Toxic by-election candidate sees MPs decline to be seen supporting
Labour MPs have refused to campaign in Hartlepool for the party’s by-election candidate Paul Williams.
Williams, former Labour MP for Stockton South, has had a bumpy ride after a demeaning tweet about older women made headlines and an email showing Keir Starmer’s office participated in ‘stitching up’ his selection leaked to the public domain. He also faces issues in Hartlepool, which voted overwhelmingly to leave in the 2016 referendum, for his avidly anti-Brexit politics. And those chickens appear to have come home to roost.
Labour sources say that at least two Labour MPs have refused the party’s demand to campaign in Hartlepool for Williams, in a by-election that is seen as a tough test of Keir Starmer’s insipid leadership over the last year – and of his primary role in forcing Labour to u-turn on its commitment under Jeremy Corbyn to see the referendum result through to completion.
SKWAWKBOX view:
The refusals form a bleak commentary on the party’s prospects in what was, until the Brexit sabotage in the run-up to the 2019 general election, a habitual Labour seat. The constituency returned a Labour MP in that election only because the Brexit party did not stand down in Hartlepool, splitting the pro-Brexit vote as anger at Labour’s failure to fulfil its promise wrecked the party’s standing in its working-class ‘heartland’ seats.
With Williams also under the cloud of an anti-democratic, ‘shortlist of one’ selection, the refusal of MPs to campaign for him is a blow that the badly-led party can ill afford.
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Who are these 2 brave MPs that are refusing to campaign for Labour in Hartlepool.
Why the emphasis on brave? Skwawky never said it. It could be right wing MP’s from leave constituencies who were forced to bite the bullet or lose their own seats. What does it matter to anyone but you and Walsh who they are…..no one wants to back a looser.
What’s with the identical troll comments? Are you and Walsh one person?
Enough of your silly straw men.
Headlines in your toilet paper Guardian “I will take off my mask and fight a early general election in may 2023. Sir Rodney Knight rises from the lies and foreign government funding and desperately trys to cling on to power thats slowly bleeding away .Rigged selections,Fake AS scam,fake constituency party mtgs.Fake rules inventing.of the cuff sanctions,and the worst crime is the destruction of the Labour party by driving out the best activists,and best mps ,councillors who quite frankly have had enough.Squawkbox and many others unmasked this Cuckoo and many other left wing blogs this masked imposter.IF the Labour party don’t dump him then the Tory party will,this mans background is already being scrutinised by people outside the Labour party asking who and what is this plant inside the British establishment.?
Joseph, is that the Guardian article that you’d expect from a recalcitrant teenager found smoking behind the bike sheds, refusing to do homework, skiving off, but now saying how he really, really will make sure that the sun always shines, and the lovely-cuddly working class will have his full support, and that he’ll find some principles down the back of the sofa? An article that is long on meaningless platitudes and short of anything bordering on a principle, or policy?
And the two MP’s are ?
Walsher …ask indy who will ask Janet who will ask the Hartlepool Secretary(Old loose lips)…Guido Fawkes fan who these mps are that actually have some guts to withdraw their services which I realise walsher you could not possibly understand because its the cornerstone of working class solidarity..
Yvette Cooper and Lisa Nandy.
The above article paints a picture of this being very damaging for Williams (and Starmer’s Labour Party), but are the vast majority of the electorate even going to hear about it! I very much doubt that any of the MSM will be covering it, and as far as I can determine – having just done a search – none of the local papers appear to have covered it.
Can we dispense with this silly attitude, on this site, of “Who said it? Who did it?” etc.
Journalists often receive “leaks” on the understanding that they will not be attributed. Stories based on such leaks abound in the “mainstream media” and there are no demands for “the names”.
I agree Goldbach,ITs only done to appease the right wing paid troll so he can book in more overtime spreading propoganda from his bolt hole in the Caribbean.
Forgive me for saying so goldbach, but why would David Walsh have any reason to think the MPs concerned would wish to remain anonymous. One would naturally assume that they WANT people to know who they are in this particular instance. I mean what possible reasoning would they have for wanting to remain anonymous, when surely their decision to not campaign for Williams was so as to make a point about him.
But then it hardly matters anyway, as the only news outlet to report it will probably be skwawkbox!
And if a poster makes a claim – as signpost did, for example – that ‘presenters hostile to jeremy were wondering why he hasn’t sued anyone that’s called him an anti-semite’, then given that signpost lies and fabricates and invents stuff all the time, of COURSE one has the right to ask him who said presenters are. And I DID, on a number of occasions, and never – as I knew would be the case – got an answer, despite signpost initially saying that he ‘would let me know all in good time’ and ‘to be patient’, which was of course a dead give-away that it was a big lie – ie fabrication.
I would suggest that it’s YOUR attitude that’s the silly one! Absolutely ridiculous in fact!
I think you misunderstood my point. Probably I didn’t express it clearly enough. I think that your assumption is that the leak came from one of the MPs referred to, in which case your chiding would be valid. My assumption was that the leak came from a third party who would not want to give out names without their prior agreement, in which case my chiding would be valid. No doubt we’ll find out soon. My point was that I thought that Mr. Walsh and SteveH were simply demanding something of Skwawkbox that Skwawkbox had undertaken not to do (or, at least, not yet).
Yes, well it does say ‘Labour sources’ in the above article, but as I said, what possible reason would the MPs concerned have for NOT wanting their names to be known. And of course made the additional point regarding posters on this blog making this or that claim.
But to reiterate my main point, it hardly matters anyway if next to no-one except those who happen to read about it on skwawkbox are the only people who are aware of the fact, and so it will hardly amount to ‘a blow that the badly-led party can ill afford’, as asserted right at the end of the above article.
Williams has lost anyway. Voter apathy and anger at the party hierarchy have won the day, duffer Johnson has another seat and Starmer another nail in his coffin.
I agree about the minor (I would say, insignificant) points, but would point out that, at this stage, we don’t know whether it is a case of the MPs NOT wanting their names to be known , or whether it’s a case of not yet. Regarding posters making this or that claim – I don’t want to get involved in an argument on this site between you and your friends.
As for your main point – yes, probably a bit hyperbolic to state “a blow …..”; but, if it is a well-founded report, a further minor demonstration that the vaunted project to unite the party was either hubris or was insincere.
Afterthought: Mind you, if it was a left-wing candidate and a couple of ‘moderate’ MPs had refused to campaign for them, it probably WOULD be all over the MSM!
Goldbach…I am impressed youve handled him very well and given us a lesson or three in the replys
Says Okeefe the shill in a superior and patronising tone. But THAT’s what fascist black propagandists DO, isn’t it Joe! And they regard the people they dupe and deceive as inferior and just playthings to manipulate.
So you still haven’t come up with the evidence regards me supposedly accusing you of lying about having been a councillor. I wonder why not. Oh, right, because yur a lying piece of shit, that’s why. Have a nice day Joe!
PS Perish the thought that Joe’s ‘reply’ to goldbach was designed to provoke me into a response, so that he and one or two or more of his buddies can then pile in with their usual fascist verbiage. My apologies for keeping you waiting nearly three hours!
What a shame the stitch up right-wing candidate games being played by the cult of new Labour 2.0 can’t find anyone willing to assist this fool in BS’ing the local people into supporting the cult.
Well, what a shame quite frankly I can’t wait until this cult sees what its BS has wrought after the election results are tallied and we see how much support the party has lost through their stupid games and Tory-lite ideology change. Let’s see how much this hatred of JC and socialism earns them and will they see the error of their ways or double down as I expect!
Get the popcorn out this is going to be good!
Vote for the 🐒