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The great man was 80 on Saturday. I expect most people in this forum hate him,but i think hes one of the most principled men ever to set foot in the house of commons.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/la ... rns-682602

He is in the wrong party these days, the last thing you could say about dennis skinner is that he's a metrosexual whore.He was real Labour.

Yeh, pricipalled to the state of total ignorance. Proud of the fact he has never been out of the UK so doesn't need a passport. What an insular inward looking person he is. I applaud his honesty but he is becoming tedious now, to me, an old school Labour voter who is disolussioned by Blair and the rest of his ilk.

Not wily, smooth or sneaky enough for "All New Labour with Added Sparkle!" the only surprise is that Blair didn't have him "Neutralised!"

I heard once that when he became an MP he still had a job as a miner, and he continued to do both. I remember during the 1984 miners strike he gave his salary to striking miners families.

He has become a star in the House of Commons, like Tony Benn was, and it is largely for that reason he is still an MP. He will be there for as long as he wants to be there. In the unlikely event that his super-safe seat was lost, they would just put him up as the candidate for another safe seat elsewhere.

This happened with Portillo, Rifkind, and others. You can quite easily arrange for people to become MP's, look what they did with Ed Balls - he was an advisor, a non political role, then they arranged for him to become an MP. Tony Benn's son was shoe-horned into the House of Commons the same way.

Dennis Skinner has been the MP for Bolsover for something like 40 years, and if he wants to remain an MP until he is 100 they will ensure that he does. We don't live in a democracy. Thirty years from now, one or two of David Cameron and George Osbourne's kids will be MP's and ministers.

"Dennis Skinner has been the MP for Bolsover for something like 40 years, and if he wants to remain an MP until he is 100 they will ensure that he does. We don't live in a democracy."

This doesn't make sense. There is a ballot. If sufficient people are pissed off with him they will vote for someone else. Presumably they aren't and that's why he is still an MP.

Pity he has nothing in common with the Labor party anymore. He is a man of principle, even if a tad dated, whereas his party colleagues are rich public school twunts who live in mansions and would piss on a weeerrrkiiiiinggg claaaarsssseee person even after they missguidely voted or them.

You are wrong. He supported David Miliband in the leadership election

And had a long-running mistress - more in common with the Tories you might at first think.

And apparently he was a confidant of Blair's