Tank-proof barriers, armed police, Yvette Cooper and a TV sting - and it was only Day One
LIVERPOOL’S waterfront arena complex has been transformed into a fortress to protect the thousands attending the Labour Party conference from attack or invasion.
Tank-proof barriers, armed cops, police personnel carriers, discreetly positioned ready to pounce, and a strict security protocol at the entry gate.
However, forget the threats from outside: the efficient “bouncers” patrollng the Kings Dock are more likely to be engaged in protecting politicians and grassroots members from the enemy within: themselves.
For the broad church known as Labour, a family of “socialists” has brought its civil war to the banks of the Mersey.
There are rumours of more than 80 dissenting MPs preparing to defect. "It's all about to go off", a senior figure told Liverpool Confidential - and all because Jeremy Corbyn, as expected, once again won the party's leadership contest.
This time more than 313,000 people voted for him - it may well have been a lot more if tens of thousands of new members had not been barred from voting. For his detractors, his increased majority has only served solidified his grip on the party.
However his call for the party to unite, to “wipe the slate clean”, fell on many deaf ears wjth prominent MPs scurrying off to their favourite media people to spill the beans on what they really thought.
The Sunday papers were universally of the same opinion that peace had not broken out in Liverpool.
Saturday: D-Day in a Labour leadership race that has dominated the headlines all summer in a way that the Brexit vote never could.
Up at the Black-E, Momentum supporters were gathered for their big fringe event, watching on televisions and cheering their superhero Jezza as the result was awaited, and booing whenever the cameras zoomed on challenger Owen Smith. The roof was raised when Corbyn was declared the winner with 62 percent of the vote against Smith’s 38 percent.
Up at the Black-E, Momentum supporters were gathered for their big fringe event, watching on televisions and cheering their superhero Jezza as the result was awaited, and booing whenever the cameras zoomed on challenger Owen Smith. The roof was raised when Corbyn was declared the winner with 62 percent of the vote against Smith’s 38 percent.
MPs would no doubt have felt in a stronger position if the result has been closer but so powerful was the result for Corbyn that if he had stepped out of the arena and parted the Mersey nobody would have been surprised.
With time to digest all of this - and revenge being best served chilled - Sunday dawned and live from The Titanic Hotel, came the ITV show, Peston on Sunday,
First up to rock the boat was Yvette Cooper, and, when prompted, trawled up a story from a couple of years ago involving Esther McVey, one time Conservative MP for Wirral West, and also the minister in charge of cuts to disabled people.
Cooper went on a verbal attack against Corbyn’s right hand man, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell.
McDonnell, it is claimed, referred to McVey as a “stain on humanity” with suggestions she should be lynched. Cooper demanded that the Liverpool-born MP should apologise for the comments.
Up next - and warmly thanking Cooper for raising the matter on the telly - came McVey herself, venting her spleen on what she thought of the Labour Party.
And then their villian of the piece, McDonnell, refusing to budge or apologise for his “stain on humanity” remark, made in Parliament, saying he had been angry, and that “sometimes you just have to express honest anger”.
Of the talk of lynching, he recalled that he had “simply reported what was shouted out at a public meeting” but said he had been goaded into it by the “appalling” treatment of disabled people by the last government.
McVey hit back at McDonnell, saying “this is a man who links violence with politics”.
She accused him of “whipping up” antisemitic and misogynist abuse on social media, saying “this is a man who talks about politics through threats, violence and bullying”.
Alec McFadden, president of Merseyside TUC, told Liverpool Confidential how the row was “born” - at a 2014 campaign launch to have the then Wirral West MP fired, called “Sack Esther McVey”.
He said: "The people of West Wirral responded to the campaign, Sack Esther McVey, by not re-electing her at the 2015 General Election. That was because of Ms McVey’s role as Tory minister overseeing the massive increase in both benefit sanctions and illegal benefit sanctions.
“John McDonnell spoke at the public launch of that campaign in October 2014 when the people of West Wirral demanded that the slogan ‘Sack Esther McVey’ didn't go far enough, and some shouted ‘lynch her.’”
He added: “Every speaker that evening - and at all times - rejected those comments and continued the successful campaign to Sack Esther McVey. That's democracy.”
Maybe McDonnell, today eye firmly on the ball of setting out Labour’s far-reaching economic strategy to delegates, should have sniffed out, on Sunday, something of a media sting, and refused to discuss something that had been fully aired a long time ago.
Why, the day after Corbyn’s rallying call for unity, did Cooper, one of Labour’s leading politicians go on national television in a ferocious attack?
Of course any comments or attacks, particularly of an anti-Semitic or misogynist nature are unacceptable. But was this the time for Cooper to rake this one up to be paraded on national television when Labour’s task should be to show the nation it is preparing to take on the government?
Corbyn and his so-called fan club, Momentum, are among those being blamed for Labour’s so-called "ills". Yet tens of thousands of ordinary people, who feel let down by the pre-Corbyn Labour Party see him as the man who will take the party back to its origins. They see little point in creating an electable party, led by career politicians, which has seemingly forsaken them in their quest for their Holy Grail, the keys to 10 Downing Street.
The people's Chosen One, Corbyn needs the judgement of Solomon to bring the warring sides together. But on the evidence of the weekend, even the Almighty or those close to him do not have it in their power to sort this mess out.
