Second Labour MP is on verge of quitting over anti-Semitism
JEREMY Corbyn’s leadership could be rocked by a second resignation in a week after another senior Labour MP has indicated he will follow Frank Field out of the parliamentary party in protest against anti-Semitism.
Ilford South MP Mike Gapes’s intervention came as Mr Field was threatened by the Labour leadership to withdraw his resignation from the parliamentary party or face being expelled from Labour.
Speaking out against the culture within Labour under Mr Corbyn, Mr Gapes, who has served for 26 years, said: “I am agonising every day about the situation and the state of the Labour Party. I will make my own decision about how I deal with this in my own time.”
Mr Field’s decision to resign the parliamentary whip was met with a hard response during a meeting with chief whip Nick Brown.
The veteran Labour MP, who has served Birkenhead for 40 years, was told unless he reversed his decision to resign the whip he would be kicked out of the party within two weeks.
Mr Field said he was contemplating hiring a solicitor to fight any attempt to remove him from the party.
FOR nearly 40 years, Frank Field has been a defiant Labour MP, tirelessly fighting for social justice. He’s certainly not one to be bullied by the Labour leadership so the fact that he has chosen to resign the whip, citing the fact that Labour has become a haven for anti-Semitism, shows how serious the crisis in the party has become.
If the Labour Party can’t put its own house in order on this front, what chance have they got of running the country?
“Britain fought the Second World War to banish these views from our politics,” he says, “but that superhuman effort and success is under huge and sustained internal attack.” It is a stinging rebuke and deserves more than just platitudes from the Labour leader.
And when it comes to Brexit he knows what is best for his country. But supporting Theresa May’s Brexit deal means Corbyn’s attack dog supporters have made life in his constituency miserable for him, relentlessly calling for his deselection. His resignation letter from the Labour whip cites the brutal intolerance under Corbyn’s regime as one of his principal reasons for detaching himself from the party machinery.
Ironically, Frank Field was one of the Labour MPs who called for Corbyn to enter the leadership contest in the first place in order to widen the debate about the future of the party but now that same hard Left has viciously turned on him for daring to back Theresa May’s Brexit.
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OLITICIANS who prefer common sense to blindly following party dogma are a rare breed and to be cherished. Frank Field’s ability to cut through ideology was one of the reasons Tony Blair recruited him as minister of welfare reform.
He was characterised as “thinking the unthinkable”. He certainly thought the bloated welfare system could be changed to a more efficient means of delivering support that included the resurrection of friendly societies to provide financial care for the vulnerable. Such suggestions offended the old school Marxists but endeared him to some Conservatives who praised his integrity and ability to work with politicians from across the party divide.
Famously he cared enough about Margaret Thatcher’s legacy to advise her to resign in 1990 just as support was draining away in her own party. David Cameron appointed him to head an independent review into poverty.
Come 2016, Field did not shy away from openly supporting Brexit. Unlike so many MPs from both parties, he actually respects and represents the Leave majority in his Birkenhead constituency where 52 per cent voted to depart the EU.
In July this year when the country looked to Parliament to deliver a proper Brexit by rejecting an amendment that would keep us in the customs union, Frank Field did not waver. Along with three other fearless Labour MPs he helped Theresa May’s Government clear this hurdle. For that act of defiance he has been vilified ever since by Corbyn’s fanatical supporters.
Used to the hurly burly of politics, even he was shocked by the new level of abuse he received in his constituency party. Quite rightly he described it as a “culture of intolerance, nastiness and intimidation” which should have no place in mainstream politics.
He is not alone in being on the sharp end of this. Fellow Labour Brexiteer Kate Hoey has faced votes of no confidence from her constituency because of her Leave stance, although since 2016 her majority has actually gone up by more than 5,000 votes. Considering it was mainly northern Labour voters who helped deliver a Leave victory in the referendum, what is it about a majority of their MPs and the Labour leadership that doesn’t understand democracy?
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HE problem for Labour is that it is in the grip of a hard-Left minority that feels empowered by its Marxist leader to unleash any level of abuse and intimidation on rivals and dissenters, including the appalling anti-Semitism at the highest levels. It is a cyber version of the street fighting that disfigured the 1930s and made it an era of political extremes.
Frank Field has been an MP longer than Jeremy Corbyn and commands the respect of many politicians both inside and outside his party. That he should be forced to put his distinguished parliamentary career on the line to oppose such major problems in his party leadership says much about how low Labour has sunk.
It is up to his constituents, not the virulent Corbynistas who have infiltrated his local party, to decide on whether this gesture will get their backing in a battle for the future of the party. This weekend in Birkenhead he will be talking to them to see if he should force this conflict to a head by calling a by-election so he can stand as an independent candidate.
He may enjoy the affection and loyalty of ordinary members but sadly the Corbyn Momentum machine is such that it will fight a vicious grassroots campaign against him and cow many more moderate supporters.
That is the problem for Labour. Its more moderate voice is being drowned out.
It would be a sad day not just for Labour but the nation if Frank Field is hounded out of his seat. Not least because Brexit-supporting Labour MPs are vitally needed to support Theresa May as she presses on with delivering the referendum result the majority of Britons want to see. And now the party’s appallingly virulent antiSemitism has made him decide to stand down.
‘Resignation cites the brutal intolerance’