Tag Archives: define

TOO LATE, Clive Lewis – the two-faced politics of Starmer has already been very well defined

Two-faced: Keir Starmer wants us to think he’s the left-wing alternative to Boris Johnson, but his behaviour shows that’s a mask for another Establishment stooge.

Labour’s Clive Lewis has warned that the politics of new party leader Keir Starmer needs to be defined quickly, before others do it. Too late!

Commentators on the decline of Labour under Starmer already know perfectly well that he represents a backslide into two-faced Blairism and are making a public impact with their revelations.

He said definition of ‘Keirism’, with “broad themes” and “red lines”, “needs to be done because if you don’t, other people begin to define you or try to define you, and that’s already happening.”

It sure is – and the verdict is damning.

So, for example, we get this piece in Libcom, which puts the two-faced Labour leader in context from the very first paragraph: “It appears that Sir Keir intends to combine a ‘forensic’, lawyerly critique of the government’s many failings with what he calls ‘constructive’ support for the most hard-right Tory administration since the 1930s.”

Writer Mark Kosman goes on to condemn Starmer’s response to the Black Lives Matter movement as “keen to reassure the entire British establishment that the Labour Party will continue to be a ‘most loyal’ opposition”.

You may remember Starmer belittled BLM, saying “I don’t have any truck with what [Black Lives Matter] is saying about defunding the police or anything else. That’s just nonsense.”

Mr Kosman describes BLM’s response – that Starmer was just a “cop in an expensive suit” as “incisive and memorable”.

But he goes further – pointing out that the Labour leader’s words were a far cry from what he said back in 1986 when writing about police attacks on pickets during the printers’ bitter dispute with Rupert Murdoch over his Wapping print plant:

Back then, according to Starmer’s former Highgate housemate, ‘he used to run an organisation called Socialist Alternatives from our house.’ Socialist Alternatives was the publication of the British section of the pro-self-management, ex-Trotskyist group, the International Revolutionary Marxist Tendency, and Starmer’s contributions to the magazine included an article about the Wapping dispute in which he denounced the use of ‘paramilitary’ policing methods. He then said:

This leads to the question of the role the police should play, if any, in civil society. Who are they protecting and from what?

Starmer’s comments appear to raise the issue of abolishing the police not just defunding them. According to one of his old lawyer friends, back in 1986, Starmer also advocated a ‘thorough critique of the prison system and how it didn’t work.

Well, it’s not uncommon for people to change their minds. And, as Mr Kosman points out, “Starmer’s subsequent depressing trajectory from ‘Marxist’ radical to cynical careerist is not uncommon on the British left.”

He goes on to add: “What is less common is Starmer’s trajectory from a lawyer who genuinely supported left-wing activism to one who became head of the Crown Prosecution Service – an organisation whose only interest in such activism is a determination to contain and prevent it.”

He goes on to direct us to a more thorough critique of the Labour leader’s grim record at the Verso blog. He states: “In ‘The Case Against Keir Starmer’, Oliver Eagleton runs through Starmer’s dubious positions on the Iraq War, Trident, state surveillance, Julian Assange and welfare cuts, as well as his apparent reluctance to prosecute the police officers who killed Jean Charles de Menezes and Ian Tomlinson.”

“There’s certainly no question that [Starmer] has become a convert to the establishment,” he writes. “Not only has he accepted a knighthood but he’s been a member of the pro-US, pro-market think tank, the Trilateral Commission, since 2018. Other members of this rather secretive organisation include not only Henry Kissinger but as many as seven former heads of the CIA and various other US intelligence agencies

“The head of the UK’s intelligence agency, MI5, is Jonathan Evans who was particularly grateful to Starmer for his decision not to prosecute MI5 for their role in the CIA’s overseas torture programme.”

Kosman points out Starmer’s supine response to the Covid-19 crisis, quoting Lancet editor Richard Horton’s protest against the Tory policies that have killed nearly 70,000 people (by the time I’m writing this): “Why are you allowing this government to orchestrate the deaths of your citizens, your families, your neighbours? This is a mass delusion. Resist. Resist. Rebel.”

And what’s Starmer’s response? “Starmer has never been quite this passionate about anything but, as a younger activist, he would, at least, have been able to appreciate and echo Horton’s truth-telling.

“However, now, as an older professional politician – one who is completely integrated into the establishment – he is simply unable to face up to the truth of modern Britain, let alone ‘speak out’ about it.

Finally – and crucially – Kosman lays into Starmer’s merciless “witch-hunt” against people on the left of the Labour Party – the wing from which he himself emerged:

His witch-hunt against the left, both inside and outside the Labour Party, has probably only just started.

If Starmer is prepared to smear his fellow front-bencher, Rebecca Long-Bailey, as a purveyor of ‘anti-Semitic conspiracy theories’, he won’t hesitate to slander and persecute any and all genuinely left-wing activists.

This ‘cop in an expensive suit’ is, at present, no threat to the Tory government. But, allied both with that government and with his friends in the police, he could easily become a very serious threat to those of us on the genuine left.

Those are the facts of the matter.

And that is why, after only 100 days as leader, it is now far too late for Keir Starmer to try to define his politics.

The damage has already been done – and he did it himself. We just said what we saw.

Source: “Keirism” needs to be defined – or others will define the Labour leader, says Clive Lewis – LabourList

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.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/


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People aren’t trolling Nusrat Ghani because of misogyny – and the reasons are obvious

Nusrat Ghani.

Tory MP Nusrat Ghani appears to be a little upset at the response attracted by her call for an urgent debate on Clive Lewis’s use of the word “bitch”:

The trouble is that she, along with those others who have been trying to make something of this incident, is pushing a false argument.

Nobody is denying the offensive nature of the words used by Mr Lewis – least of all Mr Lewis himself, who has apologised after being made aware that they did cause offence.

But context is everything, and his remark was made in an attempt at humour, with no offence intended – to a man. This is, at the very least, a subversion of the offensive nature of the words – albeit, in hindsight, an unsuccessful one.

The claim that the words used were gendered is easily defeated as there are many instances of men calling other men “bitch”. Indeed, one definition in the Urban Dictionary states that a bitch is a “modern-day servant; a person who performs tasks for another, usually degrading in status”.  To This Writer, it appears to be the relevant definition when considering Mr Lewis’s use of the term. Note the use of the word “person” – not “woman”. Therefore it can be someone of either gender.

Nobody female who was at the event has come forward to say they took offence at the time (to my knowledge), and my understanding is that the organisers took no complaints at the time.

So Mr Lewis used a non-gendered term of abuse, in a humorous (or attemptedly humorous) manner, while speaking to a man.

And Nusrat Ghani wants us to think it implies hatred towards women.

Yes. I would like to see a debate on the subject.

Unfortunately, it seems unlikely:

All things considered, that would be a lucky escape for Ms Ghani.


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The land of do-as-you-please (if you’re a Tory minister)

The Tory Faraway Tree: By the power of very bad image editing, David Cameron, Iain (RTU) Smith and Grant Shapps have replaced the protagonists. Careful, Mr Shapps - your panties are showing! How unusual that they aren't on fire!

The Tory Faraway Tree: By the power of very bad image editing, David Cameron, Iain (RTU) Smith and Grant Shapps have replaced the protagonists. Careful, Mr Shapps – your panties are showing! How unusual that they aren’t on fire!

Do any British readers remember what it was like to live in a country where the government respected the law, and accepted facts without making up silly little stories about them?

What an amazing place that must have been.

Sadly, we’re all trapped in Tory-Coalition purgatory for the next 19 months at least, and have to endure the relentless procession of nonsense associated with it.

Yesterday (Friday) we were provided with two glowing examples.

Firstly, the visit of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, Raquel Rolnik, was treated with extreme prejudice by the Tories and their poodles in the right-wing press, after she announced she would be filing an unfavourable report after investigating the effect of the bedroom tax on the British people.

Vox Political covered these events in some detail, so there’s no need to rehash them here.

Tory chairman and ‘Michael Green’ impersonator Grant Shapps then wrote to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to complain about the Special Rapporteur’s behaviour. A reply has now arrived and, rather than give it the due consideration it deserves, Shapps seems to have handed it straight to The Sun.

That newspaper reported that the UN had “slapped down” Ms Rolnik for her behaviour. Shapps himself told the paper: “People expect the UN to be neutral, yet on this occasion a former Workers Party politician came with a clear agenda” – a bizarre claim, when the letter itself creates a completely different view.

Guido Fawkes’ blog provides the text of the UN letter – along with a bit more right-wing spin which we’ll ignore as it is irrelevant.

It states: “Ms Raquel Rolnik is one of 72 independent experts appointed by the United nations Human Rights Council – the lead UN body responsible for human rights – on the basis of their expertise and independence, and following a competitive selection process. As in the case of all mandate holders, Ms Rolnik serves in an independent capacity and in accordance with a Code of Conduct adopted by the Council. She is not a staff member of the United Nations, is neither accountable to nor appointed by the Secretary-General, and does not receive any compensation beyond a daily allowance when engaged in mandated activities.

“Among other activities, Special Rapporteurs are mandated to undertake country visits to assess human rights enjoyment on the ground. The United Kingdom is one of 94 Member States which has extended a standing invitation to mandate holders thus indicating that it is open to the visit of any Special Rapporteur. Country visits are governed by rules and procedures set out in the Code of Conduct referred to above and the Manual of Operations adopted by Special Procedures. Ms Rolnik’s visit was planned and organised over many months in consultation with the Government in compliance with these rules and procedures.

“As in the case of all country visits, Ms Rolnik’s visit concluded with a press conference and a press statement, provided to the Government in advance, which indicate preliminary findings and recommendations. The final report on the visit will be submitted to the Council’s twenty-fifth session which will take place in March 2014 in Geneva.”

Reading between the lines, we can piece together the gist of Shapps’ correspondence – and it’s clear that he made a lot of mistaken assumptions. Firstly, it seems likely he wrote to Ban Ki-moon demanding that Ms Rolnik be fired from her position, in the belief that she is a hired hand and that the Secretary-General can hire and fire her as he pleases, the way Tories would like to run the UK. She’s just ‘the help’ in Shapps’s eyes. He must also have made a claim about her remuneration – possibly that she receives too much money from the UN or that, as a Socialist, she must be pulling pennies out of the public purse like there’s no tomorrow. Both claims get short shrift.

It seems Shapps then asserted that Ms Rolnik had not been invited to the UK and had no reason to be there. Wrong again, as the UN letter clarifies. A claim that she went beyond her remit is similarly batted away by reference to the governing rules which, we may conclude, were available to Mr Shapps before he wrote his letter. Oh yes, look, they’re available from the introduction page to the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’ (OHCHR) website, here!

Next, Shapps is likely to have reasserted his claim that “It is completely wrong and an abuse of the process for somebody to come over, to fail to meet with government ministers, to fail to meet with the department responsible.” The UN response is the same as Ms Rolnik’s own statement in her preliminary report.

And the final paragraph seems to be a response to his further claim that it was out of line “to produce a press release two weeks after coming, even though the report is not due out until next spring.”

Taken at face value, then, this is a letter that entirely supports Ms Rolnik, both in her position within the United Nations and the way she carried out her role in the UK.

But that wasn’t enough for the United Nations, whose higher echelons clearly wanted to ensure there can be no doubt about the way this – let’s face it – international  incident is being viewed.

Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, told the Huffington Post: “The Sun‘s take on it – that ‘The United Nations has slapped down’ Ms Rolnik – is pure spin. There was no such intention whatsoever.

In the face of a blizzard of misinformation and personal abuse of Ms Rolnik, published in one or two other UK tabloids during and immediately after her visit, the letter to Mr Shapps simply corrects the factual errors that have been asserted about her status and her role as an independent UN expert, or ‘Special Rapporteur.’

“Ms Rolnik’s visit was planned and organized over many months in consultation with the UK Government in compliance with these rules and procedures.

“As in the case of all country visits, Ms Rolnik’s visit concluded with a press conference and a press statement, provided to the Government in advance, which indicate preliminary findings and recommendations.

“The final report on the visit will be submitted to the Human Rights Council’s session next March in Geneva.

“In short, there was nothing unusual or untoward about Ms Rolnik’s visit – apart from some of the reactions to it.”

No doubt Mr Colville will have drawn his own conclusions about the current UK administration from that Sun article – conclusions that, one hopes, will be included in that final report next March.

The New Statesman reckons the Tories have an “antipathy for evidence” and presents a theory regarding why this should be so: “If all the facts are against you, your best tactic is to make stuff up and hope you can shout the other person down (changing your mind obviously not being an option).”

Alternatively, we return to V for Vendetta territory. The graphic novel’s writer, Alan Moore, referenced Enid Blyton’s novel The Magic Faraway Tree several times. For an anarchist like the story’s protagonist, the Land of Do-as-you-please would be very attractive – but here in reality, it seems the Tories think they’ve taken the ladder to that land and can do and say whatever they want – and facts don’t matter.

For more evidence of this, let’s turn to our second example: The Department for Work and Pensions and its reaction to a benefit tribunal in Scotland, who ruled against Fife Council, saying that a room of less than 70 square feet should not be considered a bedroom for the purpose of the bedroom tax. This led the council to call the tax “unworkable” and demand its reversal. Since then, a disabled gentleman has won a ruling against Westminster Council, after he claimed that a room used to store equipment that helps him manage his disability was not, and never has been, a bedroom.

In his decision notice, the judge wrote: “The term ‘bedroom’ is nowhere defined [in the relevant regulations]. I apply the ordinary English meaning. The room in question cannot be so defined.”

In response to the first ruling, the DWP has issued an ‘Urgent Bulletin’ in which an attempt is made to retroactively define a bedroom, for the purposes of administering the tax.

Perhaps we are to assume Iain Returned-To-Unit Smith believes that, having achieved one retrospective law via the normal legislative route, he can now ordain such rulings willy-nilly. He’s wrong.

His Department’s demand that “when applying the size criteria and determining whether or not a property is under-occupied, the only consideration should be the composition of the household and the number of bedrooms as designated by the landlord, but not by measuring rooms” is worthless.

If he wanted that to be the case, he should have written it into his silly little Bedroom Tax Bill (or whatever it was called).

For the moment, Shapps and RTU can get away with their bizarre pronouncements – although they can’t expect to be believed – because the Conservatives are in office.

But they won’t be in office forever.

In the meantime, let’s all keep supporting the opposers, wherever they turn up. If you are being subjected to the Bedroom Tax – appeal. And write to the UN, supporting Ms Rolnik and her findings against the tax.

You have a chance to prove that the Land of Do-as-you-please is a very small place.

And, as in the book, the return to normality involves a very, very long descent.