Friday 27 January 2017

A Rift Adrift

People you've never heard of, resigning from unpaid positions that you never knew they held, or in some cases never knew existed.

On 7th December, Jo Stevens was one of 150 Labour MPs to vote in favour of the triggering of Article 50 by Theresa May's deadline of the end of March.

56 Labour MPs did not vote, for which there will have been various reasons, although some certainly were abstaining as a conscious act.

Leaving a mere 23 who voted against.

Not much of a split, even if there are a few Stevenses next week. There might, of course, be switchers in the other direction, too.

More broadly, what are the two sides of what is supposedly Labour's Great Schism?

One side consists of a few hundred people, no more than a couple of thousand as an absolute maximum.

They either work in the Palace of Westminster, or they delude themselves that they do.

They had thought that they were joining the Democratic Party of Jed Bartlet, whom even now they assume to be real.

The other side consists of the Labour Party and the Labour Movement.

2 comments:

  1. Looks like you've got what you wanted at Stoke Central.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A pro-Brexit, pro-NHS, anti-torture candidate.

      Delete