Sedgefield Strife

Ramsay MacDonald was defeated whilst Prime Minister in a North Eastern constituency we are reminded by Derek Cattell, a member of Sedgefield Labour Party’s executive committee for ten years, who is quitting in protest at the Iraq war which he says raises questions about the "honesty and integrity" of Mr Blair’s leadership.

Derek Cattell, who is also a regional organiser with the GMB union, is putting his weight behind Reg Key's campaign, saying he can't vote through gritted teeth for Blair. The anti-Blair feeling in his own constituency went largely un-reported outside the left-wing press, but in late March protestors assembled outside Trimdon Labour Club to lobby the A.G.M. of Sedgefield Constituency Labour Party, (the people who select Blair), where an increasingly vocal anti-Blair, anti-New Labour element is feeling the full weight of a New Labour counter-attack. Veteran Labour party members are excluded from meetings and dissenters are given the full treatment in the way that only comrades can.

Reg Keys, the father of a British soldier killed in Iraq, is standing for election in the Prime Minister's constituency. He says: "the last time I saw my son, Tom, was at a railway station when he marched off down the platform with his head held high, proud to do his duty for his country. He believed what he was told. But the Prime Minister misled the country, and Tom and 84 other soldiers who had their oaths of allegiance betrayed came home in coffins - having died for a lie. It's time to bring accountability back into British politics."

Guido is pleased to report that David Shayler has stood down in favour of Reg Key's campaign and that the Reg Keys for Sedgefield Campaign is picking up most of the disgruntled Labour voters. Still no sign of a white suit, yet...

My only problem with what you've just written is that this guy you're referring to is no big-hitter (there's only one big-hitter allowed in Sedgefield and that's John Burton, Blair's Agent, for whom the phrase about fish and ponds automatically springs to most people's minds), pretty much someone who could be relied upon to sit on a committee of 20 and turn up for meetings that the rest of humanity couldn't be arsed with. If a senior officer of Blair's local party had resigned, then OK. But as it stands, meh.

Actually, no, my other problem is that the Tories would have taken us to war on less of a premise, as it happens. Even then, if they'd been in power between 2001 and now we wouldn't even know what that premise was because of a lack of freedom of information legislation (so-called freedom of information legislation, as Howard would probably refer to it). The Tories' opposition to war is based purely on the grounds that they weren't the ones who started it. So let's have a debate among the other candidates in Blair's constituency about it, not just focus ire on one individual.