48

An open letter to Sadiq Khan from a member of the Labour Party

Megan, a Labour Party-member writes to Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London concerning his recent email to party members which linked to his article in the Guardian about his decision to support Owen Smith and related matters

Dear Sadiq Khan,
You are, truly, beyond belief.
I cannot describe how angry it makes me to receive this email from you. How betrayed I feel by you. How hopelessly furious I feel in knowing (with utmost certainty, thanks to this very email) that to you, my anger and sense of betrayal mean absolutely nothing.
The fact that you could even write this email is true testament to your total lack of care for, or understanding of, the very people who elected you. You are spitting in their faces, neglecting – like almost every other politician – to recognise that we are dangerously close to being done with playing your political games or acting as pawns in your political careers. That inability to read the electorate is dangerous. Revolutions were started for less (just sayin’). So many of us are tired – so very tired – of the continual, never-ending, self-interested nonsense of the political classes.
You, Sadiq, were supposed to be the break from Tory buffoonery in the Mayoral post in London, a step away from the chummy ‘you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours’ approach which had characterised the tenure of Boris Johnson. You were a chance for Labour to come back to London, to put a stop to the appalling housing crisis, the floods of young talent and young families fleeing for more affordable, less soul-less destinations. You were supposed to help cut the cost of transport and rent, of essential living items and bring London back to being a city for the people, not just for the obscenely wealthy.
You are, it pains me to say – already – a failure, Sadiq.
How can you hope to ever bring London back to the people, to enact fair policies for the many, when you are so clearly blind to what they need and what they want? This email itself is evidence that you have lost your ability to connect with those in situations similar to that in which you grew up, or to connect to normal people at all. It appears that you have fallen into the ‘power-player trap’; forgetting all the reasons and inspirations which brought you to this career and instead, desperately and diligently – and somewhat humiliatingly – scrabbling for nothing more than the continued existence of the meagre power you have managed to scrape together. Perhaps this is what Westminster does to you if you come to it hoping for power, rather than hoping for change; I couldn’t say, I’ve never worked there, but I’ve seen a similar thing plenty of times in the corporate sector and you resemble nothing more right now than a power-hungry, top-down autocrat – out of touch with the very people he so desperately desires to influence.
As if this weren’t enough, you now pledge allegiance to Owen Smith – a man few had ever heard of and who would have been no aid in your recent Mayoral campaign – over Jeremy Corbyn, the man whose backing you took full advantage of during that campaign and of which he gave you plenty; praise, support and a spotlight when you needed it most. You reached your current position as Mayor – at least in part – thanks to Jeremy’s support. Now, when he needs your support in return, you choose to play games intended to help you maintain power instead of giving power to the people. In doing so, you so clearly show exactly who you are.
You show this, not by backing someone other than Jeremy or by switching your allegiance – neither of which, of course, are inherently bad – but rather by failing to support actual change, to support a man whose policies are so clearly beneficial for so many, a man who has so clearly brought not only hope, but action, back into British politics. Jeremy’s policies are backed by experts from around the world – top economists, ecologists, activists – and are so clearly right-headed and fair; the long-awaited reparation for the multitude of wrongs perpetuated upon the many by the few, that no decent, fair or honest person could deny the truth or benefit of them.
In fact, the reason you give to vote for Owen can be wholly contained (no good thing) within two short, error-laden sentences: “Owen has the strongest Labour values – he led and won our fight against the Tory cuts to tax credits and disability allowances. The polls show he is the most likely Labour candidate to win the next election.”
I think you’ll find, Sadiq, that Kier Hardie and Nye Bevan would disagree with you about Owen being the candidate with the ‘strongest Labour values’, but then again, perhaps you’ve never heard of either of them and so could be forgiven for believing that it was Tony Blair who first established Labour’s “values”, in which case Owen is indeed a front-runner. This level of ignorance can’t be blamed for your erroneous statement about who it was that led and won the fight against Tory cuts to…well, pretty much everything over the last year.
You’ll find that was Jeremy Corbyn. You’ll also find that it is Jeremy and not Owen Smith who packs out town halls, parks and any other venue at which he arrives with hundreds or thousands of supporters. I think the “polls” to which you so confidently refer are likely to be wrong, because as more and more of the general public hears from Jeremy, listens to his message and his policy, your polls will not save you these continually crowded venues nor from his victory or the victory of the many over the few.
The only real reason to disagree with Jeremy is because his position threatens your own. His focus on equality, rather than on lining his own pockets or those of already wealthy men, threatens to unbalance the carefully curated global ecosystem of political corruption and power which allows the faceless minority few – of which you are one – to continually feed their own self-interest at the expense of all others.
These institutions of power are undoubtedly attractive (and not only to you) because they offer the chance to accumulate – much and often – and the only price to be paid in return for all of this is the poverty of those who are not you, not part of these institutions. This price is easy to pay when you distance yourself from the very people whose lives, hopes and children you are selling off for your own advantage, and it seems to me, Sadiq, that you have paid it in full.
Jeremy, on the other hand, is a man who is not only of the people, but who is down here in it with us. The same cannot be said of you, and it is for this reason that you will not win the next Mayoral election in London, nor any other political post, I suspect. To quote a better man than I, the times they are a changing, and emails like the very one you just sent me – with their laughable ‘logic’ and patronising betrayal – will be your downfall as anger rather than complacency becomes the reaction to such inbox fodder.
Not that whether you come or go matters much really; you are but another interchangeable face in the political crowd, as easily forgotten by the public as you are replaced by the establishment.
Now isn’t that a sad and damning critique.


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Marina
Marina
Aug 16, 2018 4:01 PM

So you are a Freemason Sadiq something against your religion, be it on your own head if and when the devil talks and you listen it will be through your own hand shake.

Marina
Marina
Aug 16, 2018 3:58 PM

I agree with letter even his security was given a £20000 luxury converted house in North London when he became Mayor of London who’s money did he use

Paul Smyth
Paul Smyth
Aug 30, 2016 10:42 AM

Reblogged this on The Greater Fool.

Mick McNulty
Mick McNulty
Aug 28, 2016 4:36 PM

There’s a photo of Sadiq Khan being ushered by the rather obnoxious Israeli Ambassador to London, Mark Regev, which says it all really about whose scripts he reads and whose gold he pockets.

Richard Le Sarcophage
Richard Le Sarcophage
Aug 30, 2016 4:57 AM
Reply to  Mick McNulty

Regev was born in Australia, but his loyalties lay elsewhere and he moved to Israel in 1982, about the time that Israel, under Begin and Sharon, were slaughtering 40,000 Lebanese in an aggression (they don’t do that anymore, thanks to Hezbollah)that included 3,000 women, children and old people butchered in Sabra and Shatilla. If Khan has bent the knee to Regev already you can see that he’s a real Blairite and knows exactly where real power resides in the UK.

Quiet Si
Quiet Si
Aug 28, 2016 1:59 PM

Haven’t all JC’s policies been tried before? E. Europe, Russia, Venezuela etc, and all failed? What is the point of voting Lab under JC in a gen election? How does removing inequality work? Does it mean that anyone with a GCSE can be a brain surgeon?

Catte
Catte
Aug 28, 2016 2:42 PM
Reply to  Quiet Si

“Equal to” does not mean “identical with”. That’s simpleminded. How does removing inequality work? Is it hard to imagine? It works as a bare minimum by enacting legislation that limits extremes of wealth and poverty and the abuses of privilege while ensuring public welfare takes priority over, or at least is balanced with, corporate interests.
This was the societal consensus the UK and other European countries between 1945 and the start of the neocon era. Not perfect, not even always good, but at least it upheld a minimum of decency. It was purposefully dismantled by ideologues and greedy opportunists for their own foolish short term gains. If you were alive at all before 1980 you got to see what that world was like, at least in its dying days. It would take some kind of fool to suggest things are better now than they were then.

Citizen Si
Citizen Si
Aug 28, 2016 7:29 PM
Reply to  Catte

Every metric shows ‘things’ are better now in terms of income, health, wealth etc are better now than in 1980. What planet are you on?

Catte
Catte
Aug 28, 2016 8:37 PM
Reply to  Citizen Si

I’m from the planet where real incomes have been declining steadily for the past twenty+ years, where the disparity between rich and poor is greater now than at any time since the early 20th C.
I’m from the planet where welfare systems carefully put in place during the post-war years have been systematically dismantled.
I’m from the planet where 25% of the UK’s children now live below the poverty line.
I’m from the planet where parts of a wealthy western county’s own infrastructure now resemble a war zone or a bankrupt third world state.
I’m from the planet where begging in the streets is now commonplace in those same wealthy nations, when thirty years ago it was almost unknown.
I’m from the planet where elites vote themselves pay rises and award themselves billion dollar tax breaks while working people queue at food banks to keep their kids from starvation.
I’m from the planet where perpetual war feeds the 0.1% and bankrupts and destroys the rest of humanity.
I’m from the planet of debt slavery.
I’m from the real world. Come visit us some time.

Citizen Si
Citizen Si
Aug 28, 2016 9:47 PM
Reply to  Catte

You imagine you are, but really you are not. You have chosen to spout some slogans which are not reflected in reality. What are you going to do? Abolish debt? Abolish relative poverty? How do you define it, only 2 flat screen TVs? I could go on. When you finish with the simplistic idealism of student politics you will find things are different in the real world.

physicsandmathsrevision
physicsandmathsrevision
Aug 28, 2016 10:14 PM
Reply to  Citizen Si

Abolish debt. Great idea but not a new one. A regular occurrence in the Roman Empire… Napoleon did it. Plenty of others I’m guessing. Why think the suggestion ridiculous? Are we that totally enslaved to the Satanic B*stards?

Admin
Admin
Aug 28, 2016 10:35 PM
Reply to  Citizen Si

Poverty is defined by the UK govt as an income less than 60% of the average. Between 20-28% of children are currently defined as living in poverty.

Citizen Si
Citizen Si
Aug 29, 2016 5:11 AM
Reply to  Admin

That is correct, it is relative poverty. That is the problem. If those described as being in that bracket had their income doubled or tripled overnight , there would still be people in relative poverty. It’s the “only one Ferrari? You poor thing, everyone one else has got at least two”, problem.
Quoting stats like that is indicative of a lack of rigorous analysis and sloganeering.

Catte
Catte
Aug 29, 2016 12:58 PM
Reply to  Citizen Si

The “only one Ferrari” problem is your own invented paper meme, so you solve it. It’s a classic bit of diversion developed by neo-liberals to persuade the easily persuaded that social justice is a frivolous and unattainable Utopia. What you aren’t told is that thirty or forty years ago legislation existed in most western democracies, and was broadly approved by both left and right that applied basic controls to the flow of capital, basic controls on the freedom of banks to manipulate money, basic controls on the permitted extremes of wealth and poverty. As Jen says if you want to know how that system worked and would work if employed again just study some recent history.
And try to dial back on the ad hom.

Citizen Si
Citizen Si
Aug 29, 2016 4:46 PM
Reply to  Catte

Argumentum as hominem is a device to question the character or motives of someone instead of debating and refuting their argument. Note I have not done that. My point about the problem with ‘relative’ as opposed to absolute poverty has not been addressed.
What were these popular mechanisms that existed thirty or forty years ago that you refer to that addressed today’s manifestations of inequality? Did they actually exist or are they a secret that dare not be mentioned? Perhaps with the benefit of historical analysis we could all examine their effectiveness. I look forward to a progressive debate.
[note from Admin – this question has been answered; the “popular mechanisms” are easily verifiable; further requests for answers already given are discouraged]

Jen
Jen
Aug 29, 2016 12:43 AM
Reply to  Citizen Si

Quiet Si, Citizen Si … please make up your mind who you are. Or ask your call centre troll supervisor what template you’re supposed to be using here at Off-Guardian.
Also come up with some proper criticisms of Jeremy Corbyn’s policies (if you have read them and know something of the principles they’re based on) instead of trying to bring down Catte with vague banalities and stereotypes and insinuating she knows nothing. Do you know why Catte used the year 1980 as a benchmark?

Citizen Si
Citizen Si
Aug 29, 2016 4:55 AM
Reply to  Jen

Please enlighten me.

Jen
Jen
Aug 29, 2016 5:31 AM
Reply to  Citizen Si

That’s your homework.

Citizen Si
Citizen Si
Aug 29, 2016 6:24 AM
Reply to  Jen

Interesting response. Are we going down the “you don’t know your history” route?

Citizen Si
Citizen Si
Aug 29, 2016 9:39 AM
Reply to  Jen

Launch of Austin Metro.

Richard Le Sarcophage
Richard Le Sarcophage
Aug 30, 2016 5:14 AM
Reply to  Citizen Si

Go on, Si-let the misanthropy and contempt for others ooze out of you. What a pluperfect little Rightwing psychopath you are. Harassed any disability pensioners today, have you? I bet it made you feel BIG.

Chris Owen
Chris Owen
Aug 29, 2016 8:29 AM
Reply to  Quiet Si

“Haven’t all JC’s policies been tried before?” Not sure what policies you’re talking about – sounds a little like daily mail socialism rant! But if you mean railway nationalisation for example – then perhaps this could be in a modern format – with all the benefits of technology. Perhaps nationalisation ‘failed’ in the past because of specific conditions of that time. Actually I think it was a misguided belief in the now failed magic of the market. You need to start thinking a bit deeper yourself rather than trotting out MSM soundbite propaganda.

Citizen Si
Citizen Si
Aug 29, 2016 9:17 AM
Reply to  Chris Owen

Are we against inequality of opportunity or achievement? If we are against wealth inequality that means we are against the opportunity to do well (accumulate wealth, have above average income, etc). How will this work? Maximum wage (£25 per hour, £1000 per week has been suggested with 95% tax above this), but effects would be calamitous eg the NHS would soon lose every doctor. Let’s have some real policy ideas not 1980’s slogans.

Richard Le Sarcophage
Richard Le Sarcophage
Aug 30, 2016 5:17 AM
Reply to  Citizen Si

There is no ‘equality of opportunity’, anywhere in the West. Are you cretinous or a lying, misanthropic, class-hating hypocrite? You seem a true believer in greed and exploitation however, the only paths to ‘wealth’, apart from open crime and inheritance. And your odious slogans are straight from the 1880s, 1780s, 1680s etc.

Citizen Si
Citizen Si
Aug 30, 2016 8:26 AM

As hominem abuse is not an endearing trait more often a sign of other latent problems. Why can’t you counter my specific point about equality?

Richard Le Sarcophage
Richard Le Sarcophage
Aug 30, 2016 4:59 AM
Reply to  Quiet Si

A belief that inequality is good speaks of a psychopathic personality without human compassion or empathy, and there’s a lot of it about. What would Jesus have made of you?

John
John
Aug 30, 2016 8:52 PM
Reply to  Quiet Si

Quiet Si.
Remain quiet!

chrisb
chrisb
Aug 28, 2016 1:43 PM

‘That inability to read the electorate is dangerous.’ Khan got himself elected while holding Corbyn at arm’s length.
‘Jeremy, on the other hand, is a man who is not only of the people, but who is down here in it with us.’ What on £137k a year? With a townhouse in Islington and a place in the country? Corbyn has never been ‘one of the people’, even if his sympathies are genuine.
Corbyn doesn’t have policies. He has intentions. When other Labour politicians have tried to work with him, he hides himself away.

Richard Le Sarcophage
Richard Le Sarcophage
Aug 30, 2016 5:01 AM
Reply to  chrisb

Have you always been a compulsive liar? The anti-Corbynites are the cream of Blairism, with all his character traits.

Chris Owen
Chris Owen
Aug 28, 2016 8:50 AM

Excellent description of how we are all feeling. The revolution is creating space for a new breed of writers. The tired old cheerleaders in the Guardian like Polly Toynbee, Martin Kettle, Jackie Ashley, and Simon Jenkins, sitting in the lazy comfort of an excellent pay packet, are being replaced by new voices who are authentic and understand how the world has changed and echo our feelings of isolation. After reading all this right wing labour stuff – you rage at the newspaper and the tv and the radio – then suddenly you realise that there are hundreds of thousands of people who think like you. I wonder if Owen Jones will come with us.

michaelk
michaelk
Aug 28, 2016 6:45 AM

He is, of course, precisely the kind of ‘professional politician’, as opposed to the ‘amateur’ kind found on the left, someone who is ‘radical’ but ‘electable’, that the Guardian loves, with something cloe to glee, and supports to the hilt.

michaelk
michaelk
Aug 28, 2016 6:42 AM

A burning and righteous critique of a self-serving, professional, politician. A guy who manages to conflate his own towering ambition for personal social and economic advancement, with the apirations ordinary people have for a better and fairer life. That these two things are virtually impossible to achieve at the same time, as, arguably they are mutally exclusive; one can’t be an effective ‘champion’ of the people and strive for great personal advancement, becoming a platinum card carrying member of the ruling elite… at the same time, doesn’t seem to cross his mind for an instant. But could we try not to bring ‘the Jews’ and ‘Freemasionary’ into the debate as well, please?

physicsandmathsrevision
physicsandmathsrevision
Aug 28, 2016 11:08 AM
Reply to  michaelk

Yes. Say everything but the necessary. The oligarchy are highly organised but best not mention how they operate or behind whom they hide. This is the default attitude that amounts to collective suicidalism. It is enforced by intensive and constant media propaganda …
… why is ‘The Holocaust’ and ‘anti-Semitism’ such a dominant feature of western political discourse to this day? … it never occurred to me to ask this question until I became aware of some of the massive lies that are enforced on our minds as public truths (that Muslims did 9/11 and bigger lies than this).
Can it be coincidental that Khan’s FIRST act as Mayor was to visit a ‘Holocaust Memorial’ event in Barnet? I thought HolMemDay was in January ….or that, moments after it was announced that she would be replacing David Cameron, Theresa May signed a committment to remembering the Holocaust or that the night before her anointment as leader she shared dinner with the chief Rabbi?
In these days of fair representation and anti-racism, how does 0.5% of the population pull this kind of influence? Why do we allow them to exercise this power over us … so that we continue sending armies to destroy enemies of Israel? … or are WE really Israel? These wars are of zero use 9or less) to the UK so these are questions we should be asking .. but, strangely, do not.
Corbyn and anyone like him will almost certainly be destroyed by established vested interests. Failure to ask who these people are will ensure their ongoing hegemony.
The biggest lies can not be spoken but realising the inversions of reality that have been inflicted on western minds does, indeed, make one “mad” in the eyes of a brainwashed and functionally insane world.
Corbyn is a decent man who I have seen operating at close quarters when I saw him take an evening out (back in the 90’s) to investigate the lives of psychiatric patients. But on the most serious issues he has drunk the Kool-Aid like most others.

Richard Le Sarcophage
Richard Le Sarcophage
Aug 30, 2016 5:03 AM

Good God, that’s tantamount to antisemitism and Holocaust denial! EVERY day is ‘Holocaust Memorial Day’!

Gurinder
Gurinder
Aug 28, 2016 1:58 AM

Excellent open letter by Megan. Well said and Megan has spoken for millions in the UK and elsewhere by explaining how political self interest is promoted for selfish reasons. I had expected better from Sadiq. So sad.
God bless you Megan.

Mark Catlin
Mark Catlin
Aug 28, 2016 12:48 AM

Reblogged this on Mark Catlin's Blog.

Peter
Peter
Aug 27, 2016 11:43 PM

You get in life what you deserve fact. So you thought you were the clever ones and now Khan as stabbed you in the back. In the north west he would never have been elected as a mayor . In London one of his first rulings take down pictures of a women in a bikini in France he changes his stance to women should wear what they want he is a two faced man.Watch what he does next it will come.

Michael Scott
Michael Scott
Aug 27, 2016 6:07 PM

Jeremy Corbin is so exceptional, so human for a politician, I think they will get him in the long run. It has already started. History shows us than in politics, as elsewhere, simple decency iq not enough. The raising of poltical awareness, migtht, just be enough, so congratulations Megan for your letter. In the world in which we live he is going to need a lot more of the same kind. Of course ordinary people like Corbyn, they have every reason to, and of course they wind up with the Camerons. That is the tragedy of politics. Maybe that can be changed?

mohandeer
mohandeer
Aug 27, 2016 5:01 PM

Reblogged this on Worldtruth and commented:
Sadiq sold Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party members who elected him and his moral conscience down the swanney. He is as contemptible as he is two faced and is the perfect example of the self serving politicos who have held sway for too long.

Lesley
Lesley
Aug 27, 2016 12:46 PM

We won’t forget or forgive.

gideonscokeandyourebroke
gideonscokeandyourebroke
Aug 27, 2016 12:36 PM

Forgive my igonarance but please what is the etiquette in regards to the recipient replying to an open email, or letter? Especially one elected to a public position of power?
Regardless Kahn is likely just another Zionist approved Masonic stooge as pointed out above.
It’s all kabbalah theatre. Plus ca change…

Admin
Admin
Aug 27, 2016 2:07 PM

The usual method would be to request space to reply on the same outlet(s) that published the original.

Seamus Padraig
Seamus Padraig
Aug 27, 2016 6:12 PM

As Soraya Sepahpur-Ulrich says, Sadiq Khan is a “Zio-moz”, a Zionist-approved Moslem.

Richard Le Sarcophage
Richard Le Sarcophage
Aug 30, 2016 5:11 AM
Reply to  Seamus Padraig

A ‘Zio-Moz’, a version of the Sabbat Goyim who infest Western MSM and politics. Like al-Nusra Front, al-Sisi (‘A hero to the Jews’ according to one Israeli Minister)and Dahlan, Arafat’s assassin.

curi56
curi56
Aug 27, 2016 11:52 AM

Reblogged this on Faktensucher.

leruscino
leruscino
Aug 27, 2016 11:33 AM

Well said & wholeheartedly agree with every word even politeness has tempered the message.
I’m praying for another landslide for Jermey & then a hard purge to remove the Bairites so Labour can be healed & return to power to right the wrongs of unabated greed we have seen from the Blue Labour Brigade.

physicsandmathsrevision
physicsandmathsrevision
Aug 27, 2016 11:30 AM

Spotted Kahn’s Masonic handshake in a couple of photos. Masons first loyalties are to their own ruling Brotherhood. The fact the ENTIRE media (faux-leftie LBC’s James O’Brien could not be more poisonous in his attacks on JC) and all the parliamentary majorities are rabidly anti-Corbyn tells you that our real masters, the oligarchy, the deep state … are absolutely determined to sink him. Seeing that Owen Smyth’s policies are all but identical to Corbyn’s it appears to me that the defining issue re Corbin’s acceptability is the fact he treats Hamas and Hezbollah as if they were real human beings with genuine grievances.
INTOLERABLE!
Ordinary Jews are the first victims of the banking oligarchy. Zionism and Israel are chosen instruments in the drive for total global control. The Devil’s creating the wars and chaos hide within Freemasonry and behind Jewish “victimhood”.
Come back Jesus Christ. Say what you said one more time. These enemies of the Jews are “Liars, of Satan.”

labrebisgalloise
labrebisgalloise
Aug 27, 2016 11:19 AM

I was berated by some people a few months ago when I urged a vote for George Galloway against Sadiq Khan in the mayoral election. It has not taken long for my position to be vindicated: in fact the word opportunist could have been coined with Mr. Khan in mind. A very good letter, Megan.