Labour MP Lucy Powell was heckled while addressing a “Say No to Antisemitism” rally in Manchester yesterday with chants of “Corbyn Out”. Powell stopped the crowd and told them she was “100%” on their side:
“You don’t need to heckle me, because I’m on your side. I’m on your side 100%.”
She is not the only one. When are Labour MPs going to do something about it?
“It’s absolutely the right thing to do” : @jessphillips reacts to the news @MrBrendanCox has stood down from the charities he founded in Jo Cox’s name pic.twitter.com/YOBABph1tD
— Peston on Sunday (@pestononsunday) February 18, 2018
Brendan Cox is “showing how he’s going to change” says Jess Phillips, while Lucy Powell says “good for” him for “reflecting”.
Good for @MrBrendanCox – reflecting and taking responsibility for past actions. Read his full statement not just the headlines. https://t.co/e2fbeC81jh
— Lucy Powell MP (@LucyMPowell) February 17, 2018
Compare and contrast with how they went after Toby Young over some tweets.
.@LucyMPowell says #JaredOMara should be suspended from @UKLabour while he’s investigated #AftertheNews pic.twitter.com/gffgOiyre2
— After The News (@AfterTheNewsITV) October 24, 2017
Pressure is now coming from within Labour to withdraw the whip. Lucy Powell told ITV’s After the News that O’Mara should be suspended while he is investigated.
And speaking at the Mile End Institute last night Lisa Nandy also called for him to go:
“We have quite clear rules in the Labour Party about discrimination and the process is very clear too, that people who have engaged in anti-Semitism or other forms of discriminatory behaviour are suspended while… their case is investigated. We have a very clear process in the Labour Party that in my view ought to be upheld… In this case, just as in previous cases, it’s absolutely clear: we suspend and we investigate and we make a decision.”
Wonder if he will still have the whip after Guido’s next revelations…
Handbags in the Shadow Cabinet as Lucy Powell slaps down Diane Abbott for mocking her voice. The incident happened at Labour’s infamous ShadCab meeting on Syria, where according to the Guardian “there was a spat between Diane Abbott and Lucy Powell”, where “Diane… mimicked Lucy’s accent”. Powell hit back on the Daily Politics:
“Not quite my accent. Diane has her own approach to these things. It usually loses her the room, as they say.”
More forthright colleagues would have told her to “f**k off“…
Miliband is back and this from the impeccably connected George Eaton suggests he is still not past the denial stage of loss:
“having returned from his holiday in Ibiza, I’m told that Miliband has been advising MPs on the lessons to learn from the defeat. The former leader has told colleagues not to listen to figures such as Peter Mandelson and not to turn rightwards, according to sources. “He’s not staying out of it,” one Labour insider told me (although the former leader will not be endorsing a candidate). Miliband is said to have emphasised that his party lost due to the failure of millions of notional supporters to turn out… Left-wingers have argued that this demonstrates the need for a more radical offer to enthuse this group, rather than a more moderate pitch aimed at winning over Conservative voters.”
Good luck with that.
Miliband might not be endorsing anyone but his campaign chief Lucy Powell and other members of his former Shadow Cabinet are falling over themseslves declaring for Burnham, as you can see on Guido’s spreadsheet of the public Labour MP endorsements so far. Send any others to team@order-order.com.
Listen to Ed, you know you want to…
According to Urban Dictionary:
Powelled
To f*ck up in a way that results in a media frenzy. Whether it be figuratively or literally. Derived from Gary Powell, the Apple employee who lost the next-generation iPhone prototype.
“Gary powelled when he got drunk at a bar and lost the new iPhone prototype.”
Or, “Lucy powelled when she said that Labour’s pledges weren’t worth the stone they are carved on…”
Put your spade away, Lucy:
Such as the Guardian’s political editor:
And the BBC:
Including their Labour election correspondent:
And the ‘right-wing’ Manchester Evening News:
You can’t misquote her actual words…
Lucy Powell has dropped another spectacular clanger. Asked on 5Live this morning whether having to carve their pledges into stone was a sign the public didn’t trust them, Labour’s election chief inexplicably replied:
“I don’t think anyone is suggesting that the fact that he’s carved them into stone means, you know, means that he will absolutely, you know, not going to break them or anything like that.”
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So there you have it. Labour’s pledges are not even worth the stone they are carved on…
Interviewer: “Was the country in a worse position to deal with the recession because of overspending, that is arguably the question”
Powell: “Well if that’s the question the answer to that very clearly is no”
They just don’t get it.
Guido hears Labour are planning an all female onslaught in the spin room tonight with Yvette Cooper, Caroline Flint and – amazingly – Lucy Powell lined up for the post match analysis/spin war. Telly sources suggest no men have been offered up by Labour for any interviews, despite Lucy Powell’s spectacularly crap weekend outing. It’s not yet clear whether they are bringing their pink bus…
The parliamentary rules for MPs’ social media use during the election campaign could not be clearer:
“If your website, Twitter account, Facebook page etc. refer to you as an MP (on their pages or in the address or in the handle) make sure you have either set up alternatives to use from Monday 30th March at 00:01 until polling day, or frozen the account, or published the necessary disclaimer making it clear you are not an MP during the Dissolution period.”
Yet as of 10:35am this morning, the Twitter bio of Labour campaign chief Lucy Powell still referred to her as an MP:
Within minutes of Guido politely pointing this out, “MP” had been quietly changed to “candidate”.
Yet, in a display of Powell’s winning judgement, she summoned all of her famous deflection skills to spin that Guido was talking about her handle, @LucyMPowell, which refers to her middle name Maria, and not her bio:
You would have thought, after yesterday, she would have learnt when to put down the spade…
Labour’s widely-respected election chief Lucy Powell has chalked up another wounding blow against the Tories with a series of highly illuminating Written Questions about government spending. Her top investigate digging into first class travel used by ministers, which cost the taxpayer £164 per question, has revealed that:
She’s doing a first class job…
Apparently Labour are set to unveil their special “battle bus” tomorrow. And the wheels are already spinning: it’s not a bus. It’s a van. A little pink van:
Gloria De Piero, Harriet Harman and Lucy Powell will be put in the back of this van and driven as far away from Labour HQ as possible. Let’s hope Harriet isn’t actually behind the wheel given her previous form. Well it gets them out of Wee Dougie’s way, doesn’t it…
UPDATE: It’s a sexist pink van! Last year Labour’s Chi Onwurah declared war on pink for girls:
‘Why should young girls be brought up in an all pink environment? It does not reflect the real world.’
Sounds like a patriarchally patronising pink rolling embarrassment…
UPDATE II: According to the Telegraph:
“At the launch, Gloria De Piero MP, the shadow Minister for women and equalities, thought it was “cerise”, while Ms Harman said it was “magenta”.”
UPDATE III: Tories slam on the brakes. Caroline Dineage MP says:
“The wheels have come off the Labour bus. Getting Harriet Harman to drive around the country in a pink van to try and attract the female vote is as patronising as it gets. This is clearly just another divisive gimmick that the electorate will see through”
This is a Lucy Powell leaflet encouraging people to register to vote. In it she claims that the first election she voted in was 1997, when she was 22 years old. Apparently it was “important because it was the first time in my life that the Government was going to change.” Well if she was 22 in 1997 she would have also lived through the 1979 election that also saw a change of government. With maths like that, no wonder Labour’s election chief thinks they can get a majority…
Labour’s walking election disaster Lucy Powell showed what a woman of the people she is with this tweet about darts champ Phil “The Power” Taylor:
Correct: Taylor never got a knighthood, though he was awarded an MBE in 2001. Only to have the gong annulled after he was found guilty of indecently assaulting two young women in his caravan. Bullseye!
Poor Lucy Powell did her best on the Daily Politics not to reveal whether she was responsible for Labour’s disastrous immigration strategy, described as “bollocks” by her colleagues. Eventually she ‘fessed up: “I take responsibility for what goes out in my name”. A penny for the thoughts of Labour MPs watching this interview…
Ed’s understatement that there were bits of the leaked Labour immigration document that “obviously weren’t well-drafted” is nowt compared to the kicking the toxic memo gets in this morning’s papers. “Disastrous”, “cack-handed” and “bollocks” are some of the milder sentiments from Labour figures. Election strategist Lucy Powell will be trying to “move the conversation on” from just what she thought she was doing by telling MPs to stop talking about immigration. Ed’s pet is under fire, with her incompetence becoming a really salient issue on the PLP doorstep this morning. A Labour spokesman quips: “Everyone is in total agreement that we should be — and are — campaigning on immigration.” Seriously though, everyone seems to be in total agreement that Powell is a walking disaster. Guido hates to say he told you so…
Labour insiders turn on Ed over Powell’s latest gaffe:
“When is he going to stop promoting useless people? He was warned about her.”[…] Read the rest
In response to the news that Emily Thornberry described the Lib Dems as “like the Taliban” over their new revoke Article 50 Brexit policy, the former Lib Dem leader responded:
“Come on Emily, if we really were like a Middle East terrorist group, don’t you think Jeremy would’ve invited us to a conference fringe meeting before now?”
