Right-wing Labour MP Frank Field – rejected long before today by local Labour members, who passed a vote of no confidence in him after a string of disappointments culminated in Field siding with the Tory government in a key EU vote – has announced his resignation from the Labour Party in a self-pitying letter blaming members for “local thuggery” and, of course, including an antisemitism smear.
Field appeared on BBC News to tell John Pienaar:
Of course we have a duty to our local Labour parties, but our primary duty is to our voters… it’s the voters who are sovereign
But Field has only resigned the Labour whip, meaning that he will not cease to be an MP but will ‘sit as an independent’.
But no Birkenhead constituent voted for an independent candidate in last year’s general election. Not one.
So why is Field failing to show the courage of his convictions by calling a by-election to offer his constituents the opportunity to decide whether they want to keep him as an MP – or prefer a Labour MP to represent them?
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On NW news now saying he hopes code+ and IHRA will go through on 4th September…
…He know something we don’t??
And he reckons it’s only Birkenhead CLP who hate him… ‘Kinell – Just HOW bereft of the ravages of reality IS the utterly deluded gobshite?
If he and Woodcock do not resign their seats, they are less honourable than Reckless and Carswell when they defected to UKIP. At least the voters got a say then. It’s a bad position to be in when UKIP hold the moral high ground.
Maybe I have found the one position I agree with Zac Goldsmith on (two I suppose when you count his commitment to exposing the paedophile scandal), but he was right about an MP recall bill. There is certainly a case for it for these two – and for that matter maybe O’Mara too.
Am I mistaken? Isn’t this the Frank Field who said this? https://number10duckworthstreet.wordpress.com/2015/07/21/frank-fields-arrogantly-admits-his-constituents-views-count-for-nothing-and-its-not-his-job-to-speak-up-for-them/
Indeed it WAS…After field ABSTAINED on a welfare vote.
Lovely fella field, does LOADS for the poor – as I’m sure Samuel Miller aka @Hephaestus7 would doubtlessly agree.
Jesus wept.
This is the Youtube link to that same video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8teGYcwwrg0
Lol. “Sovereign” is pulled out of the hat to justify a multitude of actions, enact a power grab and avoid consequences. I thought parliament was claiming to be sovereign over the people not long ago. I wonder if Field was one of the MPs arguing that?
Perhaps Field would like to test if he as an individual or a representative of the Labour party (under Corbyn) was elected? He should let his constituents speak for themselves at the ballot box..
Field’s total contempt towards the Labour Party it’s members and in particular his own constituents just typifies why these right wing blairites are so unpopular and find themselves scratching around in the gutter resorting, slurs, smears and lies.
He wants to milk the last few years of being paid an MPs salary and the other perks of the job, as he knows he won’t get re-elected.
Predicted on C4 news that chief whip will not allow him to stay in the party
Yes Nick Brown is no one’s fool, and will have seen him coming days ago. I suppose this all explains the little Wirral flutter in the webpages of Labur Uncut over the last three days.
Sending unemployed people to work (without pay) in shops such as Poundland under threat of removal of benefits is ‘thuggery’.
Am I mistaken also? Is this the same Frank Field that used to regularily
contribute articles in the Militant newspaper back in the late seventies early eighties?
Never, have I ever liked Field or his views.
Retire you Tory sympathizer, as far as I’m concerned your about as welcome as a dose of the clap!
What sort of person knows for a fact that the smears against Labour and Corbyn are fabricated yet still uses them to justify his resignation?
Field’s actions and pronouncements are utterly contemptible and to think, people who have needed his services in the past have had to rely upon such a perfidious character to represent them.
If he’d said ‘I no longer support Labour’s policies, therefore I’m resigning and I’m going to ask the public to support me in an election’, that at least would be honourable but blaming a figment when he knows it’s his own demeanor which has led to his unpopularity is cowardly.
I – half – watched the MSM pronouncements on this ( as I knew about the CLP vote from here) and my takeaway was…he has resigned as an MP and he is off.
Didn’t realise the technicality of it till I read this…..
..
No wonder Owen Jones was trying to redress the balance on C4 News etc.
FFS.
40 years of subversive disruption being driven by his reactionary personal beliefs which media will deploy investigatory journalists and print the real story? I have been shut up Fields in the LP has been untouchable.