LETTER: Support your leader or shut up
Local elections are held in much of England. There are some glitches – I live in the glitch called Walsall – but the overall picture is clear.
The Labour Party has gained more seats than all other parties combined.
It has made significant advances in what had been solid Conservative territory.
The great northern cities of Manchester and Liverpool are Tory-free zones, with not one Conservative councillor.
So, too, is the local borough of Sandwell.
All this is despite a vicious media campaign and grotesque vilification of the party’s leader.
Theresa May, understandably and even commendably, puts a brave face on the situation.
She goes to Wandsworth, to congratulate the local Conservatives on ‘only’ losing eight seats and retaining a majority of councillors despite Labour winning the popular vote.
She talks down the Labour Party’s success – par for the course and entirely reasonable behaviour for a Conservative prime minister.
What is not entirely reasonable is the willingness of some Labour politicians to join in.
Chuka Umunna takes time off from deploring the riff-raff being let into his favourite night-clubs to undermine his party and its leader.
Alastair Campbell, totally oblivious to the contempt in which he and his old boss “Bliar” are held across the political spectrum, weighs in because Corbyn has ‘failed’ to win every seat in the country. Blunkett and Jess Phillips put their oars in.
The Labour Party has about 552,000 members and 258 MPs.
Thus the Parliamentary Labour Party amounts to 0.04673 percent of the membership.
It’s high time for this tiny, privileged, entitled minority to back the party’s elected leader or shut up.
Alan T Harrison
Walsall
