Snowmail: Labour vice chair sacked after calls for leadership challenge
Updated on 13 September 2008
On tonight's show...
Hello Samira here.
Another female MP sacked after coming out with calls (expressed in a frustratingly vague touchy-feely way) about Labour needing a leadership challenge.
Joan Ryan, vice chair of the Labour Party, follows assistant whip Siobhan McDonagh, who got the boot yesterday not for sending her letter of concern to the party, but for going public about it.
So what is afoot? A drip drip one-a-day campaign to undermine Gordon Brown in the leadup to the Labour conference next week? What to make of the way Number 10 is handling the so far tiny number of MPs who are calling for leadership nomination forms to be sent out?
Inflated rebellion
Are they inflating the "rebellion" by making it public and appearing heavy handed, especially as the letter writing MPs had written privately up to two weeks ago? Or is Brown acting swiftly to try to snuff out signs of rebellion, maybe remembering, as he welcomed Lady Thatcher to lunch at Chequers today, the "stalking horse" coup that took her down in 1990?
Perhaps she's the only politician who truly would understand how he feels today? Victoria Macdonald reports.
XL saga continues
Jane Dodge continues to follow the XL saga as some of the 20 thousand tourists stuck abroad started arriving home on charter flights today. With three British airlines widely thought to be at risk of failing in the near future, I'll be talking to the chair of the Transport Select Committee. Labour MP Louise Ellman has been pushing for two years for a compulsory £1 levy on fares to start a rescue fund to bring home stranded passengers from future failures.
I also hope to get an update from Texas after Hurricane Ike made landfall a few hours ago.
Medal glory for Britain
And in the sport: a rare win for Liverpool against Manchester United in the Premier League (their first at Anfield for seven years). And more medal glory for Britain in the paralympics, with a gold on the track for David Weir taking the tally to 77 medals (second only to China).
See you at 7.
