Here we go again. Although Labour conference has become increasingly Corbynite in recent years, the Progress rally can always be relied upon as a safe space for Labour moderates. And so it was that Corbyn-sceptic Labour MPs gathered at the annual event on Sunday night to air their grievances.
Wes Streeting – the Labour MP for Ilford North – have a crowd-pleasing speech which took aim at Corbyn ally Chris Williamson, as well as Dawn Butler over her recent Militant comments:
‘Good evening Progress – it’s great to be here. It’s like one of Chris Williamson’s democracy tours except about thirty years younger in terms of average age.
Here at Progress we don’t talk about how we get rid of Labour MPs, we come together to talk about how we elect more Labour MPs.
And if Chris were here, I would say maybe Chris if you’d spent more time travelling around Derby we’d have kept the Labour council this year.
The thing about Chris Williamson is when you’re Chris Williamson you don’t need to worry about beating the Tories. You can just do a deal with them to run the council instead.
In Ilford, we like to do things the old-fashioned way. Next time Chris comes to the area, I’ll tell him about how I won my seat from the Tories in the same year that he lost his. I’ll tell him about the great Mike Gapes who bucked the trend and beat the Tories in 92′.
You see, in case people like Chris haven’t got the message yet, I’m not in the Labour party because I want to be a Tory, I’m in the Labour party to beat the Tories.
For me, it’s not about partisan politics. It’s about lived experience. We are told that 30 years ago, here in Liverpool, a Labour council decided to break the law rather than break the poor.
Now as you know I am a big fan of taxis but I am not sure I would have welcomed one turning up at my door to hand mea redundancy notice. That was Militant, Liverpool in the 1980s.
And that’s not something to celebrate on the platform of the Labour conference. Back then, while the Labour party was busy tearing itself apart with internal battles, families like mine were left to suffer under successive Tory governments.
So whether you think the SDP helped Labour’s recovery or hindered it, there can be no doubt that the split on the Left handed the Conservative party 18 years in power.’
That will go down well with the new party faithful…
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