A blog by Luke Akehurst about politics, elections, and the Labour Party - With subtitles for the Hard of Left. Just for the record: all the views expressed here are entirely personal and do not necessarily represent the positions of any organisations I am a member of.
posted by Luke Akehurst at 10:16 pm
Labour Party activist since 1988 - firmly on the moderate wing of the party. Member of Labour’s NEC 2010-2012 and since 2020. National Secretary of Labour Students 1995-6. Parliamentary candidate for Aldershot (2001) and Castle Point (2005). Hackney Councillor (Chatham Ward) 2002-2014, Labour Group Chief Whip 2002-09, Chair of Health Scrutiny 2010-2014. Supporter of Europe, NATO/nuclear deterrence, Israel, electoral reform. Guardian reader. Dad. Oxford resident. Unite union member. Employment history as a Labour Party Organiser, Local Government Political Assistant, Director at a Public Affairs company. All views expressed in a personal capacity. The rest will become evident from reading the blog.
3 Comments:
me too....
Lets have a look at those 19 votes
Ronnie Campbell - Campaign Group, likely to retire at next election
Rosie Cooper - backbencher, unlikely to gain preferment
Jeremy Corbyn - Campaign Group
Jon Cruddas - maverick, out of favour
John Cryer - Campaign Group
Ian Davidson - longstanding anti-EU
Natascha Engel - overlooked backbencher
Frank Field - longstanding anti-EU, maverick
Roger Godsiff - longstanding anti-EU
Kate Hoey - longstanding anti-EU, maverick
Kelvin Hopkins - Campaign Group
Steve McCabe - ex-whip, backbencher, unlikely to gain preferment
John McDonnell - Campaign Group
Austin Mitchell - longstanding anti-EU, maverick
Dennis Skinner - Campaign Group, likely to retire at next election
Andrew Smith - ex-minister, unlikely to gain preferment
Graham Stringer - overlooked backbencher
Gisela Stuart - longstanding anti-EU, maverick
Mike Wood - Campaign Group
How more unrepresentative a group could there be? Not one from the 2010 intake other than a retread
11:39 am, October 25, 2011
The arguments for Europe are no-brainers. Playing games with our EU membership would ruin our economy, which is based on trade with our EU partners and inward investment which would switch off if we were out of Europe;
Sadly this is utter rubbish , 80% of our trade is internal of the 20% which is international about half is with the EU which is very much to their advantage in terms of volume.
If you seriously think the Germans are going to refuse to sell us their BMWS you are in cloud cuckoo land,and we would of course have a free trade agreement of which there are 53 which some 70 more to come.
There is no evidence whatsoever that inwards investment to this country would stop and every reason to hope that , able to operate a competitive environment we would attract a lot more
Whilst people are not interested in the EU they are interested in the fact we do not control our own borders and are obliged to allow prisoners to vote thanks to a diktat issued from Strasbourg.
(Yes it is the same thing... )./ They are interested in waste and money thrown at this project is the least form of spending we have
The truth is that it has always been the EU`s aim to replace sovereign Nations and that odious ambition has been shown to be an insane piece of dreaming of much the same kidney that invented the vile tower blocks we had to pull down whose genesis in European thinking was roughly contemporary with pan European utopianism.
Looks modern clean and yummy on paper in reality it rots from the insider and everyone hates it
12:32 am, October 27, 2011
Calling the referendum “a device of demagogues and dictators” was Thatcher’s only ever favourable quotation of a Labour Prime Minister. Yet to those who worship at Thatcher’s altar while wholly ignoring her record on this and so much else, the demand for that deeply flawed and wholly foreign device has become a nervous tick. They honestly cannot see how Pythonesque it is to demand a referendum in the cause of defending parliamentary sovereignty. The Lisbon Treaty is self-amending, so there can never be another treaty. What is needed is an amendment suggesting legislation with five simple clauses.
First, the restoration of the supremacy of British over EU law, and its use to repatriate agricultural policy and to restore our historic fishing rights in accordance with international law. Secondly, the requirement that, in order to have any effect in the United Kingdom, all EU law pass through both Houses of Parliament as if it had originated in one or other of them. Thirdly, the requirement that British Ministers adopt the show-stopping Empty Chair Policy until such time as the Council of Ministers meets in public and publishes an Official Report akin to Hansard. Fourthly, the disapplication in the United Kingdom of any ruling of the European Court of Justice or of the European Court of Human Rights (or of the Supreme Court) unless confirmed by a resolution of the House of Commons.
And fifthly, the disapplication in the United Kingdom of anything passed by the European Parliament but not by the majority of those MEPs certified as politically acceptable by one or more seat-taking members of the House of Commons. Thus, we would no longer subject to the legislative will of Stalinists and Trotskyists, neo-Fascists and neo-Nazis, members of Eastern Europe’s kleptomaniac nomenklatura, neoconservatives such as now run France and Germany, people who believe the Provisional Army Council to be the sovereign body throughout Ireland, or Dutch ultra-Calvinists who will not have women candidates. Soon to be joined by Turkey’s Islamists, secular ultranationalists, and violent Kurdish Marxist separatists.
The appropriate person to move this amendment is the Leader of the Opposition, with a Labour three-line whip in favour of it and the public warning that the Whip would be withdrawn from any remaining Blairite ultra who failed to comply. The Liberal Democrats set great store by decentralisation, transparency and democracy, and they represent many areas badly affected by the Common Fisheries Policy. The Liberals were staunch free traders who were as opposed the Soviet Bloc as they were to Far Right regimes in Latin America and Southern Africa, while the SDP’s reasons for secession from Labour included both calls for protectionism and the rise of antidemocratic extremism. (Both the Liberal Party and, on a much smaller scale, the SDP still exist, and both are now highly critical of the EU.)
The SDLP takes the Labour Whip, the Alliance Party is allied to the Lib Dems, the Greens are staunchly anti-EU, so is the DUP, and the one other Unionist is close to Labour. The SNP and Plaid Cymru can hardly believe in independence for Scotland, greater autonomy for Wales, yet vote against the return to Westminster of the powers that they wish to transfer thence to Edinburgh or Cardiff; the SNP also has the fishing issue to consider. Even any remaining Conservatives who wanted to certify the European People’s Party as politically acceptable might be brought on board.
Leaving those fabled creatures, backbench Tory Eurosceptics. It is high time that their bluff was called. This is how to do it.
Ed Miliband, over to you.
9:32 pm, October 27, 2011
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