Source: Watson considering picking up Dep Leader challenge gauntlet?
Watson considering picking up Dep Leader challenge gauntlet?
July 22, 2017
As the SKWAWKBOX reported last week, Emily Thornberry is said to be moving closer to triggering a contest for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party after a rousing response to her outstanding performance at PMQs when she stood in for Jeremy Corbyn because Theresa May was absent.
The #Emily4Deputy hashtag first trended on social media in late March, when news of preparations for a challenge first broke, and there is significant support. Even in March, Ms Thornberry was understood to have 35 or 36 nominations by MPs/MEPs lined up – enough to stand if the post was vacant, but short of the fifty or so required to force a contest against an incumbent.
However, the equation has shifted since the General Election and Ms Thornberry is said to be very close to the (now 57) nominations she would need to force a contest whether Mr Watson wants one or…
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Video: at last blairite admits what we all knew – they wanted #GE17 to go badly
July 15, 2017
It’s long been believed by many Corbyn supporters that the right wing of the party wanted Labour to fail badly in the General Election under Jeremy Corbyn – and by almost as many that they were doing their best to make it happen.
How better to explain the constant briefings and whinings to press and broadcasters about unelectability, the manufactured misogyny smear (and worse), the damaging interventions by New Labour dinosaurs no longer in Parliament and the attempts by right-leaning HQ staff to undermine Corbyn and weed out his supporters? Hard to think of a better explanation that fits the facts.
‘The truth will out’, as the saying goes – and former New Labour front-bencher slipped up and let it escape his lips during a television interview.
Asked whether he was disappointed by Labour’s surge in the General Election because it spoiled the chance of getting rid of Corbyn, Johnson…
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Not one day more: Tory councillor suspended for sneering racism and vindictive Tory anti-welfarism
July 11, 2017
Not one day more: Tory councillor suspended for sneering racism and vindictive Tory anti-welfarism
July 11, 2017
Councillor Rosemary Carroll
A Conservative councillor has been suspended for her sneering racism and despicable prejudice regarding welfare claimants. Some media outlets have described the comments as a “joke”. It wasn’t.
Rosemary Carroll, a Conservative councillor, shared a post about a man asking for benefits for his pet dog, making offensive rascist comparisons.
She was Mayor of Pendle until last month but was suspended from her party after the post appeared on her account this week.
The local Conservative branch posted a statement about the “inappropriate post” on Facebook after the allegations came to light.
Councillor Joe Cooney, leader of the Conservatives on Pendle Council, said Councillor Rosemary Carroll was suspended pending an investigation.
The comments, which have now been deleted, compared an Asian person claiming support to a dog.
Speaking before the suspension was confirmed, Carroll said she had meant to delete the post but ended up publishing it…
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Disabled people: marginalised, dehumanised & declared fit to work
July 9, 2017
By Daniel Margrain
This time next month, council tax bill increases that average five per cent will have arrived on the door mats of millions of people. The low paid, unemployed and pensioners with fixed incomes will be among the hardest hit. But there is another group of people – the disabled – who will be hit even harder. This increase will likely push many of the most vulnerable of our citizens over the edge of an already gaping precipice that began widening following drastic reforms to the welfare system that followed the 2012 Welfare Reform Act. Further drastic cuts occurred four years later following the passing of the Welfare Reform and Work Act which, it has been estimated, will have cut nearly £28bn of social security support to 3.7m disabled people by 2018.
What film director Ken Loach described as the “conscious cruelty” of the Tory government seems…
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Exclusive: Clive Lewis on THAT tweet. #Grenfell
July 4, 2017
Exclusive: Clive Lewis on THAT tweet. #Grenfell
July 4, 2017
Last month, Clive Lewis became famous for his reaction to his huge General Election victory in the early hours of Friday 9 Hune.
Just a few days later, after the Grenfell Tower tragedy, he was in the headlines again for the brief, evocative tweet above that he sent out about the role that our economic and political system played in the deaths of so many residents in the ill-fated high-rise – and the need for that system to change.
It was a masterpiece of succinct political communication. It was also provocative enough to rouse the right-wing media – from Fawkes to the Daily Politics show and everything in between – to first attack it and then use it as a challenge to every Labour politician, even weeks later.
Clive Lewis’ famous, endearing post-election celebration
Lewis has spoken exclusively to the SKWAWKBOX about that tweet, its meaning, its aim and the…
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