Oh dear!

Following on from our last post we have done a bit of research and we conclude that Labour are as good as finished. Perhaps Nottingham will finally take down the red flag at the next round of elections.......?

One of Britain's biggest trade unions yesterday reacted to the "contempt" with which workers are treated by the government by withdrawing financial support from six Labour MPs it said were not doing enough to support union policies.

The GMB, which has 600,000 members, named the first six of 35 Labour MPs it will refuse to support at the next General Election. However, a move to disaffiliate the trade union from the party, severing the formal link with Labour, will not go ahead and the union intends that its annual £1.7m in fees and local grants will continue.

The union had examined the records of the 108 GMB-sponsored MPs in parliament and those who had not, in the GMB's view, performed well, will have their funds cut. The funding is worth £20,000 annually to the constituency Labour parties who support the work of MPs.
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The first MPs to be named are Meg Munn, junior minister at the Foreign Office and MP for Sheffield Heeley; Stephen Ladywood, MP for Thanet South and vice-chairman of the Labour Party; and four parliamentary private secretaries to ministers: Christine Russell, MP for Chester, Roberta Blackman-Woods (Durham), Sharon Hodgson (Gateshead East), and Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West). No Scottish MPs are on the union divorce list.

General secretary Paul Kenny said the union was no longer prepared to fund MPs who treated workers with "contempt". The GMB leader also warned that the union could reduce the size of its annual affiliation to Labour, worth £1.2m a year.

The Labour Party is £24m in debt and has over £13m of loans up for renegotiation this year, but Mr Kenny told the union's annual conference in Plymouth that union funds would not be used to bail out the debt.

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