The late Anthony Wedgewood Benn once said that the Labour Party is not a socialist party but is a party with socialists in it. I guess I would subscribe to this comment.

Since our inception we have been a melting pot of different ideas hence being a broad church.

The only time socialism was mentioned in our ordinances was when a certain Tony Blair advocated a change of Clause 4 from what it had been since 1917 when Sydney Webb drafted the original " To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service" to what it is today.

I do think at times political parties need to look at themselves and to work out what is their purpose and indeed last year it was suggested by one of the then Labour leadership candidates that perhaps we needed to look again at our aims and values in light of changing times.

When that was suggested it spurred me into writing a new clause 4 which I promptly deposited with a certain person.

However it is not the most important thing on the agenda.

One of my big criticisms of the Party was that it lacked a grassroots organisation where there could be a cross fertilization of ideas on how we could rebuild a collapsing society.

No doubt whatever ideas I had put forward to the Party ended up in the shredder.

Under previous leaders we were very top down and we adopted a clunking first approach that the leader is all knowing.

Although I campaigned in 2015 in my limited way for Labour in support of the local candidate I was under no illusions having informed the party back in 2014 that we were not going to win, again my thoughts at that time were put in the shredder, and after the defeat in 2015 I wrote a long explanation on why we were defeated again - that was put into the shredder.

We have a leadership now whom I believe are willing to listen to the shop floor because they don't have the answers to everything but together we can come to that point where the answers are in front of us.

Finally we came into being to be the voice of working class opinion in the legislature and the great challenge for us today is to reconnect with the working class and to understand their needs, their wants, their hopes and their desires and if we can do that I believe we will form the next government.

However if we display an arrogance, which I believe we did under previous leaders then I am sorry to say we will be defeated in 2020 or whenever the next general election occurs, because a party that doesn't listen to the people doesn't deserve to be in government.

​Thanks to our regular contributor Ferederick James

​http://www.independent.co.uk/news/defining-moment-as-blair-wins-backing-for-clause-iv-1611135.html

The British Labour Party is tearing itself apart when it should be fighting the Tories and showing a dignified and united front.

As all of us know united we stand divided we fall.

You can lay the blame wherever you want in this ridiculous spat but the behaviour of the Parliamentary Labour Party ahead of Corbyn's election as party leader on September 12, 2015, hinted at what was to come sooner or later.

So as the country reeled from the implications of a possible exit from the European Union some in Labour decided now was the time to launch a leadership challenge.

There are many petitions around online since war broke out in the Labour Party but here is one from Patricia on Twitter asking the now-called 'Chicken Coup' plotters to basically show some balls and either launch a leadership challenge or get back to work.

#putuporshutup

The petition reads:
Labour leadership challenger & election now please. No more stalling.

To: The Labour PLP coup plotters.Please put forward your contender for the leadership NOW so a democratic vote can be held.

Enough stalling, bring forward a challenger along with policy NOW so you can get back to doing the job we tax payers pay you for., WHICH IS TO OPPOSE AND ATTACK the Tory Party.

If you cannot bring forward a challenger to Mr Corbyn and give us, the people, a democratic vote then either resign or back down.

Thank you.

You can sign the petition by following this link

Op-ed: Michael Dugher: The campaign manager the Tories can always rely on.

I see Michael Dugher has been busy plotting against Corbyn again.

Despite knowing how impossible it is for Labour to win 400 council seats after the high watermark of 2012, this is the bar he's set for Labour in the local elections.

I'm surprised he hasn't come out and said Labour need to win back the council of Atlantis if Labour is going to prove they've made progress under Corbyn.

Ok that's a tad farfetched, but only a tad.

Dugher is so transparent, it's impossible NOT to see what he is up to. The higher the bar the bigger the fail. And it's a fail he craves.

A big fail means he has grounds to call on Jeremy to resign.

I can see it now - Dugher wearing his despairing face - the one he probably practices in a mirror at home - as he bemoans Labour's backward slide under Corbyn via TV interview after TV interview.

What angers me most, is the impact Dugher's plotting might have on vulnerable people.

As we know from the overly optimistic 2015 election polls, the expectation that Labour was in a comfortable position worked against Labour. Had the polls more accurately predicted a narrow Tory win, more Labour supporters would have been galvanised to vote. Similarly, if Dugher's overly optimistic predictions lead the voting public to expect an easy ride for Labour in May, thousands of Labour inclined voters, blind to a plotters rhetoric, will not bother to vote; and as Jeremy rightly says, a Labour council is the best protection against Tory cuts.

Dugher's game playing could contribute to an elderly person sitting in their own faeces an extra thirty minutes because of a slashed social care budget, or a depressed mum having no library to take her toddler to, to break up a long lonely day.

I know what Dugher would say to this - he'd say I have indulged myself by voting for a Labour leader who is so unelectable the Tories are certain to win again, with all the harm that will cause to people. But I genuinely believe Jeremy to be our best shot at winning in 2020.

That's not to say I'm certain he will win. I don't possess the so called 'moderates' arrogance when it comes to predicting future elections, especially when the world appears to be suffering from 'post financial crash disorder.' I hope he will win, but I don't know he will for sure.

But Dugher knows full well the devastating consequences Tory led councils will have for vulnerable people, so he has no excuse.

Dugher is clearly very angry and bitter about Jeremy's leadership. Does his bitterness simply stem from a belief that Jeremy is the wrong leader? I don't think so.

I'm inclined to believe it stems from his role as Andy Burnham's campaign manager in the leadership elections. Burnham was odds on to win at the start of the race. Had Burnham won, Dugher would have secured his place in history as the man who ran a successful leadership campaign. Not only that, his career would have flourished under a grateful Burnham's leadership.

But it all went 'horribly wrong' when a bearded, sixty-six year-old left winger, who had never expressed any interest in being leader before, unexpectedly entered the race.

But rather than blaming himself for failing to have his finger on the pulse of the membership, Dugher seems determined to blame Corbyn for standing, and the members for voting for him.

We need to be punished.

Maybe he believes Corbyn's failure is the only balm that will take the sting out of his own? Maybe that is true. Or maybe, the balm that will really take the sting out of his 'failure,' is if he turned his fire on the Tories and helped us defeat them, because at the moment he is acting like their unpaid campaign manager, and I fail to see any good that can come from that.

By Chelley Ryan
Find Chelley at the Morning Star online

The following was written in response to "Jeremy Corbyn Urged By Furious MPs At Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) To Expel Anti-Semitic Party Member Vicky Kirby" posted by the Huffington Post.

John Taylor does not pull his punches as he writes:

Comrades, brothers and sisters, how much more can we take from these 'Bitterites' in the PLP?

They are an utter disgrace and week in and week out at the PLP, Parliamentary Labour Party, meeting they have something to gripe about; Monday it was attacking Jeremy Corbyn for not expelling a Party member over anti-semetic tweets'.

Since when was it the Party Leader's duty and or responsibility to expel a party member?

Currently it is the duty of the unelected unaccountable 'Compliance Unit' to carry out the Party Rules, so why in God's name aren't these 'arseholes' calling out this Unit instead of Jeremy Corbyn?

I think it’s plainly obvious to even the most 'casual observer' what these clowns' agenda is?

Then we hear Chukka Umunna saying: "Clearly Jeremy has a very strong support amongst our membership. But then if you look at the parliamentary Labour party they have a direct mandate from 9.3m Labour voters. “If you look at the research on things like Trident the parliamentary party would be closer to the views of the voters than the members and there's that tension."

Asked if he would stand for the Labour leadership, Umunna responded "I would never say never" but gave a hint that Mr Corbyn would be safe at least until September.

"I think the guy deserves a chance to see what he can do. He hasn't been in the job for year yet. I think most members of the parliamentary Labour party would agree with that."

Who the fuck does he think he is comrades? We need to get tough with these bastards it is getting completely out of hand now.

AT NEWTEKWORLDNEWS:
Time attacks on Corbyn were stopped, a call to arms
Jeremy Corbyn the man
Corbyn under pressure even from within Labour
Cameron Corbyn attack childish
Blairite Corbyn backstabber

It is not conducive to political party unity for supporters to take part in a slanging match but when Labour MPS continue to voice their negative opinions on the party's election chances a response is needed.

The latest to push her political opinions forward is Jess Phillips MP. Yes her again!

Phillips is or was something of a darling of the party and could be popular with her constituents but does that give her carte blanche to bad-mouth the current party leader and downgrade Labour's election chances in the MSM?

These days Phillips is usually making news headlines by choice but in the weeks following the 2015 General Election the Birmingham Mail reported "A new Birmingham MP has employed her husband as her office manager, funded by taxpayers.  Jess Phillips (Lab), MP for Birmingham Yardley, pays husband Tom Phillips to be her Constituency Support Manager from her Parliamentary allowance. The employment began on June 7, a month after she won the seat for the first time in the general election on May 7.The arrangement is revealed in the register of members’ interests, published by House of Commons authorities. Mrs Phillips said: “I am in the process of setting up my office and I need somebody I can trust to do that. “He has all the skills I need to do that. “It’s about setting up the office, making sure the IT works and I need someone with the skills to do that.”

She is not the only politician that pays a family member to work for them in such a way.

But the media tide turned for Jess Phillips post the election of Jeremy Corbyn as party leader when she began feeding the press with a series of opinions.

In September days after Corbyn was elected the Huffington Post went with "Labour MP Jess Phillips told Diane Abbott to “fuck off” during a heated row about a lack of women in the top shadow cabinet jobs."

Abbot is a longstanding supporter of Mr Corbyn Phillips is not. Abbot began her political career in 1982, Phillips was elected as a Member of Parliament in 2015.

Phillips kicked off after Mr Corbyn announced his new shadow cabinet, angry that the ratio of men to women was unevenly balanced. She does however need to bear in mind two senior women who are Labour veterans, Liz Kendal and Yvette Cooper, refused to work alongside the new leader. Other MPs also ran for the backbenches.

Perhaps she thought she should be sitting on the front benches?

However most women do not want a female to represent them at any price; we want one fit for purpose.

But either way she is playing divisive political games and ultimately it is we the people who will lose out.

Many of the politicians unhappy at the election of Jeremy Corbyn declined to stand in the party leadership race including Dan Jarvis who some now tout as a likely candidate to stage a Labour leadership coup in the future.

Those who attack Mr Corbyn's record as party leader should bear in mind that verbal attacks in the workplace undermines your performance and wrecks efficiency.

Those in parliament seeking to fulfil their own agenda will make the party unelectable and not the party leader.

In December Phillips said if ‘the general election were called now’, she could not see the opposition doing better than in May. That report in the Guardian continued saying she "has spoken of her determination to see Labour win the 2020 general election, saying she would knife Jeremy Corbyn “in the front, not the back” if it looks like he is damaging the party’s chances of electoral success."

But you have to wonder what Jess Phillips says on the election campaign trail after "Labour MP Jess Phillips rules out party's chances of winning 2020 election" Sunday less than three months after that supposedly determined stance.

That was published yesterday, mothering Sunday in the UK, along with "Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Won't Win 2020 Election And He Doesn't Want To Be PM, MP Jess Phillips Says" in the Huffington Post"  and maybe in some ways backed up by a pro Phillips piece in the Guardian titled "Jess Phillips: someone to believe in" and written by Rachel Cooke.

Corbyn  certainly rattled her cage last week after reports that he said "Decriminalise the 'sex industry'; note however that was a non-parliamentary debate not a policy announcement, Mr Corbyn answered a direct question with a direct answer as he always does and the word decriminalise does not mean the "legalisation of sex work."

He is not allowed to express an opinion but Ms Phillips runs off at the mouth time and time again.

But “Jess Phillips: someone to believe in?” That boat has sailed.

Phillips has had a busy old week feeding the mainstream media leaving this person wondering when she finds time to work and if in reality she is working for the Tory party.

One thing is sure - with friends like Jess Labour does not need enemies.

Check out the video below also from last week.

[She seems to like her honest approach but dislike it in people such as Jeremy Corbyn. Telling Diane Abbot to f**k off and then announcing it to the media is however not being human. What about being professional? Various emails and letters have been sent to Phillips on the back of her MSM post about the un-electability of Labour in 2020 and we will update if and when we receive replies-Eileen Kersey]

We are very pleased that in response to the vote on Syria and those recent attacks we have seen an unprecedented rise in Stop the War membership and activity across the country. We would like to thank all of you who have joined or donated in recent weeks. It is more important than ever that together we continue to build a strong anti-war movement in the UK. If you have not yet received your membership confirmation letter and card please do not worry, it is on its way. We are trying hard to process all recent memberships as quickly as possible.

We have repeatedly made our positions on the war in Syria clear, most recently in John Rees' For the avoidance of doubt article and in a statement last week. That the media largely chose to ignore them speaks volumes about its pro war agenda.
 
We have held a series of demonstrations over past weeks both in London and across the country. On Saturday, several thousand people joined us to march to Downing Street where we heard a message of solidarity from Jeremy Corbyn alongside many other speeches, which can be seen here. Jeremy was also the guest of honour at our very successful fundraising dinner last Friday.      
 
In the new year, there will be continuing protests and campaigning against the bombing. There is also the mass demonstration against Trident on February 27th, which Stop the War is fully supporting. It is clear that international and foreign policy issues will continue to hit the headlines over the next few months, and we have to be prepared to combat the pro war pro nuclear weapons agenda.