Labour members in Wales should realise who runs the party.

Martin Shipton of the Wasting Mule serms to be suggesting that rather than risk voting for the am they want Labour Members in Wales should obey the ires of the Parlimenty Party  and  vorte  for Jeremy Corbyn

He writes 

" Assuming that Welsh Labour stayed with the Corbyn-led entity the MPs would have to decide whether they threw in their lot with their PLP colleagues or whether they swallowed their pride and effectively retracted their support for the motion of no confidence in Corbyn.
It’s difficult to imagine the likes of Chris Bryant, Wayne David, Ian Lucas and Mark Tami – and quite a few more – backing Corbyn in such circumstances, so they could be in at the beginning of a breakaway party which would be committed to selecting candidates to stand against official Welsh Labour at the next Assembly election.
If the bulk of the PLP decided to form a breakaway party it would be likely to face huge challenges.
Labour, for all its current difficulties, remains a strong brand.

 Those who may find themselves gravitating towards a new entity would firstly have to come up with a name.For obvious reasons “SDP” would be off the table.
More crucially, it would need to get a substantial local support base.

 With the upsurge in Labour Party membership in the run-up to last year’s leadership election and since, Jeremy Corbyn supporters are strong in many constituency parties.It may be that a breakaway party could attract donors – though not from the trade unions – but while they may be able to pay for leaflets that doesn’t mean there would necessarily be the bodies to deliver them.

 The party has miraculously managed to retain nearly half of the Assembly’s seats, despite a significant decline in voting support.Its dominant position in the Assembly could not survive a formal split, with some AMs backing Corbyn’s Labour Party and others supporting the breakaway model.
Just like the MPs, AMs would have to decide which of the rival parties they backFor Plaid Cymru, a Labour split could be the catalyst it needs to make the giant leap forward that has eluded it since it was formed 91 years ago".

He goes on .... 

"....Does the Labour Party really want the scenario I have described to play out? No, is the answer.

 But sometimes people get carried along with an unstoppable ... I was going to use the word “momentum”, which is either extremely apt or wholly inappropriate.When thousands of idealists joined Labour to show their support for Jeremy Corbyn, they didn’t expect the position to develop to the one the party finds itself in now.
What’s clear is that it’s unsustainable for a party leader to be at loggerheads with the MPs they are supposed to lead at Westminster.
And what’s even clearer is that no party in such a mess can expect to gain power – or, in the Welsh context, retain it".

Mind you  if Labour were to split we would still have wo arch Unionist Parties opposed to increased  devolution to Wales , with neither side offering anything substantial that even an Plaid Coalition./SNP Green alliance with one side in the Westminster or a Plaid Assembly Coalition in the Bay would gain nuch for Wales.


But the argument seems to be "Do not vote for Jeremy Corbyn because we in the legislature are prepared to split the party rather than so.
This will be the Media argument  in order to stop Corbyn  so that Labour elect a leader who will listen the likes of Murdoch rather than their membership/

If that is the case then what is the point of having a democratic election among its membership if the Parliamentary Party make it clear.

Meanwhile Owen Smith will announce his candidature Today presenting himself as a Unity candidate which I thought that was what Angela Eagle was claiming.

TWO UNITY CANDIDATES!

Mean while  I wonder if the Media will point out that Owen Smith will have the same problem as Stephen Crabb  in that . Although they have been very slow in using it thus far, the new English Votes for English Laws (EVEL) procedure in Westminster is going to  mean the leader of the Opposition will not be able to vote  on some Bills affecting England. 

As Owen is likely to be the Media darling at least for the period  of the contest I doubt it will be raised in the same way it was for Stephen Crabb,

A November Election could destroy a new Labour leader in months

This supposed to be nearly  the silly season, the period lasting for a few summer months typified by the emergence of frivolous news stories in the media when Parliament and the Law Courts are not sitting (about August and September)".

With the Tories settling for a Coronation  rather a nine week bitter leadership contest the prospect of a early General  Election in November grows 

After the 2010 general election, the coalition government enacted the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011  

However Section 2 of the Act also provides for two ways in which a general election can be held before the end of this five-year period:

• If the House of Commons resolves "That this House has no confidence in Her Majesty's Government", an early general election is held, unless the House of Commons subsequently resolves "That this House has confidence in Her Majesty's Government". This second resolution must be made within fourteen days of the first.
• If the House of Commons, with the support of two-thirds of its total membership (including vacant seats), resolves "That there shall be an early parliamentary general election".

In Germany n .2005 SDP Chancellor Schröder orchestrated a motion of confidence with the aim of triggering an early federal election following the defeat of his SPD in Germany's most populous state

Though Prime Minister May would probably have to rely on the support  of opposition  MPs  o ger a 2/3 vote.

Since nearly every party then this seems possible but where does this leave Labour?

With Claims that Pontypridd MP Owen Smith has resolved to run for the leadership of the Labour party, could he be the challenger to Jeremy Corbyn or could he be crowned by the end of this month in the same way Prime Minister May was.

Mr Smith and Ms Eagle are understood to have held talks about one them running as a “unity” candidate

Sp could Ms Eagle withdraw and Mr Smith e the only candidate with Jeremy Corbyn  failing to get the backing of 51 MPs as some claim he needs.

However any candidate for the Leadership must know that a diverse  and bitter leadership campaign or the exclusion of Corbyn with the prospect of November Election  could be disastrous for the Party .

Indeed there must be concern among any challenger that if they won then their leadership could only last a few months  and end after a humiliation at the polls.

It looks like a number of people in the Westminster Bubble will not be getting a holiday  this  Summer.

Parliament must revive Blair Impeachment process.

In August 2004, when he was am  MP Plaid's Adam Price commissioned and published the report: A Case to Answer: a first report on the potential impeachment of the Prime Minister for High Crimes and Misdemeanours in relation to the invasion of Iraq. The document was written by Dr Glen Rangwala (lecturer of politics at University of Cambridge) and Dan Plesch (Honorary Fellow of Birkbeck, University of London.) The report is 111 pages and divided into two sections.

Section I[edit]

The first part of the report details evidence for charges that an MP could use when moving for impeachment. The evidence detailed by the report suggests that Tony Blair:

• made unsupported statements to the house and the public;
• failed to report counter-evidence;
• failed to verify claims in the evidence;
• failed to remove errors found in the evidence; and
• made a secret agreement with US President George W. Bush to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

Section II[edit]

The second part examines the history of impeachment proceedings and looks at the possibility of bringing impeachment proceedings in modern government. It also gives the impeachable offences for which it claims Tony Blair must offer a defence:

• failing to resign after misleading parliament and the country;
• making a secret agreement with a foreign power;
• undermining the constitution; and
• negligence and incompetence.

Finally, it gave precedents for considering the conduct of a Prime Minister.

MPs from Plaid Cymru, the SNP  2 Liberal Democrats, together with 10 Conservative MPs including Boris Johnson,  George Galloway (RESPECT) Richard Taylor (Independent)
 signed the original impeachment motion.

On Wednesday Adam Price called for the Impeachment process to be revived since Chilcott virtually confirmed the argument  Adam made 13 years ago..

He wrote,,,,

"The British Establishment does not do self-condemnation very well.
But the Chilcot Inquiry will probably go down in history as the most devastating denunciation of decision-making since the Crimean Board of Inquiry laid bare the same lethal cocktail of vanity and incompetence that we came to know as the “Charge of the Light Brigade”.
The mistakes made are manifold but the charge sheet against the Prime Minister has three major elements: a private pact, a case built on deliberate deception and dubious legality.
The former Prime Minster pre-committed Britain to war without parliamentary or even Cabinet approval repeatedly as the report lays bare.
This promise was made at the Crawford Ranch and at Camp David meetings according to contemporaneous notes by the few officials with whom these confidences were shared, but also in the personal notes that Blair send Bush, with all the obsequious regularity of a medieval courtier.
“I will be with you, whatever” sounds more like the febrile scribbling of a star’ crossed lover, than the cool language of a diplomatic despatch.
The next part of the message - “The military part of this is hazardous but I will concentrate mainly on the political context for success” – says a lot about Blair’s sense of priority.
It will drive more salt into the still tender wounds of military families.
The ‘L’ word is banished from public discourse in these islands, but the report banishes forever any doubt that the Prime Minister deliberately exaggerated the case for war.
Mr Blair, says Chilcot, made statements that “went further than the assessments of the JIC” and that were “not an accurate description of the intelligence”.
Parliament and public were misled and this was no accident. A concerted effort to “shape public opinion” had been identified as a necessary condition for Britain’s involvement in the war as early as July 2002.
The final element in the prosecution case is the question-mark the report raises over the war’s legality, describing the process by which legal opinion was arrived at, in classic English under-statement, as “unsatisfactory”.
More damning still, the admission that the war was not a last resort option and that peaceful avenues had not been exhausted is prima facie an assertion that the war was indeed a “crime of aggression”.
Parliament, which played its own sorry role in this tragic debacle, now has an opportunity to redeem itself by holding Blair to account.
As the international criminal court has already declared the indictment against the former Prime Minister beyond its current remit, Parliament must dust off its ancient role as the court of last resort and begin impeachment proceedings.
If the Brazilian President can be impeached for massaging financial statistics, how much more grave the case to do so for a former Prime Minister who, as Chilcot lays bare, has the blood of hundreds of thousands on his hands?

Many of the MPs who failed to back the impeachment process 12 years ago including Jeremy Corbyn  are still in Parliament .

We can only wonder how many will support impeachment this time , but will it because they felt duped by Blair in 2004 or to ease their conscious   in that they did not see which was clear to Adam Price twelve years before Chilcot came up with his devastating report.
  

NIgel Dix has uncovered another conspiracy

Wales Online recently gave space to Nigel Dix, who represents Blackwood on Caerphilly council, yo claim that many new people were joining the party, hoping to take it to the far left. 

Far left activists are taking over the Labour party, a longstanding councillor in Wales has warned.

Councillor Dix compared it to the efforts of Militant, a Trotskyist group, to take over the Labour Party in the 1980s.

The Caerphilly councillor said: 

“What I see now is very similar to what was going on in the 1980s.
"A lot of new people have joined the Labour Party, but many are doing so because they want to take it to the far left.
"I recognise some of the people who have joined as having been involved in entryism in the 1980s.
"They were part of Militant then – now they’re supporting Corbyn. Some of the far left are taking advantage of the £3 registered supporter status which gave them a vote in the leadership election.

Nigel Dix, was is associated with the group "True Wales" which opposed stronger devolution in Wales seems to see conspiracies everywhere including the he expansion of Welsh Language teaching

: "I think there is an inherent view in the Welsh Establishment that everyone in Wales should have Welsh as their first language, and this is part of that.  It's an attempt at social engineering which I don't think has any chance of success.

" Dix was quoted in a 2011 BBC report making the following statement in reference to the Welsh Assembly:  and the referendum 

At the Time he said  to increase powers in 2011

There are plenty of good reasons to vote No.

At the last referendum we were told that we would get an assembly with limited powers in three key areas.

This has proven not to be the case.

Over the past 10 years we have witnessed a power-hungry assembly that has drawn more and more powers from Westminster and local government to the centre.

The assembly has been dominated by what I call "nationalist light".

There has been an obsession with all things constitutional - costly reports on devolving tax and borrowing, the Richard Commission and discussions on the devolution of law and policing.

It appears that our Assembly Members distrust all things English and also distrust MPs, as they continually attempt to lay the blame for their failures at Westminster's door.

The vote on 3 March is about turning the assembly into a parliament, something that was not stated on the original ballot paper some 12 years ago.

An article in the Western Mail highlighted the scale of AMs' ambitions: if the people of Wales vote Yes, we will simply see more and interference from Cardiff Bay in our everyday lives.

We must ask ourselves whether Wales needs more laws and costly government? The answer has to be a resounding No.

The answer of course was a resounding YES.

So Cllr Dix sees a ard left conspiracy in his own party and given the above statement  a "nationalist light". conspiracy as well.

How realistic  his claims are I leave you to judge  but I wonder  how many Labour members in Wales share both views.?

Why can't you say a Minister is Lying?

There  are ro thoughts running through my head when reading that  Plaid Cymru’s Neil McEvoy has been strongly reprimanded by Presiding Officer Elin Jones following a series of incidents where he has accused Carwyn Jones of misleading the National Assembly..

The first is that if a Minister or anybody in the Assembly Siambr  is clearly lying or misleading  AMs and the public, shunt an elected official have the right to say so

On the other hand we don't want the debates in the Assembly becoming a shouting match.

On several occasions since his election to the Assembly in May, Mr McEvoy has challenged the First Minister on the issue in the Senedd, in one instance calling him a liar.

Now Llywydd Elin Jones has written an email to her fellow Plaid AM, saying: 

“Although robust political debate is welcome, I expect all Members to behave in a consistently courteous and civil manner to one another, even when both sides are disputing evidence.
“I would ask you to guard against making any remarks in the Siambr [the Assembly’s debating chamber] which appear to call into question another Member’s integrity, or indeed endeavouring to create that impression.
"I hope you will bear this in mind when planning your future contributions to plenary.”

 When you are called to ask a supplementary question, you must do so.“You are not at liberty to digress in the way that you did [on Tuesday] – that is an abuse of being called to speak. The rules of conduct and debate in the Siambr are governed by Standing Orders.
“I have already dealt with the first key principle of these rules, that is that Members must at all times in their conduct promote respect for the Assembly and extend respect and courtesy to other Members.
“The other key principle is that Members must, at all times, comply – without argument - with any directions given by the Presiding Officer about conduct and order in plenary meetings.
“Members must not challenge the Chair during plenary but should deal with any questions or concerns in private.”

  “Both the Deputy Presiding Officer and I have been very patient because you are a new member, but this behaviour must not continue.“If you need any further assistance to help you to understand procedures, you only have to ask. My door is always open.
“I must warn you that I will impose sanctions if you continue to disregard these rules and procedures.”

 In a response to Ms Jones, Mr McEvoy wrote:

 “During the Fourth Assembly, the First Minister branded me a liar, using the term ‘blatant lie’.“I assume that the rules have now changed. I do call the First Minister’s integrity into question on the basis of fact.
“He denied making any such announcement about LDPs in 2012 during First Minister’s Questions recently.
“A simple apology or admission of an error would have sufficed. Instead, he is trying to re-write history.
“Where is the recourse to challenge this, if at this point I accept that I cannot call him a liar in the Chamber? This is an important democratic point.
“I debate in a robust manner, but keep to issues. [The] First Minister of all people was haranguing me during the debate on the ministerial code.
“He quite clearly shouted out that I was a ‘coward’. If the comment referred to a political action of mine, I would accept it as knockabout.
“However, there was no political context for the remark. It was simple abuse. What do you intend to do about this?”

Much of the debate in the Assembly Siambr  has been ruined by the First Minister simply not answering a question or being evasive ,

 It is similar to the practice at PMQ's at Westminster where the Prime Minister very rarely answers a direct and factual answer to questions from the opposition.

Surely members of both legislature should be able to point this out .

Maybe care should be taken in the language used we don't want slanging match.

But we don't want Ministers hiding under rules designed to ensure respectful debate.

Owen Smith: Macbeth or Mr Clean?

“The hand that wields the knife shall never wear the crown.”

Pontypridd  Labour MP may well be musing on the often quoted saying  though oddly it's origins see, the be recent than Shakespeare.

 Pontypridd MP Owen Smith  well be musing over this as considers whether to stand for for the Labour leadership against Jeremy Corbyn

He has said he stands ready to do “anything” he can to save the Labour party.

The former Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary is the bookies’ favourite to succeed Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader but he called on his colleagues to give talks to “restore unity” a chance.

What he means by this s clear does he want Corbyn to quit and then present himself not as the man who stabbed his leader in the back or even front.

Or does he seek Corbyn anointing  him as heir as he accepts that he cannot go on leading a Parliamentary  Party.in the hop that there will be no contest and he will not face the wrath of of the  grassroots members?

Leading Labour figures, including Mr Smith, have quit Mr Corbyn’s frontbench team and last week he lost a vote of no confidence by 172 votes to 40.

He said,

“Over the last week, I have been contacted by hundreds of Labour members and MPs deeply worried that the Labour Party is truly in danger of splitting apart. I share those fears and call on everyone in our movement to do all we can to avert such a disastrous outcome.
“I stand ready to do anything I can to save and serve the party. Yesterday, I spoke directly with Len McCluskey of Unite and met with our leader, Jeremy Corbyn, to explore what I can do to try and heal the rifts that have opened up in our movement. On behalf of the trades unions, Len has reassured me that the talks he has opened up between Jeremy and Tom Watson have been productive and has asked that they are given more time this weekend to see what further progress can be made towards a resolution. 

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“Jeremy has also reassured me that he is engaging in talks with an open mind. I believe that all of us whose priority is to restore unity in the Labour movement and give us a chance to defeat our only true enemy, the Tories, should give these talks every chance to succeed.
“That is what I intend to do and I urge all my colleagues to do likewise.”

Mr Smith and Labour should beware. A Welshman as leader will face the same "racist" scorn of the London Media that Gordon Brown and Neil Kinnock met and the Tories will use the argument that some of his own used against Strphen Crabb that because of the English Votes for English Laws (EVEL) procedure in Westminster having a leader or PM setting a legislative agenda on which swathes of it he or she cannot vote is inconvenient at best

Indeed Mr Smith would probably have to defer to his Deputy to speak on English legislation .

If Mr Smith was to succeed without a contest getting the backing of nearly all 172 rebels with Corbyn or another left candidate from the 40 loyalist putting up a Candidate who loses n the membership vote , Then will he unite the party.

Probably not there may well be many who think that this was as the intention of the Blarites alll along setting up Angela Eagle as a sacrificial Lamb . So that "Mr Clean" can emerge without causing to much discontent.

Is this the case will it work something in me thinks both.

Ann Clwyd should admit she was wrong in her support for Iraq invasion.

One od the most appalling sights on yesterdays commons  debate over Chilcott was of Ann  Clwyd  MP for Cynon Valley,  who voted for the war 

defending  the decision 

Ms lwyd,d was special envoy on human rights in Iraq from 2003 until 2010, said that Saddam Hussein slaughtered his own people and was in breach of a string of UN revolutionises

: "Saddam Hussein in 1988 already had killed a half a million of his own people. He went on to kill more and more - the Shia in the south, the Kurds in the north, the Marsh Arabs in the south.
"And if you stood by the mass graves where 10,000 Iraqi bodies lie, still many of them undiscovered - those of us who had campaigned for human rights over many years in Iraq, and I over 30 years, were very well aware of the torture and the horrors happening in that country.
"And I wish people would ask Iraqis what they think of the invasion, because many Iraqis are grateful that we took the action we did that time."
"The horrors of Saddam Hussein and what he did to his own people...were clearly documented and I think we were right to take part in that invasion."

Ms Clwyd rightly was a long opponent pf Sadam Hussein Human rights  record but that has led her to mislead the public herself. 

On 12 March 2003, James Mahon made first mention of the claims that some Iraqis were killed in plastic shredders or wooden chippers,when he addressed the House of Commons after returning from research in northern Iraq. Six days later, Clwyd wrote an article in The Times entitled "See men shredded, then say you don't back war," saying that an unnamed Iraqi had said that Saddam and Qusay Hussein fed opponents of their Baathist rule into a plastic shredder or wood chipper, and then used their shredded bodies as fish food.

Later she would add that it was believed to be housed in Abu Ghraib prison, and spoke with an unidentified person who claimed the American-sourced shredders were dismantled "just before the military got there". As the first journalist to state the unsubstantiated claim, the rolling effect of the gruesome verbal picture garnered wider media and international political support, including from Australian Prime Minister John Howard, for an invasion of Iraq. 

This claim has not been substantiated  and most observers believe it was made up by Hussein opponents

The Sun's political editor Trevor Kavanagh wrote in February 2004 that as a result of Clwyd's article 

"Public opinion swung behind Tony Blair, as voters learned how Saddam fed dissidents feet first into industrial shredders."

 Brendan O'Neill was the first Western journalist to seriously challenge the existence of the shredder, in reports for The Spectator and The Guardian in February 2004. He asked Clwyd and Mahon to provide evidence or the names of the Iraqis who gave them the story.^[7][8] He spoke with the doctor who dealt with executed prisoners at Abu Ghraib during Saddam Hussein's rule, who said that all executions were performed by hanging, and denied claims that there was a shredder of any type.

Did he ever attend to, or hear of, prisoners who had been shredded? "No." Did any of the other doctors at Abu Ghraib speak of a shredding machine used to execute prisoners? "No, no, never."

Clwyd responded to O'Neill's allegations in The Guardian later the same month, stating:

Brendan O'Neill was told by my office, but chose not to include in his article, the following information. In his statement, the witness who said that people were killed by the shredder was very specific: he named individuals who he said were killed in the shredder and the individuals who he said supervised the execution by shredder; he stated where the shredder was located and the month and year when the executions took place. The witness was closely questioned by Indict researchers and was described by them as being "unshakeable". He said he is also prepared to testify in court about the incident.^[9]

Brendan O’Neill wrote a letter in response to Clwyd’s, claiming that her office had actually refused to give him the information he asked for:

Over the phone, a member of Clwyd's staff read to me, at breakneck speed, a pre-prepared statement about the witness. She said I could not ask any questions about the statement, that it would not be faxed or emailed to me, and that none of the witness's specific information would be made available to me. When I phoned Clwyd to make further inquiries, she hung up.^[

No further evidence for the existence of the shredder has ever been published, though a witness at Saddam's trial in December 2005 claimed to have seen it. Saddam's half-brother, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, verbally attacked the witness, shouting he "should act in the cinema."^[11] O'Neill returned to the topic in February 2010, writing "Neither Amnesty International nor Human Rights Watch, in their numerous investigations into human rights abuses in Iraq, had ever heard anyone talk of a human-shredding machine."^[

As MsClwyd  had been vocal and prominent in her concern for the situation in Iraq before the war, Tony Blair made her a Special Envoy on Human Rights in Iraq in the run-up to the war in order to give justification for the invasion thought this was nit the legal pretext,

Since the invasion  Ms Clwyd has been constantly telling us that the Green Roots of democracy have been springing up  all over the Middle  East as the actual evidence has shown Iraq to be involved in a civil war and Human rights abuses and deaths higher than Hussein  a pattern hat has been replicated throughout the Middle East.

It is important to remember that the reason  given why we invade Iraq was not about Human rights abused but the Hussein had weapons of mass destruction .

But Ann Clwyd  claims helped to swing public opinion behind the invasion,

How ever can she claim it was the right thing to do considering the disastrous fall out from   the Invasion that has left a legacy of feat and destruction that will last for generations,