Claire Short resigns Labour 'whip', but not the Party ...

Claire Short, MP for Birmingham Ladywood, has resigned the Labour 'whip' and has announced she will sit as an Independent for the remainder of this Parliamentr, having already announced that she is standing down at the next election.

There are two ways of looking at this, I suppose:

- a principled stand by someone who has always said plainly what she thinks (at least most of the time). Even though her political outlook is radically different from my own, I suppose one has to admit she has always (mostly) shown integrity.

- that Claire Short is just one more rat leaving a sinking ship, and as she is already a rebel who is leaving Parliament in the next year or two, this is simply an empty gesture taken by yet another selfish politician.

She has stated recently that she would like to see a 'hung Parliament' (and so would many people, although perhaps not in the way she means! - Ed.) as a means of curbing the arrogance of a Downing Street cushioned by too-large majorities since her own Party came to power; the linked article reports she is not actually resigning from the Labour Party, merely the 'whip'.

That last detail clinches it - this is just another empty gesture from a washed-up 'Labour' politician!