LETTER from Peter Doyle, Penrith and the Borders CLP member
Starmer’s insipid speech last week reminded me of a Progress meeting I attended a few years ago in Carlisle, just after Corbyn had been elected leader. It was bit disappointing for Progress, as there were more Corbyn supporters than Progress supporters. The top table was Jamie Reed then the ‘Labour’ MP for Copeland, councillor Lee Sherriff and Lord Roger Liddle of Wigton.
It was a very, very uninspiring event. There were lots of statements from the MP, the noble Lord and the want-to-be-an-MP, about how we need a ‘big vision’ and how Tony Blair had a ‘big vision’, but unfortunately, none of the panel had much of a vision themselves. Jamie Reed, when asked why, for the whole of the time he had been in parliament, he had remained silent about the PFI scam of Carlisle hospital, which was plunging the health service in North Cumbria into catastrophe, said nothing.
Did it have anything to do with one of Progress financial backers being Interserve, the company who have just sold their share in Carlisle hospital of £90m? We were then lectured by Lord Liddle, who proceeded to tell us if it had not been for PFI, we would not have had all the hospitals and schools that the Labour government built, failing to tell the audience that Labour took a government decision to build hospitals and schools with PFI and not to build them in the traditional manner, ie the government building them.
Councillor Sherriff missed a golden opportunity to tell the audience that the final cost of the Carlisle PFI hospital will eventually be enough to build 10 Carlisle-sized hospitals. I suppose, listening to the contributions from the top table, that that must have been the ‘big vision’: more business-friendly policies, where rogue employers and bankers can continue to fill their boots.
Another comrade raised a brilliant point about unity in the party, adding that they out to allow the leader, who had only been leader for five months, to settle in, and to stop sniping. He pointed out that Jamie Reed had resigned his junior whip post only seven seconds after Corbyn was elected. He was then corrected by Jamie Reed, who said that actually, it was 47 seconds. Based on that response, I don’t believe there is any possibility of unity within the PLP.
During the general discussion, several audience members raised the taxation policies of the government. Would the Labour Party tackle the super-rich and force them to pay their fair share; would they deal with companies like Amazon, Google, etc, who are paying no tax? The ‘big vision’ from the top table was ‘no comment’. Not one of them said they would ensure that the deplorable taxation system would be sorted out. Clearly, no-one on the top table, would want to be accused of being a Trotskyist, but sorting out the taxation system is hardly revolutionary.
Lord Riddle also told us about the German Social Democratic Party, which in 1960, changed its party policy from its original Marxist aims to being pro-market, but he failed to inform us that they still couldn’t win elections. He also failed to tell us that the majority of this political experience was as one of the founding members of the British Social Democratic Party, the right-wing split from Labour in the 1980s, or that he had opposed the Labour Party for a decade.
Altogether, it was totally uninspiring, totally uninteresting and definitely without a ‘big vision’. Much like Starmer’s speech last Thursday.
