Quote of the day 8th August 2015

"On Saturday I met Green party Leader Natalie Bennett at Liverpool Pride.  She was with the party’s parliamentary candidate for Liverpool Riverside.  Also with them was one of their local election candidates, who’s recently registered as a Labour Party supporter.  I said to her that I’d assumed she’d left the Green party, as I’d seen her name as a registered Labour supporter.  She replied, in front of Natalie Bennett, that she was still a Green Party member and supporter but had registered as a Labour supporter just to vote for Jeremy Corbyn."

“I was a Labour voter for 30 years,” she said, “and I support Labour’s values.”

“But what about the bit about not being a supporter of any organisation opposed to the Labour Party?”, I asked.

“Erm…”, was the response.

“Natalie, ” I said, “Is this allowed under Green party rules?  Surely if you sign up to this, you’d be ineligible to stay a Green party member?”

Natalie replied in that familiar, refreshing manner I’d got to know so well from the televised debates,

“It’s not something we’d recommend, but if someone wants to perjure themselves…”

(From an article by Liverpool Labour Councillor Nick Small on  Labour uncut)

Comments

Jim said…
Im not really a fan of parties as such, I think there are too many issues for any single party to have the best answer to them all. I just prefer to work with whomever is saying the most senisible logical thing for the given situation.

You tend to see in the house of commons that if the government come up with something really really sensible, then the opposition feel obliged to oppose it because they are the opposition, usually they dont oppose it with a better idea though, Just something very very silly instead.

The same thing happens within parties, if a party come up with something that is very very silly, then the other members of the party feel inclined to agree with it but only because it came from their own party, they would slate it if the idea came from anyone else.

I don't think the answer to that is to join two or more parties, as you like bits of each of them, I think its far easier just to be a member of none of them.
11:41 am
Chris Whiteside said…
Sadly what you just described happens far too often at national level - in fact one of David Cameron's strengths as Leader of the Opposition is that he was less prone to vote against things just because it was the other side putting things forward than most politicians are. Blair only got academy schools through, for instance, despite opposition from a big chunk of his own party, because DC helped him to do so.

It was my experience in local government that councillors are often more prepared than MPs to vote for something sensible which their opponents put forward - although Copeland Labour councillors seemed to find this harder than most.
12:18 am
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