Quotes & Sayings About Labour Party

I think the truth is that the Labour Party isn't believed any more because people suspect it will say anything to get votes. The rebuilding of some radical alternatives to Thatcherism - and by that I mean all-party Thatcherism - will require us to do some very difficult things — Tony Benn

We have arrived at the point where the public are right in thinking that John Prescott no longer serves a purpose in governing the country, only a purpose in trying to hold together the fragile peace in the Labour Party — Andrew Lansley

I know that the right kind of political leader for the Labour Party is a desiccated calculating machine. — Aneurin Bevan

I hope you have read the election programme of the Labour Party ... this is not socialism. It is Bolshevism run mad. — Edward Snowden

People know where I stand in the Labour party and what I believe in. — Tony Blair

Thatcher had broken the miners' union, all but crushed the Labour Party, dramatically cut back the welfare state, even flirted with a poll tax. In the circles I ran in, Reagan was mocked as a childish dolt. Thatcher was despised. — Jon Weisman

The Labour Party is going about the country stirring up apathy. — William Whitelaw, 1st Viscount Whitelaw

The comments by the Leader of the Labour Party [Jeremy Corbyn] at the launch, however they were intended, are themselves offensive, and rather than rebuilding trust among the Jewish community, are likely to cause even greater concern. — Ephraim Mirvis

My own view is that if you filled every member of the parliamentary Labour party with a truth drug and lashed them to a polygraph lie detector, very, very few of them would support foundation hospitals. — Frank Dobson

It is clear that my predecessor as First Minister is frightening the life out of the Tories and the Labour Party. Long may it continue. — Nicola Sturgeon

I'm still batting away on my politics for the Labour Party. I'm much further to the left of them than I used to be, but that's because they've moved, not me. — Billy Bragg

The Scottish Labour Party should work as equal partners with the U.K. party, just as Scotland is an equal partner in the United Kingdom. Scotland has chosen home rule - not London rule. — Johann Lamont

Unless the Labour leadership candidates decide to settle the issue through televised mud-wrestling (Adam Boulton, I think, for referee, and he may even take part) they will find it hard to gain massive attention for their utterances. Nor would the wannabes be wise to sign up to Lord Adonis's optimistic gloom about the coalition not lasting. Watching David Laws this week going about deficit reduction with an avidity bordering on the erotic, I realised that there are very good reasons why the centre should hold. — David Aaronovitch

Following the rise of the Labour Party it seemed reasonable, in 1927, to expect, or at least hope, that co-operation for the common good might gradually replace the competitiveness of capitalism. — Dora Russell

A majority of all defectors who voted Labour in 2010 but for a different party in 2015 said Ed Miliband had helped push them to another party. For those switching to the Tories, the second biggest reason was the fear that a Labour government would spend and borrow too much. — Michael Ashcroft

The programme of the British Labour Party under Neil Kinnock is so wildly irresponsible, so separate and apart from the historic NATO strategy, that I think a Labour government that stood by its present policies and I rather doubt that they would would, if it didn't destroy the Alliance, at least diminish its effective ability to do the task for which it was created. — Richard Perle

Abortion is an issue of conscience for the Labour party. — Diane Abbott

But Friedman seemed to share Friedrich Hayek's extreme and inaccurate view that socialism of the sort that Britain embraced under the old Labour Party was incompatible with democracy, and I don't think that there is a good theoretical or empirical basis for that view. The Road to Serfdom flunks the test of accuracy of prediction! — Richard Posner

All the people you have killed, all the lies you have told have come back to haunt you and the best thing the Labour Party can do is sack you tomorrow morning. — George Galloway

The 1973 Labour Conference will have before it the most radical programme the Party has prepared since 1945. — Tony Benn

The labour Party has lost the last four elections. If they lose another, they get to keep the liberal party. — Clive Anderson

The trade unions and the Labour Party ... failed miserably. Instead of giving concrete support, and calling upon workers to take industrial action, they did nothing. — Arthur Scargill

I've been really clear that my first job as leader of the Labour Party and co-leader of the labour movement is to engage with our base. — David Cunliffe

We must draw on our early roots and remind people why the Labour party was created and who it sought to represent. We have never been a sectional party promoting self-interest, but instead a force for engaging self-reliance and self-determination. — David Blunkett

It is absolutely clear that your continued leadership is putting the Labour Party's future in jeopardy and denying millions of people in our country who so desperately need representation by a Labour government the chance of that Labour government. — Tessa Jowell

Thus in such a Labour Party there can be no question of independent policy. — Karl Radek

The Conservative Party have got to ask themselves, 'How do we persuade people who at the moment are voting Labour and Liberal Democrat to vote Conservative — Kenneth Clarke

We just have to be crystal clear that if we were to abandon all the reforms made over some very painful years in the Labour party, we would be consigned back to opposition. — Patricia Hewitt

In a way I'm almost more rueful about the notion of having a non-ideological Labour party than I am about the personality of Tony Blair. — Robert Harris

I've been a member of the Labour Party sixty five years, and I remain in it, but I think it's all about campaigning for justice and peace, and if you do that, you get a lot of support. — Tony Benn

Crucially, I'd like to thank Labour party members up and down the country for sticking with us. For their active citizenship, their willingness to engage in our democracy, and for being there at the cutting edge of making our democracy work. — David Blunkett

I was a Labour Party man but I found myself to the left of the Labour party in Nelson, militant as that was. I came to London and in a few months I was a Trotskyist. — C.L.R. James

The domination of capitalism globally depends today on the existence of a Chinese Communist party that gives delocalized capitalist enterprises cheap labour to lower prices and deprive workers of the rights of self-organization. — Jacques Ranciere

The Labour Party is the sister Party for the Democrats and their progressive views are the ones that we are most aligned with. — Harriet Harman

I've been in the Labour Party 50 years and it's 40-odd since I was elected to Parliament — Roy Hattersley

My first real experience of ambition was as party leader. It was my ambition for Labour to win, in which event I would be prime minister. — Neil Kinnock

A Labour party is not a debating club, it is a party of action. — Karl Radek

Until today I had made no public comment about Jeremy's [Corbyn] ability to lead our party, but the fact that he failed to intervene is final proof for me that he is unfit to lead, and that a Labour Party under his stewardship cannot be a safe space for British Jews. — Ruth Smeeth

People were surprised in the 1990s when multinationals began to contribute heavily to New Labour, favoured even above the Conservative Party. But this move of Labour to New Labour was much more important to capitalism than simply having one party to support, for if you can have both big parties you have achieved the ultimate switch from a capitalist democracy to a totalitarian capitalist democracy, such as was accomplished in the USA many years previously. — Dave Mearns

I was democratically elected leader of our party for a new kind of politics by 60% of Labour members and supporters, and I will not betray them by resigning. Today's vote on Brexit has no constitutional legitimacy. — Jeremy Corbyn

I have never been in favour of expelling people from the Labour Party. — Michael Foot

Billions raised, billions spent. No idea where the money has gone. With a record like that the chancellor should be running for treasurer of the Labour Party. — David Cameron

John Prescott has made the government look greedy and ridiculous. Labour is seen as the corrupt party. The government has been fulfilling the old rule that oppositions do not win elections, governments lose them. — William Rees-Mogg

I come from a generation of sceptics, who do not believe what politicians say. The Labour Party wants to convince people through actions, not words. The Nationalist party have given the country 25 years of lies, the Labour Party will build the country anew. — Joseph Muscat

She had heard someone say something about an Independent Labour Party, and was furious that she had not been asked. — Evelyn Waugh

I never heard communism seriously propounded or argued; perhaps I was too deeply preoccupied with my own dissipations; and, as it turned out in the end it was a way of thought that I was denied or spared by a geographical fluke. From the end of these travels till the War, I lived, with a year's interruption, in Eastern Europe, among friends whom I must call old-fashioned liberals. They hated Nazi Germany; but it was impossible to look eastwards for inspiration and hope, as their western equivalents
peering from afar, and with the nightmare of only one kind of totalitarianism to vex them
felt able to do. For Russia began only a few fields away, the other side of a river; and there, as all her neighbours knew, great wrong was being done and terrible danger lay. All their fears came true. Living among them made me share those fears and they made stony ground for certain kinds of grain. — Patrick Leigh Fermor

Is the Labour Party to remain a democratic party in which the right of free criticism and free debate is not merely tolerated but encouraged? Or are the rank and file of the party to be bludgeoned or cowed into an uncritical subservience towards the leadership? — Michael Foot

The dream of true economic, gender and racial equality in a free society, which was cherished (if not achieved) by Leftists of the post-war generation, died under New Labour; but the egalitarianism at its heart was resurrected by a merciless minority as the brain-sucking zombie of Political Correctness. — Mark Crutchfield

The British Labour Party has always had a very strong "Atlanticist component," with an obsequiousness to American policies, and Blair represents this wing. He's clearly obsessed with Iraq. He has to be because the overwhelming majority of the people of Britain oppose a military action. — John Pilger

We've got to stand up for what we believe in as a labour movement. And that means the party's membership needs to be even bigger so it becomes a genuinely mass organisation. — Jeremy Corbyn

I was brought up and raised in Britain as a Labour man, and that quickly changed. And I find there are more working-class people in the Conservative Party than the Labour party. — John Lydon

Remember the No campaign is Conservative people, Labour people, people of no party. — William Hague

I was elected leader of our party, for a new kind of politics, by 60% of Labour members and supporters. The need for that different approach now is greater than ever. — Wes Streeting

The general election of 1983 has produced one important result that has passed virtually without comment in the media. It is that, for the first time since 1945, a political party with an openly socialist policy has received the support of over eight and a half million people. This is a remarkable development by any standards and it deserves some analysis ... the 1983 Labour manifesto commanded the loyalty of millions of voters and a democratic socialist bridge-head in public understanding and support can be made. — Tony Benn

That this occurred at the launch of the report into the Labour Party's recent troubles with antisemitism shows how deep the sickness is in parts of left of British politics today. — Jonathan Sacks

I am in the Labour Party because I am a feminist. I am in the Labour Party because I believe in equality. — Harriet Harman

Labour is the party of law and order in Britain today. Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime. — Tony Blair

I am nothing if not a loyalist. After 46 years in the Labour party, I've grown weary of the cry: 'If only we had a new, shining, revamped leader, all would be well.' — David Blunkett

I joined the Labour Party not because it was Left Wing, but because it was definitely internationalists and would seem to be the group in the Labour Party which would serve my purpose best for propaganda along internationalist lines. — Norman Angell

I didn't come into politics to change the Labour Party. I came into politics to change the country. — Tony Blair

When I joined Labour in 1982, I didn't feel I belonged to a party born to power. My repeated experience was of bitter and repeated defeats. — Douglas Alexander

That doesn't matter. Gorky's a vain man. We must bind him with cables to the Party," replied Stalin.3 It worked: during the kulak liquidation, Gorky unleashed his hatred of the backward peasants in Pravda: "If the enemy does not surrender, he must be exterminated." He toured concentration camps and admired their re-educational value. He supported slave labour projects such as the Belomor Canal which he visited with Yagoda, whom he congratulated: "You rough fellows do not realize what great work you're doing!"4 Yagoda, — Simon Sebag Montefiore

There is only one hope for mankind - and that is democratic socialism. There is only one party in Great Britain which can do it - and that is the Labour Party. — Aneurin Bevan

There is little or no point being chair of the Labour Party and being ignored when engaging with Labour ministers when you're trying to articulate something that affects ordinary people in society. — Colm Keaveney

I make no apology for saying that in the East End of London a new party of labour, with a small L, is being born — George Galloway

Our people need Labour party members, trade unionists and MPs to unite. As leader it is my continued commitment to dedicate our party's activity to that goal. — Wes Streeting

They [the Labour Party] are not fit to manage a whelk stall. — Winston Churchill

In the end, the Labour party could cease to represent labour. Stranger historic ironies have happened than that. — Enoch Powell

Labour Party members must all be free to criticise and oppose injustice and abuse wherever we find it. — Jeremy Corbyn

He was a Labour MP so I asked him if it was true the House of Commons was a form of poor relief for the otherwise unemployable... — Robert Robinson

That's the point. If these Labour MP's were really working men, they'd have some sense. But most of 'em, or at least the ones I've met, seem to be half-baked intellectuals who've specialized in economics or some such dreary muck. — Carter Dickson

I shall not rest until, once again, the destinies of our people and our party are joined together again in victory at the next general election Labour in its rightful place in government again. — Tony Blair

I've been on the left of the Party since I joined it about 1934 and I haven't seen much reason for altering ... I have always been a strong libertarian both inside the Labour Party and outside ... what I want to seek to do over a period of course is to establish a Socialist society. — Michael Foot

The instinct of the Labour Party is if there's a problem, change the leader, then sit back, fold your arms and wait to be disappointed because they're sure it's not going to deliver. — Johann Lamont

I support a constitutional conversation, as the Labour Party does, which will allow New Zealanders to evolve a more mature and stable constitutional form, but that's not something that I, as Labour Party, would want to impose, either on the party or on the public. — David Cunliffe

The labour party is like a stage-coach. If you rattle along at great speed everybody inside is too exhilarated or too seasick to cause any trouble. But if you stop everybody gets out and argues about where to go next. — Harold Wilson

In the Members' Dining Room, the Conservatives eat at one end, the Labour Party at the other, while the Liberals wait at table. — Gyles Brandreth

This government and the party that I lead will continue to argue an alternative to the Tory-Labour austerity. — Nicola Sturgeon

The combination of the Liberal and Labour Parties is much stronger than the Liberal Party would be if there were no third Party in existence. Many men who would in that case have voted for us voted on this occasion as the Labour Party told them i.e. for the Liberals. The Labour Party has "come to stay" ... the existence of the third Party deprives us of the full benefits of the 'swing of the pendulum', introduces a new element into politics and confronts us with a new difficulty. — Austen Chamberlain

We will renew our party, to rebuild our land - and we will do it by being a better Labour, real Labour, Scottish Labour. — Johann Lamont

The longest suicide note in history. — Gerald Kaufman

Full and unhesitating implementation of the report's findings must now follow. I call upon the Labour Party to guarantee that there will be zero tolerance of antisemitism. — Ephraim Mirvis

I've said in the primary race repeatedly that a Labour Party that I lead would be a true red Labour Party, be very clear about its social democratic roots and its social democratic agenda. — David Cunliffe

Of course we as Labour Party members must all be free to criticise and oppose injustice and abuse wherever we find it. But as today's Report recommends, can we please leave [Adolf] Hitler and Nazi metaphors alone (especially in the context of Israel). Why? Because the Shoah is still in people's family experience. — Jeremy Corbyn

When I was first elected to parliament 18 years ago, one of the many things that struck me and that I still feel now is how the Labour Party, the party of collective action, can, at MP level and above, behave in such an individualistic way. — Bob Ainsworth

We need to reach out to small 'l' liberal voters who have a modern outlook on life, who want a party that is hard-headed on the economy - more credible on the economy than Labour - but more socially progressive and fairer than the Conservatives. — Nick Clegg

I do not often attack the Labour Party, they do it so well themselves. — Edward Heath

Now, I think that in acknowledging that every individual Member of Parliament and indeed every individual member of the Labour Party, has rights to express their view in a spirit of tolerance. — Ron Davies

I did not enter the Labour Party 47 years ago to have our manifesto written by Dr Mori, Dr Gallup and Mr Harris — Tony Benn

This is a huge strategic problem for Labour. Mr Laws is a magnificent deployer of Tina; every particular cut he makes, every specific tax increase, is justified on the basis that There Is No Alternative, and that anyone who says different is a Flat Earther. But if Labour complains, it encounters Tina's new boy-friend Alf - All Labour's Fault. — David Aaronovitch

The trouble with the Labour Party leadership and the trade union leadership, they're quite willing to applaud millions on the streets of the Philippines or in Eastern Europe, without understanding the need to also produce millions of people on the streets of Britain. — Arthur Scargill

What people should understand is that I adore the Labour party. — Tony Blair

As you know, the Australian Labour Party is committed to turning the country into a republic. We've not stipulated a timeline for doing that. We are sensitive to the other priorities we've got as a nation and in the world, but in time the country will head in that direction. — Kevin Rudd

The right to demand the best and refuse the worst and do so not by virtue of your wealth, but your equal status as citizen, thats precisely what the modern Labour Party should stand for — Tony Blair

Is it not typical that we have a Tory Government that wants, just like its pals in the Labour Party, constantly to talk down Scotland's prospects? — Nicola Sturgeon

I'm a solid Labour party supporter. I aspired to be a Labour MP, but it's difficult to make the leap from the Foreign Office. — Jonathan Powell

Why did I desert Labour? Total bloody disillusionment. The party was a corpse. It had no ideology, it became detached, old, spineless and needed to go. — John Le Carre

I am the 'change Britain' candidate. We can only change Britain through a united Labour Party and I am the unity candidate. I have got support from the Left and the Right of the party. — David Miliband

In general, if signs of sectarianism do appear in a Socialist Party, these are only the products of the absence of a broad Labour movement in the country. — Karl Radek

The question Tony Blair should be reflecting on this weekend is having achieved this, having secured his place in the history of the Labour Party and the history of Britain, whether now might be a better time to let a new leader in who could then achieve the unity we need if we are going to go forward. — Robin Cook