If Starmer hadn’t whipped Labour to abstain on #spycops bill, this support for murder, torture & sex crimes would have been defeated
Keir Starmer: he probably thought he was being smart but all he really did was get it wrong again.
Well, isn’t this interesting?
https://twitter.com/raphaeldogg/status/1313480836679958531
The tweet isn’t quite correct; only 20 MPs voted against the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill that would authorise people from the Financial Conduct Authority (for example) to commit crimes up to and including murder, rape and torture in the course of an investigation – and they were all from the Labour Party.
But only 182 Tories voted for it.
If Keir Starmer had not whipped Labour MPs to abstain – and take note that exactly 182 of them did – then this endorsement of crime by a criminal government would have been stopped in its tracks.
Defenders of the Bill have claimed it isn’t as bad as some of us are saying – that spies working for the various government agencies would need approval to commit crimes before carrying out the acts for which the planned law would grant them immunity.
But the safeguards against abuse are said to be “very vague and very broad” and, as I mentioned in a previous article, there is the issue of “mission creep”: agents will end up committing ever-more-extreme crimes because they are told to do so on the spur of a moment, creating precedents to stretch what is permissible until it covers anything at all.
Take note: Starmer used to be a human rights lawyer.
But he just gave an insult to human rights a free pass to the next stage of becoming law.
And his supporters are trying to flood the social media with claims that he is a good thing. #StarmerOutstanding, they say.
He is outstanding. He is an outstanding threat to the well-being of you, me and everybody we know.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
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Well, it’s a nice thought – but if Labour had been whipped to vote against, I’m sure the Tories would have whipped their MPs to attend and vote it through.
There are quite a few who are deeply disturbed by it, though. By whipping to abstain, Starmer was helping avert a schism among the Conservatives.
I am very concerned by it and, furthermore, I consider whipping to be just a tool for a dictator rather than an elected leader.