Comrades! There is a traitor in our midst. Word reaches Mr Steerpike that the phones are red hot in Labour circles as party hacks consider expelling a vocal enemy of the leadership.
Dan Hodges — Labour insider turned Telegraph writer — has been a vociferous critic of Ed Miliband. He also hated Ken Livingstone so much that he urged his readers to vote for Boris. Now delegates to this year’s Labour Party Conference are being sounded out on whether they would support a motion to have the fiery scribe banished from the party.
The motion will appeal to the Labour National Constitutional Committee to expel Hodges on grounds that he campaigned against an official Labour Party candidate. But, as one party insider lamented ‘it would be a big can of worms to expel him over London’. Not least because other high profile members, like Lord Sugar, committed exactly the same ‘crime’. One delegate told me, ‘The leadership would be stupid to turn him into a martyr so if they had any sense they would stamp on it.’
Hodges has taken the news on the chin, ‘If conference decides my expulsion is really in the best interests of the Labour party I’ll go quietly. It’s a fair cop. Plus, I could probably do with the £10 pound a month currently going on my subs’.
When asked to comment, Team Miliband made no effort to shut the idea down, instead stating rather coldly: ‘All motions will be considered in a normal way.’
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