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The “good cop/bad cop” routine is a familiar one in any negotiation and it is a strategy the Labour leadership seems to have been adopting as Jeremy Corbyn ponders what to do about the majority of MPs who do not support his leadership. Some of his allies are quite happy to issue threats to the dissidents, as the Guardian reports in its splash today.
Related: Len McCluskey: disloyal MPs ‘asking for it’ and will be held to account
I have made it my business to talk to quite a lot of Labour MPs and will continue to do so and I hope they will understand that we’ve been elected as Labour MPs …
It doesn’t mean everybody agrees on everything all the time – that I understand – but the general direction of opposition to austerity, opposing the Tories on grammar schools, those are actually the kind of things that unite the party.
That then becomes, surely, a very strong campaigning basis for the Labour movement, becomes a campaigning factor in towns and cities where there’s never been very much activity before. That does begin to change the debate and national mood. I think you’ll begin to see that play out, particularly in local elections next year and after that.
I’ve been at political rallies all my life, of various sorts. What I find exciting and nice, but slightly depressing, is when I know half the people at the meeting I go to. I go to these events all over the country, and some of them, I don’t know anybody. I don’t know anybody at all, and they’re people who come up to me who say ‘I’ve never been involved in politics before, I’m interested in what you have to say, because I’m interested particularly in the economic argument that you have to rebalance society away from inequality towards equality’.
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Sig Nordal 