Birmingham and Slough are clear examples of how unfit the Labour Party is for government.

Slough bankrupt. Birmingham bankrupt. Liverpool under special measures. This is what the Labour Party has done in government. Corruption, mismanagement, misuse of public funds, and unpayable taxes including Council Tax and now with the addition of ULEZ and parking permits. 

Keir Starmer and the Labour Party Cabinet can claim that they have solutions that they clearly do not have. When asked on the streets, the inhabitants of Birmingham are talking about leaving Birmingham and such is the level of disarray.

As if this wasn't enough, extraordinarily high number of migrants including illegal migrants, are loading local authorities, regional authorities and government with spiralling levels of indebtedness. People who arrive in the country without any documentation and without even knowing the language of the country and practically no skills are occupring local facilities and turning local communities into a living hell. 

Local inhabitants are taking to the streets but those who are supposed to represent them are not listening. Based on ideological stances, elected representatives care more about illegal migrants than they care about those who got them elected.  

Yet again Electoral Fraud in Labour Constituencies

Not long ago, it happened in Tower Hamlets where instances of electoral fraud and voter intimidation were investigated, leading to the removal from his post of the then Mayor Lutfur Rahman who was found guilty of corrupt and illegal practices by an Election Court in 2015. 

Lutfur Rahman

 

It was found that votes for rival parties had been intentionally lost at the count and Mr Rahman was removed from office and banned from standing for election for five years. 

But in spite of very serious issues that proved that the election was rigged, in the following election no proof of identification was introduced. Irregularities also included ballot tampering and postal vote fraud.

Now, yet another scandal has shaken the Labour Party that led to the suspension of East Ham and West Ham constituency parties represented by Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown. 

Stephen Timms

Lyn Brown

Troubled years for the Labour Party that indicated that until further notice no party meetings or business can take place, but Labour Party authorities refused to divulge the nature of the investigation. The allegations of electoral malpractice are said to be wide ranging and supported by a considerable amount of evidence. 

In places like Newham, support for the Labour Party has been massive with practically all seats being occupied by Labour Party Councillors. The borough also has a Labour Party Mayor. How confident can we be that in the coming London Assembly elections voting will be legal? Three separate scandals in constituencies controlled by the Labour Party.

In a few days time, the House of Commons will consider a bill demanding electoral proof of identification for voters. I reckon that such piece of legislation is long overdue to tackle manipulatioon and fraud in elections. 

After the anti-Semitism scandal, the Islamophobia scandal, and several other scandals involving misconduct including sexual misconduct, racism, misuse of public monies, false statements of parliamentary expenses and political intimidation and bribes leading to the arrest of the Labour Mayor in Liverpool, the Labour Party should grasp the opportunity of supporting a piece of legislation aimed at ensuring that voting is legal and that those voting are legally entitled to vote.

It was pretty extraordinary to see a Labour Party MP walking inside the Houses of Parliament wearing a Police electronic tag attached to one of her legs because she lied and falsely accused an innocent person who was overseas of an offense that she herself committed. 

With all that has happened in recent years, the Labour Party can hardly claim that it occupies the high moral ground. 

Changing a leader is easy, but getting of a bad reputation based on corruption, undemocratic practices and examples of incompetence publicly displayed by members of the Labour Party Shadow Cabinet is not going to be easy.

 

Now Labour wants to follow Britain First

After being routed in its homelands during the 2019 General Election, an election in wich the Conservative Party got a sizeable majority by becoming the party of the white working class (statistically more white working class people voted for the Conservative Party than they voted for the Labour Party), Labour Party Leader Keir Starmer wants his party to use national flags and put on a suit to try and regain the confidence of British voters.

According to him, a posher Labour Party might become a more attractive option, but if this an issue merely of flags and suits and not of real policies the chances are that his approach will not find favour amongst those whose support he needs to turn the tide that has gone against the Labour Party after a series of scandals involving anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and outright fraud. One example is the once popular Mayor of Liverpool Joe Anderson who fell from grace after being accussed of being involved in a conspiracyu to commit bribery and witnerss intimidation. 

Before Joe Anderson, members of the Labour Party Shadow Cabinet have shown worrying signs of incompetence when Diane Abbott discussed on live radio his options to improve Police services. Something about the amount of money needed to recruit new Police Officers. Emily Thornberry didn't do that well when she publicly acknowledge that she wasn't aware of the names of key political figures in the international arena, people she would have had to deal with if she had been Foreign Secretary.

If anything, the removal of Jeremty Corbyn also helped remove many members of his Shadow Cabinet, but it hasn't helped to improve the Labour Party's standing in terms of competence. 

Having the Labour Party taken  to the courts by its former Leader is not a show of unity. If the party whip is not returned to Jeremy Corbyn, Jeremy Corbynb would be facto not allowed to stand in a General Election for the seat he now represents. And what about Labour Party supporters? During his term in office as party Leader, Jeremy Corbyn managed to increase Labour Party membership. The irony was that Labour Party members liked Jeremy Corbyn as much as the Parliamentary Labour Party disliked Jeremy Corbyn. What happened in the northern seats that used to be represented by Labour MPs might very well have been retaliation by the Labour Party grassroots against the Parliamentary Labour Party that got rid of Jeremy Corbyn.

Using the tactics of the so called Far Right could be for Keir Starmer a fatal mistake. What would the likes of the UAF, Hope Not Hate, Searchlight and others say when they see the Labour Party dressed in Britain First's clothes? For decades the Labour Party tried to convince British voters that Natinonalism was poisonous and that whoever went around with national flags was racist, Fascist and xenophobe. Labour Party authorities literally replaced national flags with European Union flags. After Brexit, they cannot use European Union flags to hide symbols that they actually hate.

Will the Labour Party that actively campaigned against British Nationalism now turn around and say that they are British Nationalists and that they no longer believe what they used to preach by demonising anybody who dared to stand for British Nationalism?

 

In politics, the issue is to have candidates that can perform

In politics, the issue is to have candidates that can perform

A politician is a salesman that sells ideas and strive to meet up expectations. Voters look at the salesman. Is he a credible salesman? They listen to what that the salesman says and ponder about how likely the salesman is to deliver what he promises to deliver. They might like or dislike what is on offer. If they dislike what is on offer, they might go against it and if they like what is on offer they might even disregard their first impression about the salesman (or salewoman).

The Liberal Democrats had been all over the place and in the spate of a few years have had more leaders that there were General Elections. Correct me if I forget all the names. After Paddy Ashdown came Charles Kennedy, Sir Menzies Campbell, Vince Cable, Nick Clegg, Tim Farron, Sir Vince Cable, Jo Swinson, Baroness Sal Brighton, Sir Ed Davey, and Mark Pack? For the duration of one Parliament they were in power in coalition with the Conservatives under David Cameron.

The Liberal Democrats - with a few exceptions - defined themselves as pro-EU. After the 2016 Referendum, the made themselves one of the stumbling blocks in the quest for Brexit. They desperately pursued the possibility of a Second Referendum with the hope of keeping Britain in the European Union. When that failed to cristalize, they went for a General Election that they strongly believed would give them what they wanted but from the start the struggle to reach an agreement with other political forces to overcome party political differences. They divided the Remain Camp because they couldn't possibly reach an agreement with Jeremy Corbyn. The fact that several Labour MPs and several Conservative MPs decided to join them was not an incentive to reach such agreement. She went as a far as saying that she would go against Article 50 and de-facto keep Britain in the European Union despite the outcome of the 2016 Referendum on EU Membership. This last act signalled the beginning of the end for Jo Swinson's leadership. The British Electorate could possibly stomach the idea of a Second Referendum. They couldn't possibly support somebody that talked about getting rid of the Article 50 straight away.

The issue for Scottish voters - Jo Swinson was at the time a Scottish MP - was to decide between an SNP that openly stood for Remain and also for Scottish Independence and a Liberal Democrat MP that stood for Remain but against Scottish Independence. The political fate of Jo Swinson was sealed. She lost her seat and as a direct consequence of losing her seat she could not continue as Lib Dem leader.

Voters didn't like the saleswoman, didn't believe that the saleswoman could deliver what she was offering and many even didn't like what she was offering. In the process, every single Labour MP and every single Conservative MP that defected to Lib Dems lost their seats. Even the possibility of a hang Parliament eluded them. 

The agony for both Lib Dems and Labour is self-evident. For Labour, as some Labour representatives have publicly stated, the aim is to restore public faith. The party is a divided as before. It is difficult to find a unity candidate. London set itself apart from the rest of the Labour movement when Labour voters outside London decided that the only possible choice was to support the Conservative Party.

To say that the Labour Party has a mountain to climb would be a historic understatement. As long as whoever replaces Jeremy Corbyn is seen as a representative of the Jeremy Corbyn lobby, the Labour Party will struggle to recover.

Now, all eyes look towards the 2020 May Elections and in particular towards the London Mayoral Election in which an opponent of Jeremy Corbyn - Sadiq Khan - is likely to win a second mandate. Given the absence of candidates visibly able to unseat Sadiq Khan, the London Mayoral Election could serve to unite a very divided Labour Party.

Do you see Sadiq Khan as potential Labour Party leader? Nobody mentions Andy Burnham - present Mayor of Greater Manchester. Former Member of Parliament and former Cabinet Minister and a likeable individual far detached from Jeremy Corbyn's leadership and one of the centre-left politicians born in Liverpool - a northerner. If the Labour Party has any hope of bringing back traditional labour voters into the fold, choosing a man from Liverpool with proven political record would not be a bad choice. Sadiq Kahn would appeal to London. Andy Burham would appeal to the country as a whole. 

Whoever is chosen now as leader could end up being the leader of a party forever in opposition but if the struggle ends up being a war between London and the rest of the country the Labour Party will have to decide between being a political party for London or being a political party for Britain.