Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Hand over £25, or the centre-left gets it

Give us your money, or the centre-left gets it

issue 23 July 2016

In order to become a ‘registered supporter’ of the Labour party, you first have to disclose whether you’re a member of an organisation opposed to the Labour party. Such as, I suppose, the Labour party. You also have to affirm that you agree with the party’s ‘aims and values’, which must be the hardest bit, because who alive now knows what those are?

If the leader of the Labour party — to pick an example not wholly at random — agrees with the aims of the Labour party, then how come he just voted against the party’s own manifesto in order to oppose Trident? Or is the idea supposed to be that Labour was only pretending to have those aims and values, in order to get the electorate into bed? Was it perhaps a bit like a dating profile where you pretend to have a GSOH but, in truth, only really laugh at Mrs Brown’s Boys and The Vicar Of Dibley? If so, somebody should write down the true aims and values, sharpish.

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