Quotes of the month
"Sources inside and outside Starmer's inner circle say the party is on the verge of bankruptcy and fearful of court cases brought by former employees"Sunday Times, 9 January 2022
"This cafe is a hostile environment for the Home Secretary" reads the sign in a Hastings cafe, from where trays of piping hot chips, along with hot drinks, are rushed down to the beach for the refugees.Guardian1 December
"The richest one per cent of the world's people (those earning more than $172,000 a year) produce 15 per cent of the world's carbon emissions; twice the combined impact of the poorest 50 per cent...The end of concentrated wealth – our survival depends on it."George Monbiot
Guardian, 10 November
Johnson thinks he has a winning formula – an interventionist, left of centre approach to the economy and a tough, right of centre approach to law and order, immigration and culture wars.Larry Elliot
Guardian, 7 October 2021
"There are many reasons why our Party should continue to fully support First-Past-The-Post, and reject the entreaties of those pressing for Proportional Representation. In the North West in the Euros, we had a very clear lesson as to the damage PR does to Labour. Under FPTP we had 10 out of 10 MEPs. Under PR we went down to only two MEPs and a far right/neo fascist was elected MEP. I joined the Labour Party because I believe it offers the best way forward for the mass of the people. That obviously means winning the maximum number of seats,not losing seats!" CLPD strongly believes that Annual Conference must endorse First-Past-The-Post. Failure to do this will give a huge boost to the Far Right, to the discredited Lib Dems and to the non-socialist Greens.Andrew Gwynne MP
, 1 September 2021
"Belief in the sanctity of the rule of law and civil liberties runs across...parts of the Labour left...but the supposed mainstream tends to either scoff at such ideas or meekly look the other way."- John Harris
Guardian, 2nd August
"The main progressive political party in this country is pandering to the worst kind of regressive politics. The failures we see notched up daily by Starmer's team aren't just political - they are moral"- Aditya Chakrabortty
Guardian, 8th July
"It is rare for an opposition leader to shoot up like a firework and tumble down like a stick."- Andrew Rawnsley
Observer, 13th June
"Jeremy Corbyn hugely motivated the under 30s to vote. In 2017 we achieved the largest swing to Labour since 1945. Sadly the present leadership seems to motivate very few. And the latest talk of building party unity is cheap. Unity requires the whip being restored to Jeremy Corbyn."- Freddie Demuth,
CLPD Activist, 11th May
"The Labour Party's strategists will need to learn from Corbynism's strengths, rather than ignoring them and insisting it had only weaknesses."- Andy Beckett
Guardian, 9th April
"The pledge to keep Labour's radical policies of 2017 and 2019 binned, replaced by policies made up on the hoof, without reference to Conference or the National Policy Forum....Reports suggest industrial-scale cheating has returned to local government selections"- Labour Briefing Co-op, March, 2021
"[Labour's] combination of top-down leadership and taking leftwing voters for granted is reminiscent of the party under Neil Kinnock."- Andy Beckett
Guardian, , 12th February
"For a long time much of the country hasn't resembled tabloid England. At a Jeremy Corbyn rally, you saw a different England to the one idealised by the tabloids."- Andy Beckett
Guardian, 8th January
"Suspending members without explanation is no way to treat people who give everything to our party."- Dan Carden MP (Liverpool Walton)
On the recent bout of suspensions of local CLP Officers , December 16th
"When you're elected and you're in that seat in Westminster, you take a position, you don't abstain. You take part in the match. You're the opposition, don't sit in the stand. They sat in the stand whilst the home team had a clear run."- Gary Neville
Sophie Ridge Show, Sky News, 6th December
“To be honest, removing the whip from well regarded Tory MPs that have served their party for years amounts to Johnson and Cummings destroying their own party. That will not end well.”- Sir Keir Starmer
BBC Radio 4 Today Programme, 4th September 2019
"During the 1990s, 'New Labour' accepted the neoliberal argument that the Unions had been too strong in the post-war decades. That has led directly to todays precarious so-called 'Labour Market', with its ever expanding bogus self-employment. We need a united Trade Union Movement committed to a campaign for collective bargaining legislation."Stevie Stevenson
CLPD EC member, Morning Star, October
"Increasingly our MPs are drawn from professional backgrounds - now only some 3% are from manual occupational backgrounds (in 1951 this was 37%). And yet at least 30% of employees are in jobs classed as manual. Our Party and the unions must address this glaring disparity."- Cllr Mandy Clare,
CLPD EC member, , September 2020
"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down."- Aneurin Bevan
"It's an abuse of members' money. It's as though a huge sign has been put up outside the Labour Party with 'Queue here with your writ and get your payment over there'"- Len McCluskey,
speaking about the Panorama "damages", Observer, , 2nd August 2020