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Why did Lord Warner take so long to leave? Because the Tories need a distraction?

385px-Lord_Warner2Baron Norman Warner. Who he? I can’t be the only politico who scratched their head as news came through that Lord Warner resigned the Labour whip in the Lords this evening. So here are some very quick notes about a resignation few are likely to notice.

Lord Warner was ennobled under His Royal Blairness in 1998 after years as a career civil servant. He served in the Department of Health between 2003 and 2007, and was one of those charming Labour people who took Dave’s shilling to look at social care funding for the elderly. In 2013 Warner broke the party whip and voted with the Tories and LibDems to open up the NHS market to practically any willing provider. And in March last year, Warner called for the introduction of some NHS charges. With views like these, why has his resignation been so long coming?

Dave and co. are facing up to their most difficult week since their fear-mongering won them the general election. The collapse of the steel industry while the government sit on their hands. Awkward questions of the Chinese state visit. Cuts to working tax credits. Opportunities aplenty exist to put them on the back foot, so excuse me for adopting a conspiratorial turn of mind as an unknown peer resigns at the very moment the Tories could desperately do with a bit of a distraction.

This post first appeared at All that is Solid

4 Comments

  1. Mervyn Hyde says:

    Having heard him on BBC the politics today programme, he never was Labour.

    No Labour member moves from Labour to the Tories, only Tories within Labour.

    1. Sandra Crawford says:

      Absolutely. He has spent the last few years working with private health companies securing contracts. He is a dyed in the wool neoliberal and a carpet bagger.

  2. Bazza says:

    Before we can replace the Lords with something more democratic and representative perhaps any unelected Lord who resigns the whip (and leaves those who nominated – put them there) should also by law leave the Lords.
    Talk about undemocratic cheek!

  3. Bazza says:

    Perhaps we should be really talking about the Chinese State visit.
    It is fascinating to see the British state grovelling to Chinese capital.
    Democratic socialists need to kick the bourgeois democrats here out (the Tories rule for the rich really – the pretence of ruling for the people is just for the mugs out there) and democratic socialists in China need to peacefully kick their bourgeois ‘socialists’ out (their top down, undemocratic elites, with secret plice etc; they have even recently bought a private school in the UK probably for the children of the CP princelings).
    Then with a UK Labour, and China Labour, as elsewhere we can have genuine friendships and co-operation. Yours in peace & international solidarity!

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