Category Archives: Labour Party

Labour’s ‘fresh start’ seems to keep a LOT of rotten Tory depravities

It seems some of us are not impressed with Labour’s “fresh start”:

That’ll be because Keir Starmer seems to be keeping an awfully large number of Tory policies.

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For those who can’t read images, they are:

The Bedroom Tax
The Rape Clause (in Child Benefit claims)
The two-child benefit cap
Starving school children
Asylum seekers on barges
Hard Brexit
NHS privatisation
Anti-trade union laws
Coalitions with Conservatives in Scottish councils
The unelected House of Lords
Anti-worker laws
Universal Credit
Children in poverty
Anti-LGBTQ+ attitudes

You might not agree with everything on the list. Feel free to add your own choices!


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Andy McDonald’s Labour suspension ends; when will Diane Abbott’s?

Andy McDonald: his Labour Party suspension is over. But why is it looking as though Diane Abbott will have to do a humiliating deal before her own suspension ends?

MP Andy McDonald’s suspension from the Labour Party has been ended after five months and a lengthy investigation which found that he did not break any party rules.

Mr McDonald’s party membership had been placed under “precautionary suspension” after he told a pro-Palestine rally, “We won’t rest until we have justice. Until all people, Israelis and Palestinians, between the river and the sea, can live in peaceful liberty.”

Downing Street had said, just a few hours earlier, that the chant, “From the River to the Sea, [Palestine will be free]” was “deeply offensive” to many people. But, of course, that’s not what Mr McDonald had said, as discussed by This Site, here.

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The Guardian reports that a Labour spokesperson said:

“The chief whip has today restored the Labour whip to Andy McDonald MP. This follows a full investigation by the Labour party into complaints received about public remarks that he made in October 2023.

“The investigation concluded that he had not engaged in conduct that was against the party’s rulebook but reminded him of the importance of elected representatives being mindful not only of what they say in public but how their words may be interpreted, especially in reference to controversial or emotive issues.”

But questions remain to be answered here. A “precautionary suspension” is supposed to last just three months. Why did this one continue for five? The Graun also quotes a spokesperson for left-wing campaign group Momentum, who connected the case with that of Diane Abbott, who has also been without the Labour whip – for nearly a year – and who has been the subject of much discussion this week after comments by the Conservative Party’s biggest donor, Frank Hester:

“Why has it taken nearly five months to investigate a speech at a rally? Why has Diane Abbott – a black woman Keir Starmer rightly hails as a trailblazer – been suspended for an outrageous 11 months now, with no end in sight? And why do black and brown MPs like Diane, Apsana Begum and Kate Osamor feel they suffer worse treatment than their white male counterparts?”

Senior Labour figures from across the party have called for Abbott to have the Labour whip reinstated. Harriet Harman, Ed Balls, John McDonnell and Dawn Butler believe Abbott should be readmitted to the party.

McDonald’s readmission into the party will also raise questions on the future of Osamor, who was suspended by the party in January.

These are all left-wing Labour MPs – and party leader Keir Starmer is about as right-wing as one can get. It has been suggested that he is trying to find a way to change these suspensions into removal from Parliament altogether.

This speculation is fuelled by comments like the following:

It is true that, after the Equality and Human Rights Commission investigated Labour for alleged “institutional antisemitism” (and found none), Starmer said the party leader’s office would no longer have any influence over investigations into allegations against members – a criticism that had been levelled against previous leader Jeremy Corbyn.

If Starmer is the one making decisions about Ms Abbott’s future, then he was lying with that claim.

The following suggests that Abbott may be blackmailed into quitting Parliament at the next election in return for having the whip restored until then – with right-wing cronies of Starmer queuing up to take over from her.

If that were true, it would be yet another scandal, opening Starmer’s party to renewed accusations of racism and misogyny, and This Writer would certainly agree with James Foster’s suggestion, below:

Now this information – whether it is right or wrong – is in the public domain, Starmer’s best course of action would be to restore the whip at once, in order to prevent a possible – and highly damaging – backlash.

But he seems to think he is invincible, in spite of the small army of left-wing Independent candidates springing up to take his MPs’ constituencies away from them.

Watch this space to see what happens next.


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Donor’s Diane Abbott remark highlights racism in both Tory and Labour parties

Diane Abbott: she has suffered more racist abuse than anybody you can name – and now she has to watch Tories scrambling to defend a donor who has allegedly piled more of it onto her, while her own party leader sits on his thumbs rather than supporting her.

A Conservative Party donor, whose business has received huge contracts from the Tory-run UK government, has apologised for passing racist remarks about Labour MP Diane Abbott.

But Frank Hester’s contrition comes too late, as it has demonstrated that both the Conservatives and the Labour Party are now cesspits of racism.

He reportedly said Ms Abbott made him “want to hate all black women”, and that she “should be shot”. That’s not merely insulting to her but racist to every woman in her ethnic group.

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Here’s a neat summary of what happened:

Mr Hester’s apology has proved not to be enough – and his claim that he was not being racist has been dismissed by other Labour MPs of colour. Here’s Dawn Butler:

Ms Abbott herself issued a statement this morning (Tuesday, March 12, 2024), describing Mr Hester’s words as “frightening”.

She said: “It is frightening. I live in Hackney, I don’t drive, so I find myself, at weekends, popping on a bus or even walking places, more than most MPs.

“I am a single woman and that makes me vulnerable anyway. But to hear someone talking like this is worrying.”

There was more to her statement, including an appeal for public support from Labour leader Keir Starmer, as read out by Susanna Reid on Good Morning Britain:

Alas, Ms Reid’s hope may be forlorn; if Mr Hester is racist, then Starmer is just as racist as he is. We’ll come back to this.

Conservatives have rallied to support – not Ms Abbott, but their biggest donor. Apparently he can’t possibly be racist because he takes money from people in Jamaica:

Mel Stride, Work and Pensions Secretary, has also come out with much the same excuse.

Here are former Tory chairwoman Sayeeda Warsi and LBC’s James O’Brien with their own opinions about that:

The incident appears to have triggered a crisis within the Tory Party and its supporters, as black people across the UK who may have offered the Tories their vote at the next election now find themselves reconsidering their position:

But Ian Lavery, who is a socialist Labour MP and therefore a close comrade of Ms Abbott, can’t afford to crow too much about this because Labour itself has also treated her abominably.

Press coverage of the story seems to have missed out this vital angle…

Is it because they are backing Labour to form the next government?

Let’s get the facts out in the open, right now, starting with Ms Abbott’s own comments about the racists within her party who backstabbed her for years:

Returning to her appeal for support from Keir Starmer, here’s This Writer’s reason for doubting he’ll offer any: he has spent years doing his best to stifle or ignore any suggestion of anti-black racism in his party, despite the fact that it is clearly riddled with racists:

We can only conclude that Starmer is, himself, deeply racist against black people – at least until such time as he can prove that the words recorded above were never used by Labour staffers and/or that he has acted to ensure that the racists have been removed. I fear we may face a long wait.

I lay the following in support of this belief:

So now, not only the Tories but also Labour MPs and supporters have had to launch a damage limitation exercise. For example, here comes Ed Balls on (again) Good Morning Britain. I tend to agree with the comment by “Teri”:

We judge people on what they do. With the Conservatives scrambling to defend their biggest donor, rather than disown him, take back his contracts and return his dirty money; and with Labour doing almost nothing to condemn the racist discrimination against not only that party’s, but the UK’s, most heavily-abused black female politician, our conclusion must be harsh:

Both parties are racist to the core. Both deserve to be shunned at the next general election.


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UK politicians wishing Muslims a “peaceful Ramadan” are hypocrites

Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak: they’re both quick to wish Muslim voters in the UK a peaceful Ramadan, while supplying – and supporting the supply of – weapons to Israel so it can continue killing Muslims in Gaza.

The hypocrisy of this.

The Conservatives…

… and Labour…

… are wishing Muslims a “peaceful” Ramadan.

Included in those wishes must be the Muslim people of Gaza, who have been subjected to five months of genocide – so far – by their Israeli neighbours, who are using weaponry supplied by the UK, and who are aided by UK naval support.

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A more honest message would have been: “Ramadan mubarak to Muslims everywhere except Gaza. Muslims in Gaza can all die.”

After all, that’s what they have been doing, thanks to the aid the UK gives Israel:

These two-faced fakers in the Conservative Party and Labour should all be kicked out at the next election. I mean, would you vote for any of these liars?


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Four ways Labour could fix the crisis in local council finances – but will it?

Council funding: council tax bills are only a minor element in the funding of local authorities – most of the cash comes from central government’s Aggregate External Finance (AEF) grant. It is the composition of this grant that determines whether councils can cope – or will go bankrupt.

LabourList used to be a handy source of information about the UK’s largest political party – but that was a long time ago, before the infighting over Jeremy Corbyn, and Keir Starmer’s purge of the Left.

Still, it does produce the occasional item of interest, like a recent piece about ways a Labour government might solve the Tory-caused crisis in local council funding.

Six English councils have announced effective bankruptcy since 2020, and there is said to be a £4 billion funding gap across the board.

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“£4 billion? That’s nothing,” I hear you say. “Tories give sums like that to their buddies in return for hot air.” True. But LabourList has suggested four possible ways of improving council funding.

The big question is: which will Keir Starmer rubber-stamp? Or will he ignore the problem, like the Tory he is?

Here are the possibilities:

Proposal 1: Rework the local government needs assessment [the Fair Funding Review].

The government launched a ‘fair funding review’ in 2016, but this has not progressed since a consultation in 2018. Not having this in place in England makes it a significant outlier in the international community, gradually untethering the distribution of local government finance from local need and resource.

The Fair Funding Review should be reopened and delivered, paving the way for yearly needs assessments and longer-term funding settlements.

Proposal 2: Establish a systematic form of territorial equalisation between local authorities.

England is an outlier in not having a systematic form of territorial equalisation, that ensures solidarity and parity in needs-based revenue between location.

Germany, Italy, and Japan all utilise forms of vertical (central to local) and horizontal (between location) redistributions of major income streams (including elements of personal, company, consumption, and asset taxes) that ensure that all locations have access to sufficient resources and the ability to deliver minimum service standards.

Importantly, the funding provided through the equalisation systems in Germany, Japan and Italy is not ringfenced. This results in individual local authorities having significant discretion over the income they receive.

Proposal 3: Establish a standing commission, akin to the ‘English Devolution Council’ proposed by the Institute for Government.

Discussions between councils and the government about local financial pressures, distribution of funds, or the impact of national policies are haphazard and often adversarial. To strengthen this relationship, we propose a one-stop, statutory body to provide discussion forum for local authority representatives and the government.

Proposal 4: Develop a long-term programme exploring assigning national tax revenues to local authorities.

A fixed percentage of the revenue from one or more national taxes could be assigned to local government as a whole. Taxes that could be considered in this regard include income tax, VAT, employers’ NI, corporation tax, vehicle excise duty, and stamp duty.

The revenue could then be distributed according to the needs assessment developed in Proposal 1. This would counter the problem faced by many proposals for fiscal devolution: that richer areas raise more money, increasing inequality.

All of these ideas are based on the situation in Germany, Italy and Japan, which suggests that, perhaps, only minimal research has been done.

Still, a little is better than none at all.

But no amount of research can do any good if a government is not interested in implementing it.

And Keir Starmer is haemorrhaging votes because of his blind loyalty to Israel in that country’s brutal slaughter of innocent citizens of Gaza.

Which of the four ideas above will he implement? Well, he may not have the chance to consider any of them.

Source: Four ways Labour could fix the crisis in local council finances – LabourList


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Another Keir Starmer lie? Election candidates to be chosen centrally?

Keir Starmer: they lie, and they lie, and they lie… (allegedly).

Here’s the claim:

Didn’t Keir Starmer say something about constituency Labour parties selecting their own MPs, before he became leader?

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Yes:

The comments are searing:

So, if this claim is true, not only will Keir Starmer have reneged on yet another promise, but he’ll be foisting candidates of highly suspicious character on UK Parliamentary constituencies.

Worth your vote? Really?


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Was Streeting’s about-turn on Gaza just a pose?

Wes Streeting: look at that smug smirk.

Take a look at Wes Streeting, laughing and joking in a London restaurant after Labour hijacked the SNP motion for a ceasefire in Gaza and made it meaningless:

He was acting as though he didn’t have a care in the world. He certainly didn’t seem to care about what he and his party had just done.

To clarify: after the SNP tabled a motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the collective punishment (a war crime) meted out on Palestinian non-combatants there by Israel, Keir Starmer’s Labour (of which Streeting is a leading MP) tabled an amendment removing that reference, adding verbiage sympathetic to Israel and saying any ceasefire should happen at Israel’s convenience.

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When it came to the vote, SNP and Tory MPs had walked out of the Commons chamber in protest at Speaker Lyndsay Hoyle’s decision to allow the Labour amendment to be debated (it was against convention for another opposition party to table an amendment when the government had also tabled one), so Labour MPs were free to approve their amendment, meaning the SNP could not have a vote on its own motion.

This is a clear abuse of Parliamentary procedure (and Hoyle had been warned of this very fact by his clerk, before he adopted the Labour amendment). It brought the entire debate into disrepute.

And then we see video of Streeting laughing afterwards, without a care in the world.

It makes a mockery of his words on Sky News on Monday: “What we have seen are actions that go beyond reasonable self-defence and also call into question whether Israel has broken international law. The ICJ [International Court of Justice] are now investigating and we take all of that seriously.

“I think, objectively, yes, Israel has gone too far. And we have seen that with a disproportionate loss of innocent civilian life.”

“A disproportionate loss of innocent civilian life” suggested that Streeting agreed with the SNP’s motion that said Israel was inflicting collective punishment on the non-combatant citizens of Gaza – punishing them for the actions of Hamas.

And then Labour tabled its watered-down amendment, he supported that, and went off to have a laugh and a joke over a slap-up meal while Gazans like him were being shot, bombed, slaughtered.

He and his party do not deserve to form a government – and the people know it:

If you thought you would support Labour at the next election, think again.


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Starmer’s dilemma: he’s not an alternative to the Tories and he isn’t even interesting

Stiff as a board: Keir Starmer simply isn’t interesting – and he doesn’t have any policies worth supporting.

The opinion polls suggest a landslide general election victory for the Labour Party – not because Keir Starmer’s policies are any good but because people are so sick of the Tories that any old rubbish will seem better.

It is likely to have the lowest turnout, as a percentage of the electorate, of any election since universal suffrage was introduced, meaning there will be strong arguments that whichever party forms the next government will not have a mandate and proportional representation should be introduced to restore power to the people.

The problem is that any government formed by Starmer will be as right-wing as Rishi Sunak’s, with policies that are indistinguishable from those of Sunak’s administration. In other words, none of Starmer’s policies will work either.

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And the UK’s electorate doesn’t turn out to elect right-wing governments. We don’t like them.

Consider the following:

So election expert Professor John Curtice reckons, “None of [the party leaders] enthuse the electorate, none of them are popular, all of them are regarded as dull as dishwater… So what’s the point of turning out to vote? If we give people a reason to vote, they’ll turn out.”

But people don’t have a reason to vote.

And Ruth Wodak said: “If there is a good opposition, if there’s an alternative programme, you might have a chance [to defeat far-right populism]… One has to provide alternatives, provide more participation so that citizens feel that they are acknowledged and that their worries are being taken seriously.”

There isn’t a good opposition. There isn’t an alternative programme. Keir Starmer has removed all his alternatives and cut back on participation – because, at heart, he is a Conservative cuckoo in the Labour nest.

Oh, he keeps pretending to offer more participation – here’s his current pledge:

But you can be sure it will be withdrawn long before anybody expects it to be put into practice, just like all Labour’s other pledges under Starmer’s leadership.

The UK needs alternatives – and we won’t get them from Labour or any of the other mainstream parties.

That’s why I am advising everyone to actually find out what the candidates in your constituency are planning to do, if they are lucky enough to be elected.

That is what party manifestos are for. Independent candidates also have policy documents and they will all be online for you to find and read.

You need to find and read these policy documents, and then you need to make a dispassionate choice, based on what you have read.

Which of the candidates offers the most policies that fit what you need? And, by that, I mean: who will improve your own life the most?

Do not consider how other people will vote, either in your constituency or the other 649 around the UK. That is not your concern.

It is not for you to worry about which party will get enough votes to actually enact its policies. This will lead you down the usual garden path to voting in a government that won’t do anything at all for the good of the country, like the one we’ve had since 2010.

BE SELFISH. Bizarrely, it might be the only way to get the kind of government that all of us need.


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Never mind the spin – here’s #TelAvivKeith

#TelAvivKeith: Keir Starmer’s slavish support for Israel has earned him a new derogatory nickname. But if the cap fits…?

It’s the perfect put-down for a Labour leader who sold out to a foreign power before winning any power for himself.

Keir Starmer’s unquestioning support for Israel has been just a little too conspicuous since October 7 last year – and today (February 17, 2024), somebody found the perfect way to sum it up:

He can try to pretend he’s been taking legal advice into consideration but everybody has already concluded that the only advice he’s accepting is coming from Tel Aviv.

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The nickname caught on quickly:

And then it started trending:

It’s because right-thinking people think it’s accurate, of course:

Even now, when he has changed his tune in response to public demand, #TelAvivKeith can’t avoid the public spotlight that highlights all his little evasions and caveats:

This Writer has said it before and will undoubtedly do so again: Do you really want this man running your country when he is so clearly influenced by another one?


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Tories lose two more by-elections – but don’t believe Labour’s propaganda

The ballot box: it seems democracy in the UK has fallen to such a pitiful state that our governments are formed according to the number of people who DON’T vote, rather than the number who do.

Labour has won two more by-elections – but don’t be fooled by the party’s propagandists; Keir Starmer’s cronies only took the seats because disillusioned Tory voters stayed away from polling stations.

The polls were held in Wellingborough and Kingswood, after the recall of Peter Bone and resignation of Chris Skidmore (both of the Conservative Party) respectively.

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Wellingborough has an electorate of 79,376 people – but only 30,145 turned out to vote in the by-election. That’s about 38 per cent – less than half the total.

How can an election result based on such a low turnout be said to represent the will of the majority? The majority didn’t want to vote for any of the candidates!

Turnout was also 21,768 down from the 51,913 in the 2019 general election.

Looking at the numbers for each party, we see that Labour had 13,844 votes on February 15, 2024 – up from 13,737 in 2019… by just 107 votes. As a proportion of the total electorate, that represents a swing to Labour of just 0.1 per cent from 17.3 per cent of the electorate to 17.4 per cent.

So we can see that the reason Labour won, as has been the case in many recent by-elections, is not because that party has become more popular but because the Conservative vote collapsed. In 2019, 32,277 people voted Tory (41 per cent of the electorate), compared with 7,408 on February 15 (nine per cent). So that’s a percentage drop of 32 per cent.

As for Gen Kitchen, the new Labour MP: she cannot claim to represent a majority of Wellingborough’s electorate because 82.6 per cent of that electorate – 65,532 people – did not want her to be their MP.

Let’s move on to Kingswood, where the result was even worse – for both main parties.

The electorate is said to be 65,543 people but only 24,905 turned out to vote on February 15 – so, again, that’s about 38 per cent of the total. It’s a fall of 40,638 voters.

And the vote for both Labour and the Conservatives collapsed. The only reason Labour’s Damian Egan won is that his party’s vote didn’t fail quite as badly as the Tories’.

In 2019, Labour had 16,492 votes (24 per cent of the electorate at the time). On February 15, this fell to 11,176 votes (17 per cent of the electorate). That’s a fall of 5,316 votes (seven per cent)

But the Conservative vote fell from 27,712 (40.2 per cent) to 8,675 (13.2 per cent) – a massive 19,037 (27 per cent) drop.

Again, it may be said that, with 62 per cent of the electorate not turning out and 83 per cent not voting for that party’s candidate, Labour cannot be said to have a mandate in that constituency. Can it?

And people know.

Look at the comments on ‘X’:

What a disaster for democracy.


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