How is he still a Labour MP?

The mind boggles

Graham Stringer, MP for Blackley in Manchester, has been in the House of Commons for so long that he seems to have forgotten which party he belongs to.

Ostensibly a Labour parliamentarian, first elected in 1997, Stringer has spent the past few months panning his own party in alliance with the far-right.

Keir Starmer has been trigger-happy in dispatching left-wing rebels from his ranks. It’s pretty shocking that Stringer’s associations with the far-right have not been treated with the same urgency.

As we revealed at DeSmog, Stringer signed an open letter last month drafted by Great British PAC, a new vehicle founded by former Reform deputy leader Ben Habib – a man who has openly called for the “mass repatriation” of legally settled migrants, and who is openly consorting with Elon Musk and Tommy Robinson (aka Stephen Yaxley-Lennon).

The letter railed against the Labour government’s decision to hand the Chagos Islands back to Mauritius, branding it “an act of self-sabotage” and a “deliberate act of strategic self-harm that threatens both British and American security.”

Alongside Stringer’s signature were a catalogue of right-wing ideologues: Suella Braverman, Steve Baker, Mark Francois, Daniel Hannan, and Grant Shapps. No other Labour MP decided to join the list. Funny, that.

Great British PAC’s advisory board includes far-right YouTuber Carl Benjamin – better known as Sargon of Akkad – who has claimed the UK is facing a “Muslim takeover”, and has suggested that British-born Labour MP Zarah Sultana should be deported because she’s a “Pakistani Muslim communist”.

In 2016, Benjamin infamously speculated on Twitter about whether he would rape Labour MP Jess Phillips, prompting a police investigation when he later stood as a UKIP candidate.

The letter’s signatories also included current UKIP leader Nick Tenconi, who has called for “millions” of people to be deported, including British-born Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, has said that Islamophobia “isn’t a thing”, and that anti-racism campaigners are “democratic terrorists”.

This is the company Stringer keeps.

(Incidentally, Great British PAC told me it was “nonsense”, “lazy” and “dishonest” to call them far-right. They added: “As for comments made by individual PAC members, supporters, and advisers, we don’t all have to agree on everything. We’re not a political party, we’re a group of patriots representing people from every party and every walk of life. That diversity of thought is exactly what free speech and democracy are about, and it’s something we champion wholeheartedly.”)

I approached Stringer and Labour for a response, which wasn’t forthcoming.

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Stringer’s strange associations aren’t new. He’s a long-time director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) – Britain’s leading climate science denial organisation, which insists that carbon dioxide has been “mercilessly demonised” and should be “two or three times higher” than current levels.

The group is run by Conservative peer Craig Mackinlay and counts John Redwood and Tony Abbott among its board members. Its campaigning arm, Net Zero Watch, is chaired by Tory donor and Kemi Badenoch ally Neil Record.

To add insult to injury, Stringer appeared at the Battle of Ideas Festival a couple of weeks ago – a right-wing debating event run by Claire Fox’s Academy of Ideas, this year in partnership with GB News, the GWPF, and a conspiracy theory group that campaigned against mandatory Covid vaccinations.

Sharing the stage with Stringer (who’s a regular on GB News) was James Orr, a Cambridge academic and a newly appointed senior adviser to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. Orr believes abortion should be banned at every stage of pregnancy, including in cases of rape.

Incidentally, Orr is a close friend of U.S. Vice President JD Vance and a fan of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán – whose government has spent years dismantling press freedom, LGBT rights, and judicial independence.

As I’ve documented on this Substack, Orr also has a disturbing habit of parroting Putin-friendly talking points.

Soon after the festival, Stringer appeared on Sky News to label the Labour government “pathetic” for having the gall to (finally!) point out that Brexit is harming the economy.

It would be easy to dismiss Stringer as an anomaly – a cranky, rebellious backbencher nearing the end of his career. But his actions in our current political environment are a stain on the Labour Party.

British politics is swimming in an open sewer of hate. No Labour MP should be fraternising with the far-right – and the party whips should be banging on Stringer’s door until he gets the message.