Quote of the day 17th October 2021

"Everyone – at least every sensible, decent person, of which there are many – in Labour’s ranks knows it’s wrong. Keir Starmer knows it. Angela Rayner knows it. Every Labour MP knows it.


"It can’t continue like this. It can’t take the killing of a Conservative MP in their constituency" ... "for the Left to set aside their tribalism and acknowledge the essential decency of one of their opponents."


"Not least because that tribalism will not be set aside for long. Tomorrow, the House of Commons will gather for a moment of reflection. Sir Keir Starmer and other Labour MPs will help lead the tributes. And then it will be back to business as usual. ‘Tories – they hate the poor, they hate the migrants. They deserve everything they get.’


They don’t. Because they’re not ‘scum’. Tories are good, honest, decent, committed public servants, who just happen to have a different political philosophy.


David Amess wasn’t the exception, he was the rule. And it’s time for people on the Left – indeed, for all of us – to start to recognise it."


(Dan Hodges, former Labour and Trade union staffer, in a newspaper article calling for the dialling down of tribal demonisation of political opponents of right or left, which you can read in full here.)

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