Well, this explains your whole rant about the “extreme left”.
For those who don’t want to read the Daily Heil:
He should do the honourable thing and resign and have a by election. Labour will no doubt be in danger of Reform taking the seat…so maybe won’t welcome it.
As far as I know it doesn’t work like you seem to be suggesting. He is effectively no longer a Labour MP.
He can still resign as an MP though…he is unlikely ever to be accepted back into the party given his sexist and racist comments.
You implied it was up to Labour which I don’t think is correct.
You should change your post to indicate this as it’s false news.
In other words, to do the honorable thing. Although he has been kicked out for being dishonorable.
There is a mechanism for constituents to call for a recall, although that requires the MP to have been convicted of an offence or suspended from parliament.
Although a harsh review, I must reflect and state how privileged I am to have my very own in house ‘post reviewer’, you are like my little Mark Kermode.
I mean, obviously there are other ones. He isn’t going to be in a Whatsapp group on his own.
Surely the biggest scandal here is why they are discussing government business on Whatsapp in the first place. Although, I suspect that boat sailed with the Johnson government. They normalised that kind of behaviour.
There are so many problematic issues here. But it’s interesting that the article contextualises it more by pointing out that this was prior to the 2024 elections. I’m not going to rush to judgement, and the meme was tongue-in-cheek.
But it’s interesting that this is the big scandal for Labour so far, and yet when you think about how that maps onto the previous governments, it would barely register at all.
And more importantly, it’s a big distraction from the government’s failure to deliver the change that voters wanted, instead delivering more of the same austerity and victim-blaming mindset demonising immigrants, the EU, and now welfare claimants.
I appreciate that many people wanted this government to be more left wing but I think a lot of these accusations are a bit OTT, particularly as we are only just in the 8th month of its term.
You may be right about the austerity needed and the financial constraints perhaps.
But the rest of that, the “victim-blaming mindset demonising immigrants, the EU, and now welfare claimants” is absolutely unenforced, except from complete lack of conviction in their own beliefs.
But I don’t think this is what is actually happening though…I agree some of the language they’ve chosen to use is disappointing but I think it only covers a small % of what they are actually saying and doing.
And that’s precisely the problem I have. They have a choice to avoid all language like that altogether and present themselves as a breath of fresh air, contrasting themselves with previous administrations and their attitudes towards those groups. Yet they’re choosing to pander to the right-wing tabloids, perpetuating the rhetoric and the idea.
The cowards don’t seem to want to learn that you can’t go fascist-lite, people would just vote for the fascists anyway.
No, they’re not. We know there are people that try to abuse the welfare and immigration systems. The government acknowledging that they exist and they are doing something about it is not pandering to the right/ fascists - unless that was the only message they were putting out there.
Is it the biggest scandal for Labour so far? I’m not so sure. I’m sure there were a few gifts early on, etc.
Is it a scandal? Or is it just unprofessional laddish/office chat where comments are made to provoke a reaction/laugh and most likely does not reflect their views?
What it does do sadly, is amplify the publics level of mistrust in their local Councillors, many who do a good and are let down by a few.
Going off on a slight tangent, I highly recommend listening to a caller on 5 Live today, I think it was the Nick Campbell show.
The caller was the son of the elderly lady, who had concerns about her bin collections, the one Gwynne ‘wished dead’.
He provided context to his Mothers concerns. You could hear the emotion in his voice. Because, she was merely seen as a number, a name, a pain and not as a human being.
Maybe, councillors should be made to listen to it, to remind them that their duty is to represent their constituents.
I agree .
Any Government or opposition party would be failing in their role, if they did not recognise the importance of the publics concerns with Immigration and Welfare.
It is not pandering to the right or the fascists, not everyone who has concerns about immigration have the, this is my Country, stop stealing my jobs mentality, It is of a much wider spectrum. Same with the Welfare system, not all are lazy, smoking, scratch card buying single parents.
Both are complicated issues and not just defined to the UK, it’s a worldwide issue. To ignore them would only make matters worse.
Yes they are.
The people you speak of are nowhere close to being the real problem with the systems, and are just a distraction from successive governments’ failures to deal with that.
Much easier to claim that people are abusing the immigrations system when it was a conscious decision to reduce staffing and decisions made on asylum claims.
Much easier to demonise people on welfare instead of addressing the real systemic issues of why they are on welfare to begin with, such as the very real health and economic issues.

unless that was the only message they were putting out there.
They know that it’s the only message that would get amplified, and yet they still choose to do it.
Just look at @Rambler’s post here: UK Politics Thread (Part 4) - #1996 by Rambler The headline is all about people “taking the mickey”, not the real structural issues that Kendall talked about in the same interview. If it was a political neophyte making that mistake, I can understand. But this is Labour veteran Liz Kendall, who has been an MP since 2010, and has been involved in politics since 1996. It’s quite clearly a systemic issue within the party.