So farewell then, comrade. Simon Danczuk, Rochdale’s dogwhistler-in-chief has finally done what everyone sort of assumed he’d done 18 months ago, and resigned from the Labour Party. And he would’ve stood in Rochdale again, were it not for you meddling kids on Labour’s National Executive Committee.
My resignation letter from the Labour Party. pic.twitter.com/klqqzHVrTQ
— Simon Danczuk (@SimonDanczuk) May 8, 2017
It’s been emotional: the suspension for sexting a 17-year-old, the public airing of dirty laundry, the constant attacks on Jeremy Corbyn and subsequent offer to serve in his shadow cabinet. We’ll miss you. At least, we might do – if you don’t immediately pop up again as an independent candidate.
True to form, Si is out with a bang – behave – and not a whimper. In the inimitable style he pioneered in reams of blokey agitprop for Labour journals of record the Sun and Mail on Sunday, Danczuk signed off with a stinging broadside against the tree-hugging pinkos now controlling his party.
“The Labour Party is no longer the positive political movement that I joined nearly 30 years ago,” he wrote in a letter actually delivered via email to Labour general secretary Iain McNicol but printed off anyway because it’s really quite difficult to render a cut-up membership card electronically. “Indeed, under its current leadership the Labour Party is more interested in serving its own ends rather than those of hard working people for whom the party was originally established.”
“With frontbench spokespeople such as John McDonnell continually obsessing about Karl Marx, the benefits of communism and celebrating the reign of Joseph Stalin, I feel the Labour Party has totally lost touch with its social democratic values and, indeed, with reality in 21st century Britain.
“With Theresa May likely to win a landslide victory at the General Election and subsequently holding a very large majority in Parliament, Rochdale people need someone who will speak up for them, who will voice their concerns rather than simply being voting fodder for Jeremy Corbyn.”
Readers with long memories might faintly recall another S. Danczuk offering the following reflection on the electoral palatability of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour: “I hope and expect to be the Labour candidate for Rochdale on June 8th.” But that was on 25 April. Another time. And besides, there are hundreds of Simon Danczuks in Rochdale anyway. Definitely a different bloke. You wouldn’t know him. He goes to another Parliament.
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