steelcityman

    The Fight for the Labour Party….

The Labour party is in disarray after the resignation of Ed Miliband (left), as the Labour Party Leader. We all knew there would be no shortage of candidates for the position and it finished up as a short list of four ; Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper, Liz Kendall and Jeremy Corbyn. In order to be considered as a candidate, each MP who applied for selection must get the support of 35 nominations from sitting MP’s…Andy Burnham (MP for Leigh) received 68 nominations…Yvette Cooper (MP for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) received 59 nominations…Liz Kendall (MP for Leicester West) received 41 nominations …and just scraping in with36 nominations was  Jeremy Corbyn (MP for Islington Nth) with 36.

The immediate front runner seemed to be Andy Burnham with his 68 nominations ………. HOWEVER …… With the exception  of Jeremy Corbyn, the other candidates are  decidedly  to the right of the Labour Party and are committed to carry on with the ‘Austerity’ politics of the Tories. Since the birth of Tony Blair’s ‘New labour’ which successfully captured the ‘Middle ground’ of British politics, the Party has inexorably moved over to the right, even getting rid of what was once the byword of the Labour party. ‘Clause 4’ of the party constitution …. The Clause 4 of the constitution was drafted in Nov 1917 and adopted into the Labour party constitution the following year, 1918. By removing the ‘meaning’ of the original clause 4 and changing it to a more ‘modern version’ as Tony Blair described it under New Labour, essentially changed the purpose and direction of the Labour party which saw ‘Socialism’ as a dirty word…that action saw a huge rift between the old school Socialists and the ‘New Labour Blairites, and the move over to the right of British politics. To be honest, I regard the present Labour set up as being no better than the Tory party !!!

Jeremy Corbyn, unlike the other candidates is a Socialist at heart and proposes to re-introduce Nationalisation, certainly of the Railways and the Water, Gas and Electricity companies, or the Utilities as they are collectively known. He advocates scrapping TRIDENT, the nuclear deterrent, and putting the money into the NHS instead…The Labour Party is in a PANIC…as Jeremy Corbyn has emerged as the front runner and now the favourite to win the ballot for Leadership….

On the Andrew Marr show, BBC television, Andrew Marr asks Mr Corbyn exactly what he stands for and he tries to find out why the establishment is running scared. I found it an understandable view of Jeremy Corbyn’s  position ….see what you think … ….

I know who my money is on in the contest and I know where my heart lies. I’m just waiting for the dirty tricks brigade of the establishment to try and dig up the dirt on Jeremy Corbyn….the future of the Labour Party and saviour of the working class.