Chuka Umunna – who pines for the bankrupt and discredited politics of a decade ago and cosies up to Tories – said in his ‘launch’ speech this morning that his quitters’ group was for those ‘sick and tired of politics as usual… guess what so are we‘.
Luciana Berger went on to add jaw-dropping crassness, by offering condolences to the family of veteran Labour left-winger Paul Flynn, just after she and her colleagues spent interminable minutes smearing the party he loved and served and in particular the left-wing politics he represented.
Here’s what Flynn said about their ilk in 2016:
Jonathan Ashworth, himself more of the centre-left, had no sympathy for the ego-driven:
SKWAWKBOX comment:
Hypocrisy or a world-class lack of self-awareness? Both, most likely.
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”Hypocrisy or a world-class lack of self-awareness? Both, most likely.”
Both.
Plus an inherent conviction that the electorate (somehow) owes them. A delusion that they are somehow worth more than those who elected them.
Their collective sense of entitlement boils my p1$$ so it does. They’ll get what coming to them in an election and one can’t come soon enough.
At the moment their website keeps crashing, a sign of things to come maybe?
https://theindependent.group/
Even their title reminds me of a right wing consulting group!
It was setup on 16th January 2019 and the only director currently is Gavin Shuker.
‘Luciana Berger went on to add jaw-dropping crassness,’
Someone ought to remind her she’s not a labour party member anymore. But evidently she just can’t help herself. Shows just what type of hypocritical slime she is.
How dare they denigrate to such extents the membership of our party, over half a million people they have labeled as being anti sematic, bullies, ‘hard left’ the damning list goes on. We voted Jeremy in as leader twice he leads for us not for himself, he is the most anti racist person the most honest leader, that’s leader not dictator! any party could wish for no he isn’t perfect who the hell is and over the past 3 years he has learned even with such awful smearing and back stabbing the role of leader of the party and as Margaret Beckett has said doing a really good job.
Sodding brexit it is impossible to please everyone, renege on the vote however horrendous the campaigning was fueled by lies and cheating financially would be so wrong democratically, the possibility of a 2nd vote is still on the table but must be only campaigned for as a last option, even an amendment put forward over a week ago for a 2nd vote in the HOC was defeated massively.
The ego’s of these people are incredulous, yet to scared to face by elections no shock there then.
Indeed. The tolerance of Corbyn over the past three years amidst all the smears,coups and back-stabbing is admirable.
The advice from the American mentors is that they should seek re-election in Labour marginals … not in their current seats.
Have you any references to the US Mentors – looks like foreign interference on our political system.
Any evidence TB/Mandelson/Campbell etc. involved ?
Any evidence TB/Mandelson/Campbell etc. involved?
They’re still alive and breathing?
Going to be a big challenge for this bunch of empty-headed “Blair era tribute band” opportunists to work up many actual policies for their tiny new “Independent Group” proto party – other than being unconditionally Pro (an utterly unreformed) EU, pro NATO, pro US imperialism, unconditionally pro Israeli, rabidly anti socialist ( even anti social democratic Left Keynsian reformist), but pro “aspiration” (that slippery old Blairite word to cover middle class privilege and indifference to the suffering of others ), pro privatisation, anti trades union, but “socially liberal” . Well, we’ve GOT a very small no-hoper party covering all that crap – the Lib Dems – so where’s the gap ? Move over Vince Cable – Chuka (and Luciana, and Chris) want’s your job ?
I’m surprised their fairytale mentor Snow White wasn’t with em!
Small minds Small Ideas. Put yourselves up for re election under your banner and if you get re-elected under your New Banner all well and good!
The Biggest Party of Members in Labours History plus the Biggest in Europe!
All of you should be ASHAMED calling yourselves Socialists!
These people are a bunch of phonies, hiding their real reason for leaving the Party. They are all Zionists and there are at least fifty of them, thanks to Blair, still in the Party. Their leaders, Tom Watson and Margaret Hodge remain as an ever present danger and threat to Corbyn. This day was bound to come because of Jeremy Corbyn’s support for the Palestinians.
JC should never have tried to appease them in the first place by allowing witch hunters in the Party to suspend/expell Jews who oppose the Zionists.
The wreckers should be honest and call their new group The Zionist Party, they could then incorporate the JLM and the LFI both of which are Zionist groups.
The only disagreement I have is that they are ‘Zionists’. I doubt they have the intellectual capacity to be granted that definition.
They are simply self-seeking members of the Israeli lobby, trying to find a quick route to sainthood by virtue signalling and yelling ‘antisemitism’ when they think it will gather a claque of gullible second-rate journalists who can’t be bothered to do research.
Main problem for Labour in general is that they have the wind behind them on Brexit, where the Party is dragging itself along behind the Tories under the illusion that parliamentary games impact on the populace as a whole, whilst the reality is that equally disloyal pro-Brexit PLP members just gift May an undeserved win.
The Labour electorate are 50-50 over Brexit, just like everybody else. To pretend PV has an overwhelming majority is simply not true. There is no majority for it in Parliament – which kinda ends the matter. I was looking forward to the agreement about exactly what the questions would be!! Conference last year was unanimous that the Party accepted the 2016 result and that was written into The Manifesto. Which bit of ‘accept the 2016 result’ isn’t clear?
These people are nothing like the SDP unlike 1981 there’s no elder statesman / leader among them as Jenkins was or any experienced senior Cabinet ministers like Owen and Williams. They are just represented by a few backbenchers with huge egos who at the moment are only united by what they disagree about. They will be at each other’s throats within a couple of months as they start to vie for the “leadership” of their little faction and have to make decisions about the direction that their policies should take. Oh and by the way the SDP weren’t at the time facing a Labour Party of over half a million active members.
I can well believe that their rumoured electoral strategy – to stand in Labour marginals – has been dreamt up by Yank advisers. As anyone in the UK knows if they do that there’s a very good chance that they will simply split the Labour vote in those seats and put the Tories candidate in. There again I have never met a Yank yet who had any real idea of how British party politics worked. Bless them they still think that Thatcher was universally loved and admired by everyone in the UK – what a joke.
Email from Momentum: the splitters are going to stand candidates in marginal seats to ruin Labour’s chances of winning. While out campaigning they will no doubt recieve much abuse. (All of it Anti semetic, mysogynistic or racist of course). Thankyou for this blog Skwark, don’t always agree with you but appreciate your meticulous research and notice you’re up into the night doing it!
The ultimate in corporatism.
Angela Smith has defended water privatisation and Chinese government involvment.
Chuka Umuna has defended the TTIP.
Mike Gapes takes money from Saudi Arabia.
Difficult to imagine Umunna leading this party (not that he doesn’t have the anti working class qualfications) but I seem to recall he was being pushed for the Labour leadership contest a few years ago, but then declined as his family couldn’t take the pressure of the press being camped out on his door step.
Wasn’t it his ‘girlfriend’s’ family that couldn’t take the spotlight? Or was the ‘girlfriend’ a wee invention designed to make him look normal? What happene£ to her? Iniatally he was going to marry her. Did he? Some were convinced he’d suddenly withdrawn from the leadership race b3cause something was about to emerge about him h3 couldn’t hack? Confusion over his sexual orientation some media speculated or funny business with money? Perhaps we’ll soon find out!
Chuka actually married the unfortunate woman – and even had a child with her too ! So acquiring that neat trad nuclear family still so beloved of politicians of a rather socially conservative image-seeking type for their election publicity. All a bit 1950’s morality though, rather than post millennial London metrosexual. But strangely, given how conventionally butchly heterosexually oriented our devoted family man Chuka obviously is, so strange that he ran away sharly from the 2016 Leadership race at the first signs of “intrusive” media snooping on his private life . An intrusion by our mass media signally missing for any Right Wing Blairite in normal times , compared to the treatment of Lefties. Certainly a bit of a mystery – that his now very exposed public profile might yet illuminate.
If the Leavers are planning to stand candidates in Labour marginals, in order to split the vote, then this is just the chance Labour need, to hone their machine and message to defeat such a strategy. We have the numbers. Election battles are there to be fought, not shied away from, and the consequence would be to bury this annoyance. Or am I too hopeful?
Karl, yes you’re right, last election we heard on this blog how money was directed to the safe seats to protect those often Blairite MPs from ‘the impending doom’. Still Labour gained in marginal seats including here, Pereborough. The NEC ballance has changed and hopefully they will go all out for these seats. Blairites repeated over and over that Corbyn was unelectable. The electorate thought otherwise once the election campaign got underway they got a proper chance to hear him in action.
Anyway, I think I will subscribe to their website to see how I can ‘help’ and have a laugh. Mean while, prepare to have your face book/ twitter account shut down if you questioned the official line on the Skripal poisoning or queried any other MSM official corporate government sponsored news, due to your ‘spreading of fake news’. The powers that be seem to be in a panic about loosing control of the narrative.https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47255380
Out of the rag bag of opinions they represent the one they seem positively shy about is support for ‘intervention’ in Venezuela. Perhaps they fear it’s not a very popular idea?
Up Chuck is a traditional Public Schoolboy with the same values. Blair decreed the ‘Class War is Over’. Public Schoolboy?
This cabal of seven self-obsessd narcissists are a disgrace. I would call them traitors to socialism however that would only indicate that in some previous existence, they actually empathised with the people they claim to have represented.
I don’t claim to be an expert in the Machiavellian machinations of Westminster politics, but I do know that they have let down, not only their own constituents, but also the people of Britain that need a Labour government.
I would really like one of them to read and reply to this comment. I know however that this will never happen.