Top 100 Quotes About The Labour Party
#1. 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
#2. The Labour Party in 2011 was in an exceptionally bad place. We'd been hammered in an election. We didn't see the scale of it coming.
Johann Lamont
#3. 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
#4. I have never been in favour of expelling people from the Labour Party.
Michael Foot
#5. When it comes to getting more women into parliament, politicians have at least started to take active measures. The British Labour Party introduced all-female shortlists in 1997.
Noreena Hertz
#6. As early as 1975 she had come up with a wonderful line about the Labour Party: They've got the usual Socialist disease - they've run out of other people's money.
Niall Ferguson
#7. 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
#8. I've been in the Labour Party 50 years and it's 40-odd since I was elected to Parliament
Roy Hattersley
#9. 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
#10. The Labour Party can go into the next election united behind the most radical manifesto on which we have ever campaigned.
Roy Hattersley
#11. 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
#12. For six and a half years, I had responsibility for leading the Labour party policy on education and delivering on our promise of improved opportunities for all our children.
David Blunkett
#13. So there clearly is a sense in which the Labour Party here, certainly at State level is reaching out and connecting with people and reflecting the aspirations and needs of, you know the mass of ordinary Australians.
Patricia Hewitt
#14. 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
#15. 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
#16. 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
#17. Politics is tricky, especially in Jamaica. There are two parties, JLP [Jamaica Labour Party] and PNP [People's National Party], and if I went for one, I would upset supporters of the other. I stay as far from politics as I can.
Usain Bolt
#18. 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
#19. The Labour Party of today has fits of horrors of the very thought of somebody like me might saying that they bought in white Australia. But I believe they did.
Colleen McCullough
#20. 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
#21. People know where I stand in the Labour party and what I believe in.
Tony Blair
#22. It is beyond belief that someone could come to the launch of a report on antisemitism in the Labour Party and espouse such vile conspiracy theories about Jewish people.
Ruth Smeeth
#23. If the Labour party goes back to reasserting its socialist and democratic beliefs, that's where I belong.
Shirley Williams
#24. 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
#25. I can stand here today, leader of the Labour Party, Prime Minister, and say to the British people: you have never had it so ... prudent.
Tony Blair
#26. And, I hope now that everybody understands that the Labour Party - as it always has done - stands for free speech and individual Members of the Labour Party are entitled to exercise that free speech.
Ron Davies
#28. I do not often attack the Labour Party, they do it so well themselves.
Edward Heath
#29. We in the Labour party know better than most that opposition is the easy part. What's more difficult is governing and setting out an agenda for government.
Lucy Powell
#30. 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
#31. This government and the party that I lead will continue to argue an alternative to the Tory-Labour austerity.
Nicola Sturgeon
#32. 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
#33. We in the Labour party owe it to the people we represent to make sure that we offer a choice at the next election between our Labour values and those of the Conservatives.
Lucy Powell
#34. I am in the Labour Party because I am a feminist. I am in the Labour Party because I believe in equality.
Harriet Harman
#35. 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
#36. I am saying that in Wales here we have a very clear election commitment and I hope, and I will express this view, I hope that every individual member of the Labour Party, will understand that and will strive to achieve unity so that we can deliver the yes vote in the Autumn.
Ron Davies
#37. The Parliamentary Labour Party is a crucial and very important part of the Labour party, but it is not the entirety of the Labour Party.
Jeremy Corbyn
#38. I must emphasise that there is nothing in the Labour Party constituion that could, or should prevent people from holding opinions which favour Leninist-Trotskyism. Certainly Marxism has, and will continue to have an important function in the Labour Party.
Neil Kinnock
#39. I am absolutely delighted to give my full support to Gordon as the next leader of the Labour Party and as prime minister and to endorse him fully.
Tony Blair
#40. Actually, I don't ever think there will be a men-only team of leadership in the Labour party again. People would look at it and say, 'What? Are there no women in the party to be part of the leadership? Do men want to do it all themselves?' It just won't happen again.
Harriet Harman
#41. In my view it is better for the Labour Party, the leadership and the new prime minister that he be given the maximum flexibility.
John Richard Reid
#42. The Scottish Labour Party and its renewal are more important than me.
Johann Lamont
#43. 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
#44. 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
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. The labour Party has lost the last four elections. If they lose another, they get to keep the liberal party.
Clive Anderson
#48. We are all in the Labour party because we want the Labour party to be a vehicle for social change. There is a thirst for debate in the party, and all those who have joined haven't joined without a purpose.
Jeremy Corbyn
#49. The Labour Party is and always has been an instinctive part of my life.
Roy Jenkins
#50. 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
#51. Civil Society is a cluster of institutions and associations strong enough to prevent tyranny, but which are, none the less, entered and left freely, rather than imposed by birth or sustained by awesome ritual. You can join the Labour Party without slaughtering a sheep ...
Ernest Gellner
#52. Labour is the party of law and order in Britain today. Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.
Tony Blair
#54. 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
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. The Labour Party has become consumed by collective bile towards ... the Liberal Democrats. That portrays a rather nasty arrogance.
Nick Clegg
#58. I have dealt with a pretty interesting mix of young people, many of whom have never been involved in any form of politics at any level who are interested in alternatives to austerity and debt, and older people who left the Labour party, mainly over Iraq, who are coming back in.
Jeremy Corbyn
#59. I believe whoever the Labour Party chooses to replace Tony Blair will beat David Cameron.
David Blunkett
#60. 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
#61. I deeply regret the damage which recent publicity has brought to the Labour Party. However, I reject any suggestion of intentional wrongdoing on my part.
Wendy Alexander
#62. 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
#63. I want to change Scotland, but the only way we can change Scotland is by changing the Scottish Labour Party.
Johann Lamont
#64. 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
#65. 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
#66. New Labour leader Ed Miliband announces plan to 'make this party slightly less unelectable by 2015'. He added: 'I am Ed, the Almighty One.'
Defeated brother David Miliband overheard muttering: 'Now I know how Wayne Christ felt after little Jesus came along.
Andy Zaltzman
#67. 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
#68. 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
#69. The Labour party has done more than any other to address gender inequalities, through legislation and other means, and to increase women's representation in politics, which has led to recent increases in the number of female politicians.
Lucy Powell
#70. I joined the Labour party because I believed in equality, in freedom of speech and in tolerance, compassion and understanding for people, irrespective of their background and views. In whatever I decide to do in the future I will hold to those principles.
Geoff Hoon
#71. 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
#72. I hope you have read the election programme of the Labour Party ... this is not socialism. It is Bolshevism run mad.
Edward Snowden
#73. It would be as unthinkable to try to construct the Labour Party without Marx as it would to be to establish university faculties of astronomy,anthropology or psychology without permitting the study of Copernicus, Darwin or Freud, and still expect such faculties to be taken seriously
Tony Benn
#74. I know that the right kind of political leader for the Labour Party is a desiccated calculating machine.
Aneurin Bevan
#75. In the end, the Labour party could cease to represent labour. Stranger historic ironies have happened than that.
Enoch Powell
#76. 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
#77. I became a Conservative in the late 1980s because I could see that the Conservative party had transformed Britain's economy and our standing in the world compared to Labour in the 1980s.
Andrew Lansley
#78. 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
#79. We need a good strong opposition and I don't know whether it's any coincidence that we need Angela Eagle in Labour and we need Theresa May to lead the Conservative party, both of whom of course are women.
Anna Soubry
#80. We are keenly in sympathy with the representatives of Labour. We have too few of them in the House of Commons ... The Liberal party, high and low, have discovered, if they ever forgot it, that the real road to success ... lies in adhering to the old principles of the party.
Henry Campbell-Bannerman
#81. We need people like me in the Labour party.
Alan Johnson
#82. At various times in the next 20 or 30 years I think it reasonable to anticipate that I will be among the leadershp of the Labour Party, but as far as being leader, I can't see it happening, and I'm not particularly keen on it happening.
Neil Kinnock
#83. 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
#84. in this country, who's got the most guns - you and Lloyd and the Labour Party, or the Conservatives with the army and the police on their side?
Ken Follett
#85. What people should understand is that I adore the Labour party.
Tony Blair
#86. Our long-term objective is clear: to replace the Labour Party as the progressive wing of politics in this country.
Jo Grimond
#87. People can say what they want in the Labour Party.
Michael Foot
#88. 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
#89. 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
#90. Contrast that with the call of the Liberal Democrats in April, when they were prepared to call upon the British people to participate in a 24-hour strike. It shows how far to the right the Labour Party's gone.
Arthur Scargill
#91. 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
#92. 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
#93. The Labour Party believes in turning workers against owners; we believe in turning workers into owners.
Margaret Thatcher
#94. Now, many of us in the Labour Party are conservationists - and we all love the red squirrel. But there is one ginger rodent which we never want to see again - Danny Alexander.
Harriet Harman
#95. 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
#96. First of all it has never been the case that I have threatened people with expulsion or that I've threatened to throw people out of the Parliamentary Labour Party.
Ron Davies
#97. Is Tony Blair of the Labour party? The answer to that is profoundly 'yes', but that is not how, sentimentally, he is regarded in the Labour movement generally.
Neil Kinnock
#98. I take UKIP very seriously. The truth is that UKIP presents an electoral challenge to all political parties. The way to defeat UKIP is not to be a better UKIP but to be a better Labour Party.
Douglas Alexander
#99. Abortion is an issue of conscience for the Labour party.
Diane Abbott
#100. 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