After suspending Angela Raynor, the Unite union has decided to suspend the memberships of all 86 of the Labour MPs that it supports.
A spokesman said, ‘Angela started it all. The bin strike. The smell of rubbish. The smell of fear. The lack of support for our members. She was the first domino.
‘When we thought about it, we wondered what we were getting for the half a million quid we chipped in to support Labour MPs. That’s all hard-earned money from our members – we sent actual cash, not suits or dresses or posh specs - and we ARE expecting something back in return.
‘In business it’s all about efficiency, performance, customer service and other buzzwords. This government fails on all counts. It has made decisions, backed them to the hilt, talked them up, climbed back down, reversed decisions, and gone round in circles. Is that what spin doctors are for?
‘So we have decided to be business like. We’ve turned off the money tap until performance improves. And we’ll be having a quiet chat with Jeremy Corbyn...’
The government is looking at modifying the benefits bill passing through Parliament following a backlash from over one hundred Labour MPs, with the Government relying on the opposition to have any chance of passing the bill.
The modification accepts that the current bill is unfair to those people currently in receipt of Personal Independence Payments, PIP, on the grounds that the payments exist to make them personally independent. A government spokesman admitted that personal independence 'did sound like something you'd find in the Human Rights legislation.'Â
The government agrees that to withdraw the payment from people who have undergone rigorous and often demeaning checks on their incapacities would be wrong, but maintain that by withdrawing the benefit for new claimants 'saves them the distress of undergoing demeaning and rigorous checks, which must be worth a few bob in anyone's money,' the spokesman suggested. The 'few bob' apparently being the value of the current benefit.