My love for Laura Parker is a deep and profound thing.
If only all Labour members and MPs had her spirit of optimism, pragmatism & communicative skills.
She's a major figure in Mimentum and is backing Keir Starmer and Jess Philips to lead a Labour Remain campaign in a Referendum.
Evening Standard
While Labour tears itself apart over anti-Semitism, The Londoner found a pocket of peace in the House of Commons yesterday at a “Labour for a Public Vote” meeting where Momentum chief Laura Parker endorsed Keir Starmer and Jess Phillips to spearhead any potential second referendum Labour campaign for Remain.
Parker, Momentum’s national co-ordinator (who is vying to be selected as Labour’s parliamentary candidate in Enfield North), talked tough, calling for a radically different campaign to 2016 and backed Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee’s suggestion that Starmer and Phillips would be strong campaigners. But she added: “I’ll obviously be excommunicated from Momentum for suggesting that, but that’s an example of the hatchets we’re going to have to bury.” Starmer serves as shadow Brexit secretary but Phillips is known for being an outspoken critic of Jeremy Corbyn.
But it wasn’t all a love-in. In a jibe aimed at Alastair Campbell, Parker said: “The great and the good must be behind the scenes and ideally locked in a cupboard.” And on Tony Blair having a role, she retorted: “We’ve got to present people with something that doesn’t feel like rehashed old soup.”
She also criticised the last campaign for being too male-dominated: “The men screwed it up last time, so we’re going to have the best of things this time. There were no women in the last campaign. I don’t want to fall into lazy sterotypes, but in the end you need a mature group of women sitting in a room with a cup of tea.”
Parker later told The Londoner: “We need more women, less London. That’s not what the Evening Standard wants to hear.” Fair enough. We’re happy as long as the lead campaigner doesn’t take a mini-break during any future campaign. Toynbee had strong words on how the demographics had changed since 2016: “The Grim Reaper has done us many favours. Two million
have died, 2.5 million teens have come of age.” She also suggested stealing “take back control” as a campaign slogan. Dominic Cummings may claim copyright infringement...