politics

Well it's been an interesting few days in the aftermath of the Counter-Terrorism Bill. Here's the list of the Labour MPs who voted against the government; Diane Abbott, Richard Burden, Katy Clark, Harry Cohen, Frank Cook, Jeremy Corbyn, Jim Cousins, Andrew Dismore, Frank Dobson, David Drew, Paul Farrelly, Mark Fisher, Paul Flynn, Neil Gerrard, Ian Gibson, Roger Godsiff, John Grogan, Dai Havard, Kate Hoey, Kelvin Hopkins, Glenda Jackson, Lynne Jones, Peter Kilfoyle, Andrew Mackinlay, Bob Marshall-Andrews, John McDonnell Michael Meacher, Julie Morgan, Chris Mullin, Doug Naysmith, Gordon Prentice, Linda Riordan, Alan Simpson, Emily Thornberry, Bob Wareing, David Winnick and Mike Wood....

The government won by nine votes. 37 Labour MPs rebelled (thanks comrades), I'm sure many Labour Party members will be keen to see which lefties caved and voted with the government on this. Hopefully the Lords will chuck it out - I never thought I'd hear myself say that. John McDonnell: Any attempt to present this as some sort of victory for the Government will ring absolutely hollow. There will be widespread consternation among our supporters in the country seeing a Labour Government prepared to use every tactic available in its determination to crush essential civil liberties, which have been won by the Labour movement over generations....

I originally wasn't going to blog about this, my views are already pretty well known (major assault on our civil liberties over the last decade), but something just forced my hand. It was a blogger on LabourHome. I genuinely thought before now the people who supported the government on this issue in this party just didn't care one way or the other, and so they'd go with their party "loyalties". I never expected anything this extreme....

Just a heads up to those who didn't see the entry on the Yeovil CLP blog about the May Manifesto petition, which outlines the following changes to policy: Nailing the 10p tax mistake by the introduction of a fair tax system removing the low paid from taxation and ensuring the wealthiest and corporations pay their fair share An increase in the basic state pension, immediately restoring the link with earnings, lifting people off means tested benefits and providing free care for the elderly An immediate start on a large scale council house building programme and assistance for those facing repossession Immediate end to programme of local Post Office closures and liberalisation of postal services An end to the privatisation of our public services A new pay deal for public sector workers to protect their living standards and tackle low pay Abolishing tuition fees and restoring maintenance grants for all students Scrapping ID cards and abandoning 42 days detention Introduction of a trade union freedom bill and measures to protect temporary and agency workers Rejecting the proposals to renew Trident You can stick your name on the petition by emailing info@l-r-c....

According to our mate Kevin Davis I've suffered some kind of "complete meltdown" in response to the defeat in Crewe and Nantwich, while I am flattered at the amount of attention I'm getting from Mr Davis I am somewhat concerned about how it is being twisted. He seems to be under the impression that me calling for a modest increase in the minimum wage, changing how councils are funded, and stopping anymore unwarranted military invasions....

Things are just going from bad to worse for the government, it would be an immense misreading of the situation for New Labour ministers to dismiss this result as simply mid-term blues. The Prime Minister's relaunch after the disaster of the local elections has proved to be totally ineffective. This result demonstrates the overwhelming anger and contempt in which New Labour is now held by our traditional supporters - John McDonnell MP....

Comrade Lee sent in a rather hefty comment on the subject which got me thinking, and although this isn't a direct reply it will cover some thinks he talked about. I had already seen his blog entry on the subject and expected this. :-) I do agree that discussion about lowering the limit at which an abortion can be carried out is not necessarily "bronze-age thinking", however the move to get it lowered was undoubtedly led by religious fundamentalists who want to see it banned....

Although things look pretty gloomy - at least for the New Labourites, in Venezuela we continue to make progress. This May Day the minimum wage was increased 30% in Venezuela, and not only that but public sector wages were also increased 30%. Taking into account the food subsidies, this will mean the minimum wage in Venezuela will be twice that of the average wage in Latin America. It also seems that the six hour working day is back on the agenda (which was packaged with last years' defeated constitutional reforms)....

Nationally the share of the vote looked like this: Tories 44% Labour 24% In London, with a socialist candidate the share of the vote looked like this: Johnson 42% Livingstone 36% Grimmer mentions their candidate, Janet Oosthuysen, falling short of ousting the Lib Dems by 53 votes, they campaigned on a slogan of "Vote Labour - Get a Socialist". I think there is a message here for the Labour Party and somewhere in it is the 'S' word....

John Wiseman, the prospective parliamentary candidate for Westmorland and Lonsdale has picked up some attention for his recent entry on Labour Home where he made a plea to Gordon Brown to reinstate the 10p rate of tax. He's running into a lot of flak, some of it to be frank quite ghastly with plenty of ad hominem attacks thrown in against him too. He has also picked up a lot of support too, with for example Grimmer weighing in on this issue too....