No escape from the Tories’ Militant soul
Neil Kinnock rose to denounce the Trotskyist group Militant as a party within a party and pandemonium erupted. It was Friday, October 11, 1985, the last day of Labour’s conference, the first one I’d attended.
The Labour leader aimed his incendiary rhetoric at the shambles Militant councillors were making of Liverpool and, in the most famous words he ever uttered, bellowed: “You end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council – a LABOUR council – hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers”.
Wow, and kerpow!
His broadside was aimed at charismatic Liverpool firebrand Derek Hatton who leapt to his feet in a fury. I feared punches might be thrown. It was electrifying theatre and I had a front row seat. I thought, this is a bit of all right. Party conferences aren’t dull after all. I vowed there and then to make a career in the explosive world of political journalism.
Just my luck though, that was their high point. There’s never been another party conference like it since and I’ve trudged round the country to all of them for three decades.
I hated Militant, but something made me uncomfortable about expelling it from the Labour Party.
Was it not activism rather than insurgency to spend hours discussing tedious lefty political dogma in drafty community halls, stand in downpours to flog their newspaper and leaflet in the cold while others were at home in the warm, curled up watching Corrie?
Now the Tories have their own party within a party whose community hall is Parliament. Jacob Rees- Mogg’s 60-strong European Research Group spend tedious hours on the arcane points of Brexit and are every bit as worrying to the Tories as Militant was to Labour.
As a Parliamentary “research” organisation, it’s OK for MPs to each give £2,000 from taxpayer-funded expenses, and with other donations its financial future is assured.
I doubt it’ll morph into a new party, but you never know in today’s febrile atmosphere. A Labour split is more likely, with a hardcore of seven MPs actively talking about it.
Contrary to reports, they don’t include Jeremy Corbyn leadership challenger Owen Smith, but coalesce round former shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna’s People’s Vote campaign.
The ERG plan to stick around for years to ensure their brand of Brexit is delivered and, as one insider puts it, “act as the conscience of the Tory Party.”
The big danger is that in doing so they could become THE Tory Party,
That sounds grim on every level save one... I might yet see another volcanic party conference again.
The ERG’s a party inside a party and every bit as worrying
blocked Defra staff from getting into their Whitehall offices on Wednesday. Including their boss, environmental crusader Michael Gove, who security guards wouldn’t allow in because he’d forgotten his pass. So he had to queue to be processed. But that wasn’t the real scandal. Gove was carrying a single-use, plastic-coated coffee cup.