Keir Starmer: what a spectacular way to throw away electoral superiority.

Only a few weeks ago, he was set to lead his hollowed-out, right-wing Labour Party to victory in the next general election.

But now, because he blindly supports Israel in its genocide of the people of Gaza, he seems certain to split his own MPs in a vote on the conflict, to take place on November 15.

Here’s the BBC:

The party said its Commons motion would reflect its “concerns” over the lack of aid reaching Gaza and the “scale of civilian casualties”.

But it will echo the Labour leader’s position, and stop short of urging an immediate ceasefire in the conflict.

Dozens of Labour MPs have defied their leader to call for a ceasefire.

And 19 members of the frontbench have also publicly diverged from their party’s official position.

One of them, shadow minister Imran Hussain, quit his position last week in order to campaign for an immediate ceasefire.

In addition, nearly 50 councillors have resigned from the party, over the leadership’s position on the war.

Sir Keir has argued that a ceasefire would not be appropriate, because it would freeze the conflict and embolden Hamas.

Instead, Labour, like the Conservative government, the United States and the European Union, is calling for “humanitarian pauses” to help aid reach Gaza.

Compared with a formal ceasefire, these pauses tend to last for short periods of time, sometimes just a few hours. And they are implemented with the aim of providing humanitarian support only, as opposed to achieving long-term political solutions.

So Starmer wants to modify the Israeli strategy away from murdering everybody in Gaza – genocide – to making it possible for everybody in Gaza to leave and become refugees elsewhere – another Nakba.

Israel would probably be fine with this. Israel just wants the land, to destroy Palestine and to remove any evidence that Palestine ever existed.

Evidence:

Killing all the Palestinians would be Israel’s favourite way of achieving this; nobody would be left to try to take revenge. But depriving Palestinians of any ability to take revenge anyway would be an acceptable second choice – to that country.

To the international community, both propositions should be out of the question. Palestine has the right to exist.

Consider the following:

Obviously the post is responding to criticism of Jeremy Corbyn for refusing to use pejorative language when referring to Hamas. But the blueprint for peace talks that it mentions is good. Isn’t it?

An amendment by the SNP calls for an immediate ceasefire – as demanded by some Labour MPs:

This Writer has no idea why Lorna MacGillivray mentions Scottish independence. The rest is all good stuff though – isn’t it?

And that is the reason Labour MPs were expected to be… uncomfortable… on the night before the vote:

So Labour is likely to split over this vote and Starmer is going to have to make some heads roll – or look weak. And he’ll still lose votes.

And the motion will fail because the Tories will just steamroller it with their huge majority.

That’s the reason this happened:

In a nutshell, then:

Labour leader Keir Starmer wants his party to vote for “humanitarian pauses” that will help get humanitarian support to the people of Gaza – but not for a ceasefire that could lead to a negotiated peace settlement; the demand will split the party. And the Tory Party will vote down the motion anyway.

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