those arch anti-Burkeans at the Boundary Commission to have added Ascension Island and St Helena to the constituency. In that case, perhaps, it could have been achieved, with the help of Lindsay candidacy of course. But without that, without the author of Essays Radical and Orthodox? Much as it pains me to disagree with David, the numbers just don't add up, sadly.
ReplyDeleteI can barely stand at all anymore, never mind stand for Parliament.
ReplyDeleteBut the party in the North East is really quite adamant that it can be done this time, that it really does add up in post-Coalition Hexham. I agree with that.
The CLP there must agree, too. It has not selected some old hand doing the party a favour as a paper candidate. Nor has it selected someone very young and hoping for a better chance next time or the time after that.
Liam could have had a safe seat where a sitting MP was retiring. He obviously thinks that, with enough work, he stands just as much chance of election at Hexham. He is right.
Both Coalition parties are finished in the North, and perhaps especially in the North East. When Liam becomes the MP for Hexham, then that point will be made.
He sounds like a great MP and you are right that a Tory seat in the North East could be taken in 2015, you are also right about how. But you are still the lost leader of your generation, the great missing man. We all wish you had been healthier, you could have been anything in the next three or four Parliaments or maybe even in this one.
ReplyDelete