The inaugural SKWAWKBOX Labour MP of the year awards seek to recognise the commitment of Labour MPs to their constituents, to their members and to creating a genuinely-changed society – against all the efforts of the Establishment to maintain the ‘they’re all the same’ status quo that prevents our citizens from recognising what’s being done to our country or at least from voting or acting to change it.
There are five award categories. The winners have been selected in consultation with a number of senior Labour campaigners.
New MP of the year (2017 intake until the next General Election)
Winner: Laura Pidcock, North-West Durham
Reasons: Ms Pidcock has entered Parliament with a fierce determination to represent her constituents – and just as fierce a determination to resist Westminster’s attempts to make her part of the ‘club’.
Her interview with the SKWAWKBOX, in which she stated that she had no intention of forming friendships with Tory MPs because their policies were hurting her constituents, went viral and was featured by all the mainstream press and broadcasters. It made her a target for right-wing MPs and the ‘MSM’ eager to maintain the cosy, clubby system that provides them with prestige and career opportunities. But she has handled the pressure with good grace, without compromising her readiness to call attention to the wrongs she perceives.
Her strong start to her tenure as an MP makes her one to watch for the future – but also an MP who will need all our support as the Establishment continues to concentrate its fire on her.
Best community MP
Winner: Emma Dent Coad, Kensington
Taking what was previously a comfortably Tory seat by just twenty votes must have been challenging enough for Ms Dent Coad in June – but to face the aftermath of the terrible Grenfell Tower blaze in her new constituency just six days after the election must have been daunting indeed.
Yet Ms Dent Coad, who was a councillor in the area before becoming its MP, has been a tower of strength for survivors and neighbours of the tower facing indifference, incompetence and callousness from the Tory-controlled council and Tory government.
On top of that, her fearless representation of her constituents made her a target of some of the most brutal, cynical, hypocritical smear attacks – yet she hasn’t wavered or compromised, challenging the Tories, speaking with exemplary frankness about the government and its compromised public inquiry and never ceasing to highlight the needs and suffering of Grenfell residents.
Best media performer
Winner: Barry Gardiner, Brent North
Mr Gardiner was not a particularly well-known figure to many of Labour’s new members, but Theresa May’s decision to call a snap General Election was the trigger for him to become one of the best known and liked Labour MPs, thanks to his unfailing courtesy yet merciless dissection of the nonsense of a string of TV and radio interviewers. Gardiner even called Sky’s Adam Boulton on the contrast between his treatment of Labour guests and his kid-glove treatment of Tory mouthpieces.
Gardiner showed similar steel when right-wing Labour MPs attacked him for the crime of giving an interview to the SKWAWKBOX – and he promptly gave another.
Back-bench MP of the year
Winner: Grahame Morris, Easington
Morris is not only one of the nicest people in politics, but also one of the least assuming. He held down several ministerial briefs during one of the toughest periods for the pre-election Corbyn leadership before returning graciously (and exhausted) to the back-benches, yet still found time continue his steadfast work on behalf of the NHS and to champion the ‘WASPI’ women robbed of their pension entitlement by the government.
Best overall MP
Winner: Chris Williamson, Derby North
Very nearly as accomplished a media performer as Gardiner, Chris Williamson has established himself as a favourite of Labour’s left-wing membership majority with his good-humoured fearlessness, his innovative ‘Week in Westminster’ video series and his steadfast support for his party leader – and the flip-side of the coin, his readiness to call out disloyal colleagues.
That popularity and outspokenness have also made him the target of some of the most relentless attacks and smears from the Establishment – and especially from the Labour right, both in and out of Parliament.
Those attacks seem only to have strengthened Williamson’s resolve to say it as he sees it.
Special mentions
Special mentions also go to:
- Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn for his award from the International Peace Bureau
- Dawn Butler for her ‘Labour MP of the Year’ award from the Patchwork Foundation
- Dennis Skinner on becoming the longest continually-serving Labour MP in history this month
Congratulations to the worthy winners, who sadly will receive nothing but our admiration and a commemorative tweet – and hopefully plenty of messages of approval and affirmation from SKWAWKBOX readers and others for their integrity and sterling work.
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All are considerably more deserving of recognition than May’s political awards in the NYHL.
An excellent lineup of equally excellent socialist MPs. All harbingers of a bright future for the party and the country.
Great choices, Steve. Bless them all for their sterling work.
How elitist to have nominations from a bunch of anonymous ‘senior campaigners’! Next year be more democratic and have a vote…..
Great idea for the future, but it is disappointing that you had to be so negative in the way you put forward your excellent suggestion.
Think Steve’s list would be better as a vote, the same few character are featured here a lot and I’m not convinced Chris Williamson is a vote winner for the undecided. He comes across as hectoring and reinforces stereotypes of the left.
Great choices. Well done Steve for all the great work in 2017. Pura Vida from Costa Rica.
The MPs selected all deserve the recognition.
They all come across as genuine in their cause for a better society, we’ll done and let’s hope for a election sooner rather than later.
Happy new year all
They seem okay to me but I don’t see any Socialist programmes being presented by them, like workers control and it’s application, if/when all those services and industries which have been misappropriated for private profit are dragged back into public ownership! I don’t see any programmes being put forward concerning the needed changes in our Parliament which will reduce, or do away with entirely, the continuance of it being solely in control of a small elite which maintains the status quo for the few whilst excluding any real change for the many! In other words extending and expanding real and genuine democratic change which will allow more and more people to be active in political change rather than just having an electorate which is all but passive, other than for sticking Xs on bits of paper and voting for the same old suits and ties every so often! I see nothing but ‘good intentions’ by those who, whether they know it or not, just take positions which are exceedingly lucrative, which, over many Parliaments, have corrupted individuals, with some few, some very few honorable exceptions, and left us as we are today! That is, generally powerless, generally frustrated, or cynical, or both with no organisations which understand ‘class’ struggle or anything else! All I can see is more of the same with things being done to us, maybe for us! In other words, we will continue with a top down society with the many, just about, retaining ‘their place (a place dictated by the few) which no amount of ‘good intentions’ will be able to change in any fundamental way. Finally, I see no real commitment for the resuscitation of the trades union movement by a promised removal, if these Labour people get into Parliament, of all the draconian anti trades union laws which were brought in by Thatcher, and totally supported up to and including this present incompetent, nasty, vicious Tory Government as well as previous Labour administrations! I’d like to see less suits and lovely dresses and more concrete socialism offered before I throw myself wholeheartedly behind another Labour administration, no matter how ‘nice and ‘lovely’ individuals come across as! Just to let you know, I aint never been a Story, I ain’t never voted anything but Labour (except when there’s been a further Left alternative available, which has been almost never) I have always been a Left wing Trades union supporter and have seen too much in over forty years of being a grass roots activism of one sort or another. That’s too much betrayal by those who take up positions within Parliament and become, almost inadvertently (unless they’re Tories) more and more divorced from the people who voted for them and more and more like the people who keep fucking us over! So, vote Labour, unless of course there is a Left alternative, by all means but don’t be taken in by ‘nice’ ‘kind’ ‘self effacing’ or any of the other descriptions which Labour seems to be attempting to sell! Demand control, fight for real ‘Power to the People’ and take it for it won’t be offered or given by the ambitious people (with honourable exceptions – but not many) who become part of the Parliamentary game as it is still played today and has been since Cromwell executed the army radicals 300 years or more ago and the Royals were brought back by the bourgeois after they’re betrayal and destruction of those who still stuck to the aims of the Civil War of 1642 to 1646! The main one being a free and unfettered Parliament run by the people, in the name of the people and for the people!
And a happy new year.
you forgot Emily – don’t always love her politics, but always love her sang froid and humour