Keir Starmer has turned Labour into the party of hypocrisy – and racism
Diane Abbott: she has suffered more racist abuse than anybody you can name – and new Labour leader Keir Starmer has had the front to tell her off over a trumped-up accusation around a video discussion attended by expelled former party members.
Labour’s new leader, Keir Starmer, is working his fingers to the bone – turning Labour into the kind of racist cess-pit that no right-thinking person would want to join.
Consider the hypocrisy in the fact that he has “disciplined” Diane Abbott for taking part in a Zoom discussion attended by expelled former party members – but has done nothing to suspend members of the so-called right-wing “faction” who were accused of subjecting her to appalling racist bullying in the leaked Labour report on the party’s response to anti-Semitism accusations.
https://twitter.com/harriepw/status/1256597173728313344
That alone marks out his leadership as hypocritical and racist.
Starmer’s decision also betrays a failure to understand how Zoom works. It’s an online discussion that anybody can join, simply by dialling in.
Furthermore – as This Site has mentioned before – neither Jackie Walker nor Tony Greenstein, the former Labour members whose attendance triggered the complaint against Ms Abbott and Bell Ribeiro-Addy by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, were expelled for anti-Semitism as claimed.
In any case, Labour’s investigations of anti-Semitism accusations – especially high-profile claims like those against Ms Walker and Mr Greenstein (yes, they were accused of it but they weren’t expelled for it) – are known to have been fatally flawed. Saying these people are anti-Semites because Labour said so carries less factual weight than gossip.
Finally: although Starmer had signed the controversial “10 Commandments” issued by the BoD, those pledges have no weight in the Labour Party. Any individual member can agree to sign and be bound by any document they like – but they can’t force it on the rest of the party undemocratically and Starmer has done nothing to seek its approval by the party as a whole.
So any disciplinary action against Diane Abbott and Bell Ribeiro-Addy is unwarranted, unfair and unconstitutional – as those of us who’ve suffered similar treatment are well aware:
https://twitter.com/abbyhoffmann/status/1256648746772938754
But the Labour leader is likely to be unconcerned. He’ll be moving on to his next designated victim – who is, apparently, Salma Yaqoob.
She is being attacked for something she hasn’t even done yet: another Zoom discussion in which she is set to appear as a speaker on May 12 – this time with Tony Greenstein billed as a speaker alongside her. So she would be sharing a platform with him.
Once again, for clarity: Mr Greenstein has been expelled from Labour – but not for anti-Semitism or any other kind of racism.
He does, however, provoke a certain response from excitable people – who may be considered to have a problem of their own, where it comes to hate:
This is the real face of Jeremy Corbyn's beloved "Stop the War Coalition"- promoting Tony Greenstein. He is one of the most execrable figures of all in the Labour antisemitism crisis and was expelled from Labour two years ago. No wonder the stoppers are keen on him. pic.twitter.com/cAQwcW1Jae
— habibi (@habibi_uk) May 1, 2020
The issue was picked up by former Labour MP Ian Austin, who left the party because the Jeremy Corbyn leadership had returned it to socialist ideals.
He betrayed his own leanings by demanding that Ms Yaqoob should be suspended – before she had even done anything. One finds Asa Winstanley’s comment persuasive:
This racist fanatic wants a prominent Muslim woman expelled from Labour for a future event with the "wrong" kind of Jewish person.
This is beyond Thought Crime, it's Pre-Crime. https://t.co/qFKvpX1cLl
— Asa Winstanley (@AsaWinstanley) May 2, 2020
It’s open season on black women https://t.co/n8EwG54LqF
— Jackie Walker – HRH, MP, MBE, ABC (@Jackiew80333500) May 2, 2020
So this is the Labour Party under Keir Starmer.
Racism is fine – if it’s done by right-wingers against people on the left.
Sexism is fine – if carried out in the same way.
But if he has a chance to accuse people on the left – male or female – of the same, then he will attack mercilessly.
It is as Kerry-Anne Mendoza states:
https://twitter.com/TheMendozaWoman/status/1256568066374348802
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You really do want to kill your selves, don’t you.
Who’s “you”?
This is not the party I joined and it sure as hell isn’t a party I can put my faith in
To the best of my knowledge Keir Starmer doesn’t actually have the power to suspend members of the NEC?
It is the NEC and the GenSec that members of the NEC are accountable to they are not answerable to members of the PLP including the leadership.
The responsibility for suspending those named in the leaked report belongs fairly and squarely with the NEC, the GenSec and in some cases the sponsoring Trade Union or Affiliate.
No. That might have been the case before the anti-Semitism “crisis” but it isn’t now. Responsibility for suspending those named in the report now lies with certain named party officers (ironically in Governance and Legal). The NEC might have to suspend those people, if they are named in the report.
As for NEC members themselves, I’m not sure. But Starmer could certainly demand that members are suspended, based on evidence he wanted to put forward. And Labour doesn’t exactly have a good record for putting forward reliable evidence.
Many of Jeremy’s supporters (including myself) were outraged at the duplicity of his opponents who despite knowing full well that Jeremy had no no authority to suspend members often castigated him for ‘failing’ to take action.
Most of those named in the leaked report appear to be paid employees of the party and I very much doubt that their continued employment is conditional on their membership so the only way of removing them from their jobs will be through normal HR procedures.
Personally I think a cautious approach has much to recommend it. It will probably be far cheaper and the spectacle of the GMB dragging the Labour Party through the courts on behalf of their union members is not one I relish. On the evidence I’ve read in the leaked report there is little doubt of the eventual outcome. Sometimes patience really does turn out to be a virtue.
Whatever your views on him are at least Keir hasn’t recommended, like ‘Little Becky’ did, that those Labour Party staff members who appeared in the infamous Panorama ‘documentary’ are paid compensation by the Labour Party for their emotional distress.
Stammer the spammer the son of Blair oh dear
The odious fifth – columnist ‘Blairite’ faction has infiltrated and embedded itself so deeply into the Labour party that the only (probably inevitable) option will be a Party split. I know it should be the Right-wingers who are booted out but I just can’t see that happening. The Left will have to split and form the Real Labour Party.
No the wrongdoers have to be booted out. If that is the far right, so be it . Leaving party in despair is not an option.
@Shamsuddin Ahmed : Well, good luck with that, but it seems fairly apparant now that the wrongdoers own the party, and their hand is only going to be strengthend under the current leadership.
Is it really worth the effort of having to fight your own party before you even think about fighting the Tories ?
Better to channel all the energy into something new and more positive…
purge now ruthlessly expel every one of them
Yes I feel exactly the same as Trev above – and feel very angry about it.
I was prepared to give Starmer a chance, but the writing was on the wall on the very day the leadership was announced when he sent an obviously pre prepared grovelling letter to the BoD’s.
I thought at the time the BoD’s so called ‘pledges’ would come back to haunt those signing them, but for Starmer to ‘discipline’ Diane Abbott basically at the BoD’s behest is absolutely and utterly disgraceful.
Perhaps it might be a good thing if Starmer did expel Diane.
It might finally hammer home to the membership that there is no future in Labour unless you’re Tory-lite, while at the same time providing a figurehead for a new party to rally around.
It might even encourage a few of the more left-leaning members of the PLP to consider their positions.