Question of the day: Labour Party or Donner Party?

The Donner Party were a group of emigrants taking the overland trail to California in 1846. Around half way into their journey, the party split over whether to abandon their existing path follow a supposed short cut which might take weeks off their journey. Eventually, they elected a charismatic leader by acclamation and set off after him down the supposed short cut. It added weeks to their journey and the party were eventually stranded in a kind of no-man’s land in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Failing to pull together and work with each other, around half the members of the party starved to death, whereupon the rest ate them.

The Labour Party were a group of politicians taking the parliamentary road to socialism. Some way into a seemingly endless and increasingly discouraging journey, a charismatic leader emerges by offering a short cut – a turn to the right which would immediately take them into the promised land of the Progressive Century. Elected by acclamation, the leader takes his flock down the new path. However, it appears to lead nowhere and many of the party don’t like the environment they’re been taken through. Eventually open war breaks out. The wheels fall off the wagon train and the members of the party begin to eat each other:

After the arch-rebel Bob Marshall-Andrews called on the Prime Minister to resign sooner rather than later, Claire Curtis-Thomas, the MP for Crosby, looked him in the eye and said the dissidents should “find another party”. She was cheered to the rafters.