Lead Us Not Into Oblivion
W Stephen Gilbert
The simple response of course is to blame it all on Corbyn. Let’s face it, no more comprehensive bogeyman has ever been offered to the British electorate.
An extreme, hard left, unreconstructed Marxist, surrounded by ruthless Bolsheviks, he was a hater of Britain and of freedom, a friend of terrorists, an anti-Semite and racist, a fanatic dedicated to a state grab and the dismantling of enterprise, a driver-out of decent people, a dissenter from the holy grail of nuclear deterrence who would have left his country defenceless and, for good measure, a teetotal vegan, which rules him out as a reliable person with whom to deal, after the manner of Jagger and Richards’ “he can’t be a man ‘cos he doesn’t smoke/The same cigarettes as me”.
Had he gained office, he would have confiscated all your possessions and slain your first-born. Really, it’s astonishing that Labour got any votes at all.
On the other hand, perhaps this is a simple-minded reading.
The comforting notion that it would have been a very different story if somebody else – Liz Kendall, Owen Smith – had been leading the party and hence that it must all come good with, say, Jess Phillips fronting up at the next election doesn’t stand up to much examination.
After all, it’s relatively unusual for a sitting British government to be voted out of office. It’s only happened twice in the last 40 years.
Before that, despite everything that’s claimed about the volatility of the contemporary electorate, changes of government were more common: three in the 1970s alone. Still, since World War II, only eight governments have lost office, four of each of the two main parties.
As a general rule, it may be considered that opposition parties do not win elections, but rather that governments lose them, because they’re perceived as exhausted or incompetent or corrupt or a combination of these perceptions. That was certainly the case in 1964, 1979, 1997 and 2010, the last three of which are the most recent examples.
Something very striking about the election outcomes of the last 40 years is the identities of the two Tory prime ministers defeated during that passage of time. Both Edward Heath and John Major had largely lost the confidence of the national press. (To a lesser extent, this was also true of Theresa May).
And it can be no coincidence that these two were the most enthusiastic Europeans ever to lead the government of the UK. The national press is heavily in favour of the UK being outside the EU. (May was perceived as lukewarm as well as incompetent on Brexit; it’s been widely suggested that with another week of campaigning in 2017, Corbyn would have gained Downing Street, despite the horror of the establishment and the press).
It would be foolhardy to underestimate the power of the newspapers, even in the era of social media. Though specific outrages perpetrated by individual editors cause a temporary, soon-forgotten stir, it is the daily drip of systematic undermining with any material which comes to hand or which may be invented to suit the case that makes Labour perennially unelectable.
Though the overlapping and never-ending campaigns against Corbyn were – as many of us said they would be when he was first elected leader – the most malicious and mendacious ever visited upon a Labour leader, every manifestation of the party is blackguarded by the Tory press because its proprietors want continuous Conservative government, a one-party state dependent upon an immutable fifth estate.
I can clearly picture a front-page headline on the London Evening Standard during the local elections of 1976, at which a far from radical Labour government was defending its councils. SIX LABOUR LIES screamed the headline. No pretence of reporting news or of presenting objective analysis. The job of the press was to propagandise on behalf of the Conservative party. That’s what it’s always been.
It’s not hard to see why. Newspaper proprietors are billionaires. They avoid tax bills commensurate with those of less wealthy people by arranging their tax affairs abroad. Like other multi-national speculators, they spurn governments that wish to bring them into conventional tax brackets and to regulate the conduct of their businesses.
For those reasons, proprietors are opposed to what they see as the over-mighty European Union. A Britain outside the EU is far preferable to one within. The larger that governmental agencies grow, the more power they accrue. Proprietors want weak and compliant administrations. Therefore they certainly don’t want lefty leaders who talk about duty (in every sense), tax, equitability and the redistribution of wealth.
The only Labour leader elected by the public to the office of prime minister in the last 45 years was Tony Blair. As will be recalled, his opponent was the aforesaid John Major, than whom Blair cannily if not candidly positioned himself slightly less Europhile.
More significantly, Blair made it clear to the proprietors whom he cultivated that he would continue the Thatcherite programme (in particular the selling off of public enterprise to the private sector), making an earnest of his intent by rebranding the party as New Labour, by eschewing the word Socialism and by the momentous symbolism of scrapping Clause IV.
Should you consider this to be a calumny against Blair, reflect that he was a guest at Rupert Murdoch’s marriage to Wendi Deng (with whom Murdoch later suspected Blair of more than a tendresse) and is godfather to one of the couple’s daughters. Neither Major nor any of his successors got this close to Murdoch or any other proprietor, though David Cameron tried very hard.
The reach of the so-called popular press should never be underestimated. Those millions of people who are bored to tears by politics may skim past the disobliging headlines about successive Labour leaders, yet gradually gather a vague but enduring impression of unsuitability. The details don’t signify, any more than the accuracy or credibility.
Do any of the candidates to succeed Corbyn fondly imagine that the Mail and the Telegraph will give them a fair hearing, let alone be kind to them? Consider the apparent frontrunner, Keir Starmer.
People in the Labour movement, never mind the antagonistic media, ask with some astonishment whether the “lesson” of Labour’s 2019 defeat can really be that the party needs to be led by a middle class remainer from a North London constituency such as him or Emily Thornberry. Is this the obvious way to win back the so-called Labour red wall or commend Labour to the Europhobic press?
Oh, Starmer’s apologists protest, but he had working class parents. Tell that to the working class, not many of whom find themselves a job which brings with it an automatic knighthood – Starmer’s downplaying of his title will only encourage the press to use it all the more. Indeed, Sir Keir’s record as Director of Public Prosecutions will furnish plenty of old stories to be dug up and spun to his disadvantage.
And what about the argument that Labour was too extreme, that it urgently needs a so-called moderate public face like Starmer or Thornberry or Phillips, more like that of Blair? The myth of Blair’s omnipotence needs to be set against the years of uncertainty about its role that the Tory party worked through after Major stepped down.
Despite the opposition’s inability quickly to regain the trust of the press and the establishment, Blair’s support seriously declined, particularly after the invasion of Iraq.
By the election of 2005, Labour had lost 4 million voters and 63 members of parliament, and party membership was at an all-time low (under Corbyn, it became the biggest political party in Europe). Moreover, the gradual collapse of Labour’s support in Scotland began during Blair’s premiership.
It has not been widely noticed that the supposed centre ground was decimated in the 2019 election. Twelve MPs standing again had defected or been expelled from either the Labour or the Conservative parties, whether over Brexit or because of the extreme turn they all claimed had been taken by the former party. None was returned to parliament.
Moreover, scant progress was made by those parties which offered staying in the EU as a major policy. Indeed, the LibDems suffered a net loss of one seat.
They regained Richmond Park from the Tory Zac Goldsmith (who kept his ministerial post, however, because Boris Johnson promptly gave him a peerage); this was the only evidence of London’s vaunted support for rescinding Article 50.
But two LibDem losses were deeply resonant: that of their leader Jo Swinson, who was the architect of the party’s categorical stance on the EU, and that of Tom Brake, the party’s spokesperson on the EU.
As the candidate of the Labour right-wing (look at her voting record), Jess Phillips would certainly divide the party and very likely destroy it if she were elected.
Once named among the ten most abusive MPs in an analysis of tweets and posts, she has been a serial decrier of the current party leadership and hence would have no credibility when trying to face down a backlash of her own. For anyone wishing a recognisable Labour party to be elected to government, her candidacy will be discounted.
Lisa Nandy is the dark horse in the race. Daughter of the highly respected Marxist academic Dipak Nandy and granddaughter of the fondly remembered Liberal politician Frank Byers (her women ancestors seem not to have been so much in the public eye), she would be the first British party leader of mixed heritage, as well as the first woman leader of Labour.
Few party members will agree with all of her stances and actions (she joined in the mass shadow cabinet resignation of 2016 and she co-chaired Owen Smith’s challenge for the leadership), but she can evidently justify her decisions with vigour and she acquitted herself with total aplomb in her Andrew Neil interview, unfazed by his characteristic hounding.
However, she will have sounded some alarm bells with her categorical “yes” to the question whether she would accept the findings of the Equality and Human Rights Commission investigation into allegations of anti-Semitism in Labour, whatever they might be. It’s a foolish undertaking to agree to sign a document you’ve not seen. Suppose the EHRC proposed that the Labour party should be disbanded?
Rebecca Long-Bailey is widely seen as the Corbyn continuity candidate and has the formal backing of Momentum. On two issues, however, she has given some of her natural supporters pause. On the question of Trident, she told the Today programme: “if you have a deterrent you have to be prepared to use it”.
Though she attempted to ameliorate this significant departure from the stance of her mentor, talking of assessing the situation and addressing the consequences, the fact of her attested preparedness raises questions about her sincerity.
The establishment and its propaganda wing, the media, equates the deterrent with equally treacherously vague concepts like patriotism, strength and determination. Women candidates for high office may well perceive that they need to compensate for a prejudice in favour of men on such issues.
But a professed willingness to consider unleashing nuclear warheads is nothing to do with hard-nosed qualities. It is more a test of thoughtfulness in a politician. Given that the question is anyway hypothetical, has Long-Bailey considered the various hypotheses? What would be an acceptable level of casualties caused by a British nuclear strike: 100,000? 10 million? 100 million?
How many other nations would it be permissible to damage in the process of obliterating the chosen enemy, given that radiation and environmental blowback are no respecters of national borders?
How much collateral damage in neighbouring countries – say, such nations friendly to the UK as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan – would London be able to justify in a nuclear strike on Tehran and other Iranian targets?
You can bet your life that Boris Johnson has never contemplated what it would mean to “press the button” in actual practice, and you can imagine the bluster of his replies in the never-to-be-enacted circumstance of an interviewer challenging him to do so. Any Labour leader needs to be more credible than Johnson in the imagined supplementary questions to the long-hop delivery of “would you press the button?”
Depressingly, Long-Bailey also demonstrated how far the party has been destabilised by the campaign over anti-Semitism, and this was a view she volunteered, unlike Nandy’s, which was in answer to Andrew Neil’s question.
Long-Bailey wrote on her blog:
My advice to Labour Party members is that it is never OK to respond to allegations of racism by being defensive … The only acceptable response to any accusation of racist prejudice is self-scrutiny, self-criticism and self-improvement”.
This argument leaves out of account the possibility of a false, a vexatious or an unjust accusation. It replicates the Tom Watson position that anyone in the party accused of anti-Semitism should be considered guilty until proved innocent, a philosophy utterly alien to Britain’s age-old justice system.
She defined anti-Semites as “people holding negative and stereotypical ideas about Jews”, but she also wrote that “the party is right to be excluding any prominent members who tour the country and the TV studios denying and diminishing the problem of anti-Semitism”, which one can certainly do without in any way uttering negative and stereotypical ideas about Jews.
Anti-Semitism is a subject of a quite different nature to that of Jewishness, but it has been elevated into a kind of taboo. And she went on: “Labour party members who do feel strongly about Palestinian rights must also understand why Jewish people in Britain today, for whom the Holocaust is a recent memory, see the existence of a Jewish state as a source of hope and security”.
These two stances are not mutually exclusive. Supporting Palestinian rights does not preclude supporting the continued sovereignty of Israel. As the long-form IHRA definition states: “criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic”.
So, for instance, Saudi Arabia is criticised for its actions against Yemen in much the same way that Israel is criticised for its actions against Palestine.
Long-Bailey declared that she would work with the Jewish Labour Movement, but she made no mention of Jewish Voice for Labour, which has a very different take on the issues from JLM.
Rather than make common cause with a Jewish grouping within the party, all the candidates for leader and deputy leader have now signed up to support ten so-called pledges demanded of them by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. These include undertakings to empower “Jewish representative bodies” (by which is meant, of course, the Board itself) within the internal workings of the party:
Key affected parties to complaints, including Jewish representative bodies, should be given the right to regular, detailed case updates, on the understanding of confidentiality … Labour must engage with the Jewish community via its main representative groups, and not through fringe organisations and individuals”.
The candidates are all being extraordinarily naïve in yielding to an outside body such executive power, particularly as the Board of Deputies is an attested supporter of the Conservative party.
Its president, Marie van der Zyl, wished Johnson “every success as Prime Minister … we have had a long and positive relationship with Mr Johnson … and we look forward to this continuing”. The price of such a warm welcome is too high for a Labour leader if it means that Labour is to be formally answerable to unelected interests and lobbies which are committed to its rivals.
These concerns leave a considerable question mark over all the leadership candidates. It is bad enough that the task for Labour is historically difficult and may well depend entirely on Boris Johnson losing the support of the media – which, compared with most Tory PMs, he is perfectly capable of doing by himself.
After all, he’s been universally characterised as a compulsive liar and, while that was insufficient to prevent him being elected Tory leader and confirmed as prime minister, there are other character flaws that could dent his credibility more deeply.
Corbyn’s Achilles heel was his very decency and honourability. With no personal ambition, vanity or self-importance and despite the strength of his convictions, he was so wedded to democratic values that he tried to bind all shades of opinion into his party’s outlook.
He was defeated from within by the irreconcilables whose enjoyment of privilege and dependence on the tenets of social democracy would brook no compromise with more far-reaching proposals.
He flinched from excluding any elements – it’s impossible to imagine the leader of another party or another leader of this one absorbing such an in-the-face personal attack as “you are a fucking anti-Semite and a racist” without any retaliation, verbal or disciplinary.
Boris Johnson has demonstrated that ridding his party of those who disagree with him is not electorally damaging. Perhaps Labour is ready for a greater degree of internal discipline, rendering attacks on the leadership capital offences.
But how can a Labour leader neutralise the inevitable hostility of the media, without draining the Labour party of the greater part of the causes for which it was founded? I suggest that another page from the Johnson playbook be torn. Fight dirty. There’s no value in being a high-minded also-ran.
The next Labour leader should set up two energetic and determined units – an immediate rebuttal team that counters every untrue, unfair or in any other wise damaging story or criticism or report from whatever source and ensures that such rebuttal is disseminated wider than the original misinformation; and, longer term, a smear team.
This latter should be a group of old-fashioned investigative reporters, yellow journalists of the kind who work in Tory Central Office, and who would be tasked to accumulate as much background information as possible about the frontbenchers of other parties and, more importantly, about newspaper proprietors, print and broadcast editors, political correspondents and reporters, interviewers, columnists and pundits.
That such an exercise had been conducted should then be revealed publicly and frankly, putting all the media and political rivals on notice that any dirty trick played on Labour would be promptly countered by a reciprocal revelation of a highly damaging kind.
Whoever becomes Corbyn’s successor, the party needs to look outwards and be ruthless about it. That would be a refreshing novelty and might even commend it to significant numbers of electors.
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Thought provoking article all the more so for it’s closing exhortation to courage.
So you are a neo-liberal Peter, then.
To see whether Austrian economics works we just have to look out of the windows, where, according to Oxfam today, the gap between rich and poor has reached catastrophic levels., with the world’s top 1% owning twice as much wealth as the poorest 90%.
The problem with liberalism, in its first version, is that those elegant arguments demonstrating that we all benefit from ruthless competition in which a few make enormous incomes and most people grow steadily poorer soon become totally unconvincing.
Look what happened to John Stuart Mill the ideologue of liberal Political Economy and Utilitarianism-he ended up as a socialist MP. Or look at Chadwick, the first Secretary of the Poor Law Board and the architect of the 1834 Poor Law: after seeing what happened in a society in which the great majority, deprived of any claim on property, either work, if they can find it, or starve. And realising that high mortality rates and slums breeding epidemic disease did not contribute to the happiness of the greatest number- he became a Sanitation Reformer and turned his manic energies towards improving education, eradicating slums and reducing poverty.
That is why we have neo-liberalism, because the first iteration of Liberalism and laissez faire became insupportable- a recipe for national suicide. The Liberals either became conservatives and supporters of government intervention to preserve families and ensure the minimal health and fitness of a population liable to conscription, or socialist reformers.
“We are all socialists now”said Lord Harcourt, the Liberal Chancellor- a remark echoed by Edward VII- and, so, in the sense of having rejected the doctrines of Malthus and James Mill and been alarmed by the degeneration of the population revealed by the Boer War and the numerous social studies of the late Victorian era, they all were.
In fact- and this is another story- much of the endemic trouble the Labour Party has with its doctrine and its policy stems from the fact that most of the ‘socialists’ who founded it were hardly socialists at all, merely reformed Liberals or Imperialists with a soft spot for their ‘own race.’ The Socialists, outnumbered and intimidated by the descendants of such famous Liberals as the Potters, Wedgwoods and the Stephens, had an almost imperceptible impact on the practical politics of the party in Parliament. Corbyn was not the most recent in a long line of socialist leaders of the Party, he is almost unique in that he was even close to being one.
And, as we will discover next year when the books, from the insiders, come out he had almost no power to make decisions. The most common complaint, hereabouts, against Corbyn’s ‘leadership’ is that he did nothing to refute the slanders of anti-semitism (it’s a complaint that I have made) but the likelihood is that he was not allowed to. If he had made a robust defence-and he should have- most of the Shadow Cabinet would have resigned. By the same token had he insisted on sticking to the 2017 pledge to honour the Brexit vote-and he should have- even his closest ‘allies’, the ones left after the expulsions, such as Diane Abbott and John McDonnell, would have/did vote against him.
Corbyn was the example in the Political Larousse to illustrate Engels’ remark that
“The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the movement is not yet ripe.”
There were people on this site who were claiming in December, before the election, that the Deep State backed Corbyn, in the sense that he was ‘their man.’ That was nonsense but it is certainly true that had the Deep State (aka Establishment) the brains to have realised it they would have done their best to put Corbyn into the leadership of the Labour Party so that it, the only power that could, would destroy him. And itself.
But the reality is this: the choice between socialism and barbarism, between a society of social and economic equals and long periods of tyranny, characterised by the intellectual and cultural impoverishment that authoritarian government and constant class struggle invariably produce, followed by outbursts of vicious civil war has never been so live. And the choice of socialism has never been more obvious
Thatcher, buoyed by the success of Austrian economics in Chile under the military dictatorship, set out to eradicate every trace of what she might have called ‘marxism’ in the form of social services, health and educational guarantees, utilities and transportation produced and sold at cost and the self defence institutions of the working class-from Unions and Co-ops to the public commitment to provide employment and housing for all. And the result is a society falling to pieces, social disintegration of the sort not seen since the 1890s when the first iteration of liberalism and “freedom through work” collapsed and the Liberal Party, after unconvincing efforts to change its utilitarian spots, split into fragments.
Austrian economics-as a glance at Austria’s history confirms- can only lead to deepening class conflict ending in fascism. That is what setting the rights of property, dominated by a tiny minority, against the claims of humanity as a whole, must lead to: if not socialism than the victory of the few over the many, a victory that can only be consolidated by permanent terror.
So what is this shit called? “Better late than never”? Not in my book. In my book it’s called “Useless fucking chatterati Leninist arseholes.” Talking about arseholes, what was it Homer Simpson said? “Please, Mr Burns, let me keep my job and I’ll lick your butt and call it ice cream.” Yeah, right.
I don’t think there is anyone in the current crop of aspirants for the leadership of the Labour party that has the vision and courage to recognise that the concept of ‘labour’ is long gone – the world has moved on.
In this regard, IMHO, the party needs to re-invent itself for the 21st century political economy and re-brand with a name and philosophy which forsakes the dinosaurs of the last century. It will take time and positive energy to leave the last rump of Marxists to wallow in their pugnacious swamp of yesteryear, masquerading as a socialism, suitable only for the past glories of heavy industry.
The world today requires an advanced understanding of the technological economic forces at play which will determine our collective future which is eminently described by Tony Seba – Nota Bene:
http://worldoutofwhack.com/2020/01/03/tony-seba-clean-disruption/
The party might begin by understanding the Harrogate Agenda: http://harrogateagenda.org.uk/
I suppose that by writing off “Marxists” (whoever they may be) with such contempt you are attempting to convince us that you have refuted Marx’s arguments.
It would be nice to see some evidence of this, in the meantime if the question is whether I’m going to accept your ideas on putting an end to the capitalist system or Marx’s, I’ll stick with the old devil I know.
Thank you for your rejoinder, bevin, and I would not presume to write off Marx’s arguments for I believe they might well have been valid for their time. My point was that they are inappropriate for our 21st century economic models. Not that I am condoning the Keynesian methodology which our esteemed economists seem to promulgate for this too is flawed IMO.
I am supportive of the Austrian school of economic thought, you know, Mises et al as an alternative economic method more suited to our present era. “To the Left, all economics divorced from Keynes or Marx is dangerously right-wing and protective of established capital.”
https://mises.org/wire/austrian-frame-mind?utm_source=Mises+Institute+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=a73ee4abfc-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_12_31_06_15_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b52b2e1c0-a73ee4abfc-228270721
I think that would make a great epitaph for your urn, mounted over a dashboard in front of an Uber driver. Sort of a heads up display. Or in the cab of a gigtime “self-employed” courier paying off his own van. Or on your coffin, screwed into a memorial rack in an Amazon warehouse. Or under a components trolley in an Apple supply chain factory in Shenzen. Or in the night stackers’ canteen in your local supermarket. Or in a display case at a 4am bus stop in Spain where the fruit pickers and vegetable cutters wait for their daily ride to the fields. Lots of places your world view could bring a little joy and recognition to the common tomorrow’s man.
To that diminishing number of people who remain emotionally invested in the Labour Party, I would just ask if they really believe it will actually represent their interests.
Each of the runners and riders in the Great Labour Donkey Derby has now signed up to the Ten Commandments brought down from Mount Sinai by the Chief Rabbi.
And like Thornberry, all the other candidates have been “on their hands and knees, begging for forgiveness” in the Times Of Israel and the rest of the Zionist press. That newspaper openly called for the extermination of the Palestinians, incidentally, “When Genocide Is Permissible.” But what’s a little thing like genocide between friends?
Long-Bailey demanded the unqualified support of all for expulsions from the party. Phillips has helpfully explained how any criticism of Israel, or pro-Israeli groups, is anti semitic. Hence Rachel Cousins is anti semitic for criticising Israel. Nandy was saying how much she admired Madrid’s handling of Catalan separatism. SNP to note.
But Phillips is currently a 50-1 outsider in the Donkey Derby. Thornberry isn’t doing much better. Starmer is likely to inherit Jezza’s somewhat tarnished crown, despite all the assertions that “it has to be one of the wimmin.” An uninspiring ex-CPS career bureaucrat. Just what Labour needs. A good, safe pair of hands, neoliberal, pro austerity warmonger Friend of Israel.
As yet, even here, few people generally, and even fewer in the MSM, seem to have examined the Chief Rabbi’s Ten Commandments in detail and seen how arrogant, ludicrous and unworkable they actually are. All five pathetic candidates have caved in to these demands without a word of protest. This could well prove to be a ticking time bomb for Labour and UK politics in general, ushering in a new dystopia.
– People like Jackie Walker, who queried the definition of anti Semitism and wanted to talk about Slavery, must NEVER be readmitted to the party. No matter how much they may grovel and apologise.
– Anyone who associates with anybody who has been suspended or expelled, like Jackie or Chris Williamson, must also be INSTANTLY expelled.
– NO DEBATE, and NO RESERVATIONS WHATEVER are permitted. The edicts of the Board Of Deputies must be accepted without question. Van Zyl at the BOD has already pilloried Richard Burgeon for his failure to sign up.
– Henceforth, Labour may only deal with “Approved Jews,” the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Labour Movement. The pro Corbyn Jewish Voice For Labour is a “fringe group.” Labour may not engage with JVL from now on. The JLM refused to campaign for Labour in the last election.
Interestingly, you don’t have to be Jewish to be in the approved JLM. You do have to be Jewish to be in the banned JVL. The JLM seemed to appear out of nowhere after Corbyn did surprisingly well in the 2017 election. The BOD and the Deep State seemed both enraged and terrified at the prospect of Jezza getting the keys to 10 Downing Street, and the smear machine went into overdrive. They just wouldn’t tolerate his support for a Palestinian state and ban on arms sales to Israel.
The effect of this will be a complete purge of the Left from the party, and certainly any pro Palestinian sentiment. There is no scope at all permitted for reservations on human rights grounds. So if you say a word out of line about Gaza, the West Bank, the torture of child prisoners, or the ICC, which has begun an investigation into Israeli war crimes, then you are OUT. If you question the fictitious Two State Solution (which Netanyahu and all Israeli politicians have now officially rejected), you are also OUT.
Only dyed in the wool pro Likud Zionists will be allowed anywhere near power. Expect another large purge in the near future. There is no room for any Leftist in the party. Pro Palestinian motions and a call for an arms embargo on Israel were passed at the last Labour Conference.
Labour has won 3 elections in the past 45 years, all under Blair. This is a recipe for a Conservative stranglehold on power far into the foreseeable future.
The policies and membership of the Labour Party will now be dictated by a tiny religious minority of around 300,000 people. Or rather, by self appointed “leaders” of that religious minority. How many people the Chief Rabbi can be said to speak for is open to question. If the Archbishop of Canterbury claimed to politically represent all nominally Christian people, that would probably be challenged. Some Jews are atheists.
Some are infants who are too young to care. Some Jews probably have no interest either in religion or politics. Many Jews, including the Chief Rabbi, support the Tories. The people in the Jewish Voice For Labour do not agree with the Good Rabbi or the BOD.
So control of Labour has been surrendered to a handful of self appointed Jewish Zionist leaders closely linked to Likud and closely linked to the Tories, who have a very tenuous claim to represent SOME Jews.
What an inspiring example of democracy in action.
An electronic blogger posted that opinion piece electronically and The Times of Israel of Isrrael took it offline as soon as one of the editors saw it. That does not exonerate The Times of Israel or a large proportion of (a) its voters and (b) the Israeli electorate from privately wishing a speedy extermination on the Palestinian people, but nor does it exonerate you, by publishing such attributory and explanatory omission, from precisely the same sort of rabble rousing platformwise around.
Wrong. This was a centre page EDITORIAL. It may have been memory holed later because even the most genocidal Zionists saw the potential for embarrassment, but that changes nothing.
It’s not me who’s omitting things.
Rollup! Roll up!! Get your tickets for the big Donkey Derby!!!
Who are the Board of Deputies going to appoint to lead Labour into oblivion?
Does it matter??
Does anybody care???
A few self appointed leaders of a small religious minority will now dictate the policies and membership of the Labour party. A sure fired recipe for success.
Maybe the Tories should set themselves up as the political wing of the Moonies or the Hare Krishnas.
Over the past few days, a number of non violent groups have been designated as “extremist” by the counter terrorism police and placed on the Terrorism Watch List.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
CND.
Stop The War Coalition.
Campaign Against The Arms Trade.
All these organisations will now be “monitored” and presume\bly infiltrated.
Welcome to the UK Stasi State.
Anyone who “associates” with Hezbollah will also now be subjected to things like asset seizures. Previous UK governments saw some value in keeping open a line of communication to Hezbollah politicians, which has mass support in Lebanon and is part of the government.
But hey, have to keep the Zionist Lobby happy.
I fully agree with the second part of this analysis and the conclusion but have problems with the first part.
It is. The attack was much more refined than this. Remember that Corbyn improved Labour’s ratings in the elections of 2017 to everyone’s astonishment. Therefore, the attacks previously launched against him had to be refined and extended. On the AS front a very public figure, apparently neutral and well respected had to make a loud and very public statement. On other fronts, Labour’s stance on Brexit which had changed between 2017 and 2019 was used to discredit every other Labour policy in the otherwise very popular manifesto.
Short memory: soon after the election there was constant bleating by politicians and other commentators that the establishment and large parts of the press were so in favour of remain that they wanted to ‘thwart the democratic will of the people’. It is really not so simple. I think that the momentum towards getting ‘Brexit done’ was because of the paralysis in Westminster and Parliament which held up any other actions. Even when there was a chance in replacing Johnson with a temporary government of national unity under the stewardship of Corbyn, Swinson in her arrogance insisted on not supporting this action and it was therefore less likely to be supported by the rebels who joined her party who effectively dictated her policies.
As someone quite rightly noted, even the press with reduced circulation, hold great sway with the electorate through being amplified by the BBC and other channels. This is through the high profile ‘reviews’ of the press, such as in the Andrew Marr show, where the editors of the papers have a full exposure. They often also have their own slots in some of the programs in Radio 4.
I am not sure that the fact that Blair may have presented himself as less Europhile, a statement that is in fact difficult to prove or to quantitate, was a major reason why Blair was elected. This is a simple case of twisting the fact to suit the hypothesis.
That’s more like it.
So according to the author, it is more likely that the red wall will continue to vote for a Tory Eton privileged class Toff than for a middle class person from a London Constituency? Is Johnson not also from a London constituency? And does being a Europhile now make you so toxic that you should avoid politics altogether? What about the 48%? Do they become non-people?
Without looking at the totality of the corrupt system of honours, it is not constructive to pick points like this.
This requires a more nuanced critique. Lib Dem loss which also led to an even more catastrophic loss for Labour was probably due to two main factors, Lib Dem have still not removed the treachery of the coalition government which led to the sell out that damaged the party, and secondly to Swinson’s arrogance in both claiming she will be the next prime minister and also her constant vilification of Corbyn, more so than of Johnson. She was singlehandedly the greatest disaster in this election and got her rewards by losing her seat.
The question of ‘pressing the button’ is a trick question that the press and right wing like to use as a test of patriotism. In fact it really should be a test for insanity. In any case the correct answer to this question is much more complicated. A British PM will never be the sole person to decide as to whether to press the button. As a member of NATO it must be the case that this action has ramifications that mean that they would have to consult, if not with the US, but also with NATO whether this action is warranted. It should also be pointed out that without renegotiation of many treaties, this is an extremely theoretical question. I think that if I was PM and a pacifist, my answer would be that I would first examine our obligations under the treaties we have and renegotiate these before considering this question. I would also say that I would work towards a foreign policy that would make it less likely that UK is faced with this decision. I think that any other answer is pure fantasy. The other does also address some of this in the following paragraph.
Who was that ‘..very public figure, apparently, neutral and well-respected..’?
Tongue in cheek.
The apparently also applies to the ‘well respected’.
The Labour party as far as I’m concerned is finished, why would they be taking orders from an unelected group ,unless they really believe this nonsense about antisemitism, who the hell do these people think they are, that’s my lot with the Labour party they don’t deserve support after that signing up to that crap.
The tragic part of all this is that Corbyn could easily have faced down all the lies of the Zionist Smear Campaign. And with considerable dignity.
All he had to do was give a short speech of about 10 minutes duration, detailing his close relationship with Jewish Left organisations and individuals over the past 40 years. And repeat this with each new smear vomited out by the Board of Deputies, the Mossad Office, Berger, Ellman, Smee, Ryan, Mann, Austin, and the rest of that human sewage.
At the same time, he could have deputised a figure like Chris Williamson or Ken Livingstone or any number of others to go on the offensive on his behalf. An attack dog like Blair’s Campbell. To repay the Zionist and MSM smear merchants in their own coin, getting down and dirty right down in the gutter with them till they backed off. In effect saying to the Zionist smear merchants, if you keep stop telling lies about us, we’ll stop telling the truth about you. Because you can never appease these people. No amount of grovelling to them is ever enough. Give them an inch and they take a mile.
A public campaign to acquaint the people with the Haavara Agreement and Zionism’s collaboration with its German cousin, Nazism, would have helped. In the end, because of his cowardice, Corbyn has proved a CATASTROPHIC figure, for Labour, for the UK, for its people and for UK Jews.
Indeed, so WHY didn’t he?
This site is totally knackered again.
There were plenty of newspapers supporting Corbyn, and condemning Johnson. The Independent, the Guardian, the Mirror.
The UK media doesn’t fawn over politicians, the way China Daily, or Russia Today does. It recognises that they are all narcissists who indulge in half truths…
Voting in an election is an exercise in deciding who is the least mendacious.
Almost every “local” paper is syndicated and owned by right supporting corporations. For instance, Gannett is an American company that owns a large tranche of Britain’s local newspapers. Gannett owns 100 daily newspapers, and nearly 1,000 weekly newspapers. These operations are in 43 U.S. states and six countries.
Reach Plc, the owner of the daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and 240 local newspapers does not support the left. The Mirror supports Labour centrists and it’s support of Corbyn was highly conditional and critical. The Guardian is a Liberal newspaper with a centrist Labour following, it’s contents mirror that, no one but you would call more than two or three Guardian contributors left of centre (the centre being very much in the right). The Independent is on online newspaper that is also centrist. All media is supportive of continued neoliberalism, it just depends on how much.
It doesn’t matter what reservations they expressed over Corbyn’s leadership, in what was a binary contest, they supported him over Johnson.
Ultimately, labour chose the wrong leader. One as divisive on his own way as Jacob Rees Mogg would have been, if he’d ever achieved leadership of the Tory party. Somehow, they avoid mistakes like that.
You mean that they should have chosen a Blairite.
But why? In order to get the support of the Capitalist media.
A support that they could only keep by pursuing policies of an imperialist and anti-working class nature. Just as the Blair government did- privatising the Bank of England, dismantling the Health Service, renewing the contracts of the Railway contractors, entering into PP Partnerships for the benefit of usurers and to the enormous detriment of the taxpayers…the list is as long as the 13 years that Blair and Brown spent disgracing themselves and undermining the Party they claimed to be serving. Or did you think that the erosion of Labour’s vote in 2005 and 2010 was the fault of Corbyn and the Left?
Look at Scotland dominated by Blairites all the way to the grave.
There is nothing new about the current Labour leadership contest. And nothing accidental about the course that it is set upon- it is aimed at performing Blair’s final service to neo-liberalism and wiping out the party the way that the National Labour and Social Democratic Parties were wiped out when they abandoned the commitment to socialism which was the raison d’etre of all these political formations.
In Europe it is much the same for local newspaper ownership. All this was allowed by national governments, no doubt under “advice” from Langley in the end.
I would call their line neither “right” or “left” though: it is pure Establishment – of the Anglo Arab oil dollar protection racket variety. So Islam is above comment let alone criticism, not very real Left.
Get off your hobbyhorse. I am critical of the gulf states all the time.
The only Moslems who are above comment are the fake Moslems in Shady Wahabia, who have been in bed with the fake Jew Khazars in occupied Palestine for decades.
If you follow the lineage of the Wahhabists and the Saud Mafia ‘family’, both trace back to progenitures who were doenmeh, or crypto-Jewish followers of the failed Messiah Sabbatai Zevi, who ‘converted’ to Islam in the 17th century. It’s no wonder that Sordid family members sometimes refer to the Israelis as ‘cousins’.
Your psychopathic delusion, if it is not just straight hasbara lying, that the Evil Arabs control Western discourse, rather that the Judeofascist and Zionist elite, is both ludicrous and nauseating at once, in its outrageous hypocrisy and cynical mendacity.
Just straight projection.
Not quite all media. The Morning Star was the only one that supported Corbyn.
Cunning stunt is a true follower of A.H, and his ‘Big Lie’ theory.
The US media is owned by half a dozen Zionist billionaires. The UK/ Canada/ France/ Germany/ Australia are no better.
And what an indictment that is! You can have shit or shit or shit – but this shit here is slightly less shitty than that shit there. So ….which part of your body do you want mutilated? Who is going to kill you most painlessly?
So, where did Corbyn lie? Cowardice, certainly, but mendacity?
He lied in campaigning for ‘remain’ when clearly he believes we should be out of the EU .
Because he was duped by the Blairites.
You must be watching some mysterious private media nobody else has ever heard of.
If this article by Neil,Clark is correct- and it almost certainly is- the candidates have all ruled themselves out of serious contention. And the Party, if it elects one of them, will have consigned itself to political oblivion with such efficiency that it might reach that goal before PASOK or the French Socialist Party does. It will certainly be racing the Italian Democratic (former Communist) party to be the oldest and biggest suicide of the new decade.
Clark writes:
“….Pledge 2 states “Make the Party’s disciplinary process independent.” The Board of Deputies wants an “independent provider” to process anti-Semitism complaints.
“How many political parties would agree to outsiders – perhaps outsiders with an antipathy towards their own party- taking over their disciplinary procedures?
“But the Labour leadership candidates did! Pledge 3 says that “Jewish representative bodies” should be given the right to regular case updates. But wouldn’t this breach data protection legislation? Again, the Labour leadership candidates have no such concern. Pledge 4 is quite vindictive and says that “prominent offenders” who had left or been expelled from the party should never- I repeat never- be readmitted.
“But what if they were innocent? Or if they did say something deemed anti-Semitic once, but later said sorry? Should people forever be made outcasts for one tweet/statement made years ago? Why, unlike other offences, where redemption is allowed, should “anti-Semitism” be considered “one strike and you’re out for eternity?……”
https://sputniknews.com/columnists/202001171078061979-by-supporting-more-witch-hunting-labour-leadership-candidates-all-fall-at-the-very-first-fence/
By ‘independent provider’ they mean the Chief Rabbi, or Chabad or Nick Cohen.
The statement from the Board of Deputies of British Jews:
“The Jewish Community”? Which community is that? One unified community? And one that was “wounded” by Labour? Who is it that speaks for all Jews in this way? Would it be that glum room of haunted faces paraded by the BBC on the night of the contrived Mirvis attack? Are these the concerned and, above all, wounded souls glancing around in fear of impending barbed wire enclosures and ebon pumping chimneys? As the BBC put it, “the poison in our society”, “the precipice we face”.
Under Stalin (so the story goes anyway) artists, poets and composers always started to shit themselves when accused of “formalism”. This was the code that said “bye bye”. In our new totalitarian state, “anti-Semitism” is the new kiss of death.
And don’t forget anti-Zionism or pro-Palestinianism ie ‘pro-terrorwist’.
In the light of the Corbyn fiasco, I suggest a new definition:
“Democracy”: A branch of showbusiness in which stand up comics indulge in mock jousting over illusory issues, excellence consisting of the most convincing veneer of gravitas that can be attained by the jouster. Every few years the public get to vote on which comic formation displays the highest level of verisimilitude. On no account should this phantasmal arena be permitted to infringe on the true management of a society.
It’s like American “politics” where they pretend you have a choice between tweedle dee (Repugnantons) and tweedle dum (demonicrats) and the voter inevitably gets screwed.
The only good thing to come out of this shit, is you no longer have to strive to argue how good the Labour party is, it’s well and truly f****d
Let’s look at some facts instead, as some of the commentators on this site are trying to do, of spinning yarns. In the GE 2010 New Labour had 29% of the vote and had about 250,000 members. It was self evident that the “ project “ had failed hence the dropping of the New part. However, 13 years of betrayal by Blair, Brown, Mandelson and the majority of the PLP had not been forgotten either in Scotland or in many former rock solid Labour seats. After 18 years of Thatcherite Neo Liberal policies to have their hopes betrayed by these so called Labour politicians was ingrained in their memories.
Hope came in the form of Jeremy Corbyn who was elected by the overwhelmingly majority of Labour members despite the mendacious actions of the PLP plus the levers of power within the party. Nevertheless, the PLP, who in their actions, were more aligned to the Tories than the democratic socialist Labour Party had allies in the establishment so a pincer strategy was developed hence the fabricated AS nonsense. As Blair said “ he would rather Labour lost than win on a platform of socialism” or Mandelson’s statement of working every day to undermine the party. They acted in concert with the establishment to thwart the Democratic Socialist Labour Party at every turn.
The question is why, well many had nice pensions, nice salaries but more importantly the prospect of 6 and 7 figures salaries from the revolving door corruption of U.K. political parties. For example, Alan Milburn, former health secretary commanding multiple Kings ransom payoffs from private health companies. Not forgetting the Labour peers receiving £300 each per day to sit on their bottoms in the unelected 2nd chamber. To put it bluntly, these PLP members and peers did not wish to overturn the apple cart, knowing which side their bread was buttered on.
Now, the “ moderates, “ centrists” and Blairites are trying to lay the blame of the 2019 GE defeat, whilst the LP had 40.6% of the vote in the 2017 GE and still had nearly 33% in the 2019 GE, at the feet of Jeremy Corbyn. Forgetting of course in April 2019 a YouGov poll predicted the Tories would be trounced and the Labour would win handsomely if they had honoured the Brexit referendum but pressured by Thornberry, Starmer and many others JC tried to accommodate all views with the result that in the words of Nye Bevan “ the Tories had persuaded poor people to vote against their own interests “. The majority of the PLP are in denial of both their actions and their part in the defeat.
What is their strategy why to move the party to the “ centre” which in reality means right wing policies. How, will they achieve it. Limiting the choice of candidates hence why any genuine socialist choices were thwarted at every turn. The support of the MSM plus the State Broadcaster and creating an air of despondency to encourage left wing members to leave, as it happened after 2003, and packing the party with right wing members.
You are absolutely correct. Thanks for putting it so clearly. Now What is to be Done?
The elected leader of the democratic socialist Labour Party does not have absolute control over policy. Therefore, the election of socialist candidates to the NEC is of prime importance. However, if you are not a member, you can’t vote!
You are right: the elected leader has very little control over policy. Nor should he. As to the NEC one of the major problems there is the, recently elected, Jon Lansman a ‘socialist’ candidate.
You are right that members should stay in the Party and fight but they should do so without illusions. They should realise that the democratisation of the party, from top to bottom and the cleaning up of the PLP were both jobs that were undone in the past five years. And that the reason why they were not pushed through while the power, in the membership, to do so existed was because of the thoroughgoing cowardice of the “left” and its refusal to recognise that to be opposed to capitalism and to aim to replace it, ensures that the capitalists will use every weapon at their disposal against them.
How often after 2017 were we assured that, once the election campaign started, the BBC would treat Labour fairly “according to the rules’ . Or that the Press could be relied upon to publish Labour’s point of view? It has been clear for centuries that the media and the state will not allow the election of a socialist government. And yet Labour has never had a smaller Press presence, or less influence in the media.
In this sense the Blairites are correct: if you want the support of the state you have to be ready to pursue the imperialist aims hard wired into it; if you want the support of the media you have to be ready to protect the capitalist class and its intellectual servants; if you want the support of The Guardian you have to be willing to publish MI6’s Press Releases and denounce the Russian government for defending Syria from al qaeda. If you want the support of the Chief Rabbi you have to be ready to promote the policies of the fascist Israeli government and to look the other way as the indigenous population of Palestine is terrorised and starved into leaving their land in the hands of the invading zionists.
And if you support neither capitalism, imperialism, the Secret Police or the Chief Rabbi then you have to be ready to fight them until they are beaten into submission.
” And that the reason why they were not pushed through while the power, in the membership, to do so existed was because of the thoroughgoing cowardice of the “left” and its refusal to recognise that to be opposed to capitalism and to aim to replace it, ensures that the capitalists will use every weapon at their disposal against them. ”
Using every weapon at their disposal usualy means enterring into a conspiracy. If you don’t believe any conspiracy theories then the capitalists will always win.
“What, then, is to be done”, b? The Workers’ Party, perhaps?
There are plenty of younger people in Britain who are thirsting for some seriously-socialist serious democracy. Plenty of not so young ones too. The huge growth in Labour membership after JC’s election to leader seems to demonstrate that clearly. But we now have the crippled mess of Rump-Labour that the blitz against Jeremy has left behind; a blitz run by both the frankly anti-socialist, anti-democratic enemies of Labour and by the B’Liarite tory-lite rump of the PLP. As it stands, Rump-Labour is clearly not fit to be a socialist, left alternative to the Anglozionist empire’s gangster capitalism (for which the political wing of the English-raj class, the official-tory party, is the parliamentary arm at all times, of course). As it stands, Rump-Labour will be what the B’Liarites have made it: an occasionally-permitted, fake-‘alternative’, cosmetically-lite version of the full on rabid tory neoliberalism. Milibandaid, as you might call it.
Radicals and leftists have a tricky choice before them now: a new, genuinely socialist, genuinely democratic Britainwide*** party? Or stay and fight to reclaim Rump-Labour to be the the real thing. In the business of practical politics – the art of the actually possible – which is the better bet? Judging by the invertebrate, zio-kissing candidates for new leader, stay-and-fight seems a pretty forlorn hope…
But the task of creating a genuinely-radical socialist force in Britain is urgent: As the phenomenally-perspicacious studies, ‘The Limits To Growth’ and ‘TLTG: The Thirty-Year Update’ (plus many other such studies) point out, we are entering a new kind of socio-economic period on this planet, especially in the historic West. The several-centuries-long time of ‘endless’ economic growthforever (hah!) has hit the buffers and stopped. It will never return. The initial, cosmologically- and geologically-provided planetary wealth endowment has been largely squandered. The crucial commodity of plentiful cheap energy to power growing industrial ‘civilisation’, without which all modern economies grind to a halt, is now hitting crisis time (with literally NO, zero, zilch realistic replacements anywhere even on the remote horizon. Renewables? Hah! Don’t make me laugh!). Thus, the rise of the new empires of the North and the East is predicated on a zero-sum game with the declining Anglozionist empire: there’s never again – in the future of this planet – going to be enough commodities and raw materials just lying about in abundance for universal growthforever to be even remotely viable, so any growth of any new empire will depend on the decline of its opponents; zero sum, pretty certain, in fact likely to be even less than zero; actual shrinkage in the longer term; musical chairs.
Hard-faced realists amongst the ruling gics (gangsters-in-charge) of the Az-empire are already beginning to suspect this (after all, if no-count plebs with a connection to the internet, like us, can see it coming, so can they). Their response will be – indeed already is – to seek to re-establish themselves in their customary rentier-parasite tapeworm, WealthPowerStatus-addict function, within the rising empires. And that will mean demotion of the wreckage of the Western empire, and all its dependent provinces, to third world status, there to be exploited just as the Western empire(s) has(have) done to the Third World for half a millennium. (Oh, you think the Russian and Chinese empires are too inherently-moral, egalitarian and statesmanly to try such villainies? Unlike all previous empires, without exception? Really? Can I – er – can I interest you in some amazingly profitable shares in a bridge in NYC…?)
So here’s what is perhaps the most grovellingly-submissive of the Az-empire’s provinces, Britain, run now – on behalf of the atlanticist wing of the English-raj class – by one of the most entrenched and rabidly right-wing tory governments of recent times (chosen by the usual FPTP-enabled minority of Xmas-voting turkeys, yet again): An island packed chock full with over-population, all of whom have to be supported somehow. And here it is, just about to cut one of the main lifelines on which it’s depended for several decades now…
You can see, can’t you, why I keep hammering the perception that the only real-world, actually-feasible political choices that are now open to the peoples (sic: plural) of Britain are scarcity-socialism, which we only get by a critical mass of us standing up like the Gilets Jaunes and insisting; or the gics’ preferred default choice of neo-feudalism; towards which they’re already busy pushing us, of course (goodbye, NHS; goodbye social security! Goodbye all publicly-owned, non-commercial essential services! Goodbye liberty, equality, fraternity!).
Hope to god George G has better luck with his latest new party than he had with the previous attempts! After all, he’s trying to get the attention of an actual majority of the Brits, who actually agree quite well with what he stands for.
__________________
*** If the organisers of this effort are wise, they’ll not fight the nationalist parties of Alba and Cymru, but make alliances with them, so as not to split votes in those countries: Back us in Paedominster, and we’ll back your progress towards sovereign independence within a Confederation of The Isles; firm contract, no havering. Irish nationalists within the FOSCOE – the foreign-occupied six counties of Eire (similar to occupied Palestine) – will warm to such approaches too.
If the millions who voted Labour over the past forty years have come to the conclusion that they might as well have voted Tory, there can be no faster way of speeding up Labour’s irrelevance than to carry on being Tory-Lite. That’s what happened to the Lib-Dems, after Charles Kennedy, and now its going to happen to Labour. The electorate doesn’t think what it thought forty years ago.
You make a number of fundamental errors in your assessment. Firstly, millions of voters plus approximately 250,000 members left the Labour Party during the New Labour period because it wasn’t recognised by them as a democratic socialist Labour Party. Secondly, in the 2017 the democratic socialist Labour Party had 40.6% of the vote and an additional 30 MPs not forgetting the 250,000 members who joined the party. In comparison under Gordon Brown NL had 29% of the vote which meant that the democratic socialist Labour Party had gained almost 12% of the vote the largest increase in vote since 1945. Thirdly, in the 2019 GE the Tories only gained 300,000 votes whilst Labour had almost 33% higher than the 2005 GE when Blair won on less than 32% of the vote.Moreover, the Liberals lost so many seats and votes because they a. had a Blairite clone leading the party and b. forgot who their core supporters were. In much the manner that democratic socialist Labour Party allowed a right wing faction, posing as supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, to skew the policies in order to ride roughshod over the wishes of the former solid Labour seats. It is no coincidence that 55 of the 59 seats Labour lost had voted leave. It’s time to listen to what the core supporters want instead of pandering to right wing whose only interests lie in their own interests. By the way Bozo said “ he recognised that they had borrowed him their votes”. He will let them down as every Tory leader since Thatcher has. Like the prodigal son they will return.
As an almost life long member of trades unions, who I often had massive respect for (Unison still sends me mail), the main problem why the Labour Party has been self destructing since 1997 (and don’t tell me Tony Blair is a success)…is cos – well – if you are having a party, you invite everyone in. It’s a party – you can’t discriminate. All our political parties have been infiltrated, by forces (sometimes foreign) that have absolutely no interest in the ordinary working man.
The Labour Party is supposed to look after the interests of the ordinary working man in the area which they were elected – ie The UK
I am not voting for any of them, and I wouldn’t even if I was a member of The Labour Party.
Corbyn needed to get rid of The Blairites, could, and didn’t.
Nice to hear some female voices from The North West, but basically The Labour Party is lost now. I can’t think of any eloquent solutions.
Tony
Jess Phillips is deeply unlikable no matter what party she was in! Very pinchable face and her ideas of socialism are just literally mass immigration = good! Blind equality that can’t be enforced = also good! As opposed to workers owning and operating the means of production which is literally what socialism is!
‘Straight Face, Jess’
Caught in ecstasy on live tv on election night as the sting came in.
Let me say this: any Jew saying that a population of 400,000 out of well north of 50 million should in effect control one of the two biggest political parties is absolutely, non-negotiably, irrevocably, unacceptably racist.
Any Jew who thinks that they get to run one of the two major UK parties should be given 28 days to renounce their UK citizenship or face death by firing squad. It is the most ridiculously racist and untenable argument possible to hold in any sentient nation state. I genuinely believe that UK Jews now think that the goyim must be their servants.
What needs to happen is a public definition of what Jewish behaviour constitutes racism. Jews are undeniably racist in how they behave, constantly playing anti-Semitic bullshit cards to gain unwarranted power and influence. It is a hate crime to say that Jews are superior to non-Jews ,that God sees the Jews as superior and it should be an imprisonment offence for any Jew to say that 400,000 Jews get to control a nation of 50 million +.
If Jews can not accept that, then they cannot be surprised if someone puts a bullet through their head.
I have no hatred of Jews, but I have an implacable red line where Jewish behaviour and attitudes are concerned. It is non-negotiable that they have no superior rights in any way to any non-Jewish UK citizen and that violence is merited against any Jew who threatens anyone with permanent economic sanctions when they state this universal truism concerning the inalienable rights of ALL humans not to be discriminated against based on gender, sexuality, religious faith etc etc.
I am very, very clear that the Chief Rabbi has to agree with what I say or he must be put to death in a very, very brutal way. If he does not agree with it he is an arch racist who should have no chance of any significant office, no political support whatever from any UK mainstream party. And if he uses Jewish thuggery to destroy economic lives for anyone who challenges Jewish racism, he no longer retains the right to life.
This is no different to the US’ attitude to any number of states that do not kiss their ass, after all. Assassination of the Iranian general comes to mind recently……..and the Chief Rabbi is not superior to him in any way…..so killing the Chief Rabbi holding such repulsive attitudes would be every bit as justifiable as the recent US action against a Muslim…..you will note I have not stated that he DOES hold such views….and I am not about to start a smear campaign in global MSM outlets suggesting that he does. I hope that he can say the same about his non-goyim brethren…..
I feel sure that the sycophantic Chief Rabbi would never criticise the myriad of genocidal actions by his greatest servant, the USA………..an attitude which brings into stark relief the question as to whether he is, in fact, an irredeemable anti-Arab racist………
How do you think Jews will feel about being called racists themselves?
I hope they feel all the outrage that those falsely branded as ‘anti-semitic’ felt.
And I hope that the Chief Rabbi has a full understanding of who ‘those speaking Semitic languages’ comprise, for he as a Jew is in just as small a minority of the Semites as the Jews are in Her Britannic Majesty’s United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland……..
We seem to live in a world of quotas now and who has got more beans on their plate than somebody else.
Apparently there aren’t enough ethnics, gays, wimmin, trannies, whatever, in influential, desirable, and highly paid jobs.
If this quota spoils system is going to be applied, it has to be across the board.
So if about 0.6% of the population is Jewish, then their employment as bankers, lawyers, journalists, politicians and the like, should be restricted to 0.6% of the whole. With o.6% of bus driver, road sweeper, and trawlermen jobs likewise reserved for them.
Likewise, about 0.15% of banker and road sweeper jobs should be reserved for trannies.
And 50% of the prison population and 50% of fatal industrial accidents should be wimmin.
Who could object to that?
It’s all perfectly fair. Let’s just get the quotas right.
Personally I think that you are confusing Jews with Zionists which is what the latter want you to do while they cry “ANTISEMITISM” and secretly support it.
“Herzl predicted that ‘the anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies.'”
See:
https://prepareforchange.net/2019/08/06/anti-semitism-and-zionism-have-formed-a-brutal-alliance/
Irony of irony is that most White Supremacists are totally controlled by Zionists these days. The historical fact that is very well hidden along with the Haavara or Transfer Agreement is the fact that the B’nai B’rith the same Masonic organization that founded the ADL secretly supported the Klu Klux Klan and that those associated with them were instigators of wide release of the racist movie “Birth of a Nation” that actually resurrected the moribund KKK.
So caveat emptor when you buy that it’s the choose are responsible when in fact its the Zionists both Jewish and Christian of which Puritanism was a virulent strain of and was responsible for the American Holocaust and Genocide of the Indigenous population.
Rhy, the Jewish elite control ALL the parties-they just want to make Labour GROVEL. On hands and knees.
They control the Universe with their Jaweh!
Sssssshhhhh.
No, with lies, threats, smears, terrorism, blackmail and corruption.
Well, it’s there in black and white in the Talmud and the exegeses. What-are you a ‘self-hating Jew’ or something? You should enjoy your Divinity.
First you set up a straw man against reason and numbers, next show yourself a Jew hater.
Who benefits from this kind of scrap? Not the British working class or their daughters for sure.
You blindness for Muslim preachers inside the UK shows you cards…
The same people who benefit from all the Zionist smear and hate campaigns, bankrolling stooge professional moslem baiters like Wilders, or Robinson with his £10,000 a month Zionist money so he can live high on the hog with his fancy cars and designer clothes. Certainly not the British working class. They’re just goy insects.
A vicious Moslem hater, without pretense otherwise, accuses others of hatred. Words fail.
It’s called projection.
Just got 2 emails from the Labour party saying “join us to make this choice”. It’s like Big B said in one of his books, “If you keep getting the same result, why inflict further suffering on yourself and others”.
It’s genuinely time to abandon Labour for good folks. There’s no hope so why prolong the cancer another 10 years? You’re only providing jobs for parasites.
The herd are wedded at the nipple to the two main parties! So it’s wishful thinking we will stop the madness!
Let’s not forget – other than removing Clause IV – Blair’s other major coup over long term Labour policy. Conspiring with his old flatmate Charlie Falconer – that’s Lord Falconer to the likes of riff-raff like you and I – which was liberating the City of London Corporation from any symbolic threat Labour may ever have posed. Which paved the way for the final enclosure in private property of the country as a market-monopoly state …which was obviously the Thatcher project mentioned.
Also, all candidates have signed the Board of Deputies of British Jews (BoD) “10 Pledges to end the anti-Semitism crisis.” Which Robert Stevens summed up better than I could: “Every single pledge reeks of authoritarianism in pursuit of a filthy witch-hunt.” Which augments the above nicely.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/01/15/boar-j15.html
The UK is a blackhole of gravitas-torn political lack. The recent election was an embarrassment of nihilism and an absolutist abandonment of the ecology of the future. If we can’t see that the inculcated communitarian behaviourism of vote, vote, vote, is destroying the planet and abnegating any future possibility …
…The fact Attenborough said a similar thing about the ecology of the future yesterday becomes a neat screening discourse and Rawlsian ‘veil of ignorance’ that separates the real from the false these days. They share the same voice: and no doubt share the same fate of being ignored?
So the radical becomes unwanted social commentary and the status quo moves on unopposed. I can tell you for free who is going to march lockstep with City of London Corporation’s greenwashing of neoliberal globalisation – the party of capital occupation and endocolonisation that is the Zionist Labour Party (Westminster Branch). Anyone who fancies a politics of awakening – my own favourite anti-necessatarian, anti-statist, anti-capitalist, anti-globalist and pro-universal human emancipatory liberation ecology – need not apply to the bleak Mordor-like anti-future of Britain’s apolitical hyper-individualism …personified by liberal Bourgeois pseudosocialism. Politics murdered politics while it was sleeping.
Awakening is still possible: but it means embedding political economy in political ecology; the market society in global ecology; and the hyper-individualist psychology in an emergent global emancipatory consciousness …none of which appear particularly appealing to the modernist Capitalist subject. I presumed UK politics could get no lower than the political nadir of Thatcher. Oh, well …you live and learn!
They always find new depths. It was plain that we here in Austfailia could not sink deeper than after the racist war criminal Howard, then we got the narcissist Rudd, despatched by the USA and Israel, replaced by the utter incompetent Gillard, followed by the psychopathic denialist Abbott. Thereupon he was followed by another narcissist, Turnbull, who would not stand up to the denialist claque that still dominates the regime, even as the country burns down, followed by ‘one in 100 year’ floods, so was replaced by a Pentecostal (from birth, no convert he) and advertising guru, Morrison. Surely this is it-rock bottom? Don’t ever bet on it, but there is not much time left for further excursions into the nether regions of human wickedness and stupidity.
The way for the membership, viewed by the candidates, it would seem, as voting fodder, to assert themselves is by taking a leaf out of the board of Deputies’ book and producing a list of simple demands and invite candidates to subscribe to them. Or to explain why they will not.
A members charter.
Among the commitments one would desire from an aspiring leader are- in no particular order:
1/ A firm commitment to re-nationalise the Railways and provide free public transport.
2/ Free Public Broadband and a re-commitment to the Manifesto as minimum objectives for a government.
3/ Repeal of all anti-union laws and restoration of the right to strike and closed shop.
4/ Leave NATO and pursue an independent foreign policy. No Trident renewal.
5/ Recognition of Palestine. Opposition to Israeli Apartheid policies. An end to the Occupation of 1967 territories and a return of the Golan Heights to Syria.
6/ Reinstatement of all members expelled without full disciplinary hearings in accordance with natural law.
7/ An apology to the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan for participation in the wars against the.
8/ Automatic re-selection of all MPs and Councillors as part of the nomination process for elections.
9/ Fixed election dates-annual elections to Parliament. Abolition of the House of Peers.
10/ A full review of the Party Constitution by elected delegates of the membership at special regional and national conferences.
These of course are just “off the top of my head” A final Charter should be both shorter and more precise. But the idea is obvious: insist on these candidates signing on to commitments, not simply to outside pressure groups but to the membership. It is, in fact, an insult to the membership for candidates, already pledged, to request votes. They ought to have consulted the membership before acceding to, for example, the Board of Deputies’ demand.
But that is Blairism for you: its basis is a contempt for the membership and an elitist distrust of democracy.
We share a tiny blue marble in the vastness of space …any policy that does not have this as its primacy is defunct from the thinking. We do not live in a world where the Arrow of Time and Entropy are reversible. We left that world behind in the 1970s – at a time when maximal available end-use energy (exergy) peaked. The Laws of Nature demand that after that: things must degrow. And they are. And they have been for decades. UK primary exergy has been degrowing for at least a decade, along with our economy. It can’t be reversed – not without expropriating wealth, energy, and material resources from the mouths of babies somewhere else. Jason Hickel’s ‘The Divide’ has all the relevant statistics.
4.5 billion people are in abject poverty – see Hickel for how neoliberal ideologues like Rosling and Pinker mask this with massaged statistics. It will take a minimum of 200 – 900 years to lift them out of poverty at current ‘developmental’ rates of growth. And current rates of growth are stalling: then what? Will the UK distribute its surplus wealth – of which it has centuries of primitive accumulation of – to repay our ecological debt to the intentionally immiserated we extrapolate our unionised industrial bourgeois thinking from? No.
The global ‘Catch 22’ is that if we do not start thinking of others trans-nationally – we too will perish …of shame, perhaps? Perhaps not? We in the UK have a globalist imperialist mindset that must be disentangled from by every single one of us. There is a veil of ignorance erected around our coastline by our bourgeois bounded-morality thinking. We are not alone. We are situated in a nested community that is globally extensive. Not the EU: the ‘bounded’ community of humanity. Which is itself situated in the earth systems ecology – a broader inter-species bio-community of diversity and inclusiveness …the interpenetration of global interbeing.
We do not function in isolation. Any proximal polity has to be distally harmonious first, not as an distant tertiary contingency …but as a primal ecological necessity and planetary sufficiency. Socialism is universalist first: in international solidarity. Not the life-blind ghost of some post-industrial landscape trying to revive the idealised dreams of yesteryear. We do not live in that world anymore. We never will again.
So with 1/, 2/, 3/, 8/, 9/, 10/ ruled out by reality – and by the fact that the capitalist market monopoly state is so obviously a major institutionalised cause of the capitalist ecogenocide. That leaves three clauses I can most heartily endorse. Perhaps we can repay our post-colonial Empire for the ecological debt we owe to the immiserated, dehumanised, and peripheralised world we stole our military-Keynesian glory years from?
My lengthy and detailed reply seems to have been lost somewhere, somehow. I’m not going to attempt to repeat it.
Okay, (in my personal opinion), the establishment are doubling down; getting heavier from all angles and using any and all means to take down the Corbyn Movement. Apparently, in this particular instance they are using the so-called ‘law’ (in reality a corrupt, two tier system that advantages the estab and disadvantages the general public)?
Not completely sure of the detils but as far as I can see imo, one of our few unions, Unite — that isn’t as heavily infiltrated/co-opted/subverted lie the other unions — is currently being targetted; the estab aim to remove Len McCluskey (through a law suit with an ex LP MP, it seems? See link below?) asap – probably before Unite can fully, officially endorse RBL for Leader (and RB for Deputy?); these two are the only geuine Corbyn-movement-endorsed candidates and need Unite in order to get through to the next stage? Obviously, if true, I hope the estab fall on their faces and McCluskey/Unite/Skwawkbox stays around. We must fight for our Corbyn Movement; keep it going – the estab seem very afraid of it continuing.
https://twitter.com/robpowellnews/status/1218151073510236165
* details
* like the other unions
Let me say this again as it seems the denialists are, once again, on the march – the labour party is DEAD
JC is a bit like Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard.
They are all in the wrong party. Bernie should have struck free with Tulsi in 2016 when the DNC screwed him over. He rolled over. The DNC is like the Labour party, unfit for service.
Sanders is a phony. He was always going to roll over, and he will again, to ensure Biden gets the nod, to ensure a Trump (the parasite elites’ choice) wins again.
Yeah I worked on Bernie’s campaign and was part of Jared Beck’s class action lawsuit against the DNC for blatant rigging. What the judge told us basically was that the DNC weren’t obligated to run a fair primary and could lie to their voters. ‘Nuff said.
It’s very simple.
There is a cancer in the Labour party and Jeremy Corbyn needs to remove himself from the rot and setup a new party without those ever so helpfully PLP.
If he stays, it will be another 5yrs of no one challenging the tories. The cancer wants Labour to be a Blairite Labour Party again. We dont want war, so JC option is to move.
I suspect most Labour members would take to walk to a new party and leave the old Labour with a financing problem.
If he doesn’t move, people will switch off from the fraud that would allege to be a socialist party en masse.
Lol good try at gaslighting.
Corbyn and co and the half million members have nearly got the stables flushed. Just a few dried hard turds need the wire brush to dislodge them and the smell will finally go away.
Corbyn and the half million are the losers. The Blairite backstabbers have now regained control. Wishful thinking doesn’t help.
I don’t believe anyone is so blind and naive. It’s some sort of effort to deceive the suckers so that the disillusion will be even greater when they learn that they have to be circumcised to join the New Kosher Labour Party.
The current Labour membership – the largest political party with direct membership – is not going to handover the brand ‘Labour’ to these who had gained control over it – just because you suggest it!
Jeremy corbyn has spent his entire career in the imperialist Labour Party paying lip service to ideas of pretending he was a critic within the Labour Party then he starts doing he/him nonsense and THEN screwed over the working class by supporting something he’s spent his entire career pretending he was against. Fuck him and fuck anyone dumb enough to honk the fraud is a positive. And he’s done a lot to make socialism look bad again without being a socialist
It is textbook Marxism that under bourgeois democracy only forces that serve the ruling class’s interests are permitted to take office. Within the same paradigm, the function of the bourgeois media (what the alt-right terms the MSM) is to create an ideology that shores up the ruling class’s hegemony. I would argue that classical Marxism is vindicated in the way Corbyn was rendered inelectable through a vilification campaign on a possibly unprecedented scale in the bourgeois media. The inescapable conclusion must be, as classical Marxism would argue, that there is no parliamentary road to socialism.
Also rendered unelectable through ballot stuffing with postal ballots.
I keep pouring out to so called socialists that many bourgeois ideas can’t pass the vote so good luck getting some socialism through with the bourgeoisie still breathing
The acceptance of demands from the Tory Israeli lobby is madness. Presumably it’s assumed that lying down before the juggernaut will quieten things down; a preposterous hope!
Making any of these people head of the Labour Party will make sure that it goes into centerist obscurity the way the LibDems did after Charles Kennedy was got rid of, and that’s the object of the exercise. Oponents of neo-liberalism must be prevented from re-grouping by our ‘security’ services. If the left wants to counter the organic development of patterns of behaviour that reproduce power relations it will have to understand the conspiracies those patterns of behaviour and the power relations generate.
Next step will be demanding that all Labour members, and their families and friends and acquaintances, keep dream diaries. These must be turned over, regularly, to Rabbinical experts to be examined for signs of unconscious ‘antisemitism’. If found, immediate expulsion.
Thornberry has already introduced the obligatory Labour Two Minute Grovel to our Zionist Overlords. The current leadership campaign is just a contest in who is the most enthusiastic bootlicker. They almost make the stooge goys in Congress look respectable.
If only…
Mr Corbyn would you press the nuclear button?
What are you some kind of spy for Britains enemies. The whole point of a deterrent is to keeps Britains enemies guessing. Do you think I want to give succour to extremists and psychopaths by saying when I would (if all the billionaires on the planet were at a secret meeting on a deserted Island hosted by Margaret Hodge…tee hee) and when I wouldn’t (all other scenarios) press the button, then you are a fool and an enemy of British interests. Now come on lord Haw Haw ask me another.
Actually, it keeps America’s enemies guessing. The idea that we could use nuclear weapons independently of America is laughable, we could launch them at will from anywhere as long as the Pentagon had agreed. Not before.
You are so wrong.
The crew of a Trident submarine could launch independently of the UK government, were they minded to. The codes are in a safe in the captains cabin.
It has to be this way, to prevent Russia ‘cutting the head off the chicken’. If London can’t be raised, then our subs have orders to return the compliment.
BTW, only the launcher is American. The US doesn’t export nuclear weapons, we make our own.
Yea sure, that’s why a senior American general included trident submarines as “an American battle group”.
America May not know the exact position of our submarines (although, they probably do given the latest technology) but a first strike would have to be with their permission. So only a retaliatory strike is within our capabilities and that would be pointless unless we had already been directly targeted.
We don’t have our own foreign policy, we are slaved to America.
The only way to communicate with a nuclear submarine, which may be submerged for months is by ELF waves (extremely low frequency). The wavelength of waves such as these is measured in kilometres, meaning the transmitting antenna are of that size. QED, if the shit hit the fan, every ELF transmitter in Russia, US, China, France and the UK would be targeted, the world’s submarine nuclear arsenal would be autonomous.
The only way deterrence works is if an aggressor cannot prevent a retaliatory strike,
Didn’t you understand what I said? This thread was (erroneously, because the first poster was having a joke) about first strike freedom to launch against any target, we don’t have that option. Therefore, in a small country of our size, retaliatory action would be pointless as the submarine crew would have nowhere to return to other than taking their chances in non-irradiated parts of their boss country, America.
Given that Thatcher seriously considered that option in 82, with no thought to what the Americans would think, I’d say you’re wrong.
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1984/08/23/Opposition-calls-for-investigation-of-nuclear-strike-plans-in-Falklands/8701462081600/
Shows just how insane she was….and the Americans wouldn’t have allowed it. They were officially neutral but supplied us with satellite imagery. I can’t imagine they’d allow the use of their own neclear weapons platforms in their own backyard.
…and how would they have stopped it? A consequence of the McMahon act of 1946 was that America didn’t share nuclear technology. The Teller Ulam thermonuclear device was invented in 1952, knowing it was possible, nuclear Physicists in France, the UK, and Russia developed their own (BTW, Russia gave the technology to China, China passed it on to Pakistan).
It would have been futile for the US to have somehow put locks on the delivery system, first Polaris, then Trident, we simply wouldn’t have bought it, if it meant accepting American judgement was better than ours.
While I was no fan of MT, I voted for Foot in 83, the aftermath of HMS Coventry would have tested to mettle of any PM. There are worse things to criticise the old witch for.
I’m getting fed up with this so here is my final reply. We don’t have permission to use trident independently other than after an attack.
The UK is dependent on the US trident missile facility at Georgia. While polaris could have been used independently the same is not true for trident. If the US were to withdraw their cooperation our nuclear capability would be a matter of months.
It is inconceivable that Britain would fire a trident missile without American support.
The UK is fully integrated with American weapons systems and communications. Our ‘independence’ is severely limited. The proof is we don’t have our own foreign policy any more. You are partially correct in that the last time we did have some independence was the Falklands war. The claims of nuclear independence are no more than national hubris.
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/no-america-doesnt-control-britains-nuclear-weapons/
That Argentina fighting back, using French weapons, was such a shock that the Evil witch considered using nukes, can hardly be seen as sane, save by a fellow psychopath.
It’s moot, they weren’t used. The real point is that the oft repeated idea that the Americans have control of the UK deterrent is a fallacy.
The USA controls the UK, so why would they not control the nuclear ‘deterrent’?
Nobody is launching any Trident missiles without the permission and the PIN code of the American officer on board.
Our “independent nuclear deterrent” is directly controlled by the US. It cannot be used without their permission.
The cunning stunt is a real devotee of Thanatos, like all its kind.
Nuclear deterrents and MAD were developed when there were 2 superpowers – who were allies – after WW2.
The fact the USSR were able to develop their on ballistic missiles is the only reason the crazy US generals were stopped from doing to Russia what they did to Japan.
The subs were not designed to protect from attack by random terrorists who are not countries – they were there to guarantee a response if a first strike wiped out the silo based nukes and the bomber fleets.
The captains orders in such a scenario is to do what that crew think is best – what would be the point of a already irradiated planet having a bit more tons of radioactivity?
The moronic, pathetic, bullshit patriotic button pushing is psychopathic crap – you are happy to keep spreading it, Andy?
I hope the one person liking it realised it was a pisstake of jingoistic voter expectations and media traps and not a Britain firster. I thought the exagerated secret thinking of Corbyn in brackets would be a clue… Hey ho!
Andy, be a good boy and take your meds now.
‘Britain’s ‘enemies”-the Empire is over, Winston. The tens of millions you murdered are still dead, and you want to add billions more. Enjoy your Brexit, Little Englander.
A question that was guaranteed to trip him up.
The next leader of Labour party needs to look the questioner straight in the eye, and say, ‘yes I would’, without hesitation.
The answer isn’t for the electorate, the newspapers, it is for our potential antagonists.
In the sick ‘mind’ of the Rightwing psychopath, ‘enemies’ are everywhere. The paranoid projection of these Evil imbeciles will get us fried, eventually. Better dead than Red, eh cunning?
Let’s be honest here – the labour party is dead – long live labour.
The State of Israel, has enormous political clout both in the Anglosphere and openly meddles in the internal affairs of both the UK and US. This much is self-evident. Netanyahu gets himself invited to make a speech at both Houses of Congress without even informing Obama and the senators and congressman jump up and down like the trained monkeys they are. Corbyn is openly smeared as an anti-semite by the chief rabbi and actually apologies yes, more to be done to cleanse the party of these ‘anti-semites’. In chimes Gordon Brown to push for the IHRA definition of ‘anti-semitism’. It looks like the Labour Party along with the Tories has been sold and bought for by the Zionists. Here’s a disclaimer: Jews are not necessarily Zionists. There was a time when Jewish MP’s like Ian Mikado and Konnie Zillacus (I think that’s how you spell his name) were principled and indefatigable fighters for socialism. Now we get instead the ‘Labour Friends of Israel’ a Blairite-Zionist 5th column which effectively prevents the LP formulating or enacting any sort of progressive policies. And its the same of course with the Conservative Friends of Israel and the Liberal Democrats Friends of Israel.
The Jewish intelligentsia in the 19th and 20th century, Marx, Durkheim, Einstein, Lukacs, Freud, Kafka, Harendt, Benjamin, the Frankfurt school and more recently courageous men like Chomsky, Finkelstein, and the courageous Gideon Levy who writes for Haaretz have played a huge part in the creation of European culture. Zionism, however, has been particularly aggressive ideology both in theory and practice.
Herewith Labour’s Friends of Israel below
Labour Friends of Israel is a distinct organisation to the affiliated Jewish Labour Movement (successor to the UK’s Poale Zion) and Jewish Voice for Labour.
The Yigal Allon Educational Trust, founded in 1985 by former Prime Minister Harold Wilson, Ian Mikardo MP, Lord Glenamara and others, has supported Labour Friends of Israel.[21][22]
Parliamentary Supporters of LFI
As of October 2019, the Officers, Sitting MPs, Lords and former members who were supporters of LFI are set out below.
Officers
Labour (unless otherwise stated)
Joan Ryan Honorary President (The Independent Group for Change)[23]
Louise Ellman Chair (Independent)[23]
Pat McFadden[23]
Rachel Reeves[23]
John Spellar[23]
Meta Ramsay, Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale[23]
Jonathan Reynolds[23]
Sitting MPs
Labour (unless otherwise stated)
Mike Amesbury[23]
Nick Brown[23]
Chris Bryant[23]
Liam Byrne[23]
Rosie Cooper[23]
Yvette Cooper[23]
Jon Cruddas[23]
Wayne David[23]
Angela Eagle[23]
Chris Elmore[23]
Chris Evans[23]
Barry Gardiner[23]
Preet Gill[23]
Mary Glindon[23]
Lilian Greenwood[23]
Nia Griffith[23]
Andrew Gwynne[23]
Fabian Hamilton[23]
Margaret Hodge[23]
George Howarth[23]
Dan Jarvis[23]
Diana Johnson[23]
Darren Jones[23]
Kevan Jones[23]
Mike Kane[23]
Liz Kendall[23]
Peter Kyle[23]
David Lammy[23]
Chris Matheson[23]
Steve McCabe[23]
Conor McGinn[23]
Catherine McKinnell[23]
Stephen Morgan[23]
Toby Perkins[23]
Jess Phillips[23]
Bridget Phillipson[23]
Lucy Powell[23]
Virendra Sharma[23]
Barry Sheerman[23]
Jeff Smith[23]
Karin Smyth[23]
Wes Streeting[23]
Graham Stringer[23]
Gareth Thomas[23]
Emily Thornberry[23]
Karl Turner[23]
Derek Twigg[23]
Rosie Winterton[23]
Sitting Lords
Labour (unless otherwise stated)
Donald Anderson, Baron Anderson of Swansea[23]
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top[23]
Jeremy Beecham, Baron Beecham[23]
Lord Blunkett[23]
Lord Boateng[23]
Lord Clarke of Hampstead[23]
Lord Collins of Highbury[23]
Baroness Crawley[23]
Lord Desai[23]
Lord Donoughue[23]
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock[23]
Baroness Gale[23]
Lord Grantchester[23]
Lord Hain[23]
Lord Harrison[23]
Lord Haskel[23]
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town[23]
Lord Hughes of Woodside[23]
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath[23]
Baroness Kennedy of Cradley[23]
Lord Kennedy of Southwark[23]
Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead[23]
Lord Levy[23]
Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke[23]
Lord Livermore[23]
John Maxton[23]
Paul Murphy, Baron Murphy of Torfaen[23]
Lord Rooker[23]
Lord Stone of Blackheath[23]
Lord Tomlinson[23]
Lord Touhig[23]
Lord Turnberg (Independent)[23]
Lord Watts[23]
Lord Winston[23]
Lord Wood of Anfield[23]
Lord Young of Norwood Green[23]
Former members
David Abrahams, former Treasurer[24]
Lord Archer of Sandwell[25]
Sir Stuart Bell[26]
Luciana Berger, former Director of LFI[27]
Tony Blair, former Prime Minister[28][29]
Gordon Brown, former Prime Minister[28][29][30]
Stephen Byers, former Secretary of State for Trade and Industry[25]
Andrew Dismore [25]
Michael Dugher[31]
Derek Foster[25]
Anthony Greenwood, first Chair of LFI (1957)[3]
Baroness Hayman[25]
Joan Humble[25]
Barbara Keeley[25]
Jane Kennedy, Chair of LFI (2007)[25]
Ivan Lewis, former Vice-Chair of LFI [32]
Lord Macdonald of Tradeston[25]
Denis MacShane[25]
Michael McCann, Vice-Chair of LFI[33]
Anne McGuire, Chair of LFI (2013)[9]
Jonathan Mendelsohn, former Chair of LFI (2002)[34]
Alun Michael, former Leader of the Welsh Labour Party[25]
Andrew Miller[25]
Jim Murphy, former Chair of LFI (2001), former Secretary of State for Scotland [35]
Dan Norris[25]
Nick Palmer[25]
James Purnell, former Chair of LFI, former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [36]
John Reid, former Home Secretary (2007)[37]
Terry Rooney[25]
Dari Taylor[25]
Gary Titley[25]
Glenis Willmott, Vice Chair of LFI
Lord Winston[25]
John Woodcock[38]
Iain Wright, former Chair of LFI (2006)[25]
Lord Young of Norwood Green[25]
See also
Conservative Friends of Israel
European Friends of Israel
Friends of Israel Initiative
Israel lobby in the United Kingdom
Israel lobby in the United States
Jewish lobby
Labour Friends of Palestine & the Middle East
Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel
Northern Ireland Friends of Israel
Please tell me who controls the Labour Friends, and for that matter the Conservative Friends of Israel.?
2011 in Britain: Jews: 236,000, Muslims 2,516,000. Voters will be similarly distributed. Islam has no influence in the UK??
If Muslims were as proportionately represented in parliament as Jews they’d have over 200 M.P.s
Jews solo could theoretically vote in 4 English MPs; Muslims 40. Sunni Oil money slushes around in the London much more than Jewish cash. Dyscalculia fuels the “Left”.
As I observed, its not numbers of people that counts, its monetary bribery and control. You are such a villainous humbug, but who do you think you impress?
……..and half the diplomatic corps.
Muslims are not Islam any more than Jews are Judaism.
As you well know, you hypocrite, it’s not the votes that count in capitalist sham ‘democracies’, but the shekels.
Let us not forget that indefatigable opponent of Israel’s crimes against humanity, the late Jewish Labour MP Gerald Kaufman.
Plainly a ‘self-hating Jew’.
I presume this is a typo: “Harendt”? For H Arendt? 🙂
Yes, of course Hannah Arendt, and not forgetting Emma Goldman.
A person like Hannah Arendt would, these days, be vilified relentlessly as a ‘self-hating Jew’.
And how many also have Israeli passports?
Unfortunately, what the election underlined is that it is impossible to defeat the establishment, media and intelligence agencies if they want a Conservative Prime Minister. That’s because the Tories are essentially not a political party but one of the heads of the establishment hydra, along with the monarchy and the military, with ‘democracy’ little more than windw-dressing.
The opposition parties, meanwhile, are all systematically undermined by the establishment so that in a lot of ways they are only ‘controlled opposition’. Look at how the Lib Dems, Brexit Party and many in the Labour Party itself contributed to the Tory victory. And that’s before you get to outright vote-rigging, which I also suspect.
Labour are better off just choosing the best person for the job, rather than grooming a ‘winner’ – at least then we’ll have a decent opposition. Personally, I’d vote for Corbyn again if he were standing.
As it is, the field is unimpressive. Starmer may well be the best candidate although I share the reservations of him being too ‘establishment’ and also his invisibility during the election campaign. Indeed, where were any of the senior Labour figures defending Corbyn against the vile smears he was receiving during the campaign? So I probably won’t vote in the leadership election at all.
I’d like to acquaint people with a small selection of quotes from btl at The Graun from one of their favourites, just to let you know where they stand on this.
62 upvotes.
19 upvotes.
6 upvotes.
And though off topic, I love this cracker:
52 upvotes.
So, there you go, nothing else to say, Starmer it is and next foreign policy regime change objective Iran.
Yes, I noticed that Starmer was banging on about antisemitism.
Everyone but Tories, Judeofascists and Blairite vermin have been purged from that sewer. It’s like the Letters to the ‘Australian’ here. The quintessence of scum. Toxic algae.
At the moment once a person is elected Leader of the Labour Party the only way they can be removed is if they are hounded out of office or intimidated in some other way to resign. The only people who can trigger a leadership contest are the PLP. What should happen is that the Leader and Deputy Leader should be elected for a 4 year term.
If members are unhappy with the Leader then they and not the PLP should be the ones to seek to remove them.
On another matter it was never intended that the deputy leader be other than supportive of the leader.I’m wondering if the Deputy Leader in future should be appointed by the NEC in consultation with the Leader?
Seems pretty obvious to me that the leader should appoint the deputy leader.
If Tom Watson has taught us nothing else, he has taught us that.
Now that Corbyn is out it is inescapable that British politics is a totally rigged arena and you’ll pardon me if I can’t feel any interest in the above essay relaying the screamingly obvious. The key is the Long-Bailey quote:
“Allegations” mean pronouncements from on high which are to be taken as indicative of demands. The rich have spoken and they must be obeyed. Correspondingly, everything in the media embodies their concerns and their concerns alone. Thus e.g. “freedom” and “prosperity” mean freedom and prosperity for them. And all negatives refer to what threatens them. The reality for the vast majority can be perceived by simply reversing every statement in the media. And until the British population understand this, there is nothing you can do.
If someones LIES in accusing you of racism, the only ‘acceptable response’ is to defend your reputation and vociferously attack the vilifier-if you have ANY self-respect, which this text-book feminazi, Identity Politics, Sabbat Goy plainly does not possess. Does she really think that groveling will spare her if she deviates on micrometre Left from Blairism? Is she that stupid?
I am highly delighted by this article which in every aspect is spot on. My criticism of Corbyn being that he was too nice and lacked ruthlessness. It is definitely time that Labour had a female leader but what we need is someone with the drive and determination of Thatcher.
A big thing that constituency parties don’t get is that it doesn’t matter for the next four years if we lose MPs hostile to the party membership.
‘lose’?? hostile MPs. But go they must.
Never underestimate the power of propaganda. Its all pervasive and when done properly its designed to generate visceral reactions in the populace at large to its targets. You can see it at work when you find people expressing strongly held opinions about something without actually being able to tell you why, and those opinions may defy reason, logic or knowledge.
One recent example was in a note sent to my by my brother. I live in the US and he lives in the UK in a staunchly Tory rural backwater. He was commenting on the Democrats in the House in a very negative way, he knew how they were all rabid haters of Trump and so on, the usual stuff. I sent him a link to our representative, a ‘lady of a certain age’ that isn’t known to be rabidly anything, just one of the Democratic caucus. The specifics are unimportant, its just that he ‘knew’ all about our politics despite never actually having lived here because he’s obviously been told repeatedly about how terrible they are. He also ‘knew’ about Corbyn and others from the Labour front bench (I suspect as an American, albeit of British origin, that I know a lot more about the Labour party leadership than he does.)(But then I don’t live off a diet of the Daily Telegraph, or rather I know just how much seasoning it needs to make it palatable!)
The astonishingly arrogant, presumptuous and insulting DEMANDS of the self-appointed Jewish Board of Deputies, their TEN COMMANDMENTS for the goy untermenschen, are the most preposterous affront to ‘democracy’ it is possible to imagine. The BOJ DEMANDS to run and control the Labour Party, and the Sabbat Goy Quislings are falling over themselves to obey. In the end this sort of narcissistic arrogance must kindle hatred and resentment of these villains (the BOJ) who treat it as entirely natural that one part of a small community must have total control over UK politics and the political parties. Let’s see a vote among UK Labour members to see how many agree to put themselves under the total control of the likes of the Chief Rabbi, or Melanie Phillips et al. And then, let’s set up a new Jewish representative body to make the proper sort of respectful submissions to the Government of the entire country, including the 99.5% of mere goyim.
Keep it simple, ditch the words socialism and wealth redistribution. It’s too abstract, too tainted and looks like you’d clean out people’s savings accounts.
Just focus on building affordable housing to avoid Los Angeles type deterioration.
In other words, surrender to the Bosses. Bring back pig-tails, I say!
The author fell 100% in the trap laid by the Anglo Arab Israeli oil dollar for protection pact: let all keep Zionism in their cross hairs to keep the Wahhabis out of the limelight, both domestically and internationally. Israel has little to offer but it makes an excellent bogeyman for any Tom, Dick or Ali.
The Arab oil & gas powers have enormous underground reserves plus the ca$h to keep on supporting the unlimited FED’s U$ dollar bill printing without any inflation penalty. In return for being vilified, Israel get US hardware and support – money for “free”. Jews are totally used to be discriminated in Europe and the ME, so nothing new for them. Meanwhile the Wahhibis get to spread their nefarious ideology far and wide: they even got the EU so dumb to open up fully for their young religious immigrants. Imagine, they themselves won’t allow any of these guys into KSA, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Iraq etc., specially not those “Palestinian” Arabs.
Game, set, match!
That never happened till date.
More over, present KSA is physically pretty safe, while 1967 Israel wasn’t with a waist of 15 km wide. For Israel it is about survival, not damage.
The Wahhabists are Israel’s long allies and friends, and ‘cousins’, and represent a very great Evil indeed. In fact their ‘society’ is rotten to the core, unlike Israel that still possesses many fine features, although careering ever further into racist fascism. But the influence of Israel on the world, its belligerence, aggression, interference in the affairs of other countries through Zionist Fifth Columns like that which mobilised to destroy Corbyn and controls US politics TOTALLY, and utter and total contempt for International Law and basic humanity (they are not alone there, by any means) makes it a veritable focus of Evil in the world, outdone only by the USA that it controls.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/grooming-gangs-sex-abuse-manchester-police-exploitation-asian-a9283146.html
You should be celebrating your TOTAL takeover of UK politics, but instead all you can do is spew your filthy race hatred and xenophobia. Incorrigible.
Abhorrent is the behaviour of bringing the grooimng gangs to cover the stench of the Israeli lobby’s nasty influence on other countries’ politics and policies.
No action taken for fear disturbing UK Intelligence assets amongst the terrorists recently relocated from Libya to Manchester by the UK SIS.
Kosherstan is the world centre of sex trafficking, organ trafficking, and much else besides.
Notoriously, the biggest customers of the sex trafficking industry in Israel are the Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox. Who’ d a thought it?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/millionaire-ehsan-abdulaziz-who-said-he-accidentally-tripped-and-penetrated-teen-is-cleared-of-rape-a6774946.html
Let’s discuss Epstein, Weinstein, the Israeli teenagers happily raping their way across Cyprus, Moonves, Malka Leifer (one of 65 suspected sex criminals hiding out in Israel), and the whole ‘shiksa’ belief system before we start throwing stones in our glass yeshiva, eh Antonym? There are perverts and abusers in every society.
Ludicrous. The Wahhabists have the hydrocarbons, and the poor, abused, Jews only posses total control of Western politics, domination of the Western financial Moloch, overweening influence in the Western MSM, control of much of the Internet, dominance of many lucrative rackets like ‘binary options’, human organ trafficking, ‘blood diamond’ trafficking, pornography, surveillance systems, and the personal wealth of the hundreds of Jewish billionaires, human paragons like the vulture fund king-pin, Paul Singer. In fact, Jews who behave decently as fellow human beings are almost universally admired by all but the tiny coteries of real Judeophobes, but we are nowadays ORDERED to adore even the rogues, and worse, like Bibi, Adelson, Lieberman etc, etc, etc.
How, with Magic, or are they really “The Chosen ones”?
Or is this all all just anti Zionist projections fueled by Arab oil money and latent European Christian envy/hate of Jews?
Talmudic Jews believe that Jesus sits in Hell up to his neck in boiling faeces. They call Mary, his mother, a whore. In Jerusalem Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox spit on Christian churches, graves and memorials incessantly. In fact they HATE Christians as ‘idolators’ more than they hate Moslems.
They hate everybody.
They certainly hate non-Orthodox Jews, whose marriages are not recognised in Israel.
I have lived in Qatar. Plenty of Palestinians living there.
I hear you’re a racist now, Father Anton. Only the farm takes up most of the day and at night I just like a cup of tea. I might not be able to devote myself full time to the old racism.
Big Mc projecting his own Animal Farm mind on others …..
The parenthesised ‘Palestinians’ show you going full Nazi, Ant. Hardly a surprising development.
Corbyn wasn’t electable for the simple reason, he wasn’t very bright. You can always tell a less intelligent politician, they fall back on dogma and ‘purity’, not having the mental capacity that pragmatism demands.
Starmer is everything Corbyn isn’t, pity we’ll have to wait five years before he has a chance.
Pragmatists are first and foremost practitioners of expedience.
Expedience is used by those who behave selfishly and short term.
Corbyn’s got a heart, unlike the turds who now rule.
That is absolutely no recommendation for PM. The electorate recognised that.
A small percentage of the electorate, the stupid, ignorant, vicious and bigoted felt that, after the most vicious hate campaign ever mounted against a UK politician.
Always someone else’s fault, isn’t it, when it comes to Corbyn?
He was weak on defense (admired Putin a little too much), had contradictory positions on Europe (the biggest issue of the day), allowed his party to be labelled anti-Semitic, and was absolutely charisma free.
It is tempting to see him as a Manchurian candidate…
Ahem! Tony Blair? Theresa May? John Major? David Cameron? The list just goes on and on.
Not very bright are you, falling back on media dogma?
The electorate are zombified.
I see, everyone is mad, but you….
Almost_ _ _ _
Corbyn wasn’t “electable” because he made the error of trying to be reasonable and decent and didn’t realise the utter conscienceless malevolence of the system confronting him. The only way he could have had a chance of winning (in your terms: “being pragmatic”) would be to completely cave in to the demands of the media around him and – once again – become Tony Blair who only got into power by becoming Margaret Thatcher.
I think he recognised it. He just hoped that the electorate would too. And they could not care less. The electorate were only interested in kicking out immigrants, leaving the EU and their wallets.
Well I have to say he came across as a nice enough chap, but in the final analysis he did cave in: firstly the the anti=semitic smear campaign allowing Mossad asset Gordon Brown to push the IHRA agenda thus giving the zionists cover for the smear campaign, then the Blairite demands for a second referendum to which he capitulated, even though he had been a lifelong eurosceptic. When push came to shove he just ‘bottled it’. But that is what leaders of European social-democratic parties do. Hollande, Tsipras, current leaders of the German SPD, junior partners in Merkel’s grand coalition with the SPD is now a minor force in German politics.
I doubt that Corbyn is less intelligent than a vicious troll like you, but I do know that morally he is of a different species from scum like you.
Pledge 7. Deliver an anti racism education programme that has the buy-in of the Jewish community. “The Jewish Labour Movement should be reengaged by the Party to lead on training about anti-Semitism”
The Board of Deputies must be joking, the JLM are affiliated to the World Zionist Organization, who take over land in the Occupied West Bank and finance settlements. In other words they support grave war crimes in breach of paragraph 6, Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, also the World Court [ICJ] in its opinion in 2004 [the Wall case] came to the opinion by 15 Judges to zero that ALL the settlements were in breach of the Geneva conventions, also now part of the Rome statute [ICC]. The JLM support war crimes.
Editorial
The World Zionist Organization’s Land Theft Division
It’s time to investigate, and then shut down, this quasi-governmental agency, which steals both state and private Palestinian lands to realize its sacred goal of settlement construction
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/wzos-land-theft-division-1.5465930
You need only consult the relevant sections of the Torah, Talmud and the exegeses to see that the ultimate aim of the Talmusdists is Jewish control over the world. It is there, in black and white, and might once have been laughed off as ‘religious’ make-believe, but with these TEN COMMANDMENTS for total control of UK Labour, they are right out there, naked and unashamed. The BOD wants total control on what the goyim think and do-there has been nothing like it in my experience, and the PLP Sabbat Goy stooges are falling over themselves to tremble and obey.
Slightly remise in not mentioning Harold Wilson.
HE won one more election than Blair without the aid of massed establishment and media forces. Kept us out of Vietnam and was a realist on the EC project. Etc.
Had Corbyn not been so vilified by the unelected elites in 2017 he would have been able to form a coalition government.
Equally in the even dirtier election this time (dirtiest ever), with Libdem duplicity and SNP miscalculation to push for the unnecessary, prexmas, shortening days, plebiscite AND with a very suspicious 40% POSTAL vote he may have been in position to form a government.
So I suggest Corbyn to be a twice deposed PM – Wilson was threatened with a coup – this time the coup was conducted prior to attaining office.
Nandy is a liberal by blood and Blairite by action – she has not been supportive of the leadership since 2015. Starmer is a North London Metropolitan and a man.
It has to be L-B and Rayner as deputy (though she should also hold a shadow post – Health?). Starmer can have Home Office or Trade, his already knowledgeable of both these.
There can be no further accusations of non-female Labour leaders.
RL-B is fine except for her glasses which mean we can’t see her eyes at the dispatch box. And she should probably stop saying the word robustly (rohwbhust) , minor compared to what Maggie was like before being reinvented by PR managers. Becky will improve too.
“Had Corbyn not been so vilified by the unelected elites in 2017 he would have been able to form a coalition government.”
Never mind the ‘unelected elites” they did what they do, if they didn’t they wouldn’t be part of those elites. It was the elected PLP members who, then and in 2019 screwed Labour.
Are you really claiming that Austin, Chukka and the other seceders not to mention Hodge, Watson, Phillips et al would have missed the opportunity to prevent Corbyn from forming a government? They were quite clear in their public support of May over Corbyn. There would have been a coalition, alright, but Corbyn would not have been part of it.
I agree about the Chickencoupers.
But a few hundred to a few thousand votes in a significant numbet of seats in 2017 would have made forming that government a viable – the 10 DUP would not have been enough for May.
This time – the establishment took no chances. The gauntlet was deployed. That foreign meddling WAS REAL & rife.
We are in the first month of a post Coup government.
THEY know they are not legitimate and the election was stolen. Labour was NEVER going to be allowed to repeat the 2017 close shave and the Tory majority was planned, predicted, declared and delivered accordingly, exactly like a CIA Mission Impossible caper, down to the last sardonic shakey cam LauraK’s “its the postalvotes” gurning.
The SNP should have resisted the call for a snap election and with Labour holding out until the Boris Brexit deal had passed through and THAT brexit had been delivered – would have been time to have the election. That would have also meant that the CLP’s would have had time to finish the reselection procedures instead of having to shelve it.
Of course the blue Swinson and her dirty dozen defectors may have succeeded along with a few more Lab PLooPers in still swinging the election vote – but probably not. Bozo was chosen to be the face of the election- his job is done. He can get his ‘chair at the table’ alongside Dave, Gideon, Tony ..Nick and Jo will be tucked in there too.
Meanwhile – we head for the HARD BREXIT as always threatened and perhaps an end to Parliamentry government- much like the Nazis managed to achieve …
Here is a rebuttal of the Bod’s 10 pledges from Jewish Voice for Labour https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/letter-to-labour-leadership-and-deputy-leadership-candidates/
Also in my opinion pledge 3 which reads .. “Key affected parties to complaints, including Jewish representative bodies, should be given the right to regular detailed case updates, on the understanding of confidentiality”. In my opinion this could be a criminal offence which all 5 contenders inc. former Director of Public Prosecutions Sir K Starmer declare that they intend to commit or conspire to commit in breach of section 170 of the 2018 Data protection act UK.
Emily Thornberry said the other day…
“We need to start by apologising to our Jewish brothers and sisters for the hurt and fear that they’ve been caused at the hands of the sickening, despicable people who call themselves part of the Labour movement but betray our party’s values and history with their every insidious remark.
Then we need to get down on our hands and knees to the Jewish community and ask them for forgiveness and a fresh start”. https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/we-need-to-get-on-our-hands-and-knees-and-ask-for-forgiveness/
How could any self respecting person vote for such spineless individuals?
When you grovel, the Jewish elite DEMAND more self-abasement. Their lust for dominance and the goyim’s submission are INSATIABLE, and only fed by repulsive groveling like Thornberry’s. In the end they will demand that all Labour MPs convert to Orthodox Judaism. And, really, if you do value the safety and comfort of UK Jewry, cannot you see that the Jewish elite’s utterly vile behaviour and their arrogant assumption that they are the arbiters of UK political life and none other, must drive antipathy towards to whole UK Jewish population. Not every UK Labour member will be happy to get down on their hands and knees with Thornberry. It’s like a parody, a very sick joke.
If as is possible antisemitism is fuelled by these demands and their delivery, the Zionists’ agenda is better served.
Further ‘victimhood’ further emphasises the justness of their demands.
The fact is the health and security of ordinary Jewish folk living outside Israel is of zero consequence to Israel or Zionists, unless it serves their agenda.
Indeed, if recent history is anything to go by the Israeli government aren’t too bothered about the ultra Orthodox Jew living inside Israel.
It has always been that way-the Judaic elite use ordinary Jews as human shields. The lovely Ben-Gurion noted that, if he had to choose between saving all the Jewish children in Germany by sending them to England, or only half by transporting them to Palestine, he would choose the latter.
The site is knackered again.
In other words: The only way out of hell is by adopting the tactics of Satan him/herself.
And then slaughtering the prick.
This is all very plausible and coherent, but so what?
It just doesn’t matter any more. Labour is a lost cause, a dead end, a waste of time, effort and energy. It isn’t worth 5 minutes of anybody’s time, a millimetre of shoe leather, or a rat’s ass. Labour now is just a distraction from more worthwhile activity. People should simply reject and ignore it from now on, as they have The Guardian.
It is supremely irrelevant whether Thornberry, Starmer, Nandy, Phillips, or some other neoliberal, pro austerity, warmonger Friend of Israel Big Bag Of Bugger All replaces Corbyn to implement the Ten Commandments handed down from the Board of Deputies. In the vain hope that if you agree in advance to play by their rules and lose they might go easier on you. Living on tenterhooks waiting for the phone to ring with the next set of instructions from the Chief Rabbi and the Mossad Office.
There are half a million enthusiastic young members out there who could vote with their feet and form something completely new, fresh and unused. With experienced politicians and activists like Chris Williamson, Ken Livingstone, George Galloway, Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, and so many others to provide the necessary leadership and organisation.
Farage showed what could be done, picking up 4 million votes from a standing start and turning UK politics upside down. This is likely to be far more productive than throwing good money after bad down the Labour Rabbit Hole.
None of the candidates is acceptable. Long Bailey, as you demonstrate, is entirely in the pocket of the Israeli embassy which not only holds criticism of Israel to be anti-semitic but holds the view that opposition to capitalism and social inequality is too.
Israel has become a litmus test: those who defend its indefensible and publicly avowed actions in Palestine cannot be entrusted with the defence of the interests and rights of vulnerable populations anywhere.
All of these candidates are kow-towing to zionism in order to neutralise the power that imperialism has over the media. It is not hard to imagine with what eagerness they will rush to betray the poor and working class in the UK.
Nor is imagination needed: during the 13 years when their mentors, Blair et al, held power in the UK they made no effort to repair any of the glaring wrongs inherited from Thatcher, no effort to rebalance the diminished power of the worker against the boss, no effort to relax the iron grip of the state over the inherent right of a person to withdraw his labour, no effort to relax the ban on sympathy strikes; no effort to reform the regressive tax system or to address the scandals of tax evasion. It accelerated the commercialisation of the NHS while promoting Private Public finance schemes that will be undermining the treasury for decades to come. It was this government which privatised the Bank of England, an act of stupidity amounting to treason.
And, among a long list of failures, they actually strengthened the alliance between the UK and US imperialist aggression.
It was the Labour government and Blair, alone of the major NATO powers which, by backing the invasion of Iraq facilitated that dreadful war in a way that no other power could have done. American progressives were assured that Saddam’s regime was so bad that Britain’s “socialist” government supported its overthrow. And in Iraq as in Yugoslavia the Labour government took the lead in making propaganda on behalf of imperialism.
Not one of the current candidates can be trusted. Long Bailey’s true feelings can be judged by the fact that she is running in harness with Angela Rayner one of the most notorious of the Labour MPs who undermined the party during the past five years.
Any one of these candidates will lead the Labour party into oblivion. There is no reason why the membership faced with a choice that even Hobson would have turned away from, should play along with this stitch up: the PLP is entirely responsible, much more responsible than the media which feasted on its leaks, smears, lies and misrepresentations, for the election loss. The condition that the membership of the party is restricted to voting for candidates approved in the sewer of the PLP beggars belief.
The largest political party in Europe is about to implode-unless it insists on exercising its democratic right to elect its own officers and control its own party imprimatur.
Sorry Bevin
“Long Bailey, as you demonstrate, is entirely in the pocket of the Israeli embassy ”
Is not demonstrated in the article. Though he does spend rather a lot of words on her supposed aquiesance to the Jewish lobby…
I’ll take your word for it. But don’t tell Angela Rayner or Lansman, they are both counting on it.
I’m not sure what your specific objection to Rayner is as well. Perhaps you want to explain briefly?
I am though interested by the news that Pidcock is supporting Burgone for Deputy – ideally she should have been running for Leader… if her majority hadn’t been part of the great postal vote tsunami from nowhere.
DL really is a fairly pointless position – Tories don’t have one.
It only became significant under Blairism as means of deploying two Jags Prescott as a sheepdog of the ‘Authentic Labour Working Class’ while they revelled in their Champagne Socialist relaxing with the filthy rich. Maybe Burgone is that bloke – how much of a bruiser is he?
Any Leadership failure would automatically trigger a new leadership contest with the deputy presumably holding the reigns temporarily, while in opposition. In government i would expect a cabinet to have a say in the matter.
He remains cool under fire, from what I saw of him on election night and in the days following.
He reminds me a bit of Denis Healey, although perhaps not quite that much of a bruiser.
(It’s “Burgon” withought the “e”, btw).
She is an ethusiastic groveler, a real ‘down on her hands and knees’ shiksa.
Show us. Got anything to support that? I’m prepared to be convinced.
Israelis fly to Cyprus for that sort mostly.
Bevin,
I think you’ve gone a little overboard in claiming none of the Labour Party Leadership candidates are acceptable, but concur with much else you have covered.
Lets get the Leadership out of the way first, which means concentrating on both the Leadership post itself and Deputy Leadership position.
Its fair to say that those who made it through to the second stage of the electoral process are lamentable as far as the Leader position is concerned, particularly in light of all candidates bowing to the whims of the Israeli Lobby represented by the totally unrepresentative Board of Deputies – this fact has caused much consternation on the Left, with some members throwing the towel in in protest of such an abject capitulation to rightwing forces. However, two candidates for the Deputy Leadership position have not sold out to appease the right, namely Richard Burgon and Dawn Butler and its here that much of the Left is now pinning its hopes.
As far as the Leadership goes, its now a ‘Stop Starmer’ project, namely, its recognised that Starmer, the architect of Labour’s disastrous Brexit policy, will move the Party towards Blairism once more, or as Progress will have us believe ‘Sensible Socialism’, which is an oxymoron in this posters opinion.
Given the above, that means we are into the least worst option, which means voting for RLB with no second preference, such is PLP democracy and democratic choice, which is absent shall we say – obviously many of us on the Left would have preferred a real choice, but we are where we are.
Now, the Deputy Leadership race gets interesting, we do have two actual Left-of-Centre candidates we can get behind and its here where all the action is now apparent, particularly if we wish to deny Raynor the position. With this in mind, this poster and many of his Leftist peer group are voting for Burgon with Butler as the second preference.
Now, TWatson demonstrated clearly that the Elected Deputy Leader position can be utilised as a wrecking ball, or utilised to ensure the actual Left of the membership has a voice, one that will get heard and one that will hopefully act as a brake on any attempt by the Leader to return to Blairism.
We can underscore the above with the fact that the Lansman diktat on the Momentum dream ticket of RLB/Raynor is not popular with the Momentum wing of the Party, with only 3500 of its 30,000 plus membership endorsing the Lansman diktat, so much is to play for, and that’s prior to the news that Laura Pidcock is to chair Burgon’s campaign.
So, its not all gloom and doom, and we still have an opportunity as the membership to influence the composition of the NEC, particularly given many on the Left now have zero confidence in Lansman and his London clique, meaning his diktats on who to vote for as a Left slate is much diminished, its just a shame RLB does not recognise this fact, what with him orchestrating her campaign.
Another bloody ‘antisemite’!
Lets just say I’m no fan of the owner of Momentum, who does seem to have a Stalinist streak within him, one many members of Momentum are quite aware of, which is why his Diktats are usually ignored outside of Zone 5.
Chris, I’d be interested to learn what you think of the Members Charter idea that I roughed (very rough!) out above. A set of simple policy principles to which candidates, for this or future elections can either subscribe or not.
As we know nothing is easier than for someone to say, with perfect sincerity, ” I am a socialist.”
It is a bit more difficult to appeal to the Capitalist media and the imperialists while agreeing to leave NATO, promising to rescind regressive taxes such as VAT (inspired by the EU) and ending all Public Private Partnership scams.
bevin,
I think a firm set of guiding Principles would be useful, with those who object to these evidently not fit to act as a representative of the People’s Party, what these Principles should entail is a moot point though, although as a starting point we could look to the French Revolution or ‘The Charter’ and Chartism, one things for sure, the Party should never prostrate itself to any single national entity, be it the USA or Israel.
Can agree that Burgon is worth actively supporting, particularly as someone who is not in Lansman’s pocket, is a true Bennite and has an analysis of imperialism which he doesn’t mind displaying: Butler probably has a heart of gold but is an accident looking for a place to happen in my opinion. I reluctantly conclude that RLB is the only game in town as leader.
Chris, what is your assessment of Rayner?
Mike,
Her actual Parliamentary voting record is quite positive and she is from a genuine working class background, but seems socially liberal. That said, and as with RLB, she’s prostrated herself to a foreign power and malign influence of the Israeli Lobby and would continue the Witch Hunt against those in the Party who place some import on Palestinian Human Rights and an end of violence in the Holy Lands. As such, I’m unable to endorse her and I’m only voting for RLB due to the fact she’s the only Leadership candidate who has a chance of stopping Starmer – on many other issues I’m totally unimpressed I’m afraid.
With RLB it’s like Jo Cox came back from the dead. I expect RLB to start praising the ‘White Helmets’ and the ‘rebels’ in Idlib, and abusing Iran and Hezbollah any day now. Expect the worst, and hope for it too, so as to be spared the inevitable disillusion.