‘Queer Street’ is a British slang word for Bankruptcy and the name is a corruption of the location of the English bankruptcy courts which were once on Carey Street in London. It’s less popular a phrase than it used to be but it’s really appropriate to describe where the UK Labour Party is heading. According to a recent article published by Guido Fawkes it seems that Labour have mismanaged their finances so badly that the National Executive Committee has said that the party has but one months funding for their staff left. The NEC is rapidly trying to stabilise the situation by sacking staff but the situation does not look good.
The Guido report states that a drop in membership fees and the cost of fighting anti-Semitism cases brought against the party by those who have experienced the rapid recent rise in Jew hatred in Labour Party circles is believed to be at the heart of Labour’s fiscal problems. Up until the years of the Corbyn regime the Labour Party was doing reasonably well for an opposition party. Of course it had years where the expenditure was great, such as in General Election years, but they did at least manage to survive financially.
However now, the situation is looking particularly dire even taking into account the ‘Short Money’ that is directed by the House of Commons to opposition parties to allow them to carry out their work. For 2020/2021 the Labour Party was gifted approximately £6.5 Million Short Money in the form of grants based on the number of their MP’s, over £800k for the Leader of the Opposition’s Office and travel funds. This figure does not include money paid to Labour Peers who act as the Opposition in the House of Lords in a similar scheme to the Short Money scheme named Cranborne money after the former leader of the Upper House. According to Parliamentary records Labour received over £640k from this source. Labour have therefore received support from the taxpayer of approximately £7.1 Million for their activities in the Commons and the Lords yet still cannot balance their books.
Labour are in a complete mess, their policies have driven away the working classes who the party was set up to support. The Trade Unions who have historically given a lot of monetary support to Labour are much less financially secure than they once due to fewer workers choosing to belong to Trade Unions and the party’s choice to become the party of the middle class left and of Muslims has caused many of the individuals who would once have been the financial lifeblood of the party have chosen to turn away from Labour.
It’s likely that the situation will get much worse for Labour as Sir Keir Starmer the Labour leader is in a pretty sticky position. He needs to rid himself of at least a thousand far left extremists which although might make the party look better in the eyes of the public, but which will also result in the loss of an estimated total of £4380 of membership fees based on the standard membership fee for the Labour Party being £4.38. Labour have also had a cut in funding from the Unite Trade Union late in 2020 from £7M to £6M.
There is a great but sad irony in all this and one that will no doubt be exploited by Labour’s opponents in that Labour ask the electorate to trust them with the economy yet can’t even manage their own party finances.
