Interesting Links for 27-09-2016

[andrewducker]

Why the gender wage gap explodes when women hit their 30s (tags: gender money women pay business society children ) An open letter to Jeremy Corbyn on Europe. (tags: europe labour politics uk ) The tThings we aren't allowed to talk about (tags: freespeech society morality ) How to Know if You Are a Good Person (tags: morality psychology

Comments

[danieldwilliam]

I think Thornberry will not continue as both Shadow Foreign Secretary and Shadow Brexit Secretary. I think the Speaker is very concerned that Labour aren't able to fill all the Shadow Cabinet roles and has been giving them a bit of slack during the extraordinary leadership election but now that the election is over he will require Corbyn to fill all the front bench posts on a one MP per post full time basis and I think he has some significant powers of sanction both moral and practical to make sure that he does.

(Now I think of it I wonder if it is a way for the PLP to continue hostilities with Corbyn if they wanted to. They can't make him resign as Leader of the Labour Party but they potentially could force him in to a positon where he can't fulful the duties of Leader of the Opposition.)

[gonzo21]

The counter stroke to the PLP continuing their war would be for Corbyn to inform the speaker that Labour were no longer the official opposition. Which is in the rules.

This would then default to the next largest party forming Her Majesty's official opposition. Which would be, drum roll, the SNP.

And I cannot imagine the PLP allowing the SNP to take to the front benches and become the shadow-everythings.

[danieldwilliam]

That is exactly the situation I was suggesting that the PLP could place Corbyn in. Should they wish I think a refusal en masse by the PLP to serve on the front bench so that Corbyn is unable to fulfil the role of Leader of the Opposition would see the SNP made official oppostion. I think Corbyn has more to lose than the PLP in a situation where the PLP think that a) they are going to be de-selected or b) lose their seat in 2020 anyway.

I don't think it would be a good position for them but it's a halfway house to splitting should Corbyn get worse at the job the PLP think he should be doing or should Corbyn not keep to his side of any settlement.

[gonzo21]

Dangerous risk though isn't it? The sight of the SNP in official opposition actually doing a better job of it than Labour has in the past 12 months? I suggested at the last GE that the SNP should think about standing in the North of England, and that... might just open the door to them doing precisely that.

Morphing into the Scotland+The-North-Indendence-Party.

Seems far fetched, but, we live in a very strange era now I think.

[danieldwilliam]

Risky compared to what