There has been a phoney war going on in the Labour party for a few months now.
Jeremy Corbyn repeatedly stresses that he has no hidden agenda when it comes to the deselection of MPs on the right of the party.
To put it bluntly, no-one on the right of the party believes him for a minute.
Leopards do not change their spots, goes the theory, and the hard left is as obsessed about sectarianism and party control as it ever was.
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell attended a meeting of the Momentum group last month where the deselection of Chuka Umunna was openly discussed.
Meanwhile, the clumsy briefing about a New Year shadow cabinet reshuffle, with the demotion or sacking of Corbyn’s critics, notably the widely-liked and respected Hilary Benn, has done little to assuage centrists that the leadership isn’t coming after them.
An act of magnanimity towards Danczuk, one of his most vocal foes, would be a visible manifestation that Corbyn actually means what he says about tolerating differences of opinion.
Needless to say, though, some leadership acolytes can’t disguise their jubilation at Danczuk’s predicament. Enter Ken Livingstone:
“I just find it so bizarre because he [Danczuk] put himself at the centre of the investigation into sex abuse of young girls and so on in his area, to have fallen into this, I find it hard to believe. I can’t say too much because I’m on Labour’s NEC and might have to take the final decision about whether he’s allowed to resume his party membership or whether we expel him.
“I don’t see how you can be sexually attracted to somebody that young, there’s something really disturbing [about it].”
Is he acting as an outrider for Corbyn? If so, the leadership should be careful about prurience being the reason for sacking one of their MPs.
Having threatened to stand against Corbyn as a stalking horse in the event of poor elections results in May’s Scottish, Welsh, London and local elections, Danczuk now finds himself at the mercy of his leader.
The smart move by Corbyn would be to admonish him for his recklessness and quietly drop the suspension and readmit him. He has broken no law and if sending a few racy tweets to a fellow consenting adult is now a capital offence in Labour politics, there will be plenty more MPs following Danczuk out of the exit door.
Tags: deselection, Jeremy Corbyn, Ken Livingstone, sexting, Simon Danczuk
Perhaps we should wait for the investigation and not rely entirely on the Sun for info.
Radical? I know – but perhaps a bit of restraint is becoming.
Ken should have shut up as well.
“He has broken no law and if sending a few racy tweets to a fellow consenting adult is now a capital offence in Labour politics, there will be plenty more MPs following Danczuk out of the exit door.” Not quite, although your defence of such appalling sleaze by Danzcuk is touching. The reason why this is far more ‘iffy’ than that is because the conversations that led to 49 year old Danzcuk telling a 17 year old student that he was ‘horny’ and wanted to ‘spank’ her were around a potential offer of work in his office and and a job interview for her. And by any standards that is a serious abuse of trust, position and power, but in the circumstances where we are dealing with a Labour – yes a Labour – MP doing such things then anyone serious about defending both the reputation of our Party and basic common decency needs to call for him to be expelled. He has been a walking embarrassment for far too long, and in fact his latest apologies over this are the third set in a week (the other two concerned him posting more idiotic gormless ‘selfies’ with the tag ‘happytimes’ while hundreds of his constituents were underwater and then again for not bothering to visit those affected for a number of days). Time for him to go and join UKIP if they will still have the clown after this.
Unfortunately Danczuk has played into the hands of Corbyn and co – a very different case to that which may be presented to those MPs moved into a reshuffle. MPs must present themselves as paragons of virtue – although I would also say that those who throw stones are not exactly lilly white.
Frankly anyone who knows how NEC will know that they are scrupulous in such cases as any hint of a kangaroo court approach opens the party up to the courts. I guess this case will be looked into by the NW regional office who will want to interview anyone caught up in the matter,and then present their findings to a NEC sub committee for determination.
The only way this matter will go bottom up is if Simon D let’s his mouth run off in the process which can never be ruled out.
Interesting that no one is given credit for writing this article, though you can see why the writer would be remiss to put their name to it–not exactly covering themselves in glory are they?
That being said, I do wonder whether if it had been a Corbyn ally who had been revealed to have behaved in the way Danczuk has, would Labour Uncut still be calling for mercy? Doubt it…
‘…if sending a few racy tweets to a fellow consenting adult is now a capital offence in Labour politics, there will be plenty more MPs following Danczuk out of the exit door.’
So being a dirty old man, who offers to trade favours for sex with barely legal girls, is something that is common among those that constitute the PLP? That’s quite the admission.
” ……..the hard left is as obsessed about sectarianism and party control as it ever was.”
I’d just make two points on this:
I would claim to be less hard than most on the right of the party because I’m against austerity economics and they aren’t. Austerity is unnecessary right now and is just hurting the poor. Anyone wanting to hurt the poor has to be hard in my book.
We also have to recognise the reason for the unrepresentative nature of the PLP. When the right were in control of the party, candidate selection can’t have been on the basis of merit. It has had to have been on the basis of having a certain political opinion. There’s no other possible explanation.
It may sound harsh, although maybe not in Danczuk’s case, but that imbalance has to be redressed and there are only two ways possible. We could expel 90% of all those who voted for Jeremy Corbyn I suppose. That would do the trick. Or we can make a start by getting rid of the less desirable characters like Danczuk. What other options are there?
Jeremy Corbyn is opposed within his party and its wider milieu both by a small ultra-Left and by an infinitesimal ultra-Right.
The ultra-Left has a certain activist base, but it has no MPs and no mainstream journalists. It opposed the decision to grant a free vote on Syria, it supports the setting of illegal budgets by local authorities, and it demands the deselection of dozens of MPs.
The ultra-Right exists only in the London media, where it probably has fewer than 40 members of any kind, and in Parliament, where it has no more than 15 MPs, namely those who both abstained on the Fiscal Charter and voted in favour of the airstrikes in Syria. Even those figures are arguably overestimates, and one of those 15 is Simon Danczuk.
Very much looking forward to Danczuk running as an anti-Corbyn stalking horse.
One can imagine the headlines: “Danczuk wants to spank Corbyn” etc.
Maybe if Danczuk says people should vote for a non labour candidate,like livingstone or Fisher did,the NEC will allow him to stay in the party
I recall livingstone saying in October 2014 Ed miliband winning the election was the last chance in his life time for us to have a real socialist prime minister, implying Gordon and Tony were different to Ed miliband,they weren’t socialists, and that the reason people like me backed Ed miliband for leader(even though he didn’t) was because it was the fist real chance for socialism,in generations ,turns out as it was the blairites fault that Ed miliband lost, Ken was wrong to say that Ed miliband was the first real socialist in decades and the first in a generation for people like him to vote for socialism
As Ed miliband was a Blairite,and it was the Blairite Ed miliband who lost us the election !
It’s actually a long time since I used to canvass round the Gorbals and I’m no longer a member of the party. Neither do I have much time for the kind of political positions that are now the mainstream among party members. Having written that, the members of the party choose their candidates for election. If they want to choose people who share their views, it is very difficult to see why they shouldn’t. If that results in a much smaller but more committed parliamentary party that’s the choice of the members.
These allegations are pretty serious & Danczuk doesnt seem to be denying the substance of them. The decision to suspend was inevitable whether the media picked it up or not. To suggest that The Party should go easy on Danczuk simply because he is a member of your faction is disturbing.
Danczuk has made himnself a dirty old man. Nobody forced him, nobody made him, nobody helped him. He did it all willingly, eagerly and all on his own.
Does anyone seriously believe that people aren’t going to do anything other than publicly take the piss out of him from here on in. Do you think his constituents ( a lot of him are islamic and socially conservative) will feel comfortable leaving him alone with their young daughters?
Corbyn should very publicly hang him out to dry and make it known that he will not condone this sort of behaviour from a dirty little old man.
Why the (anonymous) concern for Simon Danczuk? Look at these two quotes from Dec 28 and try and spot the difference.
‘Why do we spend money in Bangladesh when it needs spending in Great Britain? What we need to do is to sort out the problems which are occurring here and not focus so much on developing countries. That has to be our priority.’ – Simon Danczuk (Dec 28)
http://metro.co.uk/2015/12/28/spend-money-on-flood-defences-not-in-bangladesh-flood-hit-mp-says-5587413/
“This government has ring-fenced a ballooning foreign aid budget. Only UKIP would slash it. Let’s start putting our own people first.” – Nigel Farage (Dec 28)
https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/681437086906454017
Maybe Farage is (slightly) less provocative as at least he doesn’t resort to “dog whistle” politics by saying “Bangladesh” in his call for cutting foreign aid.
As for saying in the article that Danczuk “has broken no law and if sending a few racy tweets to a fellow consenting adult is now a capital offence in Labour politics, there will be plenty more MPs following Danczuk out of the exit door”, I can only agree with Feodor’s comments on this.
Maybe someone here can answer the following. If Danczuk (49) had taken on this 17 year old as an intern, would he then have been considered in a “position of trust”?
From Wikipedia –
“In the United Kingdom, the Sexual Offences Act 2000 prohibits a person in a position of trust from having sexual acts with someone who cannot consent which include minors and “very vulnerable people”. This is primarily used for the protection of young people who are above the age of consent but under the age of 18, or those with mental disabilities.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Position_of_trust
Can’t wait for ‘Have I Got News For You’
John R, you ask ‘If Danczuk (49) had taken on this 17 year old as an intern, would he then have been considered in a “position of trust”?’ This is not about a position of trust situation, nor even the girl’s very young age (although that doesn’t help). The key issue is that the allegations in the original story stated that she first approached him about a job in his constituency office. This then quickly turned to sex talk that he appeared to lead and then an invite from him to have some kind of interview with him, immediately followed by the ‘horny’ and ‘spanking’ comments from him. It is therefore very obvious that if those allegations are correct on these points then he was linking the potential offer of work to sex, and if you and others can’t or won’t see the problem with that then I’m very surprised. In terms of the potential rules that he has broken this is also very clear and relates to the standing rule (in chapter 5 of the rule book) that “Labour MPs and MEPs are expected to meet the highest standards of probity…”, and for the avoidance of doubt probity is commonly defined as “the quality of having strong moral principles; honesty and decency.”. Therefore it is very clear, if an MP has linked a potential offer of work to sex, which appears to be the case here, then it clearly has not met the necessary standards of probity, which therefore makes the suspension and investigation entirely correct. In any case, at a time when we are trying to attract far more young and women activists to the Party to not even investigate an allegation that centres of the possibility that sex was linked to a possible offer of employment would send what kind of message to them do you think?
This is very serious misconduct as the messages were in an employment related context Atrocious for any MP let alone a Labour one. I expect a final warning at least
The right would be very stupid to expend any capital in his defence.
To save you having to trawl all the papers I have prepared this short summary pf what each one says/alleges/ (there are rumours that others are starting to come forward as well):
Sonia Rossington (first wife)
Had sex with her while she pretended to be asleep
Made her have a cannabis joint ready-rolled when he came home from work
Tried to get her interested in spanking, caning and sado-masochism
Drank vast quantities of alcohol, up to a bottle of whisky a day
Used amyl nitrite ‘poppers’ and pornography to make sex more exciting
Persistently intimidated and belittled her in front of others
Wanted to tie her up and cane her
Made her sign a gagging order in an attempt to stop her speaking out
Karen Danczuk (second wife)
She was trapped in a “sexless” marriage
Used to think, ‘If he is cheating, then he’s not coming to me for it’, which she found a relief.
Attacks Rossington, Hamilton and Houlihan for going public.
Claire Hamilton (recent ex-girlfriend)
He drinks too much
Doesn’t care who he hurts to get his own way.
Follows loads of random young women on twitter
Took photos of her while she kissed Karen Danczuk in a restaurent
Is insanely jealous and self-obsessed narcissist
Behaved appallingly
He’s “a total embarrassment to Rochdale” and unfit to be an MP
Vowed to stand as an independent if his career was threatened to split Labour vote
Sophena Houlihan (now 18 year old professional dominatrix)
Wanted to spank her
Constantly pestered her for sex
Says “If I had been a year younger then I would have been the same age as some of the Rochdale grooming victims”
Simon Danczuk
Admits having a drink problem
Admits sexting Houlihan
Drank up to three bottles of wine a night
States “Younger women are my Achilles heel”
On Sonia: Has instructed solicitors over “untrue allegations of a criminal nature”
On Claire: “She is consumed by bitterness, is susceptible to drinking too much and is telling lies.”
On Sophena: “No comment”
James Martin, I do, of course, agree entirely with the points you make regarding the (possible) offer of work that may have been on offer from Danczuk and the “sexting”. I don’t see how my question of the “position of trust” in any way contradicts the issue you raise.
Your point deals with Labour Party rules. My question was a legal one asking if an MP were to employ an intern who was under 18, would that MP be in a “position of trust” in the same way a teacher would?
Tafia, I believe there are also allegations regarding domestic violence involving Danczuk and his first wife, who also says that after their marriage ended he abandoned his kids. Tim Fenton, who runs the blog Zelo Street, knows where to find the relevant legal documents–he’s long been keeping track of Danczuk, think he’s Fenton’s local MP. Moreover, it shouldn’t be forgotten that Danczuk regularly declares substantial payments from the gutter press.
Obviously a very dubious character this Danczuk, though like all dubious characters he’s not short on media friends. Quite amazing how some of them are now trying to spin this story. Danczuk’s behaviour is downplayed, while the Corbyn taking the opportunity to silence dissent angle is being played up. Disgraceful stuff.
If only Danczuk had been a Pakistani muslim, he would have been invisible and untouchable.
Feodor, his first wife is apparently making a formal complaint to the Police as of this morning and Danczuk is claiming it’s a Corbynista plot.
It’s extremely difficult to surrender the moral low ground, but Danczuk is managing admirably.
He was on LBC earlier on, claiming he was being picked on because he was a working class northern lad.
No Danczuk, it’s because you are a dirty old man and a drunk. And your moral compass and sense of responsibility towards your Office haven’t gone awry, they’ve melted down.
Tafia: ” Danczuk is claiming it’s a Corbynista plot.”
Reminds me of Jim Murphy blaming his demise on Len McCluskey and Unite.
Steve, I see the young ‘lady’ has trashed his defence that he texted her while pissed. She says a lot of his texts were sent from his office during normal working hours. (Bear in mind Danscuk swears blind he doesn’t drink before 5pm).
I have acquaintances in the nearby Oldham CLPs. They assure me the best is yet to come.