Veteran Labour ex-MP quits the party

Alice Mahon, long-serving Labour member and an MP for 18 years has walked out on the party. Her critique on policy is quite devastating:

For example we said that we would not privatise the Royal Mail, and we're going ahead and privatising part of it.

We said we would give people a referendum on the [EU] constitution. And yet the Lisbon Treaty has just been rushed through Parliament with no referendum and that's another promise we've broken.

It is not a party I recognise - I have lost faith with it," she added. "I am very very sad, the Labour Party has been my life.

This is not a fit of pique, rather a substantive divergence of views. The next bit is also quite interesting though:

I have reached the conclusion that there is not any avenue left in the structure of the Labour party for people like me.

Any threat from anybody marginally from the left and… the party machine comes down on them like a ton of bricks.

So, if you don't agree with the leadership, then you get hammered. It appears that the picture that has emerged of a top-down Labour party that is prepared to use any weapon against any of its own people who steps out of line is pretty much spot on. The Independent today has totted up all of the smears pumped out by Gordon Brown's people that it knows about, and nearly all of the targets are Labour politicians. They include several cabinet ministers. What kind of party is this where the leader rules by ruining his own colleagues reputations and threat of that keeps the rest in line? What sort of spineless yes-men and women would serve in such a regime? No wonder they have no compunction about passing illiberal law after illiberal law, such people are used to the feel of the jackboot on their own necks so the idea of universal DNA databases, ID cards, email and phone interception, entry into people's homes, covert surveillance and cameras everywhere doesn't bother them a bit. As long it is them with their fingers on the levers of power, ordering anti-terror police into action onto anyone that irks them then they don't mind if ordinary people have their lives exposed to those in authority. The mantra 'if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear' wears a bit thin now that we see that having nothing to hide doesn't stop you having your door kicked in, spending hours in interrogation and months waiting for the CPS to decide if you should be put on trial. And that is a senior opposition MP. What chance have the rest of us got?

Alice Mahon has had the courage to walk with her feet. The rest of the spineless cowards remain.