On and On.....

Jeremy Corbyn is in the news today after announcing that whatever the outcome of the general election in June he intends to remain Labour leader.    

Jezza is widely quoted as saying:

"I was elected as leader of this party and I'll stay leader of this party."

Now this is an odd stance to take if you ask me, because all of his predecessor took a rather different view.

• Michael Foot resigned after losing the 1983 election in a landslide to Margaret Thatcher 
• Neil Kinnock stood down in 1992 after two election defeats, but was widely acknowledged to have made Labour electable again
• John Smith died in office as Labour leader in 1994
• Tony Blair resigned after three general election victories (1997, 2001 and 2005) having   accepted his time was finally up
• Gordon Brown lost the 2010 general election and retired to the backbenches, having  never been challenged as Labour leader
• Ed Miliband announced his resignation the day after his 2015 despite his 'mandate' as the elected Labour leader 

But Jeremy is apparently going to stay put, no matter what damage he wreaks on his party - echoing the vainglorious claim of the Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher who famously promised to go 'on and on'.

Which begs the question: "Just where is that Len McCluskey when you need him?"




  

Resign! (26/09/15)

The Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy won a vote of confidence (17-14) at the Scottish party's executive committee the other day, but decided to stand down nonetheless because of the wrecking tactics of his most vocal critics, including Len McCluskey the boss of the Unite trade union.

Unite has wasted £14 million of its members money in donations to the Labour Party since Ed Miliband became leader in 2010 and last year the union called a disastrous strike at the giant Ineos plant in Grangemouth which almost cost thousands of Unite members their jobs 

So why doesn't Len McCluskey follow his own 'lead' and resign as the Unite general secretary because by any standards he's done a lousy job after accepting that the vast majority of Unite members in Scotland supported the SNP in the general election, having deserted the Labour Party in droves over recent years.

Jim Murphy gave Len McCluskey both barrels in announcing his decision to resign and has pledged to table a report of proposed reforms to the Scottish Labour executive next month.

Here's what he had to say:

“It is clear that a small minority who didn’t accept my election as leader of the Scottish Labour Party just five months ago won’t accept the vote of the executive today and that will continue to divide the party.

Today I received more support in the executive vote than I did from members of the executive when I stood for election five months ago.

When I table that report at next month’s meeting of the Scottish Labour Party executive, I will also table my resignation as leader of the Scottish Labour Party.

It will be for the party executive to decide whether it accepts the reforms proposed, but a party in such urgent need of reform blocks those changes at its peril.” 

The Labour Party’s problem is not the link with trade unions, or even the relationship with Unite members - far from it.

It is the destructive behaviour of one high profile trade unionist.

One of the things about stepping down is that you can say things in public that so many people in the Labour Party only say in private.

So whether it is in Scotland or in the contest to come in the UK, we cannot have our leaders selected or deselected by the grudges and grievances of one prominent man.

The leader of the Scottish Labour Party doesn’t serve at the grace of Len McCluskey, and the next leader of the UK Labour Party should not be picked by Len McCluskey.”