Council tax bill: but the levy on residents of council areas won’t save some authorities, because it is a massive cut in CENTRAL government grant that is bankrupting them.
There’s not a lot to add to this because the fault is self-evidently with the Conservative government in Westminster.
Oh – this is different from the situation in Birmingham that was brought about by a coalition Conservative/Liberal Democrat administration imposing a sexist bonus scheme, for which the now-Labour-run council is going bankrupt while trying to pay compensation.
The fault still lies with the Tories, either way.
The Tories have trashed the NHS, social care, the justice system, the prison system and of course schools that may collapse. Next victim, local councils. There has not been a government that has done has much damage to this country than this Tory one, https://t.co/IAGBMGufu6
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So much for “we’re making sure government stays out of your life”!
Not two days after Rishi Sunak said those words, we learn he is planning a new law to increase the age at which people can smoke, to ultimately prevent sales to people born after a certain year:
Whitehall sources said the prime minister was looking at measures similar to those brought in by New Zealand last December. They involved steadily increasing the legal smoking age so tobacco would end up never being sold to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009.
I know what you’re most likely thinking: “But, Mike, smoking is a blight on the world that kills millions every year! ‘Cigareets is a blot on the whole human race/A man is a monkey with one in his face’! How can you oppose something that will ease pressure on the NHS?”
All these things are true.
But this is saying something very particular about Rishi Sunak and his government.
It’s saying they think it’s entirely unacceptable for individuals to be allowed to make a personal choice to gamble with their own health, and the government should act as nanny and take that choice away.
At the same time, it’s saying they think it is entirely acceptable for them to gamble with everybody’s health by ditching ‘Net Zero’ plans.
It’s the hypocrisy that I find unbearable. So much for the “party of choice”!
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The answer’s simple, but will our pensioners work it out?
With both Labour and the Tories refusing to guarantee the continuation of the triple-lock, there is no reason for the worst-paid pensioners in Europe – ours, here in the UK – to give either party their vote.
Jeremy Hunt refuses to guarantee the pensions triple lock will be in next Tory manifesto.
The same as Labour.
UK present/future retirees condemned to one of the lowest state pensions in Europe.
Find another party to support! Your life depends on it.
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Tory interference in our lives: anti-protest laws were rushed into practice before the Coronation, so the police could be used to arrest peaceful protesters and take them off the streets.
I seem to have started something.
Yesterday (September 21), in response to Rishi Sunak’s televised trashing of non-existent ‘Net Zero’ policies which he justified by saying, “We’re making sure government stays out of your life,” I made a couple of points about how government does exactly the opposite:
Look at your energy bill. In return for the payments you make, you receive energy that comes from a number of different sources, including some that are highly polluting. For example: coal, nuclear, gas.
On a separate but related subject, look at the amount of plastic packaging you buy in your everyday grocery shopping, much of which is unnecessary and can end up polluting the environment.
These things happen because the government allows it. Indeed, among Sunak’s measures yesterday was a plan to continue allowing the sale of polluting petrol- and diesel-powered cars for an extra five years, until 2035. Who knows what some future prime minister will do then? Extend it to 2040?
Those are three ways the government interferes with our lives, right there.
But of course, I was missing the really big things that have happened lately. Here’s Peter Stefanovic:
Rishi Sunak says he’s
“making sure Government stays out of our lives”
BOLL****! In the last 12 months he’s brought in an anti strike law to rob millions of workers of their right to strike & new laws will strip back our right to protest & limit our rights to judicial review! pic.twitter.com/LdjmmCTbK8
Perhaps we should open this up for everybody to have a say?
You could make a game of it at home: sit in a circle with everybody challenged in turn to name a way the government interferes with their life.
If you are so disposed, it could be a drinking game, with people failing to think of an example taking a sip of their substance of choice (it doesn’t have to be alcohol).
It’ll help pass these lengthening autumn evenings.
And it will help remind us all of what hideous liars the Tories in our government are.
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Smells like Tory in spirit: Keir Starmer’s decision not to put an end to zero-hours contracts puts him in line with the Conservatives on employment policy.
This is just to serve as a reminder that Labour under Keir Starmer cannot be trusted at all.
Here’s a summary of the new policy:
🚨 BREAKING: Labour has effectively DUMPED its pledge to ban zero-hours contracts.
Instead of an outright ban, Labour now says that zero-hours contracts will be ALLOWED "if workers welcome flexibility themselves".
It came just four days after the party’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, told the TUC conference that the party would impose a blanket ban on all zero-hours contracts:
Today it was revealed that Labour have dropped their pledge to ban Zero Hours Contracts.
Just 4 days ago, Labour Deputy leader Angela Rayner told the TUC conference that Labour would ban Zero Hours Contracts.
It’s all very well to say zero-hours contracts will only be permissible if workers are happy to take them – but that just encourages employers to coerce workers into those contracts, saying they won’t get the job if they don’t say they’re happy to take it on those terms.
Keir Starmer knows this as well as I do. He knows that by imposing this new policy, the so-called “Labour” Party is betraying the workers it claims to represent.
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The Conservatives have gone into freefall over the ‘Net Zero’ announcements – we can’t call them changes – that Rishi Sunak announced yesterday (September 20, 2023).
Sure, there are a lot of messages on the social media from Tory MPs and Cabinet members, saying what a good job he made of it…
… but get ’em on the telly and they turn into jelly. Here’s Kemi Badenoch, unable to take in the fact that the poorest families don’t have ministerial cars and chauffeurs like she does:
Jeez! Imagine the shock for the Business Secretary when someone tells her the poorest households actually can’t afford a car – a million adults can’t even afford to eat every day! This Government has completely lost touch with all reality! pic.twitter.com/KMkwudQpeW
Here’s George Eustace, giving up and openly admitting Sunak was playing fast-and-loose with the facts when he said he was axing policies:
"When did they [the government] announce that we were all going to have seven bins and that they were going to tax meat?"@krishgm asks former Environment Secretary George Eustice if Rishi Sunak is claiming to cancel policies that have never existed. pic.twitter.com/ytrqhFGfFl
And here’s Kwasi Kwarteng, basically losing it for no good reason. He says he doesn’t want to relive his time as Chancellor but that’s a pretty good summary of it, I would have thought:
"We wouldn't be in this position today if you and Liz Truss hadn't crashed the economy."
Kwasi Kwarteng has a mini meltdown when Victoria Derbyshire asks him the above. pic.twitter.com/5BvsMEP1Hn
For a change of pace, let’s have Peter Stefanovic’s critique of the prime minister himself, after Rishi Sunak made a fool of himself in a Tory promo video:
JEEZ! Even I can’t describe the Prime Minister’s new video!
WATCH IN DISBELIEF & never underestimate just how thick this Government thinks we all are! pic.twitter.com/pGJILwcXk5
As an aside: the Tories have all spent the day banging on that they won’t dictate what the public can or can’t buy. This is nonsense.
Does anybody remember the ‘nudge unit’, that David Cameron used to … encourage … the British people into actions they would not otherwise have taken? Is Rishi not still using that?
Also: look at your energy bill. You don’t get to choose how the energy you buy is generated, and much of it comes from the burning of fossil fuels – coal and gas – or nuclear fission. All are hugely polluting and we don’t have any say at all about it.
So the government really does dictate what we can buy.
Still – in the middle of this pack of lies, who’d notice another one?
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It’s a lie, of course. Policies to tackle climate change and bring the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions down to nothing were in both the Labour and Conservative manifestos for the 2019 general election, so 75.7 per cent of those who voted – more than 24 million people – voted for Net Zero.
On page 2 of the Tory manifesto, then-prime minister Boris Johnson stated: “I guarantee… reaching Net Zero by 2050 with investment in clean energy solutions and green infrastructure to reduce carbon emissions and pollution.”
The actual policies themselves were as follows:
“We will invest in nature, helping us to reach our Net Zero target with a £640 million new Nature for Climate fund. Building on our support for creating a Great Northumberland Forest, we will reach an additional 75,000 acres of trees a year by the end of the next Parliament, as well as restoring our peatland” (page 45 – marked as page 43).
“Oil and gas sector deal: The oil and gas industry employs almost 300,000 people, of whom four in 10 work in Scotland. We believe that the North Sea oil and gas industry has a long future ahead and know the sector has a key role to play as we move to a Net Zero economy. We will support this transition in the next Parliament with a transformational sector deal” (page 48 – not marked but would have been marked as page 46).
“We will lead the global fight against climate change by delivering on our world-leading target of Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, as advised by the independent Committee on Climate Change. We have doubled International Climate Finance. And we will use our position hosting the UN Climate Change Summit in Glasgow in 2020 to ask our global partners to match our ambition” (page 57 – marked as page 55).
That’s the lot – four wishy-washy promises that don’t actually mean a lot.
So, now Rishy (-washy?) Sunak has announced that he is halting a series of Net Zero policies, he is rightly being pilloried for ending things that didn’t exist in the first place.
Check out the context note on Sunak’s own ‘X’ post about his changes:
We will never impose unnecessary and heavy-handed measures on you, the British people.
Depending on which version of the above you see, it may refer to the Tory government’s own Net Zero strategy, that was published in 2021, nearly two years after the general election, comes to 368 pages, and doesn’t mention any of the measures Sunak reckons he’s scrapping.
Alternatively, it may point out that “Taxes on meat and flying had already been repeatedly ruled out by the Government. There is no proposal to require people to have seven bins, or for ‘compulsory’ car sharing. The announced changes on insulation only stand to benefit private landlords.”
The BBC’s Nick Robinson – himself a Conservative, let’s remember – absolutely hammered Sunak as a liar in an interview on the BBC’s Today programme:
"There is nothing to be scrapped.. You're making a series of claims that aren't true."
Nick Robinson calls out Rishi Sunak.
Sunak ends saying, "I don't think its right to chase the short term headlines, just assert some goal for the future without a clear plan to deliver it… pic.twitter.com/AxfLKG7Sbw
Sunak’s parting shot, about being “honest” about the way to get to Net Zero, rings hollow in the context of what had gone before.
So let us be clear: the Conservatives did have a series of policies for the UK to reach Net Zero and the electorate did vote for them – but none of those policies were part of the package that he scrapped yesterday (September 20, 2023).
Coupled to all this is a ridiculous claim – exemplified in the words of Priti Patel, below – that the government does not dictate whether UK citizens support polluters or not:
Priti Patel, "I think heat pumps are like a misselling scandal.. It's not for gov to dictate what type of heating you have in your house.. I'm a great believer in Global Britain, Britain post Brexit, innovation technology, we're there." pic.twitter.com/yxmYRT6pbb
Look at your energy bill. In return for the payments you make, you receive energy that comes from a number of different sources, including some that are highly polluting. For example: coal, nuclear, gas.
On a separate but related subject, look at the amount of plastic packaging you buy in your everyday grocery shopping, much of which is unnecessary and can end up polluting the environment.
These things happen because the government allows it. Indeed, among Sunak’s measures yesterday was a plan to continue allowing the sale of polluting petrol- and diesel-powered cars for an extra five years, until 2035. Who knows what some future prime minister will do then? Extend it to 2040?
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Who would have thought that this cartoon could be re-used? Now, as when he was Health Secretary, Tory Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has doctors on the rack. He’s not going to pay them the 35% cost-of-living increase he owes them – but he and his colleagues have been happy to take a 42% rise for themselves.
Take a look at the clip below, in which Steve Brine MP, Tory chair of the Commons Health and Social Care Committee, says junior doctors do not deserve the 35 per cent pay increase that would be required to give them parity with their pay in 2010:
Jackie Long, "180 days since Steve Barclay spoke to NHS Consultants, and 140 days since he spoke to Junior Doctors, about pay. If there are no talks about pay the strikes keep going"
Conservative MPs have been worse than useless to the UK since 2010.
They have plunged the country into five times the debt it had in 2005, with nothing to show for it but a crashing economy and nose-diving public services, including a National Health Service that is constantly on the verge of collapse due to intrusive privatisation and over-demand due to the effects of all the Tories’ other policies.
Junior doctors, working within that crashing health service even as it crumbles around them, are far more valuable – for the obvious reason: They are genuine life savers.
But it is the Tory MPs who hold the purse strings.
They could have refused the recommended pay rises that have been offered to them since 2010 but they haven’t. They have taken the money. They have also taken huge wodges of cash in donations from businesspeople, along with the advice of those donors on what to do. You can form your own conclusion about the value of that advice to the majority of us.
And while taking all that filthy lucre – a higher proportional increase than the amount the junior doctors have lost over the same period of time – the Tories have told junior doctors that they do not deserve a pay rise equal to the increase in the cost of living.
No wonder medical professionals are quitting the NHS as fast as they can.
There is a word for MPs like Mr Brine. It begins with a ‘C’ – but it sure isn’t ‘Conservative’.
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This is fine: Rishi Sunak will burn down not only your house but your country and planet if he thinks he can get something out of it.
Rishi Sunak has hastily announced delays to headline Tory ‘Net Zero’ policies in what’s being called an attempt to create dividing lines between his government and opposition parties.
That indicates two things to This Writer, immediately:
Firstly, he has realised that Keir Starmer’s Labour really is a Substitute Tory Party now – and is afraid that, untarnished by 13 years of disastrous policies that have failed the people of the UK, that STP will seize power and start taking money from the donors who have been paying him.
Secondly, creating dividing lines between his govenrment and other parties is a pathetically weak excuse for scrapping policies designed to save us from climate meltdown. Is there an ulterior motive – connected with cash from fossil fuel or automotive firms?
The rationalisations simply don’t ring true. According to the BBC:
The government could not impose “unacceptable costs” linked to reducing emissions on British families, he said.
But what is the direct cost to the public of banning the sale of new petrol and diesel cars in 2030? Why are electric vehicles assumed to be more expensive?
It’s not as if the national grid won’t be able to take the strain; we already have an assurance that it will:
I'm told one argument Sunak will use to justify delaying the 2030 carbon targets is "the National Grid will fall over" on current electricity demand projections… … so just a reminder of what the Grid actually says about this… but maybe Tufton Street's experts say different? pic.twitter.com/UQYMcFZDPQ
Why is fossil fuel heating for off-gas-grid homes being extended by nine years, to 2035? Who complained – families who will have been planning to change their systems, or fossil fuel firms?
Why do poorer households require an exemption from the ban on the sale of new gas boilers in 2035? Won’t they just get something else and stretch out the payments to make them affordable as necessary? Isn’t that how such changes have always been managed in the past?
And why are landlords being let off a requirement to ensure all rental properties have an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) of grade C or higher, from 2025? That’s not helping poor people but rich landlords!
Raising the Boiler Upgrade Grant by 50 per cent to £7,500 to help households who want to replace their gas boilers appears to be the only sensible idea in the package.
Put it all together and the winners are the car companies, the fossil fuel firms and landlords – not the poor. Even if these corporate and business concerns aren’t actually handing over money to the Tories, one has to question what pressure they have exerted here.
Sunak himself went on the record to say democratic debate is required. But who did he ask to contribute to that debate before coming up with these decisions that will profit the polluters?
Remember: converting to renewable energy will be cheaper for the consumer. As Ash Sarkar points out in the clip immediately below (in spite of Andrea Jenkyns and her ignorance), fossil fuel supplies from abroad are subject to price shocks; home-produced energy won’t be:
Andrea Jenkyns, "Liz Truss has been actually been proven right with her economics, actually"
The changes announced now – with more said to be on the way later in the autumn – mean uncertainty, not only for the public but for industry as well. Jamie Driscoll makes an excellent point about that:
This is economically illiterate and borders on #climate denialism. Unless we give industry some certainty, they won’t invest in #GreenEnergy generation and clean transport. The UK will lose jobs. Mr Sunak is proposing a lose-lose. #NetZero#RishiSunakpic.twitter.com/LiNyunU6Ry
Still, what can you expect from an “ivory tower” Tory like Sunak who flies to the vast majority of his foreign engagement in a private jet that is 14 times more polluting than normal flights?
Rishi Sunak took 23 private flights in 187 days. He flew London to Blackpool in a 14-seat RAF jet, it’s 3 hrs by train. The same to Leeds, it’s 2.5 hrs by train
Private flights are 14 times more polluting than commercial flights & 50 times more than trains
What’s really interesting is the implication that Sunak was pushed into delaying the ban on the sale of fossil fuel vehicles by Liz Truss – and the possibility that his fellow Tories are upset about it and may try to oust him because of it:
Tories plot to oust Rishi Sunak if he gives in to Liz Truss by delaying petrol car ban https://t.co/XERxY1U5oI
The headline on this article suggests that Sunak might be taking money somehow, in order to induce him to make these changes. The suggestion that his own MPs may try to push him out of Downing Street because of it makes this seem more likely.
I would sincerely like to be mistaken, for an obvious reason:
A bit of extra cash for one avaricious toad of a man is no justification for condemning a population to climate change hell.
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Diane Abbott: she has suffered more racist abuse than anybody you can name.
“As a Black woman, and someone on the left of the Labour Party… I will not get a fair hearing from this Labour leadership.”
That is the verdict from Diane Abbott on an apparent non-investigation into racism that she – the MP who has received more race-hate messages than every other MP combined – is alleged by party leader Keir Starmer to have committed.
The allegations arise from a letter she wrote, that was published in The Observer in April. I wrote at the time:
Tomiwa Owolade claims that Irish, Jewish and Traveller people all suffer from “racism” (“Racism in Britain is not a black and white issue. It’s far more complicated”, Comment). They undoubtedly experience prejudice. This is similar to racism and the two words are often used as if they are interchangeable.
It is true that many types of white people with points of difference, such as redheads, can experience this prejudice. But they are not all their lives subject to racism. In pre-civil rights America, Irish people, Jewish people and Travellers were not required to sit at the back of the bus. In apartheid South Africa, these groups were allowed to vote. And at the height of slavery, there were no white-seeming people manacled on the slave ships. Diane Abbott
House of Commons, London SW1
Anybody can see what she was trying to do: she was pointing out that people of colour suffer racism far more often in their daily lives than those who might be defined as “white/European”, because the difference is visually obvious.
(It is also misleading. I have a friend who is white and Welsh, but whose face might seem to have a Middle-Eastern look about it to those who live by stereotypes. He tans very easily, and tells me that, when he has been on holiday abroad (lucky fellow!) he is habitually picked out for a “random” bomb check on the way back into the UK, by security officials who think he looks like an Islamic terrorist.)
Nobody who knows her history could deny that she has a very strong point; if I recall correctly, Ms Abbott receives more racist hate mail than all other MPs put together.
She tried to make a distinction by saying people of colour suffer racism while Irish people, Jews and Travellers (the GRT community), suffer prejudice instead – and that’s where she went wrong.
It’s all racism. Jewish people (for example) were originally Semitic (hence the word for hate against them: anti-Semitism), and the fact that their culture, like Christianity, has been successful in absorbing people from other races does not stop hatred being directed at them because they are different.
I was going to suggest that she could have used the word “xenophobia” to describe the hatred of people of colour in this context – the so-called “dislike of the unlike”. But that does not only refer to race/skin colour but also to culture, so it might be a better umbrella title for the prejudice faced by all the groups she mentions.
The problem here is simply finding the right word for the distinction she intended, which is that the other groups can avoid abuse on occasions because their skin colour means they can blend in with what, for want of a better word, I’ll describe as the majority.
But it was enough for the usual suspects to spring to the attack – presumably secure in the knowledge that nobody is about to ask them to compare the amount of abuse those of them who present as white/European receive against Ms Abbott’s.
(Indeed, judging from the abuse that Ms Abbott has received over this letter, it seems some of them may even have perpetrated some of it.)
At the end of the day, it was a valid point made in a very clumsy way.
Ms Abbott has apologised for it, claiming that the letter published in The Observer was a draft that should not have gone out. That’s still her mistake, though – and one she should not have made. Here’s what she said:
I am writing regarding my letter that was recently published in the Observer.
I wish to wholly and unreservedly withdraw my remarks and disassociate myself from them.
The errors arose in an initial draft being sent. But there is no excuse, and I wish to apologise for any anguish caused.
Racism takes many forms, and it is completely undeniable that Jewish people have suffered its monstrous effects, as have Irish people, Travellers and many others.
So she accepts that she was at fault and has apologised.
If she was a member of Keir Starmer’s gang, that would be the end of it. But she isn’t, so she has lost the whip and there will undoubtedly be attempts to push her out of the party (or at least out of ever again being able to stand for election to the Hackney Parliamentary seat).
Never mind his gang; Keir Starmer’s response was unequivocal. According to the BBC:
Asked about Ms Abbott’s comments the following day, Sir Keir condemned them and said they were antisemitic.
The BBC also stated:
A Labour Party spokesperson said: “The Labour Party rightly expects the highest standards of behaviour from its elected representatives, and has introduced an independent complaints process to investigate cases.
“We do not give a running commentary on ongoing investigations.”
Fortunately for the British sense of fair play, Ms Abbott has provided a commentary on it – she has condemned it as “fraudulent”.
In a statement published on ‘X’, she said:
“I was told by the Chief Whip to ‘actively engage’ with an investigation.But the Labour Whips are no longer involved – it is now run entirely out of the Labour Party HQ, which reports to Keir Starmer – and there is no investigation.
“This is the same Keir Starmer who almost immediately pronounced my guilt publicly. This completely undermines any idea that there is fairness or any natural justice. It is procedurally improper.”
It certainly is. Remember the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, and its report on Labour anti-Semitism that stated that the party leader’s office must not take part in or influence any investigations. At the time, Starmer undertook to adopt this demand fully. It seems he has chosen to forget this agreement.
Of course, no Labour complaints process can be said to be independent if it is being run from the party leader’s office, so the statement by the party spokesperson must also be considered – at the very least – questionable.
Notice also that Ms Abbott says Labour has not charged her with anti-Semitism, despite this being the basis of Starmer’s accusation against her. What is the charge, then?
Ms Abbott’s statement goes on to identify inconsistencies in the way Starmer’s party handles proven cases in which party members have been found guilty of wrongdoing. So:
“Others have committed far more grave offences, and belated or grudging apologies have been wrung from them, Yet they have been immediately excused as [they are] supporters of this leadership.”
Among those who have apparently been excused are those right-wing party members who were identified in the Forde Report which Starmer commissioned and then disowned when he realised it did not say what he wanted. Ms Abbott wrote:
“A large proportion of the racism that the Forde Report uncovered [within the Labour Party] was personally directed against me… I have never received an apology from the Leader, the General Secretary or any of the perpetrators [of] that racism. I am not even aware of any of the culprits facing disciplinary measures, as I am obliged to do.”
The implication is clear: not only is Labour still a hotbed of the most vile racism imaginable, but those responsible are actively protected by the party’s leaders – meaning Keir Starmer himself. This alleged racism goes right to the very top – and unlike that which was claimed against Jeremy Corbyn, there seems to be an evidential basis for it.
Where is the investigation into Keir Starmer’s apparent racism?
Perhaps even more shocking is Ms Abbott’s description of the way questions about child safeguarding, posed after a former Labour councillor who had been election agent for Hackney South MP Meg Hillier and shared a house with Hackney’s Mayor, Philip Glanville (who continued to associate with him, even after being informed of his arrest), were used to suppress members in the relevant Constituency Labour Party.
Is Starmer’s party now protecting paedophiles or excusing paedophilia? Where is the investigation into this?
The evidence Ms Abbott provides paints a picture of a political party that, under its current leader, has been corrupted to its core, with outrageous privileges apparently granted to racists and paedophiles because they are on Starmer’s side of the party. Or am I mistaken?
Ms Abbott concludes – rather mildly in This Writer’s opinion: “Taken together, the procedural impropriety, Starmer’s pronouncement of my guilt, the four-month delay in the investigation, the repeated refusal to reach any accommodation, all point in the direction that the verdict has already been reached.”
It reminds me very much of the situation when I was put through Labour’s disciplinary procedure. The public allegation was anti-Semitism then, as well – it took a subsequent court case to reveal the fact that the real reason for the action was that my accurate articles about the anti-Semitism claims against party members were upsetting those who wanted to use the false claims against then-leader Jeremy Corbyn.
My case was subject to more than a year’s delay and, while the court ultimately found no rules had been broken, the regulations informing those rules had not been properly observed.
My disciplinary hearing, before a kangaroo court of the party’s National Constitutional Committee, was a farce. The evidence was not examined properly because the party did not produce anybody who was familiar with it. Despite the fact that this meant the party could not contest my case, the finding still went against me. I tend to the opinion that the verdict had already been reached before that investigation happened, as well.
And what about the way false claims about me were leaked to The Sunday Times, which was subsequently forced to retract its libellous claim that I was a Holocaust denier, that was based on lies in the Labour Party’s information about me?
It seems clear that, despite promises to follow the EHRC’s recommendations, Labour has changed nothing since the bad old days of the biased right-wing disciplinary machine under former General Secretary Iain McNichol.
In This Writer’s opinion – based on personal experience – Ms Abbott is right to conclude that she’ll get no justice there.
Worse still is the astonishing, blinkered attitude of other – elected – representatives of the Labour Party. Here’s one “Cllr Matt Dent”, who I had to put straight shortly before writing this article:
Perhaps you didn't read her letter in the Observer. She said people who are not obviously non-white European "are not all their lives subject to racism". She did NOT say they don't experience it at all, and certainly did not rule out prejudice. I'm happy to set you straight.
Now Ms Abbott expects to be deselected after the elected leadership of her Constituency Labour Party was undemocratically removed by Keir Starmer and his cronies.
What should she do?
I tend to agree with the sentiment of Jackie Walker – herself mistreated brutally at the hands of the Labour disciplinarians:
“Diane Abbott, it’s time to leave Labour and stand as an independent. Rally the black, left, radical voters and campaigners.”
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