Labour Party

Nadia Whittome

Knows how to hit 'em

When the leader's a drip

She's defying the whip

Janine explains the need for, and the content of, the Labour Party Autism and Neurodiversity Manifesto.

Herbert Morrison
was moderate and worrisome
He had an appropriate grandson:
Peter Mandelson

Peter Mandelson
could not get a handle on
The passionate, radical, principled and quarrelsome:
rather like his grandfather, Herbert Morrison

Today at TUC Women's conference, PCS moved a motion congratulating their members at BEIS for successful strike action, and drawing attention to the appalling conditions that outsouced workers, many of them women, face. I made the following contribution to the debate.

Congratulations to PCS on its brilliant win at BEIS and solidarity with your ongoing sturggles at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and elsewhere.

I made Nadia Whittome's maiden Commons speech into a poem. Here it is:

"I'm here through solidarity 
and hard work in my town
I want to say to Nottingham:
'I will not let you down'

I'll represent this burning earth
- a planet we must save
To speak up for a generation
outward-faced and brave

In the cacophony of post mortems of Labour’s defeat, the role of Labour councils is being overlooked or at least understated.

I spoke with my dad (pictured) about his memories of the 1945 general election ...

75 years ago when I was seven, I experienced the first of 22 general elections in my life.

Isn't this a heartland too?
We have poundshops, pawnshops, boarded-up shops
and industries replaced by social services
We too have schools with leaking roofs
and youth in gigs and gangs and anguish

Isn't this a heartland too?
We have hearts and we have lands
Hearts that beat on rundown streets
and lands blemished with landfill
and corporate-municipal scandal

I’m stockpiling for harder times
I'm panicking and hoarding
But I won’t vote for Labour 'cos
I don’t like Jeremy Corbyn

Of course I’d like to see more help
for those who face adversity
Of course folk shouldn’t have to pay
to go to university

And rent controls would be so good -
the costs that they’re absorbing
But I’ll not vote for Labour 'cos
I don’t like Jeremy Corbyn