Tag Archives: campaign

Banning UK citizens from protesting against Israel’s government is anti-democratic. Here’s why

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Anti-Semitism? The Tory government’s plan to ban public bodies from taking part in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against a murderous foreign apartheid regime will be painted as a crusade against anti-Semitism. But it is one that will lack accurate evidence.

One of the (many) planned laws in Boris Johnson’s new legislative programme is one said to “prevent public bodies from adopting their own approach to international relations” by adopting ethical positions against foreign human rights abusers with boycotts of their exports.

It is widely understood that Johnson’s aim is to protect the government of Israel from the growing BDS movement, which seeks to end that country’s apartheid regime in Palestine.

This is – of course – hugely undemocratic. Local authorities and the devolved governments are elected by the UK’s voters and should be allowed to procure goods and services as they see fit, including according to a higher standard of ethics than that of the national UK government itself.

In essence, it seems the legislation is intended to smear those who refuse to tolerate the Israeli persecution of Palestine as anti-Semites. For some of us, it’s a familiar tactic.

Many people, including This Writer, have already been smeared as anti-Semites for opposing the harmful – indeed, homicidal – activities of a national government that presents itself as representing an entire ethnic group (it doesn’t; many Jews around the world are repulsed by the way Palestine is being treated).

Perversely, it is anti-racism campaigners who are being branded as anti-Semites – a brand that the UK’s own government intends to burn into local authorities, devolved governments and other public bodies if they insist on acting against the persecution of Palestine.

You can find out more about what has already happened – and help fight what is happening now – by visiting the website of a relatively new organisation whose title states exactly what it is about: the Campaign Against Bogus Antisemitism.

The organisation’s website states: “It is deeply hurtful to anti-racist campaigners to be branded as antisemitic. People are broken by the embarrassment and shame of attacks they suffer in the media, there for friends, family and other campaigning bodies to see – as if it were the truth… CABA aims to help set the record straight.

“We are a volunteer-led group dedicated to exposing and countering bogus antisemitism- through education and championing those unjustly accused.

“We are building a network of activists across UK, Palestine and further afield, working in a concerted manner, campaigning to allow us to decry apartheid in Israel without being branded ‘anti-Semites’.”

There’s a lot of information on the CABA site – This Writer hasn’t been able to read all of it, and I’m sure that much of it will be disputed by those with an interest in doing so.

But the intention seems an honest one – which is more than the Tory government can offer with its pro-racist, pro-apartheid planned law.

Give it a look and judge for yourself. You may learn a lot.

Source: About Us- and Joining – Campaign Against BOGUS Antisemitism

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Nobody needs a plan to discredit Rishi Sunak – they only have to quote his record

Campaign to discredit: is Kwasi Kwarteng trying to destroy Rishi Sunak? Or does the Chancellor deserve all the criticism he receives after raising our taxes but (allegedly) avoiding paying his own while his wife did the same?

Rishi Sunak is trying to curry sympathy from the public by pretending that somebody has launched a campaign to discredit him by linking him with the way his wife avoids paying UK tax.

He is – as in so many of his political choices – completely wrong.

Nobody needs to use his wife to discredit Sunak – they only need to look at his own decisions:

  1. He vetoed a plan to save the poorest families from soaring energy bills, according to a government leak.

Three options were put forward: increasing the £200 loan payment for all households (to be paid in the autumn) to “£500 or more”, either for all households or for the poorest; delaying repayment of the £200, which the Treasury is saying must be repaid at the rate of £40 a year over the following five years; or exempting the poorest homes from the need to repay at all, turning the loan into a grant.

Sunak apparently refused to consider any of these options, which are said to have come from Kwasi Kwarteng’s Business, Innovation and Skills Department. If he really does think fellow members of the government are briefing the press against him, then Kwarteng seems a likely candidate for suspicion.

2. He blocked plans to reduce millions of energy bills by making homes more energy efficient, according to another government leak.

It seems both Downing Street and Kwarteng’s team were hoping for an expansion of the Energy Company Obligation (Eco) scheme to be included in this week’s energy security strategy, with £200 million extra per year meaning the scheme could be expanded beyond only those receiving benefits to thousands more people.

Sunak apparently rejected the ideas because he is sticking to pledges he made in autumn 2021 – even though inflation means his tax take is around two-and-a-half times what he expected to make from those proposals and he is entirely capable of doing as suggested.

3. He has benefited from his non-dom wife’s ability to avoid paying UK tax while increasing the tax burden on the rest of us to its highest level since World War 2.

As Akshata Murthy’s husband, Sunak shares his household with her and must, therefore, enjoy some of the benefits of her income. As a non-dom living in the UK, she has been able to avoid paying an estimated £2.1 million per year.

Sunak himself is said to have held a US Green Card, which allows people to live and work permanently in the United States but demands that he pay US tax on his worldwide income, until October last year – long after he became Chancellor in 2020 – meaning he may have avoided paying UK tax for the more-than-four years between that date and his joining the government in 2017.

Meanwhile, by freezing the thresholds at which people move into different tax bands, Sunak has ensured that more people are paying Income Tax at higher rates; he has also introduced a 10 per cent increase in National Insurance payments. The tax burden on UK citizens who have no choice other than to pay up is now at its highest level since the mid-1940s.

It’s a filthy record; it reads more like a charge sheet than a history of achievements.

But Rishi Rich still wants you to believe he and his wife are being smeared by malicious colleagues.

Isn’t it more accurate to say that the skeletons in his closet are coming to light at last?

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Was Keir Starmer told to threaten Labour socialists over Russia-Ukraine by a former TORY MP?

Keir Starmer: Tory puppet?

You may remember that Keir Starmer ordered members of the Labour Party’s Socialist Campaign Group of MPs to withdraw their names from a Stop the War Coalition statement on the Russia-Ukraine crisis that criticised Nato – in the late afternoon of February 24.

It seems that, while the decision to threaten them with the loss of the Labour whip was his, the idea came from former Conservative MP David Gauke – as former Labour MP Chris Williamson has highlighted:

Check the time on it: 3.51pm. Around an hour and a half later, right-wing columnist Dan Hodges tweeted to say that the Labour whips had done exactly as Gauke had suggested:

Confirmation came from LabourList an hour after that:

So it seems Mr Williamson is right and Labour leader Keir Starmer takes orders from Tories. This could devastate Labour’s credibility with voters.

Gauke has tried to distance himself from the revelation – and insulted Mr Williamson in the process by saying Labour was becoming respectable again. The response is scathing:

We are days away from a by-election in Erdington, Birmingham, where Labour has struggled to attract campaigners while the left-wing candidate, Dave Nellist, has enjoyed huge support on the streets.

How will this damning revelation affect public opinion and – more importantly – the vote?

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Russians rise to condemn #Ukraine war; #KeirStarmer puts down Labour MPs who do the same

Keir Starmer: Putin down his people (sorry – I couldn’t resist the pun).

People across Russia who have stood up in protest against their country’s invasion of Ukraine are winning praise from politicians in the UK and across the world.

What a stark contrast with the reaction of – for example – UK Labour leader Keir Starmer, who has forced 11 of his MPs to withdraw their protest against the war under threat of losing the party whip!

Here is video evidence of some of the protests in Russia, as citizens there exercised their right to free speech:

All of these protests if they took place in the UK, would soon be illegal under the Tory government’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts legislation that is currently working its way through Parliament.

And it seems Labour’s current leadership tacitly supports such suppression; here’s how Starmer reacted to his MPs’ exercise of their right to free speech:

Yes, it seems he demanded that they withdraw their signatures from a statement by the Stop the War Coalition, condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The statement itself is straightforward:

“This dispute could and should be resolved peacefully, and that remains the only basis for a lasting settlement, rather than the imposition of military solutions. That it has not been resolved is not, however, the responsibility of the Russian or Ukrainian governments alone.

“The conflict is the product of thirty years of failed policies, including the expansion of NATO and US hegemony at the expense of other countries as well as major wars of aggression by the USA, Britain and other NATO powers which have undermined international law and the United Nations.

“The British government has played a provocative role in the present crisis, talking up war, decrying diplomacy as appeasement and escalating arms supplies and military deployments to Eastern Europe.

“If there is to be a return to diplomacy, as there should be, the British government should pledge to oppose any further eastward expansion of NATO and should encourage a return to the Minsk-2 agreement, already signed by both sides, by all parties as a basis for ending the crisis in relations between Ukraine and Russia.

“Beyond that, there now needs to be a unified effort to develop pan-European security arrangements which meet the needs of all states, something that should have been done when the Warsaw Pact was wound up at the end of the Cold War. The alternative is endless great power conflict with all the attendant waste of resources and danger of bloodshed and destruction.

“We send our solidarity to all those campaigning for an end to the war, often under very difficult conditions, in Russia and Ukraine. Stop the War can best support them by demanding a change in Britain’s own policy, which can be seen to have failed.”

Stop the War expanded on this in a message to followers:

“The Russian invasion of Ukraine overnight is a massive escalation in the conflict there. Stop the War is calling for the withdrawal of Russian troops and for an immediate ceasefire. Our statement is here and our resolution for union branches/CLPs here.

“The danger of war involving nuclear weapons is more real than previously and must be opposed. The real losers will be the ordinary people of Ukraine, Russia, and the rest of Europe.

“We should, however, take no lessons in peacemaking from our own government and its allies. They have brought us decades of escalating wars, each of which has been a failure. They have encouraged a growing arms race internationally. And they have set on a path of Nato expansion which has brought the military alliance to the borders of Russia, in contravention of agreements made at the end of the Cold War.

“Nato is not a defensive alliance but an aggressive one, centrally involved in wars in Afghanistan, Libya and Yugoslavia, and engaged in more and more ‘out of area operations’ including in the Indo-Pacific.

“Our government wants to hide its domestic problems behind its belligerent statements, and we can be certain that this will continue, at the same time that it will provide unlimited money for war but increase student loan repayments and cut the NHS.

“There is a surge or argument in favour of greater sanctions, including from those who purport to be anti war. But sanctions are not an alternative to war – they are economic warfare and therefore a prelude to war. We have seen this in Iraq where all they did was bring war closer, at the same time as bringing real suffering to the people of Iraq.

“As an anti-war and peace movement, our first priority is to stop war. This conflict has not developed in the last few weeks alone, but reflects a society where war is being turned to increasingly to solve other problems. However, we are also aware that this is a different situation from previous wars where our government has been directly involved in military action, and we need to do as much as we can to explain and discuss the issues with those around us.

“We are asking our members, supporters, groups and affiliates to do the following:

  1. Make sure our statement and resolution are disseminated as widely as possible.
  2.  Do everything to publicise and support our international meeting on Saturday 26th February and our in person rally on Wednesday 2nd March in Conway Hall, London.
  3. Hold urgent meetings in all localities – in person where possible – calling for withdrawal of Russian troops, ceasefire now and against Nato expansion.
  4. Attend the demos and actions in support of the NHS with placards linking cuts in public spending with money for war- you can download and print our new placard design from our website.
  5. Prepare for a day of action (tba) where we hold protests and vigils against the war.

“Please contact the office for materials and more information, and for speakers.

“Due to the high volume of traffic we are currently experiencing, we apologise for any difficulties you may encounter whilst trying to access our website today; please keep refreshing or try again later.”

This Writer leans toward the belief that Starmer – who only recently and loudly announced his support for Nato as Labour’s current policy (not that it ever changed from that) – has been incensed by the support of opposition to the organisation by Labour backbenchers.

So he did what bullies do – he threatened them with reprisals.

And to their shame, they caved in:

At a time of blatant hypocrisy by many western leaders, this is extraordinary – for reasons that seem clear:

And he drew comparisons between himself and Russian president Vladimir Putin in an ironic but entirely appropriate unintended consequence:

Damo expands on this in a well-argued ‘rant’ that critics of the Stop the War 11 should consider with care:

And what of Starmer himself? Having signalled a direction of travel, will he follow it through?

And how will this play out in the United Kingdom at large?

Well, with a by-election set to take place in Erdington, Birmingham on March 3, we shouldn’t have long to wait. And people are already making their wishes clear:

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Coming soon (online): forum on the future of the #NationalHealthService

It turns out the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs does actually perform a function beyond being Keir Starmer’s tame band of left-wing poodles.

Many of us have been disappointed with the SCG’s failure to stand up to  the Red Tory bully, but perhaps we should give it the benefit of the doubt if it can bring forth anything useful from its series of online policy seminars. Here’s the latest:

Ending NHS Privatisation – For a National Care Service.

Monday, February 21, 2022, 7pm.  Register here 

Organised in partnership with the Labour Assembly Against Austerity and Momentum, this will examine the key policies the Left needs to be raising and asking how to build the movements necessary to win these policies.

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#BritainFirst v #RNLI: whose side are you on?

Not backing down: donations to the RNLI increased by 2,000 per cent in a day after Nigel Farage tried to stop them rescuing refugees. It would be nice if the same happened because of this campaign by far-right bigots.

Britain First? Britain’s Farts, more like!

(And I’m sorry if you feel This Writer has coarsened Vox Political with my choice of language but it is entirely appropriate in the circumstances, I think. They leave a bad smell wherever they go.)

The far-right political organisation has started bombarding the Royal National Lifeboat Institution with thousands of emails purporting to be from “concerned citizens”, trying to get the charity to stop rescuing everybody in danger of drowning in UK coastal waters and instead to concentrate only on “saving British lives”:

This is of course a hate campaign against Johnny and Janey Foreigner, orchestrated by, as it happens, a pitiful gang of old, bald men with a chip on their collective shoulder:

As an old, bald man myself, This Writer is angry that these old farts are giving us all a bad name.

They aren’t concerned citizens – they’re bigots.

Fortunately the RNLI isn’t the sort of group that is ever going to pander to this kind of racially-motivated hatred.

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Sheffield #Labour councillors who broke #UCUstrike #picket line trigger #YoungLabour declaration

Packed: the Young Labour rally that Keir Starmer’s Labour conference app falsely stated was cancelled. Now Young Labour is refusing to campaign for party members who break picket lines.

This may have deep repercussions across the Labour Party – and indeed the Labour Movement, although the two are now very clearly separate entities.

After Labour members of Sheffield City Council broke the picket line at that city’s university, where UCU workers were striking over pay, pensions and other working conditions, Young Labour – the party’s youth branch – has announced it will not campaign for such people in any way:

Make no mistake – this announcement is a calculated slap in the face for Labour’s leader, Keir Starmer, who with his barely-legitimate general secretary David Evans unilaterally cancelled Young Labour’s conference, that must run alongside the main party conference, according to its rules.

That decision was apparently because the Young Labour conference would have featured an event showing solidarity with Palestine – at least, that’s how YL chair Jess Barnard saw it.

Note the line that a lack of solidarity “has no place in our movement”. Keir Starmer is fond of flinging that phrase around and this seems a deliberate choice to fling it back at him.

What will Starmer do?

Will he condemn his councillors and cause a rift with them? Will he condemn Young Labour and cause a rift with them?

Or will he just hide wherever he goes for weeks on end when difficult questions present themselves?

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Hate-filled Labour now habitually emails notice of disciplinary action to members late at night

Targeted: Jess Barnard has been the victim of a hate campaign by the Labour Party.

“Well, that’s all right then” – said nobody at all after Labour apologised to Jess Barnard for emailing her with a ridiculous Notice of Investigation at one o’clock in the morning.

The party had been planning disciplinary action against the Young Labour chair on the pretext that she was wrong to challenge transphobia. Think about that.

But party officers took a sharp U-turn – not because they acted in error, as they tried to claim, but because Ms Barnard reported the attack to her lawyers and they threatened court action against the party.

Skwawkbox has claimed that the email was demanded by a senior staff member who is carrying out a vendetta against Ms Barnard to punish her for standing up against the party’s attempts at character assassination against her, for standing in solidarity with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and to prevent her speaking at Labour’s conference later this month. The evidence is here.

Possibly worse than this is the fact that the email was deliberately sent to a young woman who has already suffered considerable mental distress because of interventions by Labour Party officers – at one in the morning on World Suicide Prevention Day. Did whoever was responsible think it was funny to do that?

“As a young member already facing hostility from some members of staff, this is very much starting to feel like harassment and intimidation,” wrote Ms Barnard in an emailed letter to NEC members. And rightly so – because that is exactly what it was.

Quite right. And several questions arise. Firstly, why is the party abusing its responsibilities in this way?

We need to know who is responsible for this behaviour and what is going to happen to them as a result. Will they face disciplinary proceedings? (I think we all know the answer to that: no.)

And the second question is: how many other Labour Party members have been subjected to abuse of their mental health in the same way?

You see, Ms Barnard is not the only Labour Party member to have received notice of disciplinary proceedings at such a time.

It is regular Labour Party practice, it seems.

That is what we find from the response to Pamela Fitzpatrick – who is herself taking Labour to court over disciplinary proceedings launched against her, apparently in order to prevent her from attending the party conference and being available as a possible replacement for David Evans if he is removed from his general secretary role by party members angered at his vindictive and unreasonable purges of left-wing members.

She asked whether the party was deliberately timing its letters to cause maximum distress to members and the answer is an unequivocal yes:

I can only agree with Ms Fitzpatrick’s response to the revelations from fellow party members:

Yes indeed.

Where is the outrage from Keir Starmer and his cult members? Where are the announcements of disciplinary action against the culprits? And when will the procedure be reformed?

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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Young Labour joins ‘Trots Jamboree’ after Starmer’s general secretary cancels their conference

Keir Starmer (left) and his right-wing ACTING general secretary David Evans: they’re doormats to any right-wing organisation that wants to attack Labour, but have no problem attacking left-wing young people.

A new event has been added to the programme of The World Transformed – the left-wing political festival running alongside the Labour Party Conference this year.

Youth Rising for Palestine will take place on September 28, between 3-4.30pm, sponsored by Young Labour and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, in what can only be a bitter humiliation for Keir Starmer and his unelected general secretary David Evans, who – it seems clear – tried to prevent the event from taking place at all.

The event’s blurb states: “May 2021 saw thousands of Palestinians killed by Israeli air strikes in the Gaza strip, in the wake of a wave of protests against violent evictions in Sheikh Jarrar and across occupied Palestine. In response to these attacks, millions mobilised across the world in solidarity with the people of Palestine, including the largest ever UK solidarity demonstration in London attended by overwhelmingly young people. But it is not enough to protest in the streets when thousands of Palestinian lives are lost. As the Israeli state ramps up its regime of apartheid and occupation, while the British political establishment seeks to suppress Palestinian voices and those acting in solidarity with them, how can we build on the explosion of youth-led organising we’ve seen this year to build a long-lasting and cross-generational UK solidarity movement?”

You can see how this would upset Starmer, who has aligned Labour firmly with apartheid Israel through his fawning subservience to the Board of Deputies of British Jews – which has itself just admitted its own strong ties to the Israeli Embassy; apparently it is not a UK organisation but an arm of the Israeli government that is being used to influence UK politics.*

I’m not the only person to see it this way. Consider:

How was Young Labour forced to take its event outside the Labour Conference? It’s quite complicated, but I’ll try to take you through it painlessly.

Events had been unfolding for many months but we only found out about them yesterday (August 31) after Young Labour co-chair Jess Barnard finally gave up trying to reason with Starmer (who never responded anyway) and Evans – who, it seems, was more interested in exercising powers he doesn’t actually have:

Right – so Young Labour were told they would not be allowed to hold their annual event this year, even though the Labour Party is required by its own rules to host it. Already, Evans was breaking party rules.

If he had provided a reason – even one as flimsy as Covid-19 (it wouldn’t work because then he wouldn’t be holding a full conference) – it wouldn’t have been as bad, but he simply didn’t bother.

Okay, so Evans at least promised to provide more resources for a Young Labour presence in the main event. Did he?

No:

You read that right. YL provided all its required information months ago and was ignored until yesterday – August 31 – when Ms Barnard was given the excuse that the party had “no capacity for due diligence checks” until September 20.

To me, it looks like Evans (and Starmer?) found a reason to want YL’s events cancelled – quietly and without any nasty publicity. Why would they want that? Read on…

Is the picture clearer now? YL wanted to host an event with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and Evans (and Starmer?) wanted to put a stop to it. But they didn’t want to be seen to be stopping that particular event, so they created an excuse about “due diligence” checks.*

Ms Barnard, at least, is still willing to work with the Labour leadership…

… but I fear any hopes she has are forlorn.

One reason for this feeling is the arrival of a journalist named Oliver Kamm (I had never heard of him either). After Ms Barnard tweeted her thread, he responded with the comment below – claiming that Young Labour is anti-Semitic and wants to see a second Holocaust.

There is, to This Writer’s knowledge, absolutely no evidence to support such a wild claim, so Ms Barnard’s response is entirely understandable.

And take a look at Alex Tiffin’s comment.

Where are Starmer and Rayner (and, for that matter, Evans)? Nowhere to be seen. Now, why on Earth would they not want to defend their elected Labour Party representative? And isn’t it a dereliction of duty that they have said nothing about this?

Fortunately a few other people have chimed in to have their informed say. Personally, I have no knowledge of this Kamm person so must rely on their information:

Fortunately, given all of the above, it seems certain that the following tweet will prove inaccurate:

So that is the reason Young Labour will be co-sponsoring an event at so-called “Trots’ Jamboree” The World Transformed – alongside the PSC. I wonder if Jeremy Corbyn will attend.

This Writer has no doubt that it will be a much more worthwhile use of your time than whatever vapid puff of hot air will be put up by Starmer’s mob at that time. When’s his leader speech?

Meanwhile, I can only agree with the following two tweets…

… and endorse James Foster’s words of encouragement to Young Labour members who will be attending the conference:

*Or so it seems to This Writer.

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Support builds for Loach after racist Labour shoots itself in the foot AGAIN

Ken Loach: he has good reason to smile because good people are supporting him.

Good people have lined up to support calls to reinstate legendary film director Ken Loach into the Labour Party. As for his detractors – well, let’s judge them by their actions.

One such detractor is Mike Katz, chair of the Jewish Labour Movement (the Labour-affiliated organisation whose members have to be neither members of the Labour Party or Jews).

He tweeted an ignorant screed against Mr Loach on Saturday (August 14) that attractedThis Writer’s eye – and my ire – as follows:

He hasn’t replied. How could he? he knows I’m right.

So he did what they all do when they’re found out: he ran away like a scalded alley cat.

I’m only surprised that the tweet is still up.

Mr Loach’s position on the Holocaust has since been clarified by his supporters:

On the other hand, members of Labour’s Socialist Campaign Group have made a statement in support of Mr Loach, signed by 21 Labour MPs plus Jeremy Corbyn and Claudia Webbe, who are currently bereft of the Labour whip after previous examples of spite by their party leader:

It says: “We strongly oppose the expulsion of Ken Loach from the Labour Party and call for his membership to be immediately reinstated.

“Ken is an outstanding socialist and a fierce opponent of discrimination in all its forms, whose work has done more than any other living British filmmaker to shine a light on injustice and oppression. The values embodied in his films – solidarity, compassion, equality – should be the values proudly championed by our party. That Ken is expelled while Islamophobes are welcomed is shameful, and suggests the party leadership is drifting yet further away from these values.

“These attacks are aimed at demoralising and pushing socialist members away from the party. But the only way to return our socialist and internationalist principles to the heart of British politics is for Labour members to stay in the party and champion them. The socialist leadership that hundreds of thousands of you made possible need not be consigned to the past of our party. It can be the future. Let’s fight for it together.”

“Islamophobes are welcomed” seems to be a clear reference to Trevor Phillips, the alleged Islamophobe who is a close friend of Peter Mandelson (with whom Keir Starmer has been chumming up lately) and a member of Starmer’s own Labour Party branch. It is believed that Starmer demanded his reinstatement. Knowing this, the line appears to be an attack on Labour’s current leader.

The last paragraph seems overly hopeful at a time when Starmer appears to be succeeding in pushing people out of the once-great Labour Party by the thousands. Still, we may look forward to the autumn party conference, at which a series of socialist motions are likely to be debated that may push back his tide of intolerance, racism and fascism.

Sadly, people have been lining up on the other side of the fence, to support Mr Loach’s expulsion – by calling for the party whip to be withdrawn from the Socialist Campaign Group MPs who opposed it. They’re the same old faces as usual, pushing the same sad attack lines – and their words were reported in the same old rag: the Jewish Chronicle:

Katz is among them, along with Euan Philipps of disgraced hate group Labour Against Anti-Semitism and Luke Akehurst – the Labour NEC member who lost his seat on Oxford City Council in May after (it is said) Muslims withdrew their vote:

And far-right ex-Labour bully-boy Ian Austin was also among those baying for blood. His attack on Jewish MP Jon Trickett rated an article of itself from Skwawkbox – and don’t you love the image illustrating it?

Austin is infamous as the MP who heckled Jeremy Corbyn from his own benches when he criticised Tony Blair’s 2003 invasion of Iraq:

We must conclude that Austin was 100 per cent behind the invasion of Afghanistan as well – and look at the way that has turned out!

Meanwhile, Keir Starmer’s programme to eliminate “the wrong kind of Jew” is continuing, as the following examples demonstrate clearly:

It seems clear that, if anybody should be removed from the Labour Party then it should not be Ken Loach or the 23 people who signed the Socialist Campaign Group’s statement.

It should be Mike Katz. It should be Ian Austin. It should be Euan Philipps, Luke Akehurst, Trevor Phillips and Peter Mandelson. And above all, it should be Keir Starmer. We all know that. But can we make it happen?