MP Neil Coyle has been reinstated to the Parliamentary Labour Party following his suspension for racially abusing a journalist and harassing an assistant.
The MP for Bermondsey and Old Southwark has been sitting in the Commons as an independent MP since his suspension from Labour last year. Mr Coyle had admitted to a drink problem which saw him being banned from the bars at the houses of parliament, where he was having up to 16 pints in an evening.
The politician, who was found to have breached Parliament’s bullying and harassment policy in a report published by Parliament’s Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme (IGS), apologised for his “insensitive” remarks and has since been sober.
He was reported after two incidents in February last year – both in the Commons’ Strangers’ Bar – in which it said the MP was drunk.
His reinstatement comes after Labour recently restored the whip to MP Rupa Huq after she called former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng “superficially black” and months after Diane Abbott was booted out for daring to suggest that Jewish people and gypsies only experience prejudices like red-haired people do, and not racism.
What we see here is a failure of the first past the post voting system, which essentially gives us a choice of two parties. This leads to parties putting up wholly underqualified candidates in safe seats, with these people ending up in Parliament without the aptitude to take on such a momentous role. With Huq and Abbott, we have two people whose lack of good judgement led to them thinking that, on account of their minority status, they could get away with criticising and name-calling of other protected groups. And in the case of Mr Coyle, we see a man who evidently couldn’t take the pressure of his position.
The Homeland Party would only put forward worthy candidates come election time, even if we had safe seats, and would prefer a proportional representation system of voting as this would help raise the quality of representatives.
Interestingly, it has been suggested that Mr Coyle is not guaranteed to be Labour’s candidate at the next election, a threat that doesn’t hang over the two ladies! I wonder why…
