Tag: Graham Stringer

Frank Field has criticised local Labour party members after he became the latest party MP to lose a confidence vote for siding with the government in key Brexit votes. The veteran Eurosceptic’s constituency passed a vote of no confidence against him on Friday, after a similar motion against fellow Brexiter Kate Hoey in her Vauxhall seat in London. Field has hit back, accusing local members of trying to misrepresent his votes in support of the government’s Brexit policies to try to get rid of him. Momentum leader calls for deselection of MPs who voted with Tories Read more The no-confidence vote does not carry any official force, but constituency party members could seek a trigger ballot that would have the potential to deselect Field. Field said his decision to support Theresa May’s plans in defeating an amendment calling for a post-Brexit customs union had been on behalf of “millions of Labour voters, mainly in parts of the country that have long been neglected by the elites, who gave politicians a clear instruction to take the country out of the EU”. He said that during his 39 years as an MP he had “always voted to free our country from the tightening stranglehold of the EU” on behalf of working-class Labour voters and that it was important to do so now. “For most, if not all, of those votes I did so alongside Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell,” he said “It would have been a betrayal of the principles I have held for my entire political life, had I voted against the legislation two weeks ago.” Both Labour and the Tories committed themselves to honouring the leave vote during the 2017 election, he said, meaning “such legislation would have been introduced by whichever party was in power”. The vote against him was sparked by a letter from the Bidston and St James branch secretary, Brian Parsons. “For whatever reason, Mr Field is refusing to assist his parliamentary colleagues in removing one of the cruellest and most savage Tory administrations this country has produced, including the Thatcher government,” he said. “This is an absurd suggestion that is being used as an excuse by certain people in the Birkenhead constituency Labour party who are fixated on the idea of trying to get rid of me.