Monday, October 15, 2007

Labour MP: why should the people trust Labour?

Isn't it funny how all these Blairites that kept their tongues over the summer are coming out of the wood work? Tonight's Evening Standard carries a scathing attack on Gordon Brown from former minister Gisella Stuart. As I'm typing this on my phone I have not had chance to see if she is only speaking up because she fears she will lose her seat but even if that were her motivation her words by no means hold back.

She talks of the 'Praetorian guard' around Brown and argues that Brown is not showing leadership over Europe and virtually endorses Cameron's view that Brown is treating the public like fools. She attacks the moving goalposts in the Government's position on the EU constitution, calls the red lines 'red herrings' and closes by saying on a referendum that 'If Labour can't trust the people, why should the people trust Labour?'

Like I say, I know nothing about Gisela Stuart but she sounds like she not just disaffected with Brown but Labour overall. Time to cross the floor perhaps? Who knows. One thing is for sure, she's not going to have a nice conversation with Labour wwhips the next time she sees one of them.

3 comments:

Alan Douglas said...

She is German-born, and was on the EU committee that did something or other recently - seems to have changed her mind about the huge benefits of "EUrope"

Good girl.

Alan Douglas

Anonymous said...

I thought you generally researched first and then blogged, Dizzy.

Gisela Stuart was one of the UK Parliament nominees to the Convention on the Future of Europe which drew up the first draft of the Constitutional Treaty, having lost a ministerial post at the Department of Health after the 2001 election (she did not really recover from being caught on camera next to the PM when Sharon Storer had a crack at him during his electioneering visit to a hospital in her constituency.)

She served on the Praesidium of the Convention and was thoroughly fed up with the anti-democratic way in which Giscard ran the whole thing "for the benefit of the peoples of Europe". She is not a fan of the document which finally emerged, and still less of the version finally adopted by the Member States in October 2004, and wrote a Fabian Society pamphlet laying into the whole show back in early 2005 (around the time the Government introduced the first Bill to ratify the Constitutional Treaty).

So her position on the Treaty appears to have been consistent since the end of the Convention: charges of short-term opportunism don't stick here, I'm afraid. She was as much of a pain to Blair in 2005 and can hardly be labelled a Blairite.

The Whips can have a go at her, though if she's been reselected for her seat (Birmingham Edgbaston in 2005) they need her help more than she needs theirs - if this marginal goes Tory Labour are in severe trouble.

dizzy said...

"As I'm typing this on my phone"

Was on the bus