It was very prominent on the BBS 1pm news. But yes you're probably right with regard to the Express, Mail, Telegraph etc...
If Labour don't call a by-election they are missing a trick. Tories would get absolutely trounced & might provoke further defections in red wall seats.
Labour can't call a by-election, only Christian Wakeford could do that by resigning his seat, somehow I don't think he'll take that chance.
My thoughts exactly , There’s no moral stand in this MP what he’s gone is what he thinks are the best interest for him in the future , it would only have been a matter of time and another excuse down the line for him to have defected .
That is a requote of an mp's damning statement to Chamberlain in WW2 in 1940. After the debacle in Norway Chamberlain was left floundering and it served to bring Churchill into power. Chamberlain resigned and the rest is history.
Labour don’t have the power to do that. Mps are elected as individuals not representatives of a party.
If you look at his voting record I'm not sure 'decent' applies to him. He's no progressive and Starmer should have made it a condition of accepting him that he resign the seat and open it up for a byelection.
Tory MPs tend to obey the whips just like any others. He may genuinely regret some of those votes (I wouldn't count on it mind). On balance you're probably right, there should be a bye-election. If that were to be the case, I would not expect him to be fighting it on behalf of Labour though. While Labour are quite happy for him to cross the house and sit with them, they would want their own candidate in any election...
I would've expected Labour to have made it a condition of entry, it's a missed opportunity if they haven't.
They aren’t really in a position to compel him to do anything. Even if he wanted to resign the whip he could have gone independent. This is a limited win win. Labour get the theatre and it intensifies the pressure on Johnson. the MP has a shot a retaining his job he would definitely lose on a 400 seat majority.
See my post above. To be fair I've not looked at his voting record but wouldn't expect any Tory MP to vote against a Tory government. You might hope for it but they tend to be a disciplined bunch - until the tish hits the fan like it's doing now.
I don’t trust his motives, what? He didn’t realise the Tory party doesn’t represent the economic interests of the working class areas of Northern Britain? He didn’t know that the impregnator in chief Boris Johnson was lying klootzak? Come on.
I would wager a tenner... if I were a betting man... that he has been guaranteed the seat. No way would he have moved otherwise.
Wouldn't you have to look at his voting record to make a call on that? (I've not by the way, so it's pretty hypothetical on my part).
If he's stayed in the Tory party until now, particularly in its current form, I would imagine he'll have an appalling voting record (in terms of now sitting as a Labour MP) purely on the basis of whipped votes he's made. Apparently, the background to his resignation is that he was hauled before the Tory whips last night and threatened with the loss of his seat (majority 460) based on forthcoming boundary changes, which is a tactic apparently being applied to the 2019 Tory intake who are at the centre of the increased incidence of no-confidence letters going in. In his case, it pushed him over the edge (or should that be across the floor).
ironic that there’s a place in the Labour Party for him but not Corbyn. Late stage capitalism at its finest.