The Times - UK (2020-10-17)

16 2GM Saturday October 17 2020 | the times

News

A group of Labour MPs have estab-

lished their own policy research opera-

tion amid growing left-wing opposition

to the leadership of Sir Keir Starmer.

In a break with colleagues from the

mainstream of the party, several allies

of Jeremy Corbyn are using parlia-

mentary office expenses to fund the

Socialist Parliamentary Research

Group (SPRG).

The pooled research and writing ser-

vice has inspired comparisons with the

European Research Group that sup-

ported generations of Conservative

Brexiteers in their guerrilla campaign

to shift the Tory position on Europe and

eventually brought about the ousting of

Theresa May as prime minister.

Labour officials see the emergence as

a sign of a renewed intent to resist Sir

Keir’s policy platform by the increas-

ingly rebellious MPs on the Corbynite

left who have sought to stake out dis-

tinct positions of their own since losing

control of the party in April.

One source described the group,

which is run from the parliamentary

office used by staff for Lloyd Russell-

Moyle, a left-wing shadow minister

who resigned after reports of tensions

with Sir Keir’s team in July, as an at-

Tory MPs who seized traditional

Labour seats have been sent hate mail

telling them they should be “poisoned

with ricin” or “taken outside and shot”.

At least five MPs elected to former

Labour constituencies, many in the so-

called Red Wall, have quit Twitter over

the level of abuse. They have urged the

public to call out the behaviour on social

media. The appeals come as figures

obtained by The Times using Freedom

of Information legislation show that the

number of malicious communications

reported by MPs to the police has treb-

led in the past two years.

Figures from the Metropolitan

Police’s parliamentary liaison and in-

vestigation team show that MPs report-

ed 239 malicious communications last

year, up from 186 in 2018 and 74 in 2017.

Malicious communications contain

either threats or abuse.

Women reported most of the cases,

despite making up fewer than a third of

MPs. Virginia Crosbie, who represents

the island of Anglesey in northwest

Dehenna Davison

has written about

abuse in the street

Corbynites create policy

group to resist Starmer

tempt to establish a “party within a

party”.

Most Labour MPs pay into the Par-

liamentary Research Service, which

provides letters to constituents and

fields research queries, from their office

budgets. Its materials support Labour

MPs in their parliamentary work and

are thus not overtly party political, but

are broadly in tune with the leadership’s

priorities and policy positions.

However, analysis by The Times of

returns from Ipsa, the Commons ex-

penses authority, shows that a number

of Corbynite MPs have instead begun

claiming for services provided by the

SPRG, which has no public presence

beyond a website registered in Februa-

ry, six weeks before Sir Keir’s victory.

Those who have claimed for its

research and writing include Diane

Abbott, the former shadow home sec-

retary, and Richard Burgon, the former

shadow justice secretary and de facto

leader of the Corbynite resistance.

Three leftwingers elected for the first

time last year, including Mary Foy, the

City of Durham MP, who was among

seven frontbenchers to quit so they

could defy Sir Keir’s whip to abstain on

security legislation earlier this week,

also submitted £5,000 claims to Ipsa for

its services in April and May. Another,

Mick Whitley, the MP for Birkenhead,

claimed £4,167. All of the claimants

were among the 34 MPs who joined the

rebellion on the Covert Human Intelli-

gence Sources Bill, legislation designed

to permit MI5 agents to commit crimes.

SPRG sources insist the group is not

a rival to established channels used by

other Labour MPs, and the exact na-

ture of the materials they provide to

their subscribers is unclear.

News of its emergence, however, has

nonetheless compounded concerns

among Sir Keir’s supporters that their

internal opponents are co-ordinating

their opposition to a leadership deter-

mined to break with its predecessor.

The organising nexus of Labour’s

hard left has traditionally been the 30-

strong Socialist Campaign Group, a

caucus established by Tony Benn. It

was long derided as an irrelevance by

mainstream Labour MPs but grew in

strength under Mr Corbyn.

Although it is not known whether the

SPRG is formally linked with the Cam-

paign Group, its subscribers are exclu-

sively drawn from its membership.

A spokesman for the SPRG said:

“SPRG is not in conflict and/or compe-

tition with any other service that MPs

may choose to subscribe to under Ipsa

rules.” None of the MPs who claimed

for the group’s services via Ipsa

responded to requests for comment.

Red Wall Tories complain

about hate mail and abuse

Eleni Courea Political Reporter

Charis St Clair Fisher

Patrick Maguire Red Box Reporter

Henry Dyer

Wales, said that the police alerted her to

threats on social media. “There were

people on Facebook wanting to bomb

me or poison me with ricin,” she said.

“It’s all on social media from people that

are not even my constituents.”

Lee Anderson, the Tory MP for Ash-

field, which voted for Brexit, said that

he was used to getting abuse from left-

wingers who thought Labour had a

right to represent the constituency.

“I was getting lots of personal stuff,”

he said. “Private messages saying I

should be taken outside and shot.”

Mr Anderson, a former Labour

member, was Gloria De Piero’s office

manager before standing against her.

Jonathan Gullis, the Tory MP for

Stoke-on-Trent North, said the abuse

he received online was primarily from

leftwingers outside his constituency.

He quit Twitter in July, claiming that it

had been “hijacked by a vocal group of

people on the extreme end of politics”.

Siobhan Baillie, the MP for Stroud,

has said that she was targeted with

“abusive emails, calls and social media

posts” while on maternity leave.

Dehenna Davison, the MP for Bishop

Auckland, has tweeted about the abuse

she received in the street.

Miriam Cates, the Tory MP for

Penistone & Stocksbridge, and Rob

Roberts, the MP for Delyn, who is under

investigation by the Conservatives over

allegations of inappropriate behaviour

towards staff, are among half a dozen

Red Wall MPs to have quit Twitter.

W

hether

skiing off a

mountain

before

deploying a Union Jack

parachute or fleeing

henchmen with a

jetpack, James Bond

could be relied upon to

deliver a short dose of

action before the title

sequence (Jack Malvern

writes).

It is a formula so

established that no

director has dared to

break it for nearly 50

years. However, purists

must brace themselves

for the forthcoming No

Time to Die, which not

only fails to feature

Daniel Craig in the

opening scene but is

performed in French.

The pre-title sequence

omits to feature Bond

in favour of a young

Madeleine Swann,

the woman for

whom he retired at

the end of Spectre.

A preview shown

to The Wall

Street Journal

was described

as “slow-paced,

visually

arresting,

subtitled with

dialogue in

French and

entirely Bond-

free”.

The

flashback, in

which the

villain Safin pursues

Swann onto a frozen

lake, is the first serious

attempt at an emotional

backstory for a

character other than

Bond.

For any other film

franchise the sequence

would be unremarkable,

but the series has so

many repeated motifs

that it has become its

own genre.

The last time that

producers broke with

tradition was in 1973,

when Roger Moore was

absent from the

beginning of Live and

Let Die.

Some have questioned

the wisdom of such a

move. Piers Bracher, a

managing director and

brand expert for Four

Communications, said

that it risked coming

across as self-

indulgent.

“Bond is

something of a

fixed recipe.

The reward of

the Bond

experience is

that it is a

predictable

formula and

that’s why we

all like it, or

hate it, so

much,” he

said. “This

recipe can

occasionally

be modernised to

suit the times with

altered ingredients —

new gadgets and special

effects, a sprinkling of

diversity, cyber

criminals etc — but

essentially its success is

based on the same

structure.”

All but two of the 24

Bond films prior to No

Time to Die, which has

been postponed until

April 2021, feature the

Bond actor in an action

sequence — Sean

Connery’s debut in Dr

No had nothing before

the titles and Live and

Let Die showed a series

of assassinations.

Another two lacked

Bond as a character. In

From Russia with Love,

Connery portrays a

Soviet agent in a James

Bond mask while in The

Man with the Golden

Gun Moore appears

as a slightly

wobbly 007

mannequin.

Mr Bracher

said that the role

of the pre-title

sequence was to

reassure

cinemagoers that

Bond was back. “That

pre-title action sequence

as you settle back in

your seat is the signal

that all is well and the

next couple of hours will

be an entirely

predictable adventure,”

he said.

No time for 007 in

opening sequence

Bond beginnings

The Spy Who Loved Me

The shot of James Bond

skiing off the edge of a

mountain at the start was

almost lost when the

stuntman struggled to

deploy his parachute. Rick

Sylvester pulled the

ripcord later than planned

because his heavy boots

and lack of skydiving suit

inhibited him from falling

the right way up. He fell

out of frame for the

master camera but a

secondary cameraman

caught the footage, right.

Goldeneye Viewers

apprehensive about

Pierce Brosnan's debut as

Bond were greeted with

an almost silent opening

sequence featuring a

record-breaking bungee

jump from a fixed

structure. Brosnan’s stunt

stand-in fell 720ft from

the top of the Verzasca

Dam in Switzerland for a

single-take shot.

From Russia with Love

Sean Connery grimaces

with pain as his character

is strangled by Red Grant,

the vicious Soviet

henchman. Only then is it

revealed that the dead

man was not Bond, but a

man on a training

exercise wearing a mask.

Spectre

Daniel Craig

walks

through a

street in Mexico

City and across a

roofscape in a seemingly

unbroken four-minute

tracking shot before

setting himself up to kill

his target. The sequence

was actually filmed in four

parts, one of which was at

Pinewood.

b

Daniel Craig is replaced in

the opening scenes of the

25th Bond film by Lea

Seydoux, below left, who

plays Madeleine Swann

ALAMY

Gun

as a

wo

m

sa

of

seq

reass

cinema

Bondwas

ico

ssa