2010 Party Leadership Campaign
On 18 May 2010, news broke that McDonnell wanted to stand in the Labour Party leadership election, to be held following the resignation of Gordon Brown, and would announce it the following day at the Public and Commercial Services Union conference in Brighton. McDonnell noted that it would be difficult to get the 33 nominations needed from the parliamentary Labour Party required to stand in the election. He stated during a speech at the GMB Union Congress on 7 June that he wished he could "go back to the 1980s and assassinate Thatcher" He later apologised for the remark which was described as distasteful and sickening. On 9 June 2010, the deadline for nominations, he had secured 16 nominations and withdrew from the election.
Read more about this topic: John McDonnell (politician)
Famous quotes containing the words party, leadership and/or campaign:
“When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man’s moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“During the first World War women in the United States had a chance to try their capacities in wider fields of executive leadership in industry. Must we always wait for war to give us opportunity? And must the pendulum always swing back in the busy world of work and workers during times of peace?”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.”
—Mario Cuomo (b. 1932)