Showing posts with label Labour. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Labour. Show all posts

Monday, 14 September 2009

Non-Partisan?

Over at Harry's Place they have a guest post from Will Straw introducing his blog "Left Foot Forward". The blog, apparently launched in late August, makes the following claim:
We are a non-partisan blog
Sorry guys but that just doesn't seem to be true.

Where to start? Well, the editor, Will Straw, is son of Jack Straw MP. He is a contributor to LabourList and declares himself a "Labour member and supporter" on the website Change We Need which is about a book he co-edited published by the Fabian Society.

The Assistan Editor of LFF is Shamik Das who also contributes to LabourList.

Other authors include Tony Dolphin (works for the IPPR which has strong links to Labour according to wikipedia), Laura Chappel (also works for the IPPR), Martin McCluskey (who tweeted "makes me proud to be Labour" 10th Sep).

Things get worse. On their "Thanks" page (presumably listing the people who have paid money to set this blog up, they ask for donations on the site) they give thanks to Progress which describes itself as, "the independent organisation for Labour party members and trade unionists." Also mentioned are Cathy Ashton (any relation to the Cathy Ashton who is a Labour member of the House of Lords?) and Peter Kellner (any relation to the Peter Kellner who is married to Cathy Ashton from the House of Lords?). There's also room to thank Marcus Roberts and Karin Christiansen who presumably are the same people who used those names to write contributions to the book mentioned above edited by Will Straw by "Labour members and supporters".

I'd be very interested to hear what definition Left Foot Forward has for "partisan" that allows such a blatantly Labour-supporting bunch to be called "non-partisan".