With its five candidates on the ballot paper, it’s clear who has won the Labour leadership election
Gone: Clive Lewis, the only Labour leader candidate who didn’t sign up to hand over his power to the Board of Deputies of British Jews, failed to get enough nominations from fellow Labour MPs. What does that tell us about them?
So now we know who will lead the Labour Party after the three-month election process is over.
Nominations closed on January 13, and five candidates secured enough votes to get through to the next round.
They are: Rebecca Long-Bailey, Lisa Nandy, Jess Phillips, Kier Starmer, and Emily Thornberry.
So we know that the next leader of the Labour Party will be…
The Conservative-dominated Board of Deputies of British Jews.
That’s right. All five of the leader candidates have signed up to the BoD’s 10 pledges to tackle anti-Semitism. One of those pledges – to engage with the Jewish community only through “main representative groups” as defined by the BoD is itself anti-Semitic as it denies a voice to anybody these Tories consider to be the “wrong kind of Jews”.
Other pledges may demand illegal action of the party.
And all five leader candidates have signed up to support all 10 pledges and do whatever the BoD demands.
Oh – and just so you know, at least three of the five candidates to be deputy leader have signed up to the BoD’s 10 pledges too. So it looks like the deputy leadership will be taken by the Board of Deputies of British Jews as well.
This organisation is a group of unelected (and therefore undemocratic), self-appointed political operators with an agenda to make the Labour Party unelectable. It has been succeeding quite well so far, but electing its puppets into leadership positions will put it in an unbeatable position.
So, what’s to be done?
Not a lot, it seems.
The satirists are already mocking the situation, drafting satirical job advertisements describing ways the new leader is likely to abuse their position:
To the best of This Writer’s knowledge, there’s no mechanism for the membership-at-large to reject all candidates chosen to stand in a leadership election by their elders and betters (as they clearly see themselves) in the Parliamentary Labour Party.
And, if you’re a party member, you have to ask: why not? Labour is supposed to be the party in which all members are equal.
But it seems clear that half a million party members are about to be railroaded by a couple of hundred political operators – presumably for reasons of their own.
I’m not currently a member of the party, but if I were, I would be demanding a chance to reject the Board of Deputies’ candidates before they do irreparable damage.
Wouldn’t you?
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Blimey what a choice – none of the above.
This was the straw.
As a Jew I reject the Board of Deputies’ cynical request that the candidates sign up to mythical notions of antisemitism and the attempt to perpetuate the falsehood that Labour has any more of an ‘antisemitism crisis’ that any other Party.
The whole media manipulation and the Chief Rabbi’s appalling ideological interference should be rejected.
The Board of Deputies do not represent the whole community. Left leaning Jews do not recognise them and nor do the most orthodox Jews who have twice sent letters rejecting the notion that Corbyn and Labour have an antisemitism problem.
Any candidate dancing to their tune is perpetuating the myth to gain media approval which, in any case, won’t help them as they will be savaged by our gutter media.
God help us
Unfortunately, I suspect cynicism all round. Did all these candidates actually read ALL the Board of Deputies demands before signing? Or considered the implications?
I suspect not.
They just signed them to make the problem go away. To look as though they were following the wishes of “the Jewish Community” and , rather, could be seen by all and sundry to be doing so.
I expect the BoD are just as cynical, knowing they could force this agreement on paper. But waiting for the inevitable transgression when the ageing Labour Party disciplinary procedures fail to creak into action quickly enough. So the whole “Anti-semitism” outrage can be stoked up to wrong-foot the next leader.
It is not unusual for people, including politicians, to sign things without reading them properly or even at all.
Before the Iraq War, a CIA report came out and Hillary Clinton, who voted for the war, later admitted that she did not read it.
One person who did read it was Senator Bob Graham. He was not too convinced and was one of only 23 senators to vote against.
I vote none of the above. By giving in to the demands of the BOD they have all shown how little backbone they have. Phillips and Thornberry are linked to LFI and Nandy is up for leadership of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. This is the final straw for me and I will be resigning from Labour.
That is precisely what they want.
It looks like the end of my Party membership. I shall continue to work with Kenneth Stern.