Andrew Feinstein is accusing Keir Starmer of prioritising billionaires
Andrew Feinstein is accusing Keir Starmer of prioritising billionaires who donate to the Labour Party over ordinary constituents.
The anti-austerity independent candidate standing against Keir Starmer in Holborn & St Pancras has condemned the Labour leader’s refusal to rule out public sector spending cuts, should his party win the general election.
Starmer made the comment at the weekend on a visit to Essex. Labour has also pledged to build more prisons, while refusing to commit to fixing Britain’s chronic housing crisis, which is nowhere more stark than in Camden.
Mr Feinstein (pictured on the right, talking with members of the public; image by Marija Carter) accused Starmer of putting billionaire donors and the needs of mega-corporations before the vast majority of ordinary people in his constituency.
Speaking outside the plush Camden Council offices in Pancras Square, where homeless people recently had their tents removed and replaced with bike racks and pot plants, Mr Feinstein said it was indicative of Starmer’s Labour party that the council thought it could just push human beings out and replace them with street furniture.
“Look around us,” he said. “All of this office and retail space, when Holborn & St Pancras is crying out for more social and council housing, for more affordable housing, right across the borough, for rent controls and a totally different approach to housing and local services that puts the people of Camden first.
“Camden Council’s desire to maximise its income from commercial property is the major problem we have here because, if they had their way, the people who run Keir Starmer’s borough and who he is close to would like to push the poorer members of our community out of it so they can turn more and more council and social housing into spaces like this.
“This is emblematic of everything that is wrong with our politics. We put billionaire donors and the needs of mega- corporations and the super wealthy before the vast majority of ordinary people in this constituency, who Keir Starmer is supposed to be representing even though we never see him in it.
“For a representative democracy to work, the people elected have to be of the community, we have to see them in our community and they have to represent our community. If Keir Starmer is failing to do that in his own constituency what do we imagine he’s going to do across Britain as a whole?
“What he’s offering us is exactly the same as the Tories are: permanent austerity, even if he doesn’t want to call it that; forever wars; the socio-economic suffering like we’ve witnessed here; and the climate degradation that comes with all this.
“Starmer has refused to rule out spending cuts to public services and says Labour can’t afford to lift millions of children out of poverty, yet there’s more money to build prisons, not homes. It’s a disgrace.
“Let’s spend less money on defence, less money on subsidising the arms companies making the weapons that Israel is dropping on the innocent people of Gaza.
“Let’s invest that money on addressing homelessness, on addressing the housing crisis and lack of council housing, and on lifting thousands of children in this borough alone out of poverty by scrapping the two child benefit cap.“
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (bottom right of the home page). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical
3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com
5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:
The Livingstone Presumption is available
in either print or eBook format here:
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
Leader of Camden council—Georgia Gould.