> I find it really disappointing that Labour has decided to take the turns it has with regard to protecting civil liberties. This is just about my only qualm with the leftist parties in the UK; they have little or no emphasis on protecting the right to privacy, freedom of expression etc.

The issue here is that Labour governments under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were decidedly NOT leftist. They were very much a Tory-lite neoliberal party. Remnants of those priests of a dying religion still plague the PLP today and spent the better part of Corbyn's leadership attempting to undermine him.

My MP is Angela Eagle. A self-described socially progressive lesbian that you would imagine would be on the side of civil liberties and democracy, yet her record speaks for itself;

- Refused to vote against Tory welfare cuts

- Voted in favour of the war in Iraq

- Voted in favour of the bombing of Libya

- Voted three times to block investigations into the decision to go war in Iraq

- Voted in favour of national identity cards

- Voted in favour of Theresa May's Investigatory Powers Bill (legalised mass surveillance of Britain)

She is the kind of 'leftist' that made the Labour party utterly right-wing.