"I've Got a Little List"

The Politics Home web site ran a great story the other day about a 'little list' drawn up by Jeremy Corbyn's office which ranks Labour MPs according to the degree of hostility they bear towards their new leader.

Katy Clark used to be a Scottish Labour MP, in Ayrshire if I remember correctly, and like so many Labour politicians Katy had little of substance to say during the long fight for equal pay, preferring not to criticise the behaviour of Labour-run councils and/or Labour-supporting trade unions.

Jeremy Corbyn's office denied any knowledge of the list, but that's exactly what the leader's office used to say when it came to the furious spats between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown - the TB/GBs as they were called.

A new kind of politics, indeed!



https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/politics/news/73061/labour-mps-branded-hostile-jeremy-corbyn-internal-list-report

Labour MPs branded 'hostile' to Jeremy Corbyn in internal list - report

Written by: Emilio Casalicchio - Politics Home

Labour's London mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan has apparently been labelled “hostile” towards Jeremy Corbyn in a list of MP loyalties drawn up by the leader's allies.

Caption: An internal list of Labour party MPs apparently shows who is 'hostile' towards Jeremy Corbyn.

Chief Whip Rosie Winterton received the same branding, as did former leader Ed Miliband and former deputy leader Harriet Harman, according to The Times.

A spokesman for Jeremy Corbyn's office insisted they had no knowledge of the list .

The document leaked to the paper was reportedly drawn up by Mr Corbyn’s political secretary Katy Clark and dates from January.

It shows five groups ranging from “hostile” to “core group”, including a category for “neutral but not hostile”.

Chris Leslie, John Woodcock, Ian Austin, Michael Dugher, Tristram Hunt and Yvette Cooper, also appear in the least sympathetic group.

The next category, the “core group" negative includes such senior figures as Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn, Shadow Education Secretary Lucy Powell, and party grandee Alan Johnson.

A Labour MP told The Times: “I think every single Labour MP will be surprised to find themselves profiled in this way.

“At a time when every focus should be on crafting a message to win support in the country so that we can displace an unpopular government with a wafer-thin majority, it is absolutely extraordinary to find that an ‘enemies’ list is being drawn up.

“The last politician to draw up a list of enemies was Richard Nixon; it didn’t end well for him or his party.”

A spokesman for the Labour leader said: “It doesn’t come from this office and we have no knowledge of it.”