Has 24 weeks got anything to do with the collapse of the Labour vote in Crewe?

It is now clear that the Labour vote has collapsed in Crewe, and a large section of it switched to the Conservatives, in a massive 17.6% swing.

A lot has been said about Northern Wreck, the 10p tax rate, and other Labour mistakes.

But a few evenings ago almost the entire parliamentary Labour Party (apart from a few decent Labour MPs, such as Ruth Kelly, MP for another North West constituency, Bolton West, with about a 2,000 majority) voted to maintain the current 24 week limit of abortion.  The timing was ludicrous.

Crewe has a long history of immigration from Irish people to work in the railways, and thus a large Catholic population.  (The most recent Catholic immigrant group, the Poles, were disenfranchised from voting in Crewe, although they can vote in local and European elections.) 

I spoke to a few Catholics in Crewe who were appalled by the abortion vote and were switching from Labour, for the first time, to the Conservatives.   There were no doubt many others, as well as some who did not turn out to vote, for various reasons – but the last straw was the abortion vote.  Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor has bravely said that Labour must not take the Catholic vote for granted.  Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor is a man that I (yes, I, an Ulster Protestant) admire for his bravery on the abortion issue.

Let’s hope that Labour has lost the Catholic vote for good.  Part of the huge swing from Lab to Con in Crewe is evidence of that.

Tue 27/5/8, 14.43 Update: On her blog, the brave campaigner Nadine Dorries MP – who made a powerful and frank speech about the reality behind abortion – has confirmed that many other people had 24 weeks raised as an issue on the doorstep.  She points out that seats such as Bedford (whose MP Patrick Hall – notional 2005 majority 3,494 – voted to maintain 24 weeks) have large Catholic and Muslim communities. Lesson to Labour MPs: don’t upset what is supposed to be your core vote.

In a nutshell, why Labour has lost the confidence of the country

A superb blog that highlights how family people who voted Labour in the past, out of a once understandable conviction that the Government would deliver for their families, is A Diary of a Mother on the Edge: http://motheratbreakingpoint.blogspot.com who points out that:

Since I turned 18 ten years ago I’ve always voted … Anyway, I’ve always voted Labour …

Flip flopping over whether to hold an election (missed an opportunity there Gordy!), and the shambles that was the 10p Tax Band… not exactly impressed me with your decisiveness and leadership Mr Brown. Say what you like about Tony (and I did. at length) he stuck to his guns. When face with opposition on the War in Iraq from so many fronts, Tony Blair stayed true and stuck to what he believed was the Right Thing To Do. That takes enormous strength of character. When GB is faced with opposition, he buckles.

The final thing that has turned me right off Labour was the vote last night. I watched it live on BBC Parl and I nearly wept. The great elected representatives of our nation had the chance to use their voices to speak for the most vulnerable members of our society, the unborn (paraphrasing Ann Widd there) and they chose to ignore them. All but 3 members of our Cabinet voted against lowering the upper limit for abortions to 22 weeks.

What we have now is a ludicrous situation wheredoctors can be terminating the life of a 24 week old fetus while down the corridor another could be fighting to save the life of a premature child born at 24 weeks.

I have a friend who lost a baby at 23 weeks. There’s a picture of that child on her mantlepiece. He is perfect, just so very very tiny. He was lucky that he had his mother, father and sisters to speak up for him. What our Government has done is choose to ignore the cries of thousands of infants whose lives they have just dismissed.

Shame on you Labour.

If this does not sum up why Labour deserves to lose the Crewe & Nantwich by-election and the subsequent general election, I don’t know what does.

You don’t expect baby murderers to ban smacking, do you?

At PMQs the Speaker asked Gordon Brown to use ‘temperate language’.  On this subject I’m afraid I will have to refrain from temperate language.

Yesterday, Brown made a speech about his commitment to liberty, which is a joke given his commitment to increasing the detention limit from 28 days to something like 56 days.  It is a joke, considering his Government’s policies on the liberty of the unborn child.  The liberty to be born.  The right to life.  All thrown aside for the right to a medieval practice that has no place in a civilised country.

Some campaigners, who are often the very same people who support abortion, are furious with the Government for not banning smacking.  I personally could never smack a child, but many parents do; criminalising parents would be asburd.  But do you really expect baby murderers to ban smacking?

The science proves that at 22 and 23 weeks (by the way, around 5 months of pregnancy) babies are not only fully formed, but viable, i.e. they have a chance of survival.  As the brave MP Nadine Dorries points out on her blog, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists study which Dawn Primarolo used to avoid reducing the abortion limit from 24 weeks,

“It failed to mention the Hoekstra study which demonstrates how with good neonatal intervention, 66% of all babies (that is babies born naturally because there may have been medical complications not healthy babies aborted) at 23 weeks live.

“It failed to mention how in the UK at good neonatal units such as UCH London and Hope hospital in Salford, 43% of 23 weekers live.

“Instead it chose to quote a study which averages out births at all hospitals across the UK, which puts the figure at 10 -15%.”

That makes the Labour Government baby murderers (the RCOG are anyway, and they sully the name of doctors), aided and abetted by the likes of Dr Evil Harris MP. 

What exactly happens to a baby (not a foetus, or an embryo, which are dehumanising medical words) when he or she – a potential Ben or Emily – is ripped from the womb?  If not already dead, the baby is murdered by the medical team responsible for the abortion.  We are not here talking about abortion at 5 or 10 weeks, where the baby may look less baby-like though I believe it is equally wrong, but about the killing of a viable baby in the womb (or after being forced from the womb).  Evidence from the US shows that babies feel pain during abortions.

Even Lord Steel, a man who has much blood on his hands for his Private Members Bill to legalise ‘abortion on demand’ in the 60s, is now appalled by the fact that there are around 200,000 abortions per year.  These are due to the social breakdown, and immorality, that has ripped apart the fabric of this country.  Almost 200,000 of our fellow Britons are denied the right to life, so the day after Ms Primarolo’s despicable decision is hardly a day for Brown to make a speech about liberty. 

And, frankly, it would be ludicrous of this Labour Government to ban smacking when it has given the green light to many more murders of babies in the womb who could survive, who are fully formed, but somehow are denied the right to life because they have not yet been born.  Worse still, these murdered little souls will never be able to vote but the babies’ murderous “mothers” do have a vote and that seems to be what the Government is calculating in this decision.  Anyone who cares about the right to babies to life, however, should never vote Labour.