The drunken punch that floored a party
WHEN Theresa May dropped her Election bombshell, shocked Labour MPs were heard muttering ‘bloody Joyce’ as they contemplated their fate.
The remark is a reference to Eric Joyce, the former MP for Falkirk who drunkenly punched several Tory politicians and headbutted an MP in a Commons bar in 2012.
From the moment Joyce swung his fists, he set in motion a chain of events that led to Jeremy Corbyn becoming Labour leader, last year’s Brexit vote – and now an election that promises to wipe out the party as an effective political force.
After Joyce was convicted of assault and resigned from Labour, the contest to choose his successor became mired in claims that the union-backed hardLeft was trying to ‘fix’ the process, prompting then party leader Ed Miliband to bring in ‘one member, one vote’ rules. This led to socialist activists flooding the membership to elect Corbyn as party leader in 2015. Corbyn, a lifelong Eurosceptic, failed to campaign convincingly for Remain in the EU referendum, leaving Labour more exposed than ever on June 8.
The fateful sequence started on the evening of February 22, 2012, in the Strangers’ Bar, where Joyce was singing loudly. Objecting to startled glances from a nearby table, he declared: ‘This bar is full of ******* Tories’, before punching two Conservative councillors and headbutting Tory MP Stuart Andrew.
Joyce now admits ‘regret’ at the consequences of his actions, saying: ‘Falkirk precipitated the rule change and the rule change was catastrophic. Ed signed off on entryism.’