I was the Secretary of Liverpool Walton CLP a few years ago, the constituency where Dan is MP, so I write this with some regret, but I wholly reject the content of this article.

🧵 When Dan became MP with the support of as good a group of working-class socialists as I have ever known, I didn’t expect to see sentiments like this expressed in the Daily bloody Mail just a few years later.

Labour's withdrawal of support for Rochdale candidate Azhar Ali has unleashed a wave of ribald humour across social media, but the issues are serious.

I can't think of a more disastrous election campaign and I have been a political activist for over 50 years.

cont. Labour was already in trouble in Rochdale because of its supine, cowardly and morally corrupt support for a massacre that has resulted in the deaths of at least 28,000 people, the majority women and children.

cont.

The timing of this expulsion is very suspicious.

liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool… I was informed of an investigation into my 'support' for left-wing organisations on February 24th.

After 2 months of silence an expulsion email drops into my inbox in April.

You'd almost think the Labour Party had been keeping this in their back pocket to use as a distraction.

While I was in the car earlier, I heard @mrjamesob engage in one of those time-consuming and time-wasting diatribes of his, claiming near genius foresight in predicting the current situation characterised by Tory incompetence and mayhem. And who is to blame for us not having a democratic socialist government acting in the interests of the people?

Well, according to the wordy @mrjamesob, you guessed it, it is that proponent of democratic socialism @jeremycorbyn.

There has been a flurry of glib and inaccurate posts on social media arguing that the reason UK P&O staff have been sacked and French staff have not is ‘because of Brexit.’

Except it isn’t. The reason French workers are less vulnerable, though not completely safe, is because of the Code du Travail, or Labour Code, which provides substantial legal protections to working people.

These are the reforms that have been under attack from Centrist President Emmanuel Macron

P&O Ferries has just sacked its entire 800 crew members without warning and plans to replace them with even more exploited agency workers.

It is hard to remember quite such a draconian attack on workers’ established conditions. The closest parallel I can remember in my lifetime is the 1981 air traffic controllers’ strike in the US under President Reagan.

Even then, it started with a strike by the workers’ union, PATCO.

Full statement on why colleagues and I are voting against the cuts in this year’s budget:

As a matter of personal conscience and political judgement, we have come to the decision that we have no choice but to vote against this year’s Liverpool City Council budget on 2nd March. We have supported attempts to draw up proposals that would amount to a no-cuts alternative. All these efforts have been rejected. The main elements of the budget are largely unchanged since the beginning of the consultation process.

The reason there are government-appointed Commissioners in this city, costing the City Council millions, is the Caller Report which revealed deep problems in running three departments.

So far, we still await any significant accountability for those failings. Six Labour councillors, including myself, have made the decision to vote against the cuts in this year’s budget.

Part of our decision relates to cuts to citizens’ services while the Commissioners receive a 50% pay increase, which is backdated.

I would like to correct some preconceptions.

Why have a number of councillors in Liverpool, myself included, decided to vote against the budget?

It is because we do not agree with the proposals included in it? Was this a rush of blood to the head?

No, we have argued alternative proposals and had them rejected as 'not robust.'

We have scrutinised it in meetings including a long Finance and Mayoral Performance Joint Select Committee.