by Gary J
Fri Oct 20th, 2006 at 04:53:31 PM EST
Clare Short, the former Labour cabinet member, is fed up with being summoned to see the Chief Whip every week so she has left the Parliamentary Labour Party.
The MP from Birmingham Ladywood, described by The Almanac of British Politics as the "least conventional of Labour's senior women politicians", had previously announced that she would not contest the next election.
Ms Short has been calling for a hung Parliament after the next election. She is criticised by former colleagues because a hung Parliament would imply that some existing Labour MPs would lose theor seats.
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6069710.stm]
(Extracts from the BBC article)
In a letter to Labour's chief whip, the Birmingham Ladywood MP accuses Tony Blair of telling "half-truths and deceits to get us to war in Iraq".
The former Cabinet minister also accused the government of being "arrogant and error prone" and repeated her call for a hung parliament.
...
"It is my view that our political system is in trouble and that the exaggerated majorities in the House of Commons have led to an abject parliament and a concentration of power in Number 10 that has produced arrogant, error-prone government," writes Ms Short.
...
Ms Short, 60, also accuses Labour's previous chief whip, social exclusion minister Hilary Armstrong, of using her authority "to stop me discussing the fact that the prime minister engaged in a series of half-truths and deceits to get us to war in Iraq".
