Comedian who backed Brighton Green MP barred from voting in Labour leadership contest
A comedian who spoke up for Brighton Green MP Caroline Lucas at the general election has been banned from voting in the Labour leadership contest.
Jeremy Hardy spoke out on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 this morning (Friday 21 August), accusing Labour of “rigging the election” to stop Jeremy Corbyn becoming leader.
Mr Hardy, a former Labour member, tried to rejoin the party but his application was rejected. He is one of a number of people to have been barred amid accusations of “entryism”.
Jeremy Hardy
He said that the party was changing the rules during the election process to weed out people like him.
Mr Hardy said that just because he had previously backed the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion he should not be prevented from taking part in the Labour leadership ballot.
He said that she was a democratic socialist – something that Labour was supposed to be although he doubted that many Labour MPs could claim to be democratic socialists.
The party cut the price of membership to £3 and has had applications to join from more than 120,000 people in recent weeks.
About 600,000 people will be eligible to vote for the next Labour leader, with Mr Corbyn regarded as the favourite by bookmakers.
Some existing Labour members fear that left-wingers and political opponents alike have been signing up to sabotage the party by electing Mr Corbyn.
East Worthing and Shoreham MP Tim Loughton – a Conservative – is one of them. His brief membership was reported in The Guardian and the subject of a Spectator blog by Mr Loughton himself.
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May-be they need to change their constitution so that new member are welcome but can’t vote for a period of time or join whilst a leadership contest is underway and vote straight away…
There’s been a lot in the news about ‘Tory infiltration’ but its not just them.. There are supportes from different parties as well. Here we have a Green supporter!
Vote rigging, no matter which party leadership or indeed other kinds of election, is a big danger to democracy.
Woolly vague rules and processes are a major factor.
If you campaign for the greens, you don’t then get to vote in the leadership contet of another party 3 months later. Makes complete sense. Same for Mark Steele.
Just goes to show that Jeremy Hardy was not supporting ‘road sitter Caroline’ because of the environmental aspirations of the green party, but instead because of the far-left ‘Marxist’ roots of the party.
Jeremy Corbyn’s policies are almost exactly those of the greens in the last elections (except I don’t think he sits in trees or in the road!). And don’t his comments about Iraq seem strangely reminiscent of wonderful ‘our soldiers are murderers’ Ben Duncan?
Could it be that if Jeremy does (heaven forfend) become leader of the Labour Party that Caroline and the rest of the extreme-left wing supporters that left Labour previously will return to the red flock who want to return the country to the bad days of union control and regular strikes?
Perhaps this could be good news for the green party if they lose the anti-capitalist anti-“big business” pro-nationalisation antiquarians and instead focus on realistic pragmatic solutions to the environmental issues of the planet instead.
Of course, we know already that many of the green party “far left-wingers” have paid their £3 so they can vote for Jeremy Corbyn – I assume based upon the lack lustre support their party (and embarassing leaders) had in the General Election and the acceptance that trying to get into power using the ‘eco’ mantra had failed.
All part of a Blairite inspired plot 007.
But, austerity is a powerful word if you haven’t much.
There are some like the Economist who say that Corbyn will inflict grave damage on Britain if he becomes leader, but why?
For people go on about the far left, but just look at what the far right has done for a minute and the capitalist system that it worships. These are things that the capitalist politicians and masters of the universe keep secret to a great extent and away from the voting people. In this respect the greatest capitalist nation ever the USA, has according to leading economists a fiscal ‘gap’ of US$222 trillion and where the Pentagon in a system weighed down by unpayable sheer debt, cannot account for US$8.5 trillion from 1996>2013 according to Reuters.
http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2012/12/01/economist_laurence_kotlikoff_us_222_trillion_in_debt_363.html
http://www.opednews.com/articles/When-8-5-Trillion-is-Chum-by-David-Swanson-Pentagon_Pentagon-150820-622.html
Indeed if the capitalist system is so good, why does the USA have so much calculated debt? can anyone answer that one?
Added to this, why also has the capitalist system created over US$ 16 trillion in debt for the UK according to the figures of PwC’s chief economist – some 7-times our GDP and where we can never pay off all this debt, with an economy not even turning over US$2.4 trillion (not profit, but economic turnover and where as we know, it is the profit bit that allows us to pay down debt, a mere fraction of the revenues).
http://worldinnovationfoundation.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/uks-debt-id-far-more-than-what-people.html
Therefore Corbyn in my estimation cannot do any worse than what the capitalist system has done in weighing down in debt the people of the USA and the UK and made them the most indebted bankrupt people in the world, or can he?
VOTE for JEREMY CORBYN – People Politics are NO More & Wealth and Power Politics of the Few Control the People, Their Families and Their Futures , ‘NOT’ who you Vote For – For a New and Positive ‘CHANGE’, I would Vote for Jeremy Corbyn as the New Labour Leader – http://worldinnovationfoundation.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/vote-for-jeremy-corbyn-people-politics.html
Wow – we are so lucky to get a response from a real Doctor!
I am always wary when someone has to use the “Doctor” title to try to convince people that they are an expert in a particular field.
Oh – wait a minute – isn’t Caroline a Doctor of English – who uses her title whenever she wants to appear important.
So could this response be from the David Hill who is just a Doctor of Sociology working at Liverpool University – or in other words probably just a free thinker living in academia who has probably not done a real days work in his life.
If so, we are very lucky to be condescended to and preached at by someone from outside the area – just brings back memories of the past 4 years with the green ‘led’ council!