Veteran Labour MP Kate Hoey has not been backward in coming forward with ideas to alienate her local CLP: backing the Leave side in the referendum, yet representing a solidly Remain constituency; campaigning alongside former UKIP Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage; voting in defiance of the Labour whips to prop up Theresa May; and then backing an amendment alongside hardline Tories and the DUP.
Why might her CLP have taken against Kate Hoey?
So she should not have been surprised when that same CLP decided to move a motion of no confidence in her. This they did last Thursday: as the Guardian has reported, “The motion, passed at a meeting of the Vauxhall Labour party on Thursday evening, calls for Hoey to lose the Labour whip and for the party’s national executive not to allow her to be reselected for the seat … Forty-two members voted against the MP with three abstentions. No one voted in her favour”. No one voted for her. In her own CLP.
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But she was not yet downhearted, telling “My local party activists are solid EU remainers. I will always put my country before my party and helping my constituents is a priority. After 29 years as an MP I am quite relaxed about the vote and it won’t influence in any way how I vote in future”. But then came one endorsement she could do without.
And that endorsement came from pro-am motormouth Katie Hopkins, who has decided that there are some Labour MPs she is prepared to support, however little sense she makes in doing so. “The Purge of Kate Hoey MP spells the end of dissent in party politics. Without dissent, the parliamentary system is dead. Proportional representation is the solution”. Ah right - change the system, so we get more Farages, eh?
But she wasn’t finished. “Kate Hoey MP … Took 57% of the vote on re-election … Loyal to Corbyn during his no-confidence vote … True to Labour manifesto to deliver on results of Referendum … Shat on from 50,000 feet by Hard-Left Mafia”. What was that about “dissent”? Now she’s talking about not dissenting. And what’s with the “Took 57% of the vote on re-election”? Does a big personal vote earn Katie’s backing?
How about someone who got over 75% of the popular vote in last year’s General Election? Someone loyal to Jezza, someone true to the Labour manifesto when it comes to Brexit? That may cause Hatey Katie a problem. “Lady Karen Brady to be the next London Mayor? Anything but Diane Abbott … Diane Abbott managing to get her mug on screen standing in solidarity with the people of Gaza. Wish she was standing in solitary confinement”.
Not such a surprise from someone who has been cosying up to Apartheid supporters in South Africa recently, slagging off London’s Mayor because he’s a Muslim, and ranting endlessly about refugees from Africa. The last endorsement Kate Hoey needs is that from a white supremacist-backing racist bigot. But it’s all she’s getting right now.
Kate Hoey may be putting a brave face on it. But if her only backers are out there on the far right, she’s finished. Apart from the £60,000 pension, of course.
The sooner Hoey is gone, the better for the Labour Party.
ReplyDeleteI can think of at least 20 New Labour she can take with her into the tories.
Any of them thinking of starting a "new party of the centre ground" would do well to remember the fate of the so-called "Social Democrats".
Certainly those duped by the SD haven't forgotten. Which is why the New Labour quisling dregs are still hanging around like a bad smell - they know they'd eventually be annihilated politically if they tried the same scam.
Fortunately, few have forgotten New Labour's warmongering and gutless treachery. Which is why the Blair/Brown mass murder gang are pariahs, especially the conscience-free trio of Bomber Benn, Mad Mann and Unctuous Umunna. With some determination party members could jettison them too. It can't come soon enough if Labour is to restore its founding principles and begin to rid the country of the dry rot of institutional corruption.
But there's a long, hard road ahead, dogged all the way by hysterical organised propaganda from sell-out far right hacks in corporate media. Hoey is the least of it.