Richard Angell
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Richard Angell is Director of the right wing Labour Party movement Progress. He is the founder of Labour’s three seats challenge (#Lab3seats) and has run marginal seat campaigns for the UK Labour party, and its sister party, Australian Labor. He is elected to the TUC’s LGBT committee and to the Labour Party Irish Society as its LGBT officer.
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Antisemitism activist
Richard Angell is a former trade union official for Community Union and worked for the All Party Parliamentary Group on Combatting Antisemitism.
He served on Labour’s National Policy Forum (2010-15), as secretary of LGBT Labour (2008-11) and chair of Young Labour (2007-2009).[1]
Copeland marginal
On 20 January 2017, Richard Angell wrote an article in The Telegraph about the candidate selection process in the 2017 Copeland by-election, caused by the resignation of Blairite MP Jamie Reed, and went on to tweet anti-Corbyn comments.[2][3]
Following which, the Blairite Copeland Constituency Labour Party then selected Gillian Troughton, another Blairite and Corbyn critic, to succeed Reed.[4]
Teddy Ryan, Blairite Campaigns Organiser from Labour's Eastern Region was drafted to Copeland to ensure the result reflected badly upon Jeremy Corbyn.[5]
On 23 February 2017, when Tory Trudy Harrison was elected with 13,748 votes (44.3%) and Labour's Gill Troughton came second with 11,601 (37.4%), the corporate media predictably put the blame entirely on Jeremy Corbyn even though had Labour maintained the 42.3% of the vote that was enough for Jamie Reed to win in 2015, it would still have been beaten by the Tories in the 2017 by-election.
The real story in Copeland was the collapse in the UKIP vote which fell from 15.5% in 2015 to just 6.5% (2,025 votes) in 2017. This 9% fall in the UKIP vote share is almost exactly matched by the Tories' 8.5% increase. Those statistics showed Ukippers abandoning their party in droves in order to throw their support behind the Tories now that Theresa May is pushing a rabidly right-wing authoritarian more-UKIP-than-UKIP political agenda.[6]
Labour's position on Brexit
In an opinion piece in The Guardian of 26 September 2017, Richard Angell demanded to know what Labour's position is on Brexit, saying "It's time Corbyn told us".[7]
Progress funding shortfall
Three months earlier, Angell told The Independent:
- “We’re losing a £260,000 a year grant. If we don’t replace it there is a scenario in which Progress could close, that’s a real possibility."[8]
References
- ↑ "The Progress Team, Richard Angell – Director"
- ↑ "Jeremy Corbyn's shambolic power grab in Copeland would put New Labour to shame"
- ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/dec/21/corbyn-critic-jamie-reed-quits-labour-mp-byelection-copeland
- ↑ "Labour unveils Gill Troughton as its candidate for the tricky Copeland by-election"
- ↑ "Labour right are trying to lose two by-elections. But Oldham West applies"
- ↑ "An alternative look at the Copeland By-Election result"
- ↑ "What is Labour’s position on Brexit? It’s time Corbyn told us"
- ↑ "Centrist Labour think tank Progress could close because of £180,000 funding shortfall"
