Posts Tagged ‘Scottish National Party’

Labour Kicked In The Yarbles Yet Again

Monday, May 10th, 2021

The UK just had their 2021 local elections, and once again Labour got kicked in the yarbles:

The Conservatives have continued to sweep aside Labour in its traditional north-eastern English heartland.

The party lost control of Durham County Council, which it has run since 1925, losing 15 seats as the Tories took 14.

This follows the Conservatives winning the Hartlepool parliamentary by-election and receiving 73% of the vote in the Tees Valley mayoral election….

So far, the Conservatives have made a net gain of 12 councils, while Labour has lost control of eight.

You may think “Oh, Labour lost some local elections, big deal,” but the wounds are deeper than that. The areas they’re losing aren’t marginal toss-up districts, they’re places that made up the Labour heartland for decades:

Labour’s traditional constituents continue to leave the woke, EU-loving, Brexit-hating, Corbynite-riddled Labour Party in droves due to the naked contempt that party now regards them with:

So, the working-class revolt against the Labour Party continues. The ballot-box uprising of December 2019 – when millions of voters across the Red Wall switched from Labour to the Tories – is still in full flow. Hartlepool, Labour since it was founded in 1974, has now fallen to the Tories, with a staggering majority of 7,000. Labour councillors in Derby, Dudley, Sunderland and elsewhere have been unceremoniously turfed out of power and replaced with Tories. The results so far are ‘shattering’, says Labour’s Steve Reed.

‘Shattering’ is the word for it. What is being shattered is politics as we knew it, the alignments that defined political life in this country for generations. The Hartlepool by-election and the English local elections – at least what we know of them so far – confirm that the relentless realignment of British politics will not be halted anytime soon. The mass working-class defection to the Conservative Party; the colonisation of Labour by middle-class graduates; the transformation of Labour from a party of working people into a metropolitan machine more concerned with gender-neutral toilets and taking the knee than with what working-class people want and need – anyone who thought these historic shifts and quakes would be reversed by having sensible, forensic Sir Keir Starmer at the helm of Labour has just received the rudest awakening imaginable.

What Labour centrists must now admit is that their party’s travails run far deeper than the Corbyn effect. Another thing that has been shattered is the much gabbed-out idea that once Labour jettisoned Jeremy and the cranky trustafarians and Fisher-Price Marxists who made up his support base, then it would go back back to being a normal party with a shot at power. In truth, while Corbyn’s time at the top was undoubtedly disastrous – the anti-Semitism, the swapping of class politics for identity politics, the Britain-bashing – something far more profound is driving the working-class revolt against Labour.

To the fore is the issue of Brexit. These election results look like a continuation of working-class voters’ rejection of the Brexit betrayers – most notably Labour – and their lining up behind the party that at least promised to Get Brexit Done: the Tories. It still blows my mind that the political class thought it could try to stitch up the largest democratic vote in UK history and there wouldn’t be severe, long-lasting consequences. This extraordinary naivety was on full display in Hartlepool, where arch-Remainer Keir Starmer stood arch-Remainer Paul Williams in a seat in which 70 per cent of people voted for Brexit. Do they think working-class voters are stupid? The answer, as we know, is yes, of course they do.

A key lesson of the local elections – as with the 2019 General Election – is that working-class people take their vote seriously. They do not take kindly to the elite’s bigoted efforts to undermine their right to vote. Many working-class voters look at Labour and see a party of over-educated operators and activists who shamelessly devoted much of the past five years to frustrating the vote for Brexit. This is why they revolted against Labour in 2019, and why they revolted yesterday too – because democracy is important to working-class voters. They don’t have newspaper columns or a seat in the Lords or thousands of Twitter followers or some other means to make their voices heard. They only have the right to vote. You mess with that right at your peril, as Starmer and Williams surely now know.

Another problem is Labour’s embrace of identitarianism and its shamefacedness about Britain. From Emily Thornberry’s haughty sneer at a working-class household that was flying the English flag to Starmer’s taking of the knee to the regressive politics of Black Lives Matter, from Corbynistas’ claim that British history is one horrendous crime after another to Labour politicians’ rage against the Sewell report for daring to suggest the UK is not actually a racist hellhole – working-class voters clock all of this. Not surprisingly they do not feel enthused by the ideology of national shame now promoted by many in Labour, or by the snotty suggestion that loads of Brits are racist. A cartoon in Private Eye captured it well – it featured a Labour candidate doorstepping two working-class voters and asking: ‘Why won’t you racist fascists vote Labour?’

Following this most recent working-class revolt against Labour, there has been a shrill, unseemly spat between Corbynistas and Starmerites over who is to blame for Labour’s troubles. The disingenuousness from both sides is staggering. The truth is that these two middle-class factions have far more in common than they would like to admit. Both backed a second referendum; both looked upon Brexit voters as a misled, idiotic mob; both are repelled by the social and cultural values of working-class communities; and both are convinced that Britain and most of its inhabitants – Them, not Us – are potty xenophobes. The revolt against Labour is more than a reckoning with Corbynism or Starmerism – it is a democratic confrontation between working-class communities and a political elite who they believe, quite rightly, views them with contempt, disdain and pity.

(Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

Dr. Rakib Ehsan says that wokeness is killing Labour:

Last night showed yet again that large swathes of the country are sick of being treated with patronising condescension by Labour politicians and student activists. Labour was crushed in the Hartlepool by-election and suffered ward losses in multiple northern regions, with Conservatives gaining control of Dudley, Nuneaton and Bedworth councils.

These areas, with their high numbers of traditional blue collar workers, are leading the charge against a woke agenda that has almost destroyed their traditional party. Working class voters are sending a clear message: they do not need a ‘political re-education’, and they reject the fundamentally warped interpretation of British society held by some of the most vocal Labour representatives.

They see that too many Labour politicians are in thrall to a toxic racialised politics, the extent of this became clear when Sir Keir Starmer ‘took the knee’ in support of Black Lives Matter. The movement’s calls for the abolition of the police and a post-capitalist society reflect a crude identitarianism that carries no truck with the vast majority of Britons. Only one in ten of people in this country are in favour of reduced investment for local police forces.

Labour is also too comfortable with elements of the London elite that proudly vilify provincial voters who supported Brexit. It doesn’t help matters that Sir Keir Starmer was the chief architect of Labour’s second referendum policy – an exemplification of the metropolitan, anti-democratic tendencies which have taken hold of the party. It was, naturally, electorally disastrous.

It seems the primary distinguishing characteristic of the Labour Party days is unbridled, withering contempt for actual laborers. A party consisting of a woke urban elite pushing victimhood identity politics and condemning anyone that disagrees with them as “Little Englanders” will never enjoy the support of a majority of voters, no matter how many times that call Boris Johnson horrible, racist and xenophobic. Labour can continue to cling to the religion of wokeness, or they can be a competitive political party. They can’t do both. Until Labour realizes this, it’s just going to keep committing protracted, slow-motion suicide.

Speaking of which, I chuckled:

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EU Election Results

Wednesday, May 29th, 2019

From this side of the pond, the EU election results may seem somewhat baffling. Populist parties gained ground at the expense of centrist and traditional parties, but so did the Greens. This doesn’t fit our traditional left-right political schemas.

In the UK, Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party captured the most EU parliamentary seats. “Mr Farage’s party won 29 seats, the Lib Dems 16, Labour 10, the Greens seven, the Tories four, the SNP three, and Plaid Cymru and the DUP one each.” Those are disasterous results for Labour and the Tories. UKIP was wiped out and entirely replaced by the Brexit Party. The Liberal Democrats coming in second was a result I do not think was foreseen by anyone, nor the Greens doing better than the Tories. The colossal stink of the inability to deliver Brexit that clings to the Tories and Labour helped both Liberal Democrats and Greens, both being so far from power and out of the spotlight the last few years. Faced with parties run by Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn, “Vote them all out!” must have seemed like a coldly rational choice.

Some interesting results in Scotland:

In Scotland, the pro-Remain SNP won the biggest share of the vote, with just under 38%, giving it three MEPs.

The Brexit Party came in second place with a significantly lower percentage – 14.8% – followed by the Lib Dems with 13.9% and the Tories with 11.6% – meaning each party has one seat.

But Labour only received 9.3% of the vote – a loss in vote share of 16.6% – leaving it with no MEPs in Scotland for the first time.

It’s hard to say what these results indicate for UK domestic politics going forward, as traditionally MEP elections have been very poor indicators of the next general election. But the giant Brexit cockup is hugely hurting both Tories and Labour.

On the results from Europe as a whole:

1) The mainstream parties of the center-Left and center-Right (or so-called legacy parties) continue a decline that has now been going on, at different speeds in different countries, for several decades. Italy’s Christian Democrats fell apart in the 1990s; its post-Communist socialists more recently; Berlusconi’s once-dominant Forza Italia fell into single figures this time; and the socialists are still struggling, at 22 percent. In this election, Italy’s insurgent populist partners — the League and the Five Star Movement — got 51 percent of the total vote between them, and they’re not getting a divorce. It was a less happy story in Germany where the two main parties in the “Grand Coalition” — Angela Merkel’s CDU-CSU and the Social Democrats — both lost ground compared with their performance in 2014, scoring only 45 percent jointly when they would once have been in the high seventies. France’s traditional parties of government almost disappeared from the results, all scoring in single figures. And so on. The most dramatic collapse of the centrist parties was in Britain, where the governing Tories fell to below 10 percent. But that story will get fuller treatment elsewhere.

2) Where the center retreated, however, the populist Right did not always occupy the abandoned position. National populists (which is the approved non-hostile term for describing them) advanced moderately and consolidated their previous gains substantially in the elections. Victor Orban’s Fidesz won 52 percent of the votes in Hungary. Poland’s Law and Justice party held off a multi-party attack from an organized left-wing coalition and won a majority that suggests it will win the forthcoming national elections. France’s National Rally — the latest name for the populist Right party led by Marine Le Pen — narrowly defeated the populist-centrist party of President Macron in France. (Populist-centrism may be a novel concept, and it may prove to be an unsuccessful one, but it’s the best description yet coined of Macron’s ambiguous politics.) The political success of Italy’s populism we outlined above. And in the United Kingdom, the populist Euroskeptic party, titled with stunning simplicity the Brexit party, went from its foundation five weeks ago to become the largest U.K. party in the European Parliament, with 32 percent of the national vote and 29 MEPs. But it hopes to be leaving Parliament soon.

Populism suffered no major defeats anywhere — unless you count (and you shouldn’t) Denmark, where the People’s Party share of the vote was halved because the more respectable social democrats adopted their tough migration policy. On the other hand, populism didn’t win as many votes as the populists had hoped and as the Left and the media had feared. In particular, populists fell well short of taking control of the European Parliament or, as we shall see, even weakening the control of it exercised by the reigning centrist duopoly of Christian and Social Democrats.

3) If the center retreated and the Right advanced only so far, European Liberals (the ALDE parliamentary group) and Greens occupied the vacant ground. Greens became the second party in Germany and the third party in France; Liberal Democrats became the surprise second-place winners, after Nigel Farage’s Brexit party in Britain; and both parties did well throughout the western half of Europe. Their success is not a mystery. Progressive middle-class voters wanted more idealistic commitments to policies such as combatting climate change and opening borders than the cautious center always provided. In addition, such voters were alarmed by what they saw as the national-populist threat to the European Union — a greatly exaggerated one in reality since none of the populists outside the U.K. want to leave the EU, merely to restrain it. All the same, these voters turned out to support the EU, too, which in the U.K. explains the rise of the Lib Dems as a response to the Brexit party.

As Australian elections proved, green policies are popular right up to the point that someone tries to implement them.

Cutting to the chase:

The moderately conservative EPP will struggle to keep its preeminence within the centrist coalition because the ALDE and the Greens are ideologically closer to the socialists than to themselves; Greens within the European Parliament and Germany itself will want to use their newfound power to phase out fossil fuels, which will be resisted by coal-producing Poland and Eastern Germany; the more progressive Euro-parliamentary majority may want to press sanctions on Viktor Orban for violating “European values,” but the success of populists in half of Europe means that he now has more allies in that conflict; and, above all, President Macron has enthusiastic supporters among the ALDE liberals in the European Parliament for his ambitious integrationist projects that the Germans and other Northern European governments fear they will be asked to finance.

And these projects are indeed formidable: to centralize the power and sovereignty of 27 nation-states in European institutions without solving their existing democracy deficit; to replace their independent budgetary arrangements with a single European fiscal policy without the power of tax collection; to create a common European defense structure separate from NATO without increasing anyone’s defense expenditure; to replace fossil fuels with renewables to solve climate change without massive regulation, and a realistic plan to prevent a huge rise in energy costs for industry and consumers. This is the hubris of government, but its costs always fall on others. It is sometimes said that the error of socialists is not that they have no faith in capitalism but that they have almost boundless faith in it. They think it can bear any burden they place on it and still stagger on delivering the goods. Modern European statesmen feel the same way about their citizens. The populists remind them they’re wrong. And they haven’t gone away.

One moderating effect on an “radical center” is the fact that the structure of the EU leaves very little actual power in the hands of the EU Parliament. My suspicion is that if the EU Parliament wanted to phase out fossil fuels faster than the real rulers of the EU think wise, those policies would just magically not get implemented.

As I’ve stated before, the future of EU politics probably looks a lot like the Northern League-Five Star alliance in Italy: Moderately populist, in favor of both low taxes and a large welfare state, guaranteed to remain popular right up until the inevitable economic crash.

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LinkSwarm for June 12, 2017

Monday, June 12th, 2017

Enjoy a late, out-of-band LinkSwarm to start your week:

  • Attorney General Jeff Sessions is serious about border control:

    Sessions said 25 judges have already been deployed to detention centers on the U.S.-Mexico border, according to Politico. Another 50 judges will be “on the bench” later this year. A separate 75 judges will be added in fiscal 2018 at a cost of $80 million.

    The need is obvious. About half of all federal arrests in 2014 were for immigration crimes, and 93 percent of that figure took place at or near the border, the Bureau of Justice Statistics recently reported.

  • Leaked diplomatic cables show concern by other U.S. allies in the region that Qatar was backing terrorist groups.
  • More background on the Qatar vs. every other Sunni gulf state feud.
  • “President Trump continues to make sterling judicial nominations.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Trump as our Claudius.
  • Pundits keep telling President Trump he has to give up tweeting. Why would he, when his tweets make the media dance to his tune? (Hat tip: Scott Adams.)
  • “Obama Admin Did Not Publicly Disclose Iran Cyber-Attack During ‘Side-Deal’ Nuclear Negotiations.” Because why protect America’s cybersecurity when you can give billions to a jihad-supporting regime to sign a treaty they’ll refuse to follow?
  • “12 Democrat staffers arrested, charged with voter fraud.”
  • Congress should investigate if Attorney General Lynch pressured Comey to cover for Hillary Clinton, says notorious right-wing shill…Dianne Feinstein? (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Now that Democrats are getting getting hefty support from moneyed elites, they’re not so keen on wealth redistribution.
  • “The Strange Death of Scottish Nationalism.” The Tories did badly in the snap election, but the Scottish National Party did much, much worse.
  • How Theresa May screwed up. And why on earth was she using Jim Messina as a political consultant? Because he did such a smashing job on the “Remain” campaign?
  • “EU, UN siphon off 100 million Euro annually to groups running anti-Israel campaign.”
  • “UK government paid London jihad mass murderer’s brother to fight ‘extremism.'”
  • Jim Goad covers the lunacy at Evergreen College. Tidbit: “The school bears the dubious distinction of being ‘one of the least selective universities in the nation with an admittance rate of 98%.'” *Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • So much news dropped last week that I didn’t get around to posting on the arrest of NSA contractor Reality Winner for leaking classified information. And does the name “Reality Winner” mean we’re living in a Philip K. Dick novel? Or a Thomas Pynchon novel?
  • But we should lit Winner’s weird name distract us from the fact she’s a complete and utter moron, “not only printing the document from her NSA computer but emailing the Intercept using her personal Gmail account from the same computer.” (More on printing microdot technology.
  • In any case, the MSM is omitting Winner’s long, documented history of far-left political activism.
  • “The Democrats don’t have a ‘white working-class problem.’ They have a ‘working-class problem.” Caveat: Lots of leftist blather. But it’s refreshing to see liberals admit just how badly the Obama economy sucked. (Hat tip: Mickey Kaus.)
  • Tweet:

  • “Italy’s populist Five Star Movement humiliated in municipal elections.” That’s Beppe Grillo’s left-wing populist Euroskeptic Party. Between this and France’s election, was Brexit the high-water mark of Euroskepticism? Maybe, until the next economic crisis.
  • Speaking of which, the slow-motion Spanish banking panic continues apace, and Spanish regulators have imposed a ban on short-selling.
  • Adam West, RIP.
  • Flying Goth.
  • Attempted cereal killing.
  • Joe’s Crab Shack files for bankruptcy.
  • “Man Fashions Fabulously Tiny Hats for Toad Who Visits His Porch Every Day.”

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    Theresa May Screws Up

    Friday, June 9th, 2017

    Despite having an absolute majority in Parliament, Prime Minister Theresa May gambled she could increase Tory numbers in Parliament, strengthen her hand in Brexit negotiations, and KO the Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Party by calling a snap election.

    The result: the Tories lost 12 seats and Labour picked up 29, meaning that the Tories no longer have an absolute majority. Because they still have the most seats in Parliament, the Tories will still get first crack at forming a coalition government, most likely with the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland. “For as long as Corbyn leads Labour, we will ensure there’s a Tory PM.”

    Oddly enough, both Conservatives and Labour gained vote share at the expense of the minor parties. The conservatives increased their share of votes in Scotland, where they took several seats from the Scottish National Party. The Liberal Democrats gained three seats.

    I said when she scheduled the snap election that it was a bold but risky move, and it backfired. I think “campaign fatigue” might have had a role in May’s defeat, a classic “Hubris clobbered by Nemesis” move.

    If there’s one pattern to 21st century electoral politics, it’s apparently “never believe polls.”

    (Administrative note: So much news dropped yesterday that the LinkSwarm will probably be pushed out to Monday.)

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    UK PM Theresa May Calls Early Elections

    Tuesday, April 18th, 2017

    This is unexpected (at least to me): UK Prime Minister Theresa May announced a plan to call a snap general election on June 8, despite the ruling Tories already having won an absolute parliamentary majority in 2015.

    Her statement:

    I have just chaired a meeting of the cabinet, where we agreed that the government should call a general election, to be held on 8 June.

    “I want to explain the reasons for that decision, what will happen next and the choice facing the British people when you come to vote in this election.

    “Last summer, after the country voted to leave the European Union, Britain needed certainty, stability and strong leadership, and since I became prime minister the government has delivered precisely that.

    “Despite predictions of immediate financial and economic danger, since the referendum we have seen consumer confidence remain high, record numbers of jobs, and economic growth that has exceeded all expectations.

    “We have also delivered on the mandate that we were handed by the referendum result. Britain is leaving the European Union and there can be no turning back.

    “And as we look to the future, the Government has the right plan for negotiating our new relationship with Europe.

    “We want a deep and special partnership between a strong and successful European Union and a United Kingdom that is free to chart its own way in the world.

    “That means we will regain control of our own money, our own laws and our own borders and we will be free to strike trade deals with old friends and new partners all around the world.

    “This is the right approach, and it is in the national interest. But the other political parties oppose it.

    “At this moment of enormous national significance there should be unity here in Westminster, but instead there is division. The country is coming together, but Westminster is not.

    “In recent weeks Labour has threatened to vote against the final agreement we reach with the European Union. The Liberal Democrats have said they want to grind the business of government to a standstill.

    “The Scottish National Party say they will vote against the legislation that formally repeals Britain’s membership of the European Union. And unelected members of the House of Lords have vowed to fight us every step of the way.

    “Our opponents believe because the government’s majority is so small, that our resolve will weaken and that they can force us to change course. They are wrong.

    “They underestimate our determination to get the job done and I am not prepared to let them endanger the security of millions of working people across the country.

    “Because what they are doing jeopardises the work we must do to prepare for Brexit at home and it weakens the government’s negotiating position in Europe.

    “If we do not hold a general election now their political game-playing will continue, and the negotiations with the European Union will reach their most difficult stage in the run-up to the next scheduled election.

    “Division in Westminster will risk our ability to make a success of Brexit and it will cause damaging uncertainty and instability to the country.

    “So we need a general election and we need one now, because we have at this moment a one-off chance to get this done while the European Union agrees its negotiating position and before the detailed talks begin.

    “I have only recently and reluctantly come to this conclusion. Since I became prime minister I have said that there should be no election until 2020, but now I have concluded that the only way to guarantee certainty and stability for the years ahead is to hold this election and seek your support for the decisions I must take.

    “And so tomorrow I will move a motion in the House of Commons calling for a general election to be held on 8 June. That motion, as set out by the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, will require a two-thirds majority of the House of Commons.

    “So I have a simple challenge to the opposition parties, you have criticised the government’s vision for Brexit, you have challenged our objectives, you have threatened to block the legislation we put before Parliament.

    “This is your moment to show you mean it, to show you are not opposing the government for the sake of it, to show that you do not treat politics as a game.

    “Let us tomorrow vote for an election, let us put forward our plans for Brexit and our alternative programmes for government and then let the people decide.

    “And the decision facing the country will be all about leadership. It will be a choice between strong and stable leadership in the national interest, with me as your prime minister, or weak and unstable coalition government, led by Jeremy Corbyn, propped up by the Liberal Democrats, who want to reopen the divisions of the referendum, and Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP.

    “Every vote for the Conservatives will make it harder for opposition politicians who want to stop me from getting the job done.

    “Every vote for the Conservatives will make me stronger when I negotiate for Britain with the prime ministers, presidents and chancellors of the European Union.

    “Every vote for the Conservatives means we can stick to our plan for a stronger Britain and take the right long-term decisions for a more secure future.

    “It was with reluctance that I decided the country needs this election, but it is with strong conviction that I say it is necessary to secure the strong and stable leadership the country needs to see us through Brexit and beyond.

    “So, tomorrow, let the House of Commons vote for an election, let everybody put forward their proposals for Brexit and their programmes for government, and let us remove the risk of uncertainty and instability and continue to give the country the strong and stable leadership it demands.”

    A snap election is a bold, risky move for May, but one that could pay off. With none of the post-Brexit vote gloom-and-doom scenarios of the Remain faction having materialized, Brexit’s popularity itself at all-time highs, the economy strong and the unpopular Jeremy Corbyn still leading Labour, May obviously thought now was the time to strike. She might be right: the Tories stand to pick up a lot of support from UKIP now that their raison d’etre is gone, while Scottish National Party looks poised to lock out Labour in the north yet again. But the downside is that if the Tories lose power, she goes down as the shortest serving PM since Bonar Law.

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    The Knives Comes Out For Corbyn

    Wednesday, June 29th, 2016

    After Brexit’s passage, Labour MPs decided to take their frustrations out on their own leader:

    A motion of no confidence in Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has been passed by the party’s MPs.

    The 172-40 vote, which is not binding, follows resignations from the shadow cabinet and calls on Mr Corbyn to quit.

    Mr Corbyn said the ballot had “no constitutional legitimacy” and said he would not “betray” the members who voted for him by resigning.

    So the purpose of the vote was, what, essentially? To shame him into resigning? To push him out without having their fingerprints on the knife in his back?

    “Dave Sparks, a councillor in Dudley and a former chair of the Local Government Association, warned that if Mr Corbyn stays, Labour will be wiped out.”

    Maybe so, but barring a Tory no confidence vote (which, with Cameron’s resignation and an absolute parliamentary majority, would not be in the Tories’ interests) the next general election will not be until 2020, by which standard this leadership move is about three years premature.

    It seems to have been a dry run for an actual leadership challenge, but I suspect that Corbyn, in all his loony left glory, is far more popular with Labour voters than anyone the MPs could replace him with.

    “The [Scottish National Party], meanwhile, is to ask the Speaker to declare it the official opposition at Westminster, claiming their Westminster leader Angus Robertson has more support than Mr Corbyn.”

    In essence, Corbyn is the victim of three things:

    1. Labour’s rage at losing the Brexit vote. It seems that Corbyn is being penalized for not clapping loud enough to keep Tinkerbell alive.
    2. Long-simmering resentment of Corbyn being elected head by the party’s Tony Blair faction. (Some have suggested that it’s meant to distract from the imminent release of the Chilcot Report on the Iraq War. Which would make Corbyn’s attempted ouster an odd “distraction” to launch an entire week before…)
    3. Corbyn has always been more popular with the party’s rank and file than with their MPs.

    As disorienting as it is for me to sound like I’m actually defending Corbyn, he isn’t the source of Labour’s ills, and booting him isn’t going to solve them.

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