Right-wing Labour MPs planning attack on Corbyn over peers’ self-serving letter and his decision to sack Hayter. Benn’s rebuke to Roy Jenkins should open meeting

Tony Benn on BBC Question Time in 1986

Right-wing Labour MPs – who in 2016 tried to ‘destroy [Corbyn] as a man’ – are planning another attack during this week’s meeting of the ‘PLP’ (parliamentary Labour party) over a paid advert by 60-odd Blairite peers and Corbyn’s decision to sack Baroness Hayter for offence to Jewish staff over ‘Hitler’s bunker’ comments.

Such mobbing attacks, using whatever is to hand at that moment in a ‘captive audience’ setting, have been a regular feature of PLP meetings, followed by immediate briefings to media friendly to the Labour right to feed yet more smears and misrepresentations, as the right-wingers use the only tool they seem to know how to.

Coal miner’s son Johnny Pitchford found an old video of the late, great Tony Benn appearing on a 1986 Question Time programme and tweeted that it was a message to the ‘Blairites’ today:

Johnny Pitchford is right. There are millions of people groaning under the weight of Tory predations; millions in poverty – including over four million children; huge numbers of disabled or unemployed people harried and penalised with ever-increasing intensity; people struggling with mental health issues abandoned or brutalised by a system that ignores their needs.

Any MP ignoring the desperation of those millions in order to try to ‘take their party back’ needs to see this video – and if they cannot heed its message they should step aside to make room for those who will.

Corbyn should play this clip at the beginning of tomorrow’s meeting, to shame those who are capable of shame and to expose those who are not.

The SKWAWKBOX needs your support. This blog is provided free of charge but depends on the generosity of its readers to be viable. If you can afford to, please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here for a monthly donation via GoCardless. Thanks for your solidarity so this blog can keep bringing you information the Establishment would prefer you not to know about.

If you wish to reblog this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.

Like this: Like Loading...