[Quincy Lehr]

Kevin Higgins talks about it HERE. Exactly who narced on him for writing satires in favor of the current leader of the party is not yet clear.

[Quincy Lehr]

This is kind of a big deal touching on several recent debates here and directly involving poetry. This is a political suspension as part of a more general attempted purge, in Higgins's case due to satirical verse. It's a case of poetry actually mattering, but apparently that only occasions comment when the Establishment rubber-stamps some cretinous award-winner or appoints some laureate or other.

[Ann Drysdale]

May I add the link I posted on your Facebook thread?

http://www.itv.com/news/2016-07-12/c...y-to-fix-vote/

Kevin's case is a horrific aspect of a movement among the Blairites to cement the dignified rightliness of a party wherein it has (in my view) no place.This is part of a bigger, sadder picture.

And now people who joined the party for three pounds are to be charged another twenty-five to secure their right to vote on the leadership issue. This seems totally at odds with the ethos of the party and targets those whose voices are most likely to support Corbyn. I have signed the protest.

I don't want to take part in a discussion on this as my knowledge of political history is scanty and my beliefs, though sincere, are hard to defend without the language of political debate.

I just wanted to make sure that at least one poet responds to what has happened to Kevin and sees it as the thin end of a truly terrifying wedge.

[Quincy Lehr]

You did respond, Ann, and it is appreciated, as is your point of a greater context in which the party's apparatus has turned against its membership.

[Andrew Mandelbaum]

I actually thought it was a satire in itself. I didn't know you could actually cut someone off like that in the UK. I am going to go read a bit more about it all. Seems clumsy in its obvious intentions. Is it a common technique?

[Quincy Lehr]

In a half-million-plus-strong social-democratic party, it is weird. It is a sign of the crisis of Blairism. The Blairites assumed that the Left would remain disgruntled but grudgingly vote Labour while they bombed Iraq, stuck anti-immigrant slogans on mugs, etc. The Corbyn phenomenon has been... disconcerting for them, with a much larger, much more left-wing membership paying far more attention and being far more critical of the sub-Blairites who dominate the Party's MPs (Angela Eagle and the rest of the coup plotters didn't even vote against the Tory austerity budget). They're trying to keep poorer members from voting (increasing dues substantially), keep new members from voting, as well as swinging wildly in cases like Kevin's. I mean, he lives in Ireland, is not running for office, and has no particular aspirations to party leadership. This isn't like being kicked out of the Soviet Communist Party in the 1930s. They can't make it substantially harder to publish or send anyone to the gulag. It is a slap in the face of the membership and deeply undemocratic (I mean, the relevant satirical poems lampoon Blairite critics of the current head of the party, so it isn't even loyal opposition), but it isn't coming from a place of strength. It's coming from the same place as party-elite hand-wringing when constituents confront them about votes and vocally express displeasure.

[Michael Juster]

I tweeted this story. Maybe it's just different political cultures, but it seemed so bizarre I worried I had missed something important in the facts.

[Norman Ball]

"The Blairites assumed that the Left would remain disgruntled but grudgingly vote Labour"

Blairism and Clintonism. Peas in a pod. An advertised 'third way' that amounted to corporatism under a competing brand. The UK is further along in the denouement. We on the other hand are contemplating Clinton II.

[John Whitworth]

Kevin's on a winner here. He can't have had as much publicity since I don't know when.

[Quincy Lehr]

The NEC seems to be on a suspension spree at the moment. It's quite something to watch.