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,… Read more »
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 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. 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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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. 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. 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. And it can be no coincidence that these… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
By ‘independent provider’ they mean the Chief Rabbi, or Chabad or Nick Cohen.
The statement from the Board of Deputies of British Jews: Today we release our #TenPledges, identifying 10 key points we believe Labour needs to sign up to in order to begin healing its relationship with the Jewish community. “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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
” 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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
* 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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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. The only hopefuls and those worthy of consideration in this leadership race is Starmer. From what I have seen in RLB she is another maverick and I would not be supporting a return to the past. Whatever she is taking, I want none of it. This is RLB in a desperate state. Vote for RLB is a vote for Johnson. Starmer it is. 62 upvotes. RLB must think she is the Joan of Arc in politics. We are seriously finished with her warrior war cry. Give it a rest. It is painful and so yesterday’s news. I hope to god she is not selected for leader. If she is like this now I dread to think. Has she jot… Read more »
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: “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.” “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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
“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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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,… Read more »
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… Read more »
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.