Frank Field and Kate Hoey are probably the average Tory’s favourite Labour MPs. Both recently supported Conservative efforts to have Sinn Fein banished from the Houses of Parliament. Frank Field also supports the traditional family and is sceptical about the euro. Kate Hoey opposes Labour’s draconian hunting ban.
Claire Curtis-Thomas is another Labour MP who deserves respect. She recently led a backbench rebellion against Tony Blair’s Mental Capacity Bill (a backdoor attempt to introduce ‘Terri-Sciavo-style’ euthanasia).
This week’s conservativehome.com Labour MP of the week is Geraldine Smith. In last Friday’s Daily Mail, the Labour MP for Morecambe and Lunsdale explained her opposition to the Commons’ Science and Technology Committee’s ‘Frankenstein’ report. The report supported sex selection and the creation of embryonic human-animal hybrids. The report was backed by five MPs (including Tory science spokesman Robert Key) and opposed by five MPs (including Tory backbencher Bob Spink). The report was published on the casting vote of the Committee’s Labour chairman.
Ms Smith wrote:
“The Committee’s report is utterly biased towards science and ignores any wider concepts of humane, philosophical or religious understanding. By concentrating solely on biotechnology, it conjures up a sinister vision of a society where, in the name of research, human cells are mixed with the cells of mice to create hybrids, where thousands of embryos are discarded so that couples can choose the gender of their own laboratory-created babies and where cloning is legalised. This is truly the stuff of horror films, a prophecy of a Frankenstein world.”
Ms Smith foresees a brave new world where children become the playthings of anyone who can afford to buy a designer child, thus divorcing child-rearing from family life. “It is no coincidence,” she writes: “that in cultures where family structures have broken down, criminality, drug-taking, poverty, and low-educational attainment are all rife.” Wow! There aren’t many Tory MPs willing to stand so tall for family life. She concludes her Mail article by talking about “the shame” that the Commons committee has brought on itself. Geraldine Smith, however, in resisting the commodification of children, is certainly deserving of her ‘honourable member’ title.
Dr Ian Gibson was Dean of the Biology Department at University of East Anglia which has a lively program and trained some of the scientists working for Saddam Hussein such as 'Dr Germ'. It is perfectly understandable that he pusues an atheistic course in the interests of his previous occupation; it is however extraordinary that the others did not issue a dissenting report.
I believe it is time to award "The Mengele Prize" for those who override moral considerations to follow the path of scientific investigation irrespective of human cost or moral constraint.
The ideas which fell out of fashion at the middle of the 20th Century are back................Euthanasia - the Nazis had T-4 Program; Genetic Experiments - they had Mengele working for the Max Planck Institute in Berlin while in the field at Auschwitz; soon we will be back to Eugenics and Genetically-Modified Babies.............................
A new generation will prove as useless in preventing these approaches from gaining acceptance as previous generations were..............the hypocrisy of "it couldn't happen here' will be shown to be true
Posted by: Rick | 28 March 2005 at 11:23
Whilst I have not agreed with many of his earlier speeches, Hackney MP Brian Sedgemore's stock went up considerably when he marked what could be his last parliamentary speech with a devastating attack on the Government over civil liberties:
"They voted: first, to abolish trial by jury in less serious cases; secondly, to abolish trial by jury in more serious cases; thirdly, to approve an unlawful war; fourthly, to create a gulag at Belmarsh; and fifthly, to lock up innocent people in their homes. It is truly terrifying to imagine what those Members of Parliament will vote for next. I can describe all that only as new Labour's descent into hell, which is not a place where I want to be.
"I hope that—but doubt whether—ethical principles and liberal thought will triumph tonight over the lazy minds and disengaged consciences that make Labour's Whips Office look so ridiculous and our Parliament so unprincipled.
"It is a foul calumny that we do today. Not since the Act of Settlement 1701 has Parliament usurped the powers of the judiciary and allowed the Executive to lock up people without trial in times of peace. May the Government be damned for it."
Source: www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmhansrd/cm050223/debtext/50223-21.htm#50223-21_spnew0
Posted by: Cllr Graham Smith | 28 March 2005 at 13:14
My least favourite Labour MP is John Bercow
Posted by: Colin Ferris | 28 March 2005 at 13:23
My least favourite Labour MP is John Bercow
At last - I can agree with Colin Ferris - how someone can move from Monday Club to New Labour without an apology for being an extremist I do not know...............does his (taller) New Labour wife beat him I wonder ?
Posted by: Rick | 28 March 2005 at 13:30
Rick agrees with me? I'm worried.
But Dickie, lots of extremists have moved across to New Labour. Reid, Milburn, Mandelson - ex-communists all. The list is endless. Mr Tony himself is ex-CND, but you probably don't think that was extreme, Dickie.
Posted by: Colin Ferris | 28 March 2005 at 14:20
The list is endless. Mr Tony himself is ex-CND, but you probably don't think that was extreme, Dickie.
CND ? Extreme ? No not at all...........just a bunch of middle class shire types with time on their hands. Milburn was not a Communist but a Trot; you forgot Kim Howells, Robin Cook, or to mention that John Reid joined the CPGB after 1968 and the Prague invasion..................
Yes it galls me to agree with you - but I suppose you preferred Bercow when he was Monday Club - childish organisation.
Posted by: Rick | 28 March 2005 at 15:01
My Favourite Labour MPs are all those Europhiles in the Tory party.
Posted by: Rod | 28 March 2005 at 16:02
Frank Field by a mile. If Blair hadn't sacked him I'd probably still be voting Labour today. He was one of the few Labour MPs willing to look benefit dependency in the eye and consider taking action - also one of the few to make the distinction between deserving and undeserving recipients of benefit. The stuff on his website is excellent.
Kate Hoey has gone from far-left (how else would she ever have been nominated for Vauxhall) to pretty sensible.
But that's about all I can think of.
Posted by: Laban Tall | 28 March 2005 at 19:52
What - no link to the Boy Wonder Peter Cuthbertson at Conservative Commentary ?
PS - hat-tip to Professor Norm Geras for telling the political UK blogosphere about this site.
http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2005/03/blog_power_2.html
Posted by: Laban Tall | 28 March 2005 at 20:04