Angela Raynor, Labour MP for the working-class constituency of Ashton-Under-Lyne in Greater Manchester, has been forced to resign as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. She has also resigned from her other two governmental posts – deputy prime minister, and housing secretary.
Raynor paid only £30,000 Stamp Duty on the purchase of a property in Hove, East Sussex, rather than the £70,000 that would have been required had the flat been deemed a second property. She claimed that she had been given erroneous advice by lawyers.
This is not a problem that will ever be faced by most of her working-class constituents. Raynor’s own working-class background can provide no excuse.
Raynor has gone along with the stampede to the right of Labour’s policies under Starmer. We need MPs who will stand up for the working class and fight to abolish the existing capitalist system.
Her financial ‘mistake’ is relatively modest in comparison with the financial arrangements of others. There are far more egregious examples that suffer no adverse consequences.
Parliament is a stinking, stagnant, cess-pit of financial irregularity, where venality passes as commonplace. Its members live a life divorced from those upon whom they impose perpetual misery.
MP’s salaries place them outside the real life existence of working-class voters and their families. Their lavish expenses place them in an entirely different world.
The socialist and labour movement needs representatives who place the interests of the working class above all else. We must have representatives who only take an average worker’s wage, plus legitimate expenses, scrutinised by the workers’ movement. This would put them in the same financial position as those they represent.
This would filter out the careerists and self-servers who use the labour movement as a stepping stone for personal advancement.
We need accountable representatives in parliament and in local and regional councils. All labour movement representatives should be subject to recall and replacement, should they act against working-class interests.
These principles should be incorporated into the constitution of YourParty. No careerists. No self-seekers.
We must put our own house in order.
In Greek mythology, Hercules was set a series of twelve ‘labours’ or tasks. The fifth labour was to clean out the stables of King Augeas. Augeas owned 30,000 cattle and Hercules was tasked with cleaning out the muck accumulated over three decades.
Hercules re-routed two rivers to wash the much away. He cleaned out the Augean Stables in a day.
We must do the same.
We need a truly democratic and accountable working body of recallable representatives to replace the present parliament.
- Annual elections.
- Proportional representation.
- All MPs on an average worker’s wage.
- No MP to be allowed to do paid work beyond that as an MP.
- A prohibition on the payment of gifts, donations etc to MPs
- All MPs to be subject to recall and replacement.
- Abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords.
- Election of all officials in positions of decision-making affecting public policy & finance.
PR – France has it, Italy has it. PR Is not the corrective to sham bourgeois democracy that some imagine. In Italy it has produced a fascist head of government, and in France a fascist who may very well be on her way there.
And I struggle to discern exactly how TAS envisages the progress of the workers’ movement to the point where the revolutionary conquest of state power appears feasible, nor the role / contribution of elected ‘representatives’ in that progression.
I hope this enquiry will be received as in good faith; it is by no means hostile, as we plainly share a good deal of common ground.