My sources tell me that backbenchers from the Parliamentary Labour Party are to meet their equally angry counterparts from the Tory 1922 Committee to discuss what to do about Sir Thomas Legg. They are all furious about the fact that his criteria are being applied retrospectively. “Why not just go back and decide that Germany won the 1966 World Cup?”, one asked me.
There was a meeting of 40 or 50 Labour MPs with Nick Brown and Harriet Harman this morning in Room 11 in the House of Commons. They were a tad upset, I’m told. Some were moaning that there were clerical errors in Legg’s paperwork (eg dates were wrong), others that papers had been lost.
Can anyone else think of an occasion when the two groups have gathered together? Curious times indeed. I’m not sure where and when it will happen yet; I’ll update you in due course.
UPDATE
Except they won’t get it. Despite a groundswell of enthusiasm among the Labour ranks for this meeting I’m told that Tony Lloyd, chair of the PLP, has put a kibbosh on it. “The prospect of a joint action…it’s just not going to happen,” says my (more authoratative) source. Could it possibly be that someone has been sat on?
Jim Pickard
Kiran Stacey
