Nandy rewrites history during bizarre BBC interview
Labour leadership candidate Lisa Nandy rewrote history during a bizarre interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg this evening.
In spite of resigning at the same time as (and in a joint letter with) eventual leadership challenger Owen Smith during the 2016 ‘chicken coup’ – and then co-chairing his campaign, Ms Nandy told Kuenssberg:
I am genuinely non-factional, I always have been
before going on to claim that Jeremy Corbyn and his front-bench team had declared war on Labour back-benchers:
Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott described those back-benchers’ aim and conduct at the time when she wrote about a meeting between MPs and their party leader:
All this was necessary because some Labour MPs expressly did not want any time to consult with ordinary party members. On the contrary they were terrified that their members might actually find out how they voted. Hence the haste and the secrecy.
But the climax of all this was Monday’s parliamentary Labour party (PLP) meeting. MP after MP got up to attack Jeremy Corbyn in the most contemptuous terms possible, pausing only to text their abuse to journalists waiting outside. A non-Corbynista MP told me afterwards that he had never seen anything so horrible and he had felt himself reduced to tears.
Nobody talked about Jeremy Corbyn’s politics. There was only one intention: to break him as a man.
Nandy’s claims were not challenged by her interviewer.
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Lisa Nandy getting the JLM nomination was all I ever needed to know about her
Nandy Pandy’s far too dumb of a bunny to be an MP, much less leader of a party.
I wouldn’t have her if I was a Liberal Democrat.
No David you are wrong She is not dumb at all. She is underhand, not to be trusted and downright malicious but she is not any more stupid than the rest of disgusting “coupers” who rejected party democracy and tried to oust our elected leader Jeremy Corbyn. She must not be rewarded for her shameful behaviour with the party leadership.
“[Being no] more stupid than the rest” is no more indicative of intellect than a GCSE in drama.
Being underhand, manipulative and malicious are characteristic of the dumb and ambitious – it’s how they climb the political ladder.
Politics is only as vicious as it is because of stupid people using the tools of the stupid to overcome intellect and con gullible electorates with soundbites and self-serving lies.
Socialism is an intellectual position entirely built on the single, incontrovertible precept that the community interest outweighs the personal – sadly those who aim for high office are almost universally motivated by the personal.
Conservatism tells us that crumbs from the tables of the insatiable 1% are the best way to provide for the 99%.
Only dumb centrist bunnies fall for that nonsense.
What I found most astonishing about the interview was the way Kuenssberg tried to put words into Nandy’s mouth, so outrageous that even Nandy rejected them. I can’t quote exactly from memory, but words along the lines of “So Corbyn was attacking..”
Dalmorgan as my old gran used to say – what do you expect from a pig but a grunt
No we really are in nutty wahoo land , planet Zoorgh to Nandy come in nutty Nandy , time to come down now and land , you have been away with the fairies for long enough .
More so I find the quote from Diane Abbot regarding the conduct of said MPs utterly astonishing and appalling.
Is this a party one would want to belong to ?
Should it go further to the RWingers ( they are not Centrists .. a joke ! ) then there has to be a split and a new DS Party established .
The DNC in the USA , its behaviour re Bernie Saunders shows the pattern of things to come and should he loose ( then Trump will win for sure ) I hope they split and form a new party that more honestly represents the working class in the USA.
Centrisim is DEAD tinkering at the edges is dead , do nothing is dead .
The radical approach , formulated by Corbyn and us ,the membership, now is the only way to improve things .
Rob I have sadly come to the conclusion that its us thats “away with the faires” .We have spent a liftime proping up the PLP and theyve just awarded themselves a inflation busting pay rise that would make an ordinary victim of the system (US)cry 😢
On the BBC website Kuennsberg says Nandy is “long known in Labour circles as a straightforward politician and an interesting thinker” and that she is “the most willing to speak out about the mistakes the party made in recent years …. while others have been afraid to trash Jeremy Corbyn’s reputation.” I have already voted reluctantly for Ms Long-Bailey (and happily for Mr Burgon) but if I hadn’t there is no way I could vote for the Kuenssberg endorsed candidate,and I don’t understand how any Socialist could.
If the knight wins and its not rigged,then the election of a right wing Tory knight of the realm,means that I have been deluded and misinformed that the Labour party is in any way representing the working class or anyone that has to struggle to make a living.ITs the only lodgical conclusion to a liftime of fighting for a mythical land of equality and humanity.I somtimes wonder if I would have been better off in contemplation inside a monestry than waiting for god inside the Labour party..IT s begining to look hopeless for a people and establishment hellbent on self destruction.The lack of any democratic choice for the leadership is a sign that the Labour party are not a Party of the people..So sad 😢
I agree Joseph , in COrbyn we had a brief light of hope that the Party could be brought back to it’s roots in representing those who are not rich and tax dodging Corps, like blair represented, thatchers greatest achievement and soon to be usurped imo by Sir Starmer in that accolade I am sure.
To me it is now a waiting game to see how things pan out at Conference this yr.
If as I suspect the “Progress bastards” will be on the rise and the Left is purged then I hope that from the ashes a leading figure might spearhead a new Left wing Democratic Socialist party.
IMO Momentum should/could have been it but for a egotistical Zionist that now leads it has destroyed that rallying point .
Left Unity , Ken Loaches initiative , might have some mileage but not sure if it has the strength of leadership. I suppose dreaming in a perfect Wrld those true Socialist MP’s would leave with JC leading and set up a new party and all those good unfairly dismissed members and the likes of Chris Williamson would be welcome in it .
In reality I think that post Conference we will see a slow but sure drift of members leaving or lapsing membership , another defeat at the next election for sure , and more voters concluding that there is NO discernible difference between a Centrist run Labour Party and the Tories , hence no point in voting .
Sir Starmers Party will become an irrelevance in most peoples lives and that is key to us who now hope for a new radical representative party to be taking those votes.
Time will tell.
“COrbyn we had a brief light of hope that the Party could be brought back to it’s roots”
… and lost an election.
Now. We can all come up with reasons why it was the fault of this, that and the other – with the behaviour of the PLP and the total capture of the media by the right being two at the top of the list.
But just ranting, retreating into sectarian ghettos, throwing in the towel and blame-spreading isn’t the same as developing a winning strategy. Nor is indulgence in the fantasy of populism being harnessed in an upsurge of democratic socialist revolutionary fervour – that’s a flying pig.
I can match anyone with pessimism and cynicism, so this isn’t a ‘j’accuse’ exercise – but it might be worth hanging on to what has happened over the last couple of decades.
Firstly, the gutting of the Party by nuliarbore was never just going to go away, with its legacy of a PLP with a distinct lack of radical talent. Similarly, a new voting base wasn’t going to be simply magicked up after years of decay.
… and the viciousness of propaganda, whilst more excessive than anything seen before, is a fact of life until new legislation puts on a bridle – which won’t happen under the Tories.
So it might be worth looking at what positives remain, the most obvious being the urge (and surge) in the membership of the Party that led to Corbyn’s election, and the clear support for a changed politics that exists in younger generations.
Obviously, this butts up against the non-radicalism of the central bureaucracy and its subservience to a right-wing narrative. But it still exists – as can be seen in various ways in Conference. It needs to be nurtured, not just abandoned.
Sustaining and rebuilding the grass roots isn’t going to be achieved by a one-trick pony such as open selection – as has been seen recently by the results of some reselections that have recently taken place. A different attitude amongst the PLP depends on it changing, and that will only be done by demands made by a changed membership on the ground. If nothing else, Momentum did show the possibilities.
A couple of things I’m sure of : (1) The idea of a new Party is a dead duck; the concept has a history of predictable failure and (2) any chance of power does depend upon a coalition of interests. There will be limits, but striving for some notional purity is also doomed to failure. In the long term, there has to be a commitment to constitutional reform in order to embed notions of coalition rather than pointless factionalism.
I have been as guilty as anyone recently in detaching myself from active politics – partly force of circumstance, partly lack of conviction. But, I’m not ditching my Party membership, and I try to convince others – particularly those who despaired over the Brexit issue – not to do so.
I’m not sure of any ‘solution’ – and I admit that the situation of the current leadership election does little to inspire optimism, but I would urge everyone to stay in the tent – piss from the outside will just run off the canvas.
“A couple of things I’m sure of : (1) The idea of a new Party is a dead duck; the concept has a history of predictable failure and (2) any chance of power does depend upon a coalition of interests.”
WRONG and WRONG.
(1) Labour was a new party only 100 years ago.
(2) Not to the extent of tolerating Quislings.
Your constant schtick is exactly Blair’s – “the electorate is a broad church so only from the centre can we win elections”
The 2017 near miss made Blairites and Tories everywhere fill their panties – they feared Corbyn’s Gandhi-like following so much they redoubled and redoubled again their propaganda and the electorate were gullible enough to believe it.
When the EHRC finally sneaks out news of its inquiry report – probably on page 5 below the fold on a 200-point headline day – the Israel lobby’s smears will be dead in the water and the fight back can begin.
Well, David – let’s dispose of one bit of bollocks : that a statement about Labour needing to harness a coaltion is to be associated with Blair. That is total nonsense – and you’re too intelligent not to know it.
*All* political parties are coaltions – that’s beyond contention, even tho’ there are real issues about the acceptable boundaries of policy within a coalition, and the definition of who might be considered a ‘Quisling’ – other than the patently futile definition as ‘someone with whom I disagree’.
As to your other contention – I’ll be among the first to eat my words if a *successful* new Party emerges, rather than another futile sectarian ego trip. I rest my case on history – including the fact that its indeed a hundred years since the Labour Party emerged in a *totally* different context. My contention may be ‘WRONG’. But the evidence to date is with me.
RH, there can be comradely disagreements on the means to achieve socialism – but NOT on whether socialism or deference to the 1% is the objective.
While the PLP contains a preponderance of Tory moles whose prime directive is to defeat socialism by fair means or foul, and who have manipulated the machinery to that end for decades, the party’s name is an affront to the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations.
RLB is the least worst option for JC supporters
What we all keep missing is how low the bar is set by politicians, would you employ any of them or go into battle with any stood behind you
What is astounding is none have a clue what constitutes anti semitism, what is radical and why the centrists are the real enemy of progress
Looks like I am not the only one thats delusional Nandys comment “I am genuinely non factional” is untreatable as the old worn out phrase., “I am not political,I’m a conservative” ..Drop the sly little schemer at the nearest psychiatric hospital…sickening witch.!
Joseph, “sly little schemer” fits her to a T well said.
This person is anathema to the Labour Party I am proud to belong to. She managed Owen Smith’s cover for a chicken coup. She embodies a total rejection of Jeremy and the membership’s Corbyn Project. She is commended by Laura Kuenssberg and the JLM, two entities that hate the Labour movement and its wonderful goals.
Only one thing would worry me more than this person’s victory in the Labour leadership competition: Sir Keir Starmer’s victory.
Are you young, healthy and got a good immune system?
Got a rich old childless uncle/aunt who just won’t die?
———————————————————————————————
Are you in your 80’s, childless and leaving your money to your nieces & nephews?
Do you get one visit from them a year a few weeks before Christmas but they just phoned to say they’ll pop round soon to make sure you’re OK?
———————————————————————————————
I’ll bet I’m not the only person the possibilities of COVID-19 jump-starting an inheritance have occurred to.
I’m the old relative not the young relative in the above scenario by the way.
On the up side the virus could drastically reduce the Gammon population overnight – speaking as a member of the older generation .
David check the sump pump regular and for good practice make sure your flue is not blocked and the ventilation is adequate.Also a small dram to offset against any bugs.!Life can be good if you are free..!
”Nandy’s claims were not challenged by her interviewer.”
And why would you expect them to be challenged? The establishment aren’t satisifed with the removal of a socialist leader; they want socialism removed altogether, full stop.
Lisa Nandy….so insignificant that she fails to cast a shadow when the sun shines.
Lisa Nandy….so insignificant that she fails to cast a shadow when the sun shines.
Just as well she’s mp for wigan,, then, innit? Everytime I’ve been there it’s pished down 🙁
I used have watching TV whatever Corbyn and was horrified. I would have not known what went on behind the scene. And if so, as here mentioned, how people could be so cried and disgusting for their own psychological sake on insecurity of their own. I cannot believe that people are so low. Jeremy is so strong that the Establishments feared. So, sad, so,sad when they get into senses.
Corona virus is a present and serious threat to those with the most serious underlying conditions, like voting for the cheap and nasty Tory party
Fuckem
It can be argued that the exclusion of socialist policies from mainstream ‘Labour Parties’ has seen electoral slumps across Europe. Many new, more radical organisations have grown, not perfect, but have had electoral success.
This is alongside the growth of fascist and populist parties, who are also capturing a large vote, often by pretending to be radical and anti-capitalist.
It would appear that millions of people are fed up with ‘kinder, gentler liberal’ politics as this has resulted in the bottom 30% taking the hit. Most of the kinder, gentler type on that side seem to come from the ‘professional class’, mostly middle class who seem to think that they should be in control; a sense of entitlement. How dare us common people challenge!! 🙂 Funny though how most em rarely open their mouths in a political debate.
As it stands the LP isn’t electable; the further it adopts liberal attitudes and policies, the less likely it is to get elected.
As someone else on Sqwarkbox already said, the ‘LP is a socialist Party’. At least that what it says in the brochures. Sadly the LP is controlled by the liberal wing, currently strengthening their position with establishment support, who seem determined to remove policies and members that could win over the electorate. Like I said before, being an opposition MP isn’t a bad career. They don’t want their boat rocking; job’s a gudn. Kerching!
Good post, potatoclock. Though the reality is that the Labour Party has NEVER EVER really been a ‘socialist party’ in any meaningful way. It always was a capitalist, pro imperialist, party with a working class base, with lots of socialists in it, endlessly, fruitlessly, trying to turn it into a socialist party.
Clause 4 was cynically adopted by the Party in 1918, purely to try and stay ahead of the then insurgent working class Red Wave, then engulfing Europe as a result of the Russian revolution, and retain its mass working class base. That working class base was then massively tempted by the promise of a thoroughgoing socialist transformation – rather than the piecemeal, always loyal to British imperialism, petty reformism of actual Labour Party policies. Remember , the ‘Labour’ Party, has always been what it ‘says on the tin’, ie, a party based for most of its life, on the, deeply conservative, deeply national chauvinist, British trades union movement and its deeply conservative bureaucracy, plus a strata of the ‘radical’ liberal, middle classes – determined, as per the Fabians, and today’s Progress and Labour First, to ensure the Party never actually presented a serious challenge to the capitalist status quo. The Labour Party has always been the ‘reserve party of UK capitalism’ – and the likes of even Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, and Diane Abbott, and their earlier ilk, have always served merely as the ‘licenced radical Leftish clowns’, tolerated by the Party for their skill in drawing large numbers of young Left wingers into wasting their lives working tirelessly to elect in the main a bunch of predominantly Right Wing , corrupt, MP’s ! When their time would have been better spent building a genuinely insurgent socialist party OUTSIDE the root-and-branch collaborationist Labour Party. Surely the last four years of fruitless, cowardly, empty posturing, and capitulating to the Right PLP saboteurs at every turn, by the old Labour Left circle around Jeremy, demonstrates that in spades ?
Today, tragically, the massive structural changes in the UK economy , with the destruction of the ‘Big Battalions’ of the organised ‘blue collar’ working classes, and the huge overall decline in the numbers actually unionised in any sectors, means that the Labour Party is now well on the way to becoming merely the party of the mainly middle class professionals, in the South and the big urban centres – indistinguishable from the Lib Dems. But , unfortunately, the fate of ALL the extra Labour Party projects of the last 30 years , including Respect and Left Unity, after those 30 years of constant working class defeats, shows that what passes for the ‘radical socialist Left’ today is in fact just a tiny grouping of equally middle class , socially isolated, declasse individuals, who have forgotten most of the core aspects of socialism – in favour of an inward-looking , self-absorbed, identity politics obsessed, bastardised ‘radical politics’. And as for the supposed ‘Marxist Far Left’ – this tiny sectarian set of mutually warring groupescules, are equally obsessed with non-socialist identitarian politics, and always serve only to disrupt and fragment any attempted new socialist party formation process, with their constant divisive posturing , as they always try to split and break up every new extra Labour Party project, in order to cleave off from their small memberships a few recruits for their fantasy project of building ‘a real Bolshevik Communist Party’ mk 89 !
Any new extra Labour Party project, on the lines of Ken Loach’s stillborn Left Unity project, would do well to proscribe all the current, perennial splitters and wreckers of the pseudo-marxist ultraleft grouplets from participation, if it was to have any chance of recruiting well beyond the 3,000 or so ‘usual suspects’ middle class, big city-based, Left bubble, lifelong lifestyle, but actually politically merely Left-Liberal, ‘Left’, and actually acquire a genuine predominantly working class membership. Left Unity couldn’t recruit more than 2,000 people – ALL of them were , including me, being previous members of umpteen previous failed projects – and some of them I even knew from the sectarian grouplet politics of my own Trot youth in the 1970’s ! Not a single genuine new recruit from outside that old Far Left bubble ever stayed in Left Unity for any time at all .
jpenney – “Not a single genuine new recruit from outside that old Far Left bubble ever stayed in Left Unity for any time at all .
I guess this single phrase neatly sums up the ‘popularity’ of your particular political ideology.
Agreed JP. I think we’ll see fascists on the streets again soon, posing as radicals, railing against Liberalism and lumping the Left in with the ‘pretenders’. The traditional Labour vote seems to be lost in many areas, for all the reasons discussed.
The fascists will be oposed in many areas by the ‘placard wavers’ who offer nothing to the bottom 30%, no political alternative. Not the case in Lpool btw, we have a more robust attitude to fascists here. We have MAFN.
Funny isn’t it, the liberal LP members who call us racists and anti-Semitic are always absent at these events. Or, they’re having tea and scones about 5 miles away with the good n the great in their own safe ‘protest’ 🙂
Lets not just moan though, better to organise and campaign for socialist ideology, in the LP or outside it; don’t let the LP liberal luvvies be a straight-jacket.
jpenney & potatoclock.
Now there’s some good, well-reasoned posting!
But I can sum up what needs to happen in just a few words:
Get shut of the labour ‘co-operative’. That’s 90% of the battle won.
In fact, they ought to be sued under the trades descriptions act.
Too true, The Toffee, the Co-operative Party is nowadays the main organising structure for the neoliberal, privatisation-keen, Labour Right , and corrupts the voting at many a CLP via their supposed local membership’s vote on key issues – which is often purely a figment of their imaginations. When the Labour Right were seriously considering splitting from the Labour Party(after twice failing to replace Jeremy as Leader) and operating as a separate Parliamentary grouping, The Co-operative Party would have been the chosen vehicle to achieve this treachery,
I well remember attending a local elections manifesto meeting of all CLPs in Shropshire a few years ago , and being quite shocked at the glee with which the representative of the sponsoring local Co-operative Party described the ever-growing privatisation of schools – via Academisation. He quite openly saw this type of privatisation as perfectly OK – as long as a school, or any other public body, could be then re-structured as some sort of ‘co-operative’. Co-operatives , either workers or consumer co-operatives, still operating entirely within the competitive tyranny of capitalist market forces, and are nothing at all to do with socialism – despite what the dopey likes of John McDonnell might think ! Co-operatives are a key means for local authorities to get rid of local libraries or sports centres, or many other outsourced services, whilst bogusly claiming that by using the co-operative form to take them off their books, they are doing something ‘radical’ – as per the entirely bogus pseudo radical ‘Preston Model’ the Labour liberals love so much . That the Co-operative Bank is now actually owned by a rapacious hedge fund shows just how non-threatening to capitalism co-operatives are. Which is why the Labour Right and Lib Dems love the Co-operative Party and co-operatives so much !
And in case I am assumed to know nowt about workers co-ops, I spent four years in the late 1980’s helping to set them up on Merseyside, during the ‘Bennite workers Co-op boom’. They were really just small capitalist worker-owned limited companies , sometimes good to work in, sometimes not, usually very badly run and short-lived, and often wracked with energy-sapping internal conflict, but certainly no challenge to capitalism.
Mind you, The Toffee, now that it looks ever more likely that the neoliberal Trilateral Commission’s creature , and Progress and Labour First’s man, Starmer, will be the new Leader, and will pack the Shadow Cabinet out with all the old corrupt Labour Right riff raff, the Labour Right no longer need to work in the parallel structure the Co-operative Party provided during the Corbyn years. So ending the long alliance between the Co-operative Party and Labour is now pretty irrelevant.
http://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Alternative-Models-of-Ownership.pdf
For clarification, the ‘Bennite workers Co-op boom’ of the early to late 1980’s I refer to, was purely funded by Labour county council local authority grants, to local Co-op Development Agencies and support grants to assist newly formed local workers co-ops in their areas – inspired by the larger scale Tony Benn ministerial rescue of failing businesses like Triumph motor Cycles and Fisher Bendix, and their rebirth as worker-owned coops under the Wilson Labour government of 1974 to 1979. (Given the lack of capital for new equipment and new model development of these co-ops, none survived long).
Why the surprise. Wasn’t she involved in a Labour frontbencher resigning on the air once?