AlanCongratulations on what must be the nearest you have come to giving a straight and sensible answer in what seems like a thousands posts over the past week or so.Of course there is nothing wrong with a broad church. The ICG, whatever your propaganda might say to the contrary, is the ultimate broad church, embracing not only left-wingers and people from the political centre, but indeed conservatives also.The difference is, of course, that unlike the Labour Party the ICG makes no pretence to ideological unity. We are united by one common belief, that the wishes of people should prevail over the agendas of political parties. Other than for that our members are free to hold, and to express, their own views.Therein, Alan, lies the difference. I could not vote to close a residential care home if I believed that it should be kept open, and knew that by closing it I would be placing people's lives at risk.I could not knock on somebody's door and ask them to vote for a Prime Minister who had taken us into a war I didn't believe in under completely false pretences, resulting in the deaths of over 100,000 innocent people, on top of the 1,000,000 innocent people who had already been killed as a consequence of sanctions, nor for an MP who had gone along with the same as a career move.I could not publish or distribute leaflets about those I considered to be my opponents containing very serious allegations about them which I knew to be completely false.I could not, as many of your friends did in Bethnal Green, campaign for a candidate whom I believed to be wrong on major issues such as the Iraq war against a candidate whom I believed to be largely in the right simply because she was a member of my club and he wasn't.I could not campaign for a candidate who had demonstrated her contempt for her own constituents by taking money out of their pockets for a second home which she does not need, and then simply ignore questions from anybody who expressed their concerns.I could not defend policies which I fundamentally disagreed with, and which I would have condemned vociferously had they been espoused by another party.You are right to say that no political organsiation will exactly fit with the views and aspiration of any individual. However, that nothwithstanding I still consider it perverse that people such as yourself, who claim to be from the "left", should be so in love with a political party which is now very much on the right of the spectrum and which has pretty much abandoned virtually everything that it once stood for.A political party is not like a football club, which you stick with right or wrong. When a party which once represented the values which you hold dear ceases to do so, you must choose between values and your party. You would appear to have chosen your party.You may not have noticed Alan but, like David Giles of the Conservative Party whom I consider to be your mirror image, your views are not taken particularly seriously by many people on these forums these days. The reason for this is not because your views are not valid, but because they are not objective. People are just getting the Party Line, chanted idiot-style like a mantra, and they could read all that in your manifesto.When a question is asked with which you feel uncomfortable you ignore it. When you are in a corner you respond by transposing your own party's shortcomings onto your opponents - accusing the ICG of cronyism, publishing "nasty" leaflets, and so on. Your brief has even compelled you to make statements which are, as Churchill might have put it, economical with the actualité, such as your claim to have had a contract with Regal Distributuions which I later proved to have been untrue.This is all a shame, because I think you have a lot to offer to the debate and to local politics in general.When I first encountered you Alan I believed that you were a person whom the Labour Party did not deserve. Sadly some of your more recent behaviour would suggest to me that maybe it does deserve you after all.
Phil Andrews ● 7304d