Neil Coyle is back in Labour. Is the party trying to attract the racist vote?
Remember the far-right-wing Labour MP Neil Coyle?
The Labour whip was suspended from him – after a week’s delay, mind – when two claims of unacceptable behaviour, including racism, were made against him.
British-Chinese journalist Henry Dyer had reported Sinophobic (anti-Chinese) remarks by Coyle to Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle after a meeting in the Strangers’ Bar on the Parliamentary estate on the evening of February 1, 2022.
Mr Dyer claimed he had also witnessed Coyle “angrily shouting at a Labour staffer” in the bar the previous evening.
It was understood that after the Speaker became aware of Mr Dyer’s allegations, he convened a meeting with the Serjeant at Arms who ordered that Coyle should be suspended from bars in the Commons for six months. Authorities in the House of Lords were believed to have taken similar action.
Labour’s chief whip, Alan Campbell, suspended Coyle from membership of the Parliamentary Labour Party while an investigation took place – which was odd, because the party had been sitting on allegations of anti-Semitism against Coyle for six months by then.
Coyle released a statement apologising for his comments (so he admitted making them). He said he had apologised to all those involved and would be co-operating fully with the inquiry.
And now it is over. The result?
PREDICTION
The Labour Party will let @coyleneil continue as an MP despite his racist abuse and sexual harassment.
They'll block anti-racism campaigner Diane Abbott from being an MP for a badly-phrased letter to a newspaper that she apologised for immediately.
It's a witch hunt.— Heather Mendick (@helensclegel) May 24, 2023
In fact, Heather Mendick was a little late:
NEW: Labour has restored the whip to MP Neil Coyle.
He was suspended from PLP last Feb after claims he made racist remarks in a parliamentary bar. He later apologised for ‘insensitive comments’.
NEC and local party could still block him standing at the general election. pic.twitter.com/P8sOIC9s8F
— Joe Pike (@joepike) May 24, 2023
Wiser heads than those at the top of the Labour Party are comparing the treatment of Coyle – now widely considered to be a “racist drunk” – with that of Jeremy Corbyn.
When the flimsiest of anti-Semitism allegations were raised against the former Labour leader, his party membership was immediately suspended.
Coyle had called for all members of Jewish Voice for Labour to be expelled from the party, claiming they were “outright Communists”.
Apparently, accusing Jews of Communism is a longstanding anti-Semitic smear. It is often paired with the phrase ‘Judaeo-Bolshevism’ or the far-right crypto-version ‘cultural Marxism’.
This may therefore be seen as a much stronger accusation of anti-Semitism than Jeremy Corbyn’s accurate assertion that claims of anti-Semitism against the Labour Party during his time as leader had been “overstated”.
So the right-wing anti-Semite is restored to the Labour Party but the socialist who has spent his life campaigning for peace between all races remains an outcast.
And Labour has persecuted and expelled more Jews under Keir Starmer’s leadership than under all previous leaders put together.
It seems an odd electoral strategy – odder even than the Tory plan to push away those pensioners who must be among the only people who haven’t inherited riches or received them as corporate executives or shareholders.
It seems Labour is rejecting everybody else in favour of racists. This Writer would not have expected there to be enough racists in the UK to elect a government but time will tell.
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Yes read about this in The Guardian during the week. The conclusion seemed to be that it was ‘alcohol wot done it’.
I was reminded of it this morning reading about Ken Loach’s latest, and possibly last, film. It beggars belief that Starmer’s Labour welcomes the likes of Coyle yet treats Corbyn and Loach, and many many others, in such a vile manner.
I know there are honourable and right minded people still in the Labour Party, optimistically hoping it can be brought back from the edge for want of a better expression, but I am afraid as so many people have said “I didn’t leave the Labour Party, it left me”.