'A bunch of old Trotskyites are not going win political power'
A former minister under both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown has warned that civil war will break out within the Parliamentary Labour Party following Jeremy Corbyn’s election victory.
The comments by Kim Howells, Labour MP for Pontypridd between 1989 and 2010, come in this evening’s edition of Week In Week Out, due to air on BBC One Wales.
Asked how he would respond to the current leadership, Howells, who ran the NUM Pontypridd office which co-ordinated the South Wales miners’ efforts during the miners’ strike in the eighties, told the programme:
“I’d be bitterly opposed to the current leadership of the Labour Party.
“I’d be saying things that I believe about the need to win political power and a bunch of old Trotskyites are not going win political power.”
Arguing that the party had to “start speaking in a language people can understand and convince the electorate”, he warned:
“There is going to be a civil war inside the parliamentary Labour Party. It’s nothing new, it’s happened in the past,” he added.
“So the party’s got to make its mind up – does it really think it’s going to win again in the future, with Corbyn as the leader? I don’t think so.”
With crucial elections next year to the Welsh Assembly, the MP for Ogmore, Huw Irranca-Davies, who is co-ordinating Labour’s assembly election campaign, has insisted that in Wales the fight back will not become “the Jeremy show”. Instead, he argues that it is First Minister Carwyn Jones who will be “right at the front” of the party’s campaign.
Richard Wyn Jones, professor of Welsh Politics at Cardiff University, will warn also tonight of tensions and difficulties between an opposition Labour Party at Westminster and a governing one in Wales. He will explain:
“Welsh Labour has been running Wales since 1999 and the kinds of pressures that you face when governing are very different from ones the Jeremy Corbyn had to face as, essentially, a campaigning backbench MP. And it’s easy to envisage that leading to real tensions.
“Now this may well all end in tears. However, I think there’s a really interesting phenomenon here and we need to be very careful before we dismiss it.”
Ed Jacobs is a contributing editor to Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter
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42 Responses to “Former minister warns of ‘civil war’ in Labour Party”
RuthB
Yes but you can only do that if we take the rules back to the way they were before Blair. At present it’s next door to impossible to change your MP, however bad s/he may be or however little they represent their local party’s views. It’s tedious and boring and bureaucratic, but it has to be done.
Riversideboy
Ruth they do not have to give him their support to stand next time. That happens a year or so before the selections in a vote of members ratifying they want him to stand again or open up the panel to others.
RuthB
Well, if you think it’s do-able, fair enough. But I don’t think it’s members, it’s organisations. I thought it was very difficult to get the required number of affiliated organisations to trigger a ballot. In the old days there was just a ballot, you didn’t have to trigger anything. You just had a selection procedure like you do for local councillors: they get nominated, you draw up a shortlist, you have a selection meeting. If the person’s doing OK, you have a shortlist of one (and I’m proud to say I was selected on a shortlist of one several times!). If not, you have a choice of people. There is a proposal to change the rules, I know.
Syzergy_Point
Maybe, maybe. But to be honest, I just don’t buy it. I’d like to believe you, but my feeling from people I’m in touch with (from quite a range of different political persuasions) is that they’re currently less likely to vote Labour than in 2010. But, I hope I’m wrong.
robertcp
If Howells is worried about a civil war, he is not exactly helping matters. Describing the elected leader of the Labour Party as a Trotskyite is just amazingly stupid.