Empty: Keir Starmer’s claims are as empty as the promises in the 10 pledges he made when he was trying to be elected Labour leader (all of which he has now broken).
This went down well, didn’t it?
After Keir Starmer claimed in a newspaper column that he would promote local democracy and empower local communities, people on the social media have been queuing up to slap him down.
The classic comment comes from a Twitter account holder who stated: “It’s laughable hypocrisy to carp on about direct democracy when your party scratched locally chosen candidates and imposes its own shortlist.”
A Skwawkbox article on the subject states:
Starmer made same promise as part of con to persuade Labour members to vote him in as leader – and has waged war on their rights to democracy and free speech ever since.
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Yes: this is the only image This Site has of Ian Byrne.
The remarkable aspect of this story is not that Ian Byrne is being victimised by members of his own party, or that he is seeking advice from the police about how to deal with it – This Site and others have already covered those things.
No – the extraordinary part is that the BBC appears to have removed its blinkers and is now prepared to cover it.
An MP who wants to remain as a Labour candidate at the next election has said he will be “seeking guidance” from police over alleged intimidation.
West Derby MP Ian Byrne tweeted that he faced “shameful” intimidation at an event on Saturday and had blocked those “involved in this appalling behaviour”.
Mr Byrne is being challenged in the race in West Derby by Liverpool councillor Anthony Lavelle and Lancashire councillor Kimberley Whitehead, after losing a series of ballots in his local party.
In a week’s time, members of the constituency Labour Party will choose one of the three to be their candidate.
The process, which started in the summer has been described as “toxic” by Labour members.
Toxic. The fact that this is the word to which party members resort when describing the process imposed on them by their own leadership speaks volumes.
The article then focuses on an alleged incident between supporters of Byrne and those of Lavelle, when events were coincidentally (?) scheduled to take place at neighbouring venues. One has to question how that happened.
Considering the ill-feeling over this matter and the way the Labour leadership seems to be prioritising the other candidates over Byrne, it seems incongruous that this should have happened.
Who was responsible for it?
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Christian Wakeford: this Tory defector to the Labour Party gets to skip the process of selection to stand as a Labour representative in the next general election, while people who have been Labour members all their lives are being pushed out by a hostile right-wing leadership.
The Labour Parliamentary selection process has plumbed a new depth of bias.
This Site has already reported the way the right-wing (dare I say far – for the Labour Party – right-wing?) Labour leadership is trying to squeeze left-wing candidates including MP of the Year Ian Byrne out of being selected to stand at the next UK general election.
Now we learn that Christian Wakeford, the former Conservative MP who crossed the floor to the Labour benches, has been allowed to skip the selection process entirely.
That’s right – a former Tory is being allowed to avoid the judgement of Labour members and voters in his constituency so he can stand for election again, whether the local party wants him or not.
Here’s Damo – and be warned, his language is spicy:
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Ian Byrne: now it seems Labour members who unaccountably want to deprive their constituency of the MP of the Year are trying to intimidate him and his team.
Take a look at this tweet, and the reply it provoked, from a councillor in the constituency of MP of the Year Ian Byrne.
Despite winning the award for his excellent work, Byrne is facing an uphill struggle to be re-selected as the Labour candidate for Liverpool West Derby – because it seems the party’s leaders are deliberately trying to prevent it.
This Site reported on November 5 that
Labour has rescinded Mr Byrne’s access to Organise, the communication facility between the party hierarchy and its members.
His rival in the campaign – a shiny Wes Streeting-a-like from London – does have access to the tool and therefore has a huge advantage over Mr Byrne, who is reduced to trying to resource his reselection campaign on the social media.
Now this:
Unlikely Ian would have blocked anyone unless they had been abusive to him or staff.
With Ian’s massive majority, excellent track record, huge popularity (MP of year) & tireless work in your community, I’m curious to know why you think someone else is more worthy of your vote?
— Nicola James 💙 #EnoughIsEnough #ProtectOurNHS (@NAJ562) November 13, 2022
Nicola James makes a good point. Why would anybody think the MP of the Year is not worth re-selecting? That’s the first indication that something is amiss with Cllr Doyle’s complaint. As for the comment about abusive behaviour… well, here’s what Byrne himself has to say about it:
So he says he suffered intimidation from people including local politicians and will be taking up the matter, not just with the local authority but with the police as well.
This casts an entirely different light on Cllr Doyle’s words, it seems.
It also appears that right-wingers among the Labour members in the West Derby constituency are spreading what Byrne himself has described as myths about him, in a bid to persuade gullible colleagues that he’s not worth their vote. An astonishing claim about the MP of the Year!
Here’s his response, killing these claims with the facts:
In a campaign in which I am saddened to say, fair play and integrity have not always been apparent, I find myself needing to put out this information to clarify a few things for West Derby members. I would much prefer to be concentrating on hold the Tories to account: pic.twitter.com/hDtdTHJErC
For those of you who can’t read images, here’s what the text says:
Mythbusters
Sometimes during a campaign, facts get lost. Several West Derby members have made me aware of what they consider to be, at best, ‘odd’ conversations with representatives of other candidates over recent weeks.
In order to ensure there are no misunderstandings and that all West Derby members have access to the facts, I have put together this simple mythbuster to clarify a few points:
I voted Remain in the EU ref, not Brexit (as members inform me, they have been told by other campaigns). I also 100% respected the outcome of the vote.
My office was not closed for my first year in the role as MP. I set up a highly visible and accessible, brand new MP’s office in Tuebrook, one of the poorest wards in our constituency. Within the first few months of the role, I, like everyone, was subject to Covid-19 rules which I followed. My office was open 8am – 6pm durinq the pandemic but subject to the same lockdown and social distancing rules as everyone else.
Myself and my team worked non-stop during the pandemic and supported West Derby constituents in so many different ways. I sadly had to close the office to the public again earlier this year as a security precaution, due to frightening death threats made against myself, team and family by a far-right extremist posing outside the office. This does not mean myself and my team are not working, we are, all day, every day, for the people of West Derby.
As the MP for West Derby I am responsible for many things, all of which I take very seriously. Councillors have primary jurisdiction over local council issues such as traffic, potholes, dog muck and street lighting. Within West Derby, each ward has three local councillors who I support and encourage to carry out their roles fully.*
I am not obsessed with foodbanks. I am however committed to ending the need for foodbanks, and I make no apology for that. Please look at my work on the Right To Food campaign to see how I am challenging the need for the very existence of foodbanks: www.ianbyrne.org/righttofood
Thank you for your time.
Ian Byrne, MP Liverpool West Derby *Please see separate statement issued 13. 11.2022 regarding intimidation
Looking at Byrne’s preface to his statement, it seems clear that he’s saying “fair play and integrity” are no longer part of the Labour leadership’s skillset.
Perhaps, instead of trying to remove MPs who have those qualities – like Byrne himself – party members across the UK should concentrate on ridding their organisation of the parasites that have infested its head office instead.
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Set adrift: how many potentially excellent Labour candidates have been rejected by Keir Starmer’s skewed Parliamentary selection procedure, that seems to contradict democracy and party rules to exclude left-wingers?
Labour Hub has reproduced an important twitter thread by Angus Satow on Keir Starmer’s purge and the implications for Britain’s democracy.
I reproduce it in full below, in view of its importance:
Labour is in the process of selecting its Prospective Parliamentary Candidates for the next General Election, with the NEC signing off batches of seats.
Well, according to Labour’s own rules – they can’t. But….
There are three stages to selections: longlisting, shortlisting and the selection.
Longlisting: NEC Majority, with trade union input
Shortlisting: Local Party and trade union representatives
Selection: Labour members
The Leader of the Opposition’s Office and the Labour machine – working in tandem – are intervening at the longlisting stage, where they have control.
This is when they’re blocking candidates from even being considered or voted on by members – even council leaders, senior council figures and ex-MPs!
The Labour Party leadership are clear about this – they are ensuring that loyalists are selected, figures from the Labour right who will never cause any problems.
They block all left-wingers from the start, and ensure any candidate offered to members is ‘friendly’.
This is no democratic choice at all.
But they face a problem:
Under a rule agreed by Starmer’s NEC, trade union-backed candidates are *automatically longlisted*.
Every left-winger blocked has enjoyed trade union backing, often from Unite and the CWU.
In @LaurenJTownsend‘s case from six unions inc Unite AND Unison.
So they come up with a workaround: ‘due diligence’.
A ‘dossier’ is compiled of ‘concerning evidence’ which has ‘come to light in the course of routine due diligence’ checks on social media.
There are some truly laughable examples of what this evidence consists of.
– Once having liked a Caroline Lucas tweet
– Liking a tweet by Nicola Sturgeon about testing negative for Covid
Equally, there are some truly disturbing examples of ‘evidence’ which is grounds for blocking:
– having mentioned Palestinian refugees (a blatant act of anti-Palestinian racism)
– Liking a tweet calling on Labour to be bolder in its economic policy
– a ‘history of protest’
It’s not hard to disprove the Leadership’s half-baked claim that this is about ‘quality control’.
For example, here’s the Leadership’s ‘heir’ for Milton Keynes North doing the exact same thing as Lauren Townsend.
In Barking, Labour Right NEC members first ignored, then swept under the carpet evidence of Blue Labour figure Darren Rodwell engaging in what have been termed racist jokes.
He was let off and won the selection. ‘Quality control’ ?
Upon receiving the dossier, the candidate is then invited to a meeting at one day’s notice, with the outcome all but certain: blocking.
These amount to nothing less than show trials.
The next day, the candidate receives a perfunctory email, saying only that the panel considered their representations, and they rejected them.
No rules are cited, no judgement given. No due process.
You might wonder – will the trade unions tolerate this blatant abuse of process, blocking their candidates?
The answer is no – earlier this year, trade unions agreed with the NEC a clarification of ‘due diligence’ that it could only be used for things such as serious financial wrongdoing.
But this agreement has been ignored, time and again.
Candidates backed by unions across the board – from USDAW to Unite, UNISON to the CWU – have been blocked on spurious grounds.
Nor is it only left-wingers being blocked.
From Bella Sankey in Hastings to Jack Hemingway in Wakefield, even soft left figures are being blocked.
As Momentum put it, anyone to the left of Tony Blair faces attack.
It’s out of step with the country, because people want their MPs to be local, but from Wakefield to Stroud, the Leadership are happy to exclude popular local champions in favour of loyalist parachutes.
And polling also shows that from a higher minimum wage to public ownership, people want left-wing economic policies!
But whether it’s deselecting Socialist Campaign Group members or blocking left-wingers, Starmer is intent on wiping these ideas out of the public sphere.
But there are more damaging effects still. As @MichaelLCrick reports, very few candidates are working-class.
In Milton Keynes North, Lauren Townsend, a trade unionist who came to the labour movement by organising her workplace as a waitress, was blocked.
The Leadership’s supposed heir is a pollster.
This is the Starmerite counterrevolution to put working-class interests back in a box.
It gets worse.
In Camberwell & Peckham, @mowords, a prominent anti-racist activist and working-class black man, was blocked. No black man has been elected as a Labour MP since 2011
Meanwhile, Rodwell was let through, despite his ‘black man’ remarks.
Britain’s leading Black newspaper – The Voice – has sounded the alarm on a crisis of anti-black racism within Labour.
All this within the context of the Forde \\Report and criticism from Black MPs.
Yet the Voice has been *ignored* by the Labour Party.
Meanwhile, in Kensington, the ex-MP, @emmadentcoad, the only person to ever win the seat for Labour, and a passionate advocate for a community scarred by Grenfell was blocked.
Locally there was widespread disgust at the decision.
Indeed, when the Party blocked the *deputy leader of the council* in favour of two people who live outside the constituency, the entire Wakefield CLP Executive resigned.
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Ian Byrne: his own party may have dis-Organise-d him but will he be able to use the social(ist) media to turn the tables on the hierarchy?
Could the UK’s voters ever have been given a clearer sign that they should not support a political party?
Labour is trying to remove MP of the Year Ian Byrne from his Liverpool West Derby Parliamentary seat – but as he is the recipient of that award, and hasn’t done anything wrong, the party is trying an inventive way of doing it. Constructive dismissal, one might suggest.
So, in the campaign to be reselected as the party’s candidate for that seat, Labour has rescinded Mr Byrne’s access to Organise, the communication facility between the party hierarchy and its members.
His rival in the campaign – a shiny Wes Streeting-a-like from London – does have access to the tool and therefore has a huge advantage over Mr Byrne, who is reduced to trying to resource his reselection campaign on the social media.
Here’s Damo with the details:
Labour is so blatantly rigging selection rules now, that they've removed MP Ian Byrne's access to his local membership, leaving him running a campaign via social media as the only way to get the word out. Well, I've some words too…#DamoRants#WestDerbyhttps://t.co/BZl6SY0u8w
— Damien Willey, Detester of Tories. (@KernowDamo) November 4, 2022
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Wes Streeting: for a Shadow Health Secretary, he has a strange attitude to health!
Wes Streeting, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, says the NHS is no longer the envy of the world – but won’t do anything to restore that position.
Instead, he is happy to allow the creeping privatisation that has de-funded the service to remain.
Not only that, but you should hear the health-related insult he has used to refer to Labour members who have been thrown out of the party.
Listen to it here:
Wes Streeting, recipient of private health donations has slammed the NHS as no longer being the envy of the world, even though he wouldn't reverse privatisation & referred to left Labour supporters as 'cranks' that have been removed, yet will still want their vote! #DamoRantspic.twitter.com/fu8c59A7TU
— Damien Willey, Detester of Tories. (@KernowDamo) October 28, 2022
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Austerity boy: Keir Starmer, as prime minister, would impose policies that would shrink the state, restrict the amount of cash flowing through society, make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
Here’s a timely reminder that a Labour government under Keir Starmer will follow discredited austerity policies, similar to those of a Conservative administration.
Austerity doesn’t work. It shrinks the state and cuts the amount of money flowing through society, meaning the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Public services suffer, and social mobility withers.
These are not traditional Labour Party policies.
But listen to Keir Starmer admitting they are his policies:
Starmer confirms a Labour government will be an austerity government. ‘Tough choices’. pic.twitter.com/fzShm3MTvy
Christian Matheson has quit as Labour MP for Chester after two charges of sexual misconduct against him were upheld.
Here’s Sky News:
According to the BBC,
Two allegations of sexual misconduct against Mr Matheson by a former member of his staff have been upheld.
The MP for Chester allegedly invited her on a private trip abroad, which was found to be “sexually motivated”.
He admitted he had committed a minor breach of the code and tendered his resignation with “great sadness”.
During a work event outside Parliament, he also [made] unwanted and unwelcome sexual advances.
Matheson said he accepted he had been found guilty of a minor breach of the code, but added that he had been found guilty of several allegations which were untrue.
His resignation has triggered a by-election for the City of Chester seat.
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Mark Drakeford: this is the only image This Site currently has of Wales’ First Minister.
This is what should happen across the UK, whenever a Conservative tries to take the moral high ground – especially on a subject as contentious as the National Health Service, which their party has been attacking for many years.
Welsh Tory leader Andrew RT Davies was trying to make a point about the National Health Service – and First Minister Mark Drakeford took exception to it in the most extreme way.
You can get the gist from this clip:
The moral of the story? If you are a Conservative: SHUT UP.
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promises broken
