Tag Archives: left wing

Channel migrants: Braverman won’t apologise for comment on ‘activist blob’ of ‘left-wing’ civil servants

Suella Braverman doesn’t think before broadcasting: she’s pictured in a committee where she claimed there were legal routes for refugees to enter the UK. Challenged on it, she couldn’t name even one.

Once again, for Tories, “sorry” seems to be the hardest word.

An email in Suella Braverman’s name, sent by Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) to party members, said the following:

“We tried to stop the small boats crossings without changing our laws.

“But an activist blob of left wing lawyers, civil servants and the Labour Party blocked us.”

See for yourself. I’m using an image posted by a journalist on Twitter because it clearly shows Braverman’s name:

The message has been savaged by Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA Union, which represents civil servants.

He stated in a letter to prime minister Rishi Sunak that it was “a direct attack on the integrity and impartiality of the thousands of civil servants who loyally serve the home secretary, doing some of the most complex and difficult work in government”.

Penman also said Braverman may have broken the ministerial code, which says ministers must “uphold the impartiality of the civil service”. Here’s the relevant part:

Braverman was challenged over this scandal by Robert Peston on his ITV show – and denied having anything to do with the email. Take note of Clare Hepworth’s comment prefacing the video below:

But it was sent out in Braverman’s name. From This Writer’s point of view, it is inconceivable that any government minister – or anyone at all – would allow a message to be sent out (in this case to many people at once) without having seen it or approved its contents.

So I think Ms Hepworth may be right that we may discover something different, some time in the future.

Mr Penman had already stated that, whether or not Braverman had approved the message that went out in her name, she should apologise for it:

As you have seen in the Peston video, above, Braverman has not apologised.

I wonder what the other members of the “activist blob” – the “left wing” lawyers and the Labour Party – have to say about the way they were mentioned. I would certainly expect Keir Starmer to object at Labour being described as “left wing”.


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Take this poll on whether a new Left party is needed to pressure Starmer’s Labour

Keir Starmer: even if he’s found this poll, I don’t think he’ll be able to rig it.

Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK has an interesting question.

He wants to know if left-leaning politicians and powerful figures should begin a new party to pressure Starmer’s Labour in the way UKIP pressured and changed the Tories.

At the time of writing, the answer is very much “yes”. But what do you think?

Source: Should left-leaning politicians and powerful figures begin a new party to pressure Starmer’s Labour in the way UKIP pressured and changed the Tories?


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Can Keir Starmer really win an election after giving Labour activists a hard kicking?

Orwellian: after doing this to his left-wing activist base, how can Keir Starmer expect any grassroots help to get elected?

The Labour Party and its supporters are still reeling from the blows dealt to them by party leader Keir Starmer last week, it’s fair to say.

Unilaterally declaring that the Islington North Constituency Labour Party would not be allowed to choose Jeremy Corbyn as its candidate in the next general election, Starmer said anybody who doesn’t like the direction in which he has led the party is free to leave (the exact opposite of his promise, when he was seeking to be party leader, to unite Labour’s factions).

But the people he was showing the door are the people who have previously campaigned for the party on the nation’s doorsteps.

How does Starmer expect to win without activists to push his party and its policies?

Here’s one viewpoint:

So, with the activists staying at home, refusing to vote Labour or encourage anybody else to do so, will slick branding, impact social media, good PR, placed media ads/stories from friends in the press and storyline video make any impact on floating/casual voters?

What do you think?


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Keir Starmer’s ultimatum to Labour left-wingers is a double-edged sword

He probably thought he was being clever.

But Keir Starmer’s assertion that anyone who doesn’t like what he has done to the Labour Party can leave is dangerous for him, as well as for them.

Here’s what he said:

Firstly, it’s clear that he was lying. Labour hasn’t stopped being a party of “narrow interests” – it has become one.

As Damian Willey tweeted: “Political pygmy tells anyone not subscribing to his narrow political viewpoint to do one, thereby making it a party for narrow mindedness.”

Others feel the same:

The problem is that Starmer issued his ultimatum after making a speech about the Equality and Human Rights Commission supporting changes he has made to the party’s process of handling complaints of anti-Semitism.

If anybody leaves his party in disgust at policies that have made Labour virtually indistinguishable from the Conservatives, he’ll be able to claim that they are anti-Semites. Yes, I really do think he is that low.

And the irony is that Labour under Keir Starmer is more anti-Semitic than ever it was under Jeremy Corbyn – or any other leader, I would dare to suggest.

Just because some party representatives say it is better, that doesn’t mean it is, Consider:

For the sake of accuracy, let’s have the official line from the House of Commons Library:

In fact, under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, anti-Semitism plummeted to a lower point, in the Labour Party, than in any other UK political organisation or the population generally.

Under Keir Starmer, however, Jewish people are five times more likely to face disciplinary proceedings and possible expulsion than non-Jews – especially if they are left-wingers.

And what is the official Labour line on this? It runs as follows: “If you don’t like it, tough.”

Watch:

Notice that Smeeth provides not one scrap of evidence to support her claims against Jewish Voice for Labour.

And this leads me on to the reason Starmer’s ultimatum is a double-edged sword for him, as well as for left-wingers and socialists who might leave the party.

He made it while trumpeting the EHRC’s support for what he has done – but anybody taking the opportunity to leave the party has only to turn his words back on him.

All they have to do is point out that anti-Semitism within the Labour Party is higher now than at any time under Jeremy Corbyn, pointing at the persecution of Jewish members and the words of Ruth Smeeth (or Lady Anderson, or whatever she wants to call herself). They can denounce the EHRC’s comments as a sham while they’re at it.

Starmer’s gamble is the usual one: he thinks that left-wingers don’t have anywhere to go other than Labour. That’s not true either.

They could go to the Green Party, as many already have. Or they could (finally!) form a party of their own. It would admittedly take a while to gain traction with voters, but if it led to yet another defeat for Labour in 2025, then socialists would be able to blame Starmer and his followers for perverting that party into something it should never have been.

My personal opinion is that Labour probably won’t lose the next general election, even under the leadership of such an inept would-be dictator as Starmer undoubtedly is. It just won’t win by the massive margin that so many pundits are expecting.

And even then his troubles will be only just beginning, because we’ll be able to criticise every right-wing, harmful-to-the-people, decision he makes.


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The two faces of Ed Miliband are revealed by the Rebecca Long-Bailey row

Ed Miliband has claimed his boss Keir Starmer was right to sack Rebecca Long-Bailey – while also claiming the party isn’t purging itself of left-wingers.

The two claims are incompatible. Long-Bailey was the continuity left-wing candidate in the party’s recent leadership election and Starmer has used a flimsy excuse related to anti-Semitism to sack her.

Many other left-wingers are either being suspended for the same flimsy reason or have already been expelled (like This Writer) – but Miliband is insisting that there is no purge.

He has just incinerated any credibility he had left. Nobody should believe a word of it.

Look at this nonsense:

Miliband, the shadow business secretary and a former party leader, said Long-Bailey was a decent person and not antisemitic but that Starmer was right to sack her.

The reason the Maxine Peake interview was a problem “is not that it had a criticism of the state of Israel. I’m a big critic of what the Israeli government has done on a number of occasions. It was that it was a false criticism of the state of Israel, or rather the Israeli Defence Force, linked to the death of George Floyd, wrongly, saying that somehow tactics that killed George Floyd were linked to the Israelis,” Miliband told the BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show.

“The problem is that over the centuries when calamitous things have happened, Jews have been blamed. That’s why there’s an antisemitism issue in relation to this and that’s why I believe Keir took the right decision. I think she made a significant error of judgment.”

Notice the wording: “When calamitous things have happened, Jews have been blamed.” Not “Jews have been wrongly blamed”.

It would be anti-Semitic to blame Jews – in this case, Jewish people working for the Israeli police or military – for something they haven’t done.

But we know that police from many US states have been trained by the Israeli police and/or military. And we have photographic evidence of the Israeli police/military – well, see for yourself:

Choke hold: Israeli armed forces using the same ‘knee on neck’ technique that was used to kill George Floyd. But we’re being asked to believe Israel never taught that technique to US police and it is anti-Semitic to suggest that one country’s armed forces could teach such techniques to another’s police.

It is in the face of this evidence that the Israeli authorities – not the Jews – are claiming their forces don’t teach these methods to US police.

It is not a credible position, therefore neither is Miliband’s.

So his other claim – that left-wingers in the Labour Party aren’t being subjected to a purge – must also fall. He said on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show:

Allies of Ms Long-Bailey who have criticised her sacking – such as former shadow chancellor John McDonnell and ex-party chair Ian Lavery – would not be disciplined for doing so.

He dismissed concerns expressed by some on the left of the party that this was a prelude to a further distancing from the Jeremy Corbyn-era and that legitimate criticism of Israel would be frowned upon.

“I heard something… about how Keir wants to purge these people. He is not about purges. He wants to change the country by not having the Labour Party mired in issues which, frankly, provide a stain on us. Keir took very strong action [against Ms Long-Bailey] and now we need to move on and deal with the issues of anti-Semitism we face.”

This Writer doesn’t believe that for a moment.

By sacking Long-Bailey and forcing left-wingers to reconsider whether they have a future in the Labour Party, he has plunged Labour even deeper into the mire.

He has not proved that criticism of Israel over this issue is not legitimate. All the evidence suggests that it has a very strong factual basis but Starmer seems determined to put his hands over his ears, shut his eyes, shake his head and mutter, “No, no, no,” like a petulant schoolboy whenever anybody tries to point this out. I have no doubt that Miliband will do the same.

It is this attitude that worsens Labour’s position. In refusing to take serious issues seriously, the party makes a mockery of its own position on anti-Semitism; how can it take a firm stand on the issue if it can’t accept the difference between anti-Semitism and justified criticism of a foreign government?

Left-wingers – including many who have not yet been smeared with accusations of anti-Semitism that are based on Labour’s bizarre misinterpretation – are quitting the party in large numbers, or seriously considering it, because of this pig-headed idiocy.

If there is a stain on the party, it is on Starmer and – despite his own Jewish heritage – Miliband.

They could put a stop to it by admitting their fault, accepting that Israel does have a prima facie case to answer (even though we may never have accurate facts because it is in that government’s interests to lie if its forces have been providing the disputed training), and resetting their claims about anti-Semitism to fall in line with accepted definitions of it.

But they won’t. They simply aren’t mature enough.

Source: Ed Miliband: Starmer was right to sack Rebecca Long-Bailey | Politics | The Guardian

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Is Vox Political on this Home Office list of left-wing ‘extremism’?

Take a look at this:

The Home Office has lumped together left-wing groups and green campaigners with neo-nazis and white supremacists in literature and posters supposedly designed to educate officers about extremism.

The Counter Terrorism Policing (CTP) document has categories including white supremacist and nationalist groups, left-wing and “associated single issue groups,” animal rights groups, and environmental campaigns.

The left-wing and environmental groups listed include the Communist Party of Britain (CPB), Stop the War, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), Extinction Rebellion (XR) and Greenpeace.

Let’s have a poll:

[polldaddy poll=10492907]

Source: Left wing? You may be on police extremism list | Morning Star

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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Netanyahu’s Israel is victimising Jews who don’t support his apartheid regime

Victimised: Simone Zimmerman.

In the words of Jewdas: “The irony of Israel recently crowning itself as the ‘Jewish Nation-State’ at the same time as it is turning away increasing numbers of Jews due to their political views should not be lost on anyone.”

American Jews have good reason to be afraid. Recent interrogations, harassment, and deportation of left-wing Jewish American activists over their political beliefs and activities have ushered in a new political moment in the relationship between Israel and diaspora Jewish communities.

No longer is Jewish identity enough to protect American activists from the reach of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency. Jewish privilege is no longer enough to guarantee entry into the Jewish state should one’s ideology or political views contradict those of the Israeli government.

When Simone Zimmerman and Abby Kirschbaum were detained and interrogated on their way back from a weekend in Sinai, the Shin Bet and border authority interrogators were almost exclusively interested in why the two wanted to work with Palestinians. They wanted to know about their politics.

A week earlier, when Israeli-American author Moriel Zecher-Rothman was held by the Shin Bet at the airport, an agent warned him against going down a “slippery slope” of anti-occupation activism and demanded he provide intelligence on fellow left-wing activists.

Source: In Israel, American Jews can kiss their privilege goodbye | +972 Magazine

Visit our JustGiving page to help Vox Political’s Mike Sivier fight anti-Semitism libels in court


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Scaremonger Leslie still represents the ugly side of neoliberal New Labour

Chris Leslie: Neoliberal, Blairite, behind the times – another closet Tory.

Today The Guardian wants to tell us the mainstream Labour Party thinks Jeremy Corbyn’s “starry-eyed, hard left” policies would keep the Conservatives in power for another 10 years at least. What a shame the paper is relying on the words of closet Tory Chris Leslie to make that point!

Leslie is the politician who, as shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, told the Huffington Post last year that a future Labour government would not undo the Coalition’s hugely unpopular cuts but would continue to impose the austerity that has kept our economy in crisis for the last five years.

In that case, as Vox Political argued at the time, why bother voting for Labour? We’ve already got one lot of Conservatives in power; there’s no need for any more.

Particularly galling is Leslie’s claim to represent the concerns of the “progressive left of centre” – a part of the political landscape he cannot ever claim to have inhabited. He’s a regressive member of the Uptight Right.

In the HuffPost interview, Leslie told us: “George Osborne has had his five years to eradicate the deficit. I am determined that we finish that task on which he has failed”. In response, This Blog asked how he proposes to achieve that aim, if his methods are the same?

140601uglynewlabour

Chris Leslie’s idea of socialism: Seems a lot like Toryism, doesn’t it?

The man just wasn’t making sense then – and he isn’t making sense now.

Jeremy Corbyn isn’t a hard-left politician; Leslie’s problem is that his politics is too far to the right of the political spectrum for him to belong in the same party – he isn’t a Labour politician at all. Austerity is not the answer to the UK’s woes – five years of insane Tory ideological policies have demonstrated that.

The people are crying out for a change – the overwhelming victory of the SNP, with it’s anti-austerity posture, at the general election demonstrates that – and claims that England is not the same as Scotland in this regard are groundless because many English people have been saying they would have voted SNP if they could.

Mr Leslie is wrong – in what he says, in what he has been doing, and in his choice of political party. Like Chuka Umunna, Liz Kendall and certain other high-profile neoliberals, he should cross the floor and join the party he really represents.

His announcement that he would not work for Mr Corbyn is the best news we are likely to get all day – and he should keep his scaremongering to himself.

The “starry-eyed, hard left” economic strategy of Jeremy Corbyn would hand the Tories at least another decade in power and end up hurting poor people by leading to higher inflation and interest rates as well as cuts in public spending, the shadow chancellor has said.

As Corbyn outlines plans to end “the years of political and economic austerity” to help create a high-skilled workforce in Britain, Chris Leslie has become one of the most senior Labour figures to say he would decline to serve under the veteran leftwinger.

In a sign of the deep unease at senior levels of the Labour party that Corbyn could be on the verge of a historic breakthrough by the left to win the party’s leadership, Leslie told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday: “This is a fork in the road for the Labour party. On 12 September we will know what the fate is of the progressive left of centre. There are millions of people whose living standards and working conditions depend on making sure we get this decision right, otherwise we face a decade or more of Conservative government.”

Source: Corbyn’s economic strategy would keep Tories in power, top Labour figure says | Politics | The Guardian

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Corbyn’s TV popularity terrifies Tories

Outspoken: Jeremy Corbyn addresses the audience in Nuneaton, during Labour's first televised leadership hustings.

Outspoken: Jeremy Corbyn addresses the audience in Nuneaton, during Labour’s first televised leadership hustings.

Read between the lines of the Telegraph‘s article and you can see that Conservatives are terrified of Jeremy Corbyn’s popularity.

Corbyn was an instant hit with voters during the Newsnight-hosted televised leadership hustings in Nuneaton, and his policies were more popular than anything suggested by his colleagues on the Labour leadership ballot paper.

So the Torygraph strapline suggests that this has stoked the “fears of centrist Labour MPs and aides”.

Reporter Ben Riley-Smith described his as “far left” and a “veteran socialist” in an attempt to pigeonhole him as something undesirable, and added that the audience’s reaction “appeared to confirm fears of senior party figures who warned Mr Corbyn’s inclusion would encourage Labour to move Left rather than returning to the centre ground after its heaviest defeat to the Tories in a generation”.

These are symptoms of Tory fears. And what exactly does Riley-Smith mean when he mentions “returning to the centre ground”?

This Blog has mentioned the Overton Window before. It’s a concept intended to describe what is politically possible at any particular time. Owen Jones, in his book The Establishment states: “This ‘window’ is relentlessly policed. So, when Ed Miliband proposes a temporary energy price freeze – a welcome, albeit pretty unremarkable policy – it is portrayed by media and right-wing politicians as crypto-Marxism, even though most voters support a far more radical option: renationalising the energy industry lock, stock and barrel.

“Policing the ‘window’ helps ensure that neo-liberal ideas generally favoured by the Establishment are deemed moderate and commonsense; anything that even slightly deviates is written off as beyond the pale.”

Ben Riley-Smith and the Torygraph are trying to police the Overton Window with this article. The Overton Window, in the UK, currently allows for the presentation of political views that only a few decades ago would have been considered right-wing or far-right. The centre ground would represent a significant move to the political left.

So when the Islington North MP declared he would “never consider myself part of New Labour”, he was in fact saying he wanted Labour to move back from the right-wing to the centre ground.

When he criticised Tony Blair for “the promotion of markets rather than the planned economy”, he was in fact saying he wanted Labour to move back from the right-wing to the centre ground.

When he dismissed the need for deficit reduction and called for a “more radical” economic policy than the SNP – which ran on a fake “anti-austerity” ticket at the election that would have cut more spending than Labour – he was in fact saying he wanted Labour to move back from the right-wing to the centre ground.

And even Mr Riley-Smith could not obscure the fact that Mr Corbyn received “the most positive responses from the Nuneaton crowd as he repeatedly called for policies to the Left of Ed Miliband’s election-losing manifesto”.

In essence, he proved that the public wants more left-wing policies, that the Overton Window is out of line with the British people and that Corbyn has his finger on the UK’s pulse.

The claim that “the positive reaction he got from the audience will increase fears among some shadow ministers and MPs that his presence in the race will distract the party from returning to polices that can win the 2020 general election” is merely indicative of Tory terror that someone has arisen who actually wants to promote good government.

In contradiction of the Torygraph, Corbyn has shown that his policies are exactly what Labour needs if it is to win any elections in the future.

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Labour leadership: Campaign for ‘None Of The Above’ box on the ballot paper looms

It seems likely that the only Labour leadership candidates to appear on the ballot paper for ordinary members will be Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall, depriving ordinary members of a socialist option.

Kendall might as well be a member of the Conservative Party and will turn Labour into a pale copy. Cooper and Burnham appear to be little better.

Creagh has too few supporters at the time of writing – as does Corbyn. The lack of support for his left-wing, anti-austerity option is a sad indication of the depths to which the Parliamentary Labour Party has fallen.

The Labour leadership candidates are engaged in a last-minute scramble for endorsements ahead of nominations opening later on Tuesday, although Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall already have enough supporters to get on the ballot.

The real issue now is what the grassroots Labour Party does about all this. Labour’s membership is now clearly far more left-wing than its MPs – as is the population in general, which supports the renationalisation of utilities, the removal of private companies from the National Health Service and the end of Iain Duncan Smith’s death penalty for people claiming incapacity benefits (all right, the last may be a slight exaggeration – but only a slight one).

The way the field looks at the moment, we could end up with a lame duck leader who will not command the support of the party in general – or the people of the UK.

Perhaps now is the time to demand a box on the ballot paper marked ‘None Of The Above’, for those of us who don’t believe in any of the candidates being pushed on us by the Parliamentary Party.

Contact interim leader Harriet Harman by emailing [email protected]

Source: Labour’s leadership race: nominations deadline looms | Politics | The Guardian

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