Friday, October 20, 2006

Clare Short finally does the inevitable...

According to Guido Fawkes, Clare Short has resigned the Labour whip. More details when I get them...

Update 24/10/2006: I've left the dust to settle before posting again. The BBC News website has a good article detailing what's happened. As you might expect, she's given the New Labour government both barrels, talking about an '...arrogant, error-prone government...' and '...the prime minister engaged in a series of half-truths and deceits to get us to war in Iraq.'

Strong stuff, but she did stand on a Labour platform barely eighteen months ago when she was reelected. When interviewed on Radio 4's PM programme a few days ago, she refused to be drawn on whether she should be standing down as an MP to give the electorate an opportunity to decide if they're happy with this fundamental (and it is fundamental) shift in her status. It seemed obvious to me that she thought that instigating a by-election would be the right thing to do, which is why she stuck to the 'we'll have to agree to disagree' line.

3 comments:

Praguetory said...

Apparently she has not ruled out standing again for Parliament (just not for Labour). Would the Dems have her? Would any party take her?

Peter Smallbone said...

I don't know whether or not she's ruled out standing for Parliament entirely, but I'd be surprised if the LibDems would be interested, or she'd be interested...

The Sads said...

where did birmingham go wrong? producing you two....its sad