What a vaguely ridiculous old man the Labour MP Dennis Skinner has threatened to become. When he entered politics he was a left wing firebrand, who after working in the coal mines, rose to become a NUM leader
(compare and contrast with the backgrounds of the current contenders for the Labour party leadership). When he became an Member of Parlament in 1970, he demanded that MP's get paid only what a working man got paid.
Nicknamed
'The Beast of Bolsover', I half admired his convictions
(he often donated his MP wages to union causes), if not his left wing politics, which even his colleagues in a much more socialist Labour party, would ignore. Nowadays though, the fig leaf of being a leading figure on the
'loony left' has been stripped away, and now he's just a leading
loo ... err, anyway, he wanted the other Milliband to become Leader, and may be a bit of a hypocrite.
I say that because, he is 83 years old, and still grimly hanging on to his Westminster seat. This after years of telling everyone that he would retire aged 65 like a worker would do. He once said that upon reaching the age of retirement, 65, he would retire so as to
“not take another man’s job”, however he stood again in 1997 and has carried on doing so, including this year .... so he's now taken half
another man's career.
No doubt he has convinced himself that his experience as an
'elder statesman', would be gravely missed by a distraught nation if he should leave his spot. Or perhaps he just can't bear the idea that if he retired, he would no long be at the centre of the nation's political heart. In any case he is still there, nearly 20 years later. Only now he no longer worries about the Tory content of the Queens Speech ... no, now he has
"bigger fish to fry".
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| The Beast In His Usual Seat ... And Usual Form. |
