Okay, after years of rebuffing their advances Chuka Umunna has finally given in and joined the Lib Dems. The MP for Streatham is going to stand as their candidate in a safe Labour seat. So much for the man, who said that he would never put on the yellow rosette. I can understand why the Lib Dem leadership want him – he’s young, Black and ambitious. He was angling for leadership of the Labour party until he was defeated by Jeremy Corbyn. And as a good New Labour Thatcherite, he’s spent the past few years intriguing and campaigning against the Labour leader.
And now, six months after splitting from the Labour party to form Change UK with the other splitters and quitters, he’s now decided that they aren’t a grand enough vehicle for their ambitions. So he’s departed from them and joined the Lib Dems. It’s not wholly unexpected – Change UK and a similar, minuscule ‘centrist’ party, Renew – were talking about some kind of alliance with the Lib Dems. But forging a party alliance is different from betraying it altogether and joining a different and competing party.
Mike has argued in his article on this sordid incident that Umunna was probably moved to do this by the Lib Dem success at the Euro elections. He believes they’re on a winning streak, but ignores the fact that this success was based on them positioning themselves as the party of Remain in an election that had zero to do with the actual Brexit negotiations. I’ve no doubt that the Lib Dem leadership will be highly delighted, but you can bet there’s a lot of rancour and discontent in the local party about it.
Umunna is, after, all toxic and deeply untrustworthy. He’s shown himself to be cynical, opportunistic and disloyal. His support and membership of political parties seems to be determined solely by how he can use them to boost his own ambitions. He was blocked from the leadership in the Labour party, so he tried to remove its leader, and undermine his support and that for the party generally in order to discredit not just Corbyn, but also the move to traditional Labour values and policies. When this failed, he loudly and publicly split, clearly expecting far more than the eight former MPs who joined him to follow suit. And when Change UK proved to be a dud, he showed his complete absence of sticking power and party loyalty by abandoning them as well. It’s a career that should tell the Lib Dem leadership that they can’t trust him even remotely. His loyalty to them is always going to depend on whether or not he thinks he can be better served elsewhere. It really wouldn’t surprise me if he grows tired of them eventually, and throws in his lost with the Tories if they appeal to him as a centrist Remainer.
As for the local party, you can bet than many of them are going to be furious, as long-term members and activists will no doubt now be sidelined after their years of loyal service in his favour.
Hopefully at the next election, whenever it comes, Umunna will lose massively and spectacularly to the Labour candidate, as he should. And then it’ll be interesting to see whether he sticks with the Lib Dems, or throws another strop and tries appealing to someone else to give him the power he craves.
Tags: Brexit, Change UK, Chuka Umunna, Conservatives, Elections, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party, Lib-Dems, Margaret Thatcher, Remain Campaign, Streatham, Vox Political
Beastrabban\'s Weblog 
June 17, 2019 at 9:18 pm |
«the Lib Dem leadership will be highly delighted, but you can bet there’s a lot of rancour and discontent in the local party about it.»
I’d like to see Umunna’s face when he gets told that the LibDem have mandatory reselection… 🙂