Tag Archives: letter

‘Flurry’ of no confidence letters in Rishi Sunak submitted, Tories say

Rishi Sunak: he might not get the chance to seek the public’s approval in a general election, meaning he’ll always be remembered as an unelected, third-choice prime minister.

Yahoo News is reporting that Tory MPs are submitting a “flurry” of “no confidence” letters in the leadership of Rishi Sunak as the party tries to weather a series of broadside blows:

A “FLURRY” of no confidence letters in Rishi Sunak have reportedly been submitted to the chairman of the Tory backbench 1922 committee.

The lack of a vote-winning policy in the Spring Budget is thought to have angered a number of MPs and Tory sources have told the i Paper this has caused some to submit letters in the last few days.

Sunak has come under pressure this week to return more than £10 million of donations from businessman Frank Hester who is reported to have said that looking at Diane Abbott, Britain’s first black female MP, made “you just want to hate all black women”.

Downing Street has finally called the comments “racist and wrong” after initially refusing to do so.

Sunak has also been dealing with the defection of Lee Anderson to Reform UK, something which has riled the right of the party.

There is no knowing how many letters have actually been sent but if a threshold of 53 – 15% of Tory MPs – was reached, [Graham] Brady would have to make an announcement.

Source: ‘Flurry’ of no confidence letters in Rishi Sunak submitted, Tories say

Keir Starmer’s response to Israel/Gaza is against Labour values

Complicit in genocide: do you agree with this description of Keir Starmer.

A devastating open letter to Keir Starmer from a group of British Palestinians who are Labour Party members has slammed his response to the Israel/Gaza conflict for opposing their party’s values.

The letter calls on Starmer to “rediscover your humanity”.

It states [boldings mine]:

We are horrified by your refusal to condemn Israel’s current indiscriminate bombing, imposition of a complete siege and planned land invasion of Gaza as war crimes. You appear to be supporting, if not encouraging, Israel in its genocidal actions against Palestinians, especially those in Gaza.

Rather than calling for an immediate ceasefire and lifting of the siege, you keep parroting ‘Israel has the right to defend itself’, a conveniently non-specific phrase.

Is killing more than 1000 children (to date) Israel exercising its right to defend itself? Is cutting off electricity, water, food and fuel following a 16-year siege so that we are on the brink of mass starvation and a collapse of Gaza’s health system examples of Israel defending itself? Is telling 1.1 million people to move from north to south Gaza and then bombing them when they have moved, a legitimate example of self-defence?

Or are they war crimes?

None of these actions are justified by the killing of civilians by Hamas.  We teach our children that two wrongs don’t make a right but this simple message seems to be beyond you. Instead, you encourage Israel on an eye-for-an-eye revenge path which will only lead to more violence and deaths on both sides. This is not the way forward to peace.

You also have had nothing to say about the Palestinian villagers in the West Bank who are being harassed and driven from their homes by armed Israeli settlers with the Israeli army standing by to crush any Palestinian resistance. The number of Palestinian fatalities there this year had exceeded 250 before Hamas’s attack on 7th October. Since then, these attacks have increased with at least three villages having been cleared//near-cleared and demolished, and an increase in the body count of more than 50 in a week.

Your statements and actions on the current tragic situation in Palestine-Israel are dramatically opposed to the values of peace, justice, equality and humanity that the Labour Party is supposed to uphold. You have badly damaged the reputation, perhaps fatally, of a Party that claims to support people fighting for freedom from occupation and oppression.

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Even in terms of the base morals of what needs to be done electorally to win power, your actions are irrational. Even if you win the next general election, you will have alienated minority ethnic communities that identify with the Palestinian struggle for freedom.

To add insult to injury, you have now banned elected Labour representatives and branches from attending protests in solidarity with the Palestinian people and said no motions can be discussed which oppose the leadership’s position on the current situation in the Middle East. The leadership’s position is totally at odds with that adopted at Labour Party conference last year.

In effect, you are aiming to silence Palestinian voices, including the estimated 20,000 British Palestinians living in Britain. And you are telling us that we can’t explain to fellow Labour Party members or the wider public how Israel in 1948/9 denied our father the right of return from studying in Britain back to Nazareth, where he was born and grew up, because he was an Arab, not Jewish but a Christian. This was not  an isolated incident but the policy that was applied to around 750,000 Palestinian refugees in the same years, often using brutal force, and a policy that continues to this day despite UN resolutions calling for the right of return of refugees.

You are saying that we cannot explain how our Palestinian relatives are discriminated against and are facing threats of ethnic cleansing. You are saying that we cannot argue for support for the non-violent BDS campaign which argues for Boycotts, Disinvestment and Sanctions to be applied to Israel until it ends the occupation and dismantles the Apartheid Wall, gives Palestinian citizens of Israel equal rights and supports the right of return of Palestinian refugees.

We understand that your policies have created an internal Party crisis with many Labour Councillors resigning or threatening resignation. We, however, will not resign, adopting the Palestinian tradition of steadfastness (sumud), and will fightback for Labour to return to the principles of internationalism, anti-racism, equality for all humans, anti-colonialism and choosing peace over war. We will work to have you removed from the leadership of the Party unless you genuinely return to these principles. Even if you expel us, we will continue to fight for Palestinian rights, for the only sustainable peace – peace with justice and equal rights for all who live in Palestine-Israel – and against Israel’s policies of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Source: Open letter to Sir Keir Starmer from 4 British Palestinians | Jewish Voice for Labour


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Tories try to use Russell Brand to cancel dissenting political views on social media

Big Brother: do you really want the government to censor what you can see on the social media – or anywhere else on the internet?

“There is a war for your attention. Don’t give it to the wrong people.”

Those aren’t my words and, to be honest, I’m paraphrasing. They weren’t even spoken about the Russell Brand affair, which – in This Writer’s opinion – adds veracity to them.

You’ll be aware – who isn’t? – that Russell Brand has been accused of sex crimes, and the mainstream media have subsequently decided – without trial – that he’s guilty.

Now we learn that the chairperson of the House of Commons’ Culture, Media and Sport committee, the Tory MP Dame Caroline Dinenage, has been writing to social media platforms, asking them to cut off any supply of funds to Brand.

To Dr Theo Bertram, TikTok’s Director of Government Relations, Europe, she wrote:

“While we recognise that TikTok is not the creator of the content published by Mr Brand, and his content may be within the community guidelines set out by the platform, we are concerned that he may be able to profit from his content on the platform.

“We would be grateful if you could confirm whether Mr Brand is able to monetise his TikTok posts, including his videos relating to the serious accusations against him, and what the platform is doing to ensure that creators are not able to use the platform to undermine the welfare of victims of inappropriate and potentially illegal behaviour.”

Here’s a copy of the letter, along with a response from ‘Viva Frei’ on ‘X’. Do you think the respondent makes good points?

“Acquire total control over dissenting voices on the internet”?

As one of those voices, This Writer might want to have a say about that!

To Chris Pavlovski, chief executive of Brand’s main platform, Rumble, the Culture, Media and Sport committee chair wrote:

“We would like to know whether Rumble intends to join YouTube in suspending Mr Brand’s ability to earn money on the platform.”

Mr Pavlovski’s response was not limited to MPs, though. Outraged, he has made it public. Reading it, you may agree with his points:

“Today we received an extremely disturbing letter from a committee chair in the UK Parliament.

“YouTube announced that, based solely on these media accusations, it was barring Mr Brand from monetizing his video content. Rumble stands for very different values. We have devoted ourselves to the vital cause of defending a free internet – meaning an internet where no one arbitrarily decides which ideas can or cannot be heard, or which citizens may or may not be entitled to a platform.

“We regard it as deeply inappropriate and dangerous that the UK Parliament would attempt to control who is allowed to speak on our platform or to earn a living from doing so. Singling out an individual and demanding his ban is even more disturbing given the absence of any connection between the allegations and his content on Rumble. We don’t agree with the behaviour of many Rumble creators, but we refuse to penalize them for actions that have nothing to do with our platform.

“Although it may be politically and socially easier for Rumble to join a cancel culture mob, doing so would be a violation of our company’s values and mission. We emphatically reject the UK Parliament’s demands.”

Here’s the response, plus the letter from the CMS committee:

As I mention above, This Site is one of the “dissenting voices” on the internet over which it seems the UK’s Tory government is trying to gain control – and by “control”, I think we all know I’m referring to censorship; restricting or blotting out altogether the ability of members of the general public to see content that I post to the social media.

I’m concerned that this censorship is already taking place.

Vox Political began at the very end of 2011, with just 11 readers on its first day. By March 2020, in a single day, the site was read 178,888 times. And then – with no change in content, or the way it was supplied – readership started slipping off. Yesterday (September 24), I had around 1,700 hits.

You may want to suggest that the mood of the public has changed and people don’t want to plough through hundreds of words on a screen any more.

But that doesn’t explain the multiplicity of responses, whenever I ask Facebook who has seen my links to articles published on any particular day, saying they haven’t. Many respond by saying my query is the first post they’ve seen in weeks or months.

It seems to me that Facebook (and possibly Twitter/X) have already implemented policies to restrict or silence the voices of people whose political beliefs differ from… someone.

Is it Facebook/X executives censoring their platforms, or the Tory government?

And should they not publish notices warning us that their platforms are politically biased, if this is what they are doing?

The big question, of course, is: how can we get an honest answer out of any of these people?


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Nadine Dorries resigns – at last! – with a SEARING poison-pen letter to Rishi Sunak

Nadine Dorries with the social media message that will always be associated with her [Image: The Prole Star].

Finally, she’s taken the hint.

After a calamitous Parliamentary and Ministerial career, promising to resign and then failing to do so, prompting campaigns and a petition for her to be ejected, Nadine Dorries has thrown in the towel.

She has finally resigned, relinquishing the House of Commons seat that, we’re told, she hasn’t occupied for more than a year.

But she had one last shot to fire – at her own government’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak.

This Writer would go as far as to say it is one of the few poison pen letters to actually have a signature at the bottom of it.

Would you like to read it?

Here’s the lot, in all its grim glory:

It has been the greatest honour and privilege of my life to have served the good people of Mid Bedfordshire as their MP for eighteen years and I count myself blessed to have worked in Westminster for almost a quarter of a century. Despite what some in the media and you yourself have implied, my team of caseworkers and I have continued to work for my constituents faithfully and diligently to this day.

When I arrived in Mid Bedfordshire in 2005, I inherited a Conservative majority of 8,000. Over five elections this has increased to almost 25,000, making it one of the safest seats in the country. A legacy I am proud of.

During my time as a Member of Parliament, I have served as a back bencher, a bill Committee Chair, a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State before becoming Minister of State in the Department of Health and Social Care during the Covid crisis, after which I was appointed as Secretary of State at the department of Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport. 

The offer to continue in my Cabinet role was extended to me by your predecessor, Liz Truss, and I am grateful for your personal phone call on the morning you appointed your cabinet in October, even if I declined to take the call.

As politicians, one of the greatest things we can do is to empower people to have opportunities to achieve their aspirations and to help them to change their lives for the better. In DHSC I championed meaningful improvements to maternity and neonatal safety. I launched the women’s health strategy and pushed forward a national evidence-based trial for Group B Strep testing in pregnant women with the aim to reduce infant deaths. 

When I resigned as Secretary of State for DCMS I was able to thank the professional, dedicated, and hard-working civil servants for making our department the highest performing in Whitehall. We worked tirelessly to strengthen the Online Safety Bill to protect young people, froze the BBC licence fee, included the sale of Channel 4 into the Media Bill to protect its long-term future and led the world in imposing cultural sanctions when Putin invaded Ukraine.

I worked with and encouraged the tech sector, to search out untaught talents such as creative and critical thinking in deprived communities offering those who faced a life on low unskilled pay or benefits, access to higher paid employment and social mobility. What many of the CEOs I spoke to in the tech sector and business leaders really wanted was meaningful regulatory reform from you as chancellor to enable companies not only to establish in the UK, but to list on the London Stock Exchange rather than New York. 

You flashed your gleaming smile in your Prada shoes and Savile Row suit from behind a camera, but you just weren’t listening. All they received in return were platitudes and a speech illustrating how wonderful life was in California. London is now losing its appeal as more UK-based companies seek better listing opportunities in the U.S. That, Prime Minister, is entirely down to you.

Long before my resignation announcement, in July 2022, I had advised the Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case, of my intention to step down. Senior figures in the party, close allies of yours, have continued to this day to implore me to wait until the next general election rather than inflict yet another damaging by-election on the party at a time when we are consistently twenty points behind in the polls.

Having witnessed first-hand, as Boris Johnson and then Liz Truss were taken down, I decided that the British people had a right to know what was happening in their name. Why is it that we have had five Conservative Prime Ministers since 2010, with not one of the previous four having left office as the result of losing a general election? That is a democratic deficit which the mother of parliaments should be deeply ashamed of and which, as you and I know, is the result of the machinations of a small group of individuals embedded deep at the centre of the party and Downing St.

To start with, my investigations focused on the political assassination of Boris Johnson, but as I spoke to more and more people – and I have spoken to a lot of people, from ex-Prime Ministers, Cabinet Ministers both ex and current through all levels of government and Westminster and even journalists – a dark story emerged which grew ever more disturbing with each person I spoke to.

It became clear to me as I worked that remaining as a back bencher was incompatible with publishing a book which exposes how the democratic process at the heart of our party has been corrupted. As I uncovered this alarming situation I knew, such were the forces ranged against me, that I was grateful to retain my parliamentary privilege until today. And, as you also know Prime Minister, those forces are today the most powerful figures in the land. The onslaught against me even included the bizarre spectacle of the Cabinet Secretary claiming (without evidence) to a select committee that he had reported me to the Whips and Speakers office (not only have neither office been able to confirm this was true, but they have no power to act, as he well knows). It is surely as clear a breach of Civil Service impartiality as you could wish to see.

But worst of all has been the spectacle of a Prime Minister demeaning his office by opening the gates to whip up a public frenzy against one of his own MPs. You failed to mention in your public comments that there could be no writ moved for a by-election over summer. And that the earliest any by-election could take place is at the end of September. The clearly orchestrated and almost daily personal attacks demonstrates the pitifully low level your Government has descended to.

It is a modus operandi established by your allies which has targeted Boris Johnson, transferred to Liz Truss and now moved on to me. But I have not been a Prime Minister. I do not have security or protection. Attacks from people, led by you, declared open season on myself and the past weeks have resulted in the police having to visit my home and contact me on a number of occasions due to threats to my person.

Since you took office a year ago, the country is run by a zombie Parliament where nothing meaningful has happened. What exactly has been done or have you achieved? You hold the office of Prime Minister unelected, without a single vote, not even from your own MPs. You have no mandate from the people and the Government is adrift. You have squandered the goodwill of the nation, for what?

And what a difference it is now since 2019, when Boris Johnson won an eighty-seat majority and a greater percentage of the vote share than Tony Blair in the Labour landslide victory of ’97. We were a mere five points behind on the day he was removed from office. Since you became Prime Minister, his manifesto has been completely abandoned. We cannot simply disregard the democratic choice of the electorate, remove both the Prime Minister and the manifesto commitments they voted for and then expect to return to the people in the hope that they will continue to unquestioningly support us. They have agency, they will use it.

Levelling up has been discarded and with it, those deprived communities it sought to serve. Social care, ready to be launched, abandoned along with the hope of all of those who care for the elderly and the vulnerable. The Online Safety Bill has been watered down. BBC funding reform, the clock run down. The Mental Health Act, timed out. Defence spending, reduced. Our commitment to net zero, animal welfare and the green issues so relevant to the planet and voters under 40, squandered. As Lord Goldsmith wrote in his own resignation letter, because you simply do not care about the environment or the natural world. What exactly is it you do stand for?

You have increased Corporation tax to 25 per cent, taking us to the level of the highest tax take since World War two at 75 per cent of GDP, and you have completely failed in reducing illegal immigration or delivering on the benefits of Brexit. The bonfire of EU legislation, swerved. The Windsor framework agreement, a dead duck, brought into existence by shady promises of future preferment with grubby rewards and potential gongs to MPs. Stormont is still not sitting.

Disregarding your own chancellor, last week you took credit for reducing inflation, citing your ‘plan’. There has been no budget, no new fiscal measures, no debate, there is no plan. Such statements take the British public for fools. The decline in the price of commodities such as oil and gas, the eased pressure on the supply of wheat and the increase in interest rates by the Bank of England are what has taken the heat out of the economy and reduced inflation. For you to personally claim credit for this was disingenuous at the very least.

It is a fact that there is no affection for Keir Starmer out on the doorstep. He does not have the winning X factor qualities of a Thatcher, a Blair, or a Boris Johnson, and sadly, Prime Minister, neither do you. Your actions have left some 200 or more of my MP colleagues to face an electoral tsunami and the loss of their livelihoods, because in your impatience to become Prime Minister you put your personal ambition above the stability of the country and our economy. Bewildered, we look in vain for the grand political vision for the people of this great country to hold on to, that would make all this disruption and subsequent inertia worthwhile, and we find absolutely nothing.

I shall take some comfort from explaining to people exactly how you and your allies achieved this undemocratic upheaval in my book. I am a proud working-class Conservative which is why the Levelling Up agenda was so important to me. I know personally how effective a strong and helping hand can be to lift someone out of poverty and how vision, hope and opportunity can change lives. You have abandoned the fundamental principles of Conservatism. History will not judge you kindly.

I shall today inform the Chancellor of my intention to take the Chiltern Hundreds, enabling the writ to be moved on September the 4th for the by-election you are so desperately seeking to take place.

It’s dynamite, isn’t it? Okay, it was written by someone whose nickname is “Mad Nad”, so you have to take it with a pinch of salt, but as far as all its claims are concerned – let’s hope for the best!

Thanks to the Daily Mail for finally supplying us with something we want to read.

The general consensus is that resigning is the best thing Dorries has ever done (be warned – the first message below contains extreme language):

What, “Whinge moan, point finger, spit, rage, narcissism, ineptitude, whinge, moan, grr, Sunak yuk, whinge, narcissism, working class don’t make me laugh, whinge moan, now where’s my money”?

Do you really think that will help, Chris?

Best of all, Mad Nad isn’t wrong about Fishy Rishi.

His latest wheeze is to avoid attending the United Nations’ general assembly, leading to this commentary (and probably many others):

 

Getting his retaliation in first: Boris Johnson takes to the attack in resignation letter

Tantrum: Boris Johnson’s resignation letter makes him look like a petulant child. Where’s Nanny to tell him to take his medicine?

It was probably the best thing he could think of doing.

After receiving notification from the Commons Privileges Committee of its decision in the Partygate Inquiry, and realising that he was going to be suspended for the 10-day period required to trigger a recall petition and possible by-election in his Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency, Boris Johnson decided to pre-empt it and resign immediately.

This gave him the opportunity to attack the decision, the committee that made it, and anybody else he felt like in what comes across as nothing less than an epistolary tantrum.

“The Privileges Committee… are determined to use the proceedings against me to drive me out of Parliament,” he wrote. “They have still not produced a shred of evidence that I knowingly or recklessly misled the Commons.”

Of course, that would be a very hard thing to do, if Johnson himself wasn’t willing to admit it – and he clearly isn’t. Committee members would have had to weigh up what Johnson had said he knew, against what could be concluded from his actions at the times of the parties in Downing Street, his comments at those events, and his behaviour in Parliament thereafter.

Clearly they have decided that it is unreasonable to believe he did not know that they were parties when he attended them and when he discussed them in the Commons chamber. That is all the committee members needed to do.

In that light, much of the rest of Johnson’s letter comes across as the sulking of a spoilt boy who hasn’t been allowed to have his own way.

Also in that light, though, his comments about the Privileges Committee and its individual members may be taken very seriously indeed.

To say, “Their purpose from the beginning has been to find me guilty, regardless of the facts. This is the very definition of a kangaroo court,” is to call into question the honesty and integrity of the committee’s members – his then-fellow MPs. He has no right to do that.

His comment, “It was naïve and trusting of me to think that these proceedings could be remotely useful or fair,” falls into the same category.

… as does his attack on individual committee members and opponents in the Tory Party: “Most members of the Committee – especially the chair – had already expressed deeply prejudicial remarks about my guilt before they had even seen the evidence… there are currently some Tory MPs who share that view… there is a witch hunt under way.”

Already leading Parliamentarians – foremost among them Chris Bryant, the former Privileges Committee chair who recused himself from proceedings after passing comment on Johnson’s behaviour – are saying action may justifiably be taken against Johnson over these ill-chosen words.

But Johnson may face reprisals from other quarters as well. His letter also attacked Sue Gray, who chaired Johnson’s own inquiry into Downing Street parties and who is now set to become Labour leader Keir Starmer’s designated Chief of Staff, along with her chief counsel, Daniel Stilitz KC.

The letter went on to attack the Conservative Party in general, along with Rishi Sunak’s government. Remember: this was a resignation letter – there was no call for any of this material (it amounts to nothing less than a rant) to be included.

And he claims multiple successes that are either not his to claim, or are not successes. The Elizabeth Line was approved by Tony Blair and it was former London Mayor Ken Livingstone who made sure it happened.

Brexit has been a hugely costly failure for the vast majority of people in the UK. Johnson should not mention his conduct during the pandemic as it led to more than 200,000 unnecessary deaths. And while it is right that the UK should support Ukraine against invasion, did we really lead that support internationally?

Put it all together and Boris Johnson appears to have suffered some kind of breakdown. This letter seems, at best, deranged.

Does he honestly believe his statements? Well, yes he probably does – but that doesn’t make them true; it makes him unbalanced, as economist Richard Murphy argues in a Twitter thread today:

Then again, there were definitely some in the Conservative Party who supported Johnson all the way. In the interests of balance, let’s hear from one:

If you’re wondering why Ms Jenkyns would say that, see this:

One good thing about Johnson’s letter is that it means the Privileges Committee doesn’t have to wait two weeks before concluding the inquiry and publishing its report.

But that won’t be the end of the affair.

Many people – some of them in positions of considerable power and responsibility, will be taking this weekend to consider their response to Johnson’s rant.

He may find that his tirade has cost him not only his future in Parliament, but also any future at all.


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Hypocrite Starmer condemns Diane Abbott over racism letter

He’s getting ready to give her the boot:

But he’s also showing that he is a monumental hypocrite.

Allow me to refer you, once again, to Barry Sheerman’s “silver shekels” comment:

This happened during Keir Starmer’s time as Labour Party leader so Sheerman remained a party member, unsuspended, with no investigation, with Starmer’s blessing.

For him to condemn another Labour Party member who hasn’t even made as serious a transgression but has still apologised in a full and frank manner is blatant – brazen – hypocrisy.

There can only be one possible reason for the difference in Starmer’s approach: that Sheerman is a right-wing member of Starmer’s crony group, while Ms Abbott is a socialist.

Starmer’s words are yet another sign to left-wing, tribal Labour supporters that the party they once thought was theirs has changed and that they should not support it under any circumstances. That would be a betrayal of their own political beliefs.


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Labour’s suspension of Diane Abbott is unprecedented and unnecessary. Here’s why

Diane Abbott: suspended for erroneous reasons?

If you’re unaware of the situation, the UK’s first black female MP – Diane Abbott – has been deprived of Labour’s Parliamentary whip after she penned a letter that correctly pointed out that people of colour suffer racism more habitually than other ethnicities – but did it in a clumsy way.

This Site has published an article about it here.

Public reaction has been split – partly, in This Writer’s opinion, because Ms Abbott is famously the most racially abused member of Parliament. In fact, she receives more racially abusive correspondence than all other MPs put together, so it can hardly be surprising that people who themselves are lower than vermin have latched onto this.

Not only that, but she is a socialist, meaning that members of the right-wing faction that currently controls Labour, together with their supporters, also want her removed from that party. This incident has been their excuse to suspend her, pending an investigation on grounds of anti-Semitism.

There’s just one problem:

Members of their faction have been caught making far more clearly anti-Semitic comments. Like Ms Abbott, they subsequently apologised. Unlike her, their transgressions were instantly forgotten.

Here’s one example:

Claudia Webbe, a socialist MP who now sits as an Independent after being expelled from Labour, has pointed out the similarity, and others have added additional arguments to her words:

So on that level, Labour has no ground on which to continue with Ms Abbott’s suspension.

The other issue is whether her letter was anti-Semitic. Let’s consider:

If you don’t believe that, let’s hear from some Jewish people (although Keir Starmer’s right-wing mob dispute their authenticity – apparently they are the “wrong type of Jew” and you can judge for yourself what that says about the current Labour leadership.

Here‘s Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL):

Her original letter was not antisemitic and the way some critics have rounded on her as if it were is cynical and unhelpful.

As a prominent Black Labour MP she cannot avoid discussing the way Black and Asian people are in the frontline of racist oppression – and the way the Black experience has been downplayed in the Labour Party. This was identified by Martin Forde in his report as a hierarchy of racism.  The wording of Diane’s letter was unfortunate in that it appeared to compare forms of racism. Diane has rightly apologised for this.

All racism is abhorrent – and she has always fought against it. Historically Jews have been major victims – most notoriously in the time of the Holocaust. As Diane says in her tweeted apology, “Racism takes many forms and it is completely undeniable that Jewish people have suffered its monstrous effects, as have Irish people, Travellers and many others.”

The fight against racism today – certainly in this country – is centred on defence of Black and Asian people. This in no way discounts the experience of Jews. Jewish people in this country of course face prejudice and racism, in particular the Haredim, who in their dress are highly visible, but it is not institutional, structural racism that fundamentally affects their prospects and outcomes.

Yes, Diane’s letter should have been drafted with more care – but this is no ground for suspension from the Labour Party.

So that’s the opinion of (some) Jewish people. That would divest Labour of its other excuse to suspend Ms Abbott – except of course that Keir Starmer couldn’t give two figs about what left-wing Jews have to say.

And that leads us to one last point:

Exactly. This is now a litmus test for Labour’s electability.

If Starmer and his cronies don’t reinstate Ms Abbott, then left-wing voters who traditionally support Labour will know that they no longer have a home there and should not, under any circumstances, vote for that party while Keir Starmer and his team lead it.


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Tory MP tells Commons he has no confidence in Liz Truss

William Wragg is the vice-chairman of the Conservative backbench 1922 Committee – whose chair, Graham Brady, is responsible for determining whether enough of his fellow MPs have submitted enough letters of ‘no confidence’ to trigger a leadership contest against Liz Truss.

He has told his fellow MPs, in the House of Commons, that he has submitted one such letter himself.

This is hugely significant. As vice-chair of the 1922 Committee, he must be enormously influential. It will therefore be interesting to see how many more such letters his committee chairman will receive now.

And we may well have a yardstick for working this out. In announcing that he has submitted his letter, Mr Wragg said that – despite opposing fracking – he would not vote against the government in the debate on that subject.

He said that, as the government has made the fracking debate a confidence motion in which anybody opposing the line that fracking should be allowed to resume in the UK will be stripped of the Tory whip and expelled from the party, it was in his interests to support the government’s line.

Otherwise his ‘no confidence’ letter would be nullified.

Other Tories, who have also expressed opposition to fracking, may take the same position.

Here’s his speech:

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Asylum crisis: Johnson’s tweeted letter infuriates Macron and make UK look daft

The clown head of Britain: this is undoubtedly how Emmanuel Macron and all the other European national leaders rate Boris Johnson.

What sort of statesman thinks Twitter is an appropriate place to discuss ending the refugee crisis with the Head of a neighbouring State?

A man who’s in a state, that’s what sort.

And what were his advisors thinking? Why didn’t they stop him?

No wonder Emmanuel Macron was enraged by this:

For a start, it’s an attempt to seize control of the dialogue by engaging the public; by ensuring that the general population got to see his proposals, Johnson hoped to ensure that at least some of them would have support.

Also, he tried to seize control of the language used to discuss the issue.

And of course this meant that Johnson was trying to dictate the posture that France should take – that asylum-seekers should be prevented from trying to reach the UK for their own safety and that not doing so is helping people-traffickers.

It seems, as well, that the content of Johnson’s letter was radically different from what he had previously said to the French President in person.

No wonder M. Macron was enraged.

According to the BBC,

At a press conference on Friday, Mr Macron attacked Mr Johnson over the posting of the letter on Twitter, saying: “I spoke two days ago with Prime Minster Johnson in a serious way.

“For my part I continue to do that, as I do with all countries and all leaders. I am surprised by methods when they are not serious.

“We do not communicate from one leader to another on these issues by tweets and letters that we make public. We are not whistleblowers.”

A French government spokesman accused Mr Johnson of saying different things in his conversation with Mr Macron and in the letter, adding: “We are sick of double-speak.”

The result: a furious France has retracted an invitation for Home Secretary Priti Patel to discuss the matter with her counterparts in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.

Macron is also understood to believe that Johnson tweeted the letter to address flagging support from his fellow Conservative MPs, rather than to achieve anything serious.Sickckckckck

Johnson has worsened the UK’s position internationally. Yet a-bloody-gain.

(And I’m not the only one who feels that way.)

The meeting without Patel will undoubtedly be more productive than if she had been allowed to attend. I mean, consider the state of this:

That’s an accurate criticism. The UK has spent decades causing chaos in foreign countries and making promises to their populations – then, when the time come to honour those promises, they turn out to be lies.

Earlier in the week we heard that one of the men who died was a former Afghan soldier who had worked with the UK and whose life was endangered after the panicked withdrawal that Dominic Raab couldn’t be bothered to leave his holiday to oversee.

Even knowing that, Matthew Garrahan’s words ring true:

There are simple solutions for the problem that the UK government has created for itself. Firstly:

Secondly, as This Writer has previously stated, there should be an easily-accessible and legal route for asylum-seekers to take. Blocking off the routes only makes these people prey to the traffickers.

And that leads to deaths.

This Site has commented many times on the fact that Tory government policy on disability benefits has killed (many) more people than the Nazis did with their Aktion T4 purge of disabled Germans, back in the 1930s and 1940s.

Now it turns out that the false barrier the Tories have made between the UK and France has killed more people than the false barrier the Communists created between West and East Berlin:

Yeah. British jingoism refers to the Nazis and the Communists as the bad guys, but it turns out that the people making these comparisons have killed more people than Johnny Foreigner.

Are continuing to kill more people.

And they’re lying to us about what’s happening:

On second thought, it’s probably a blessing in disguise for Johnson and Patel that they are being excluded from Continental discussions on the subject.

If they tried to float their lies and silliness around serious politicians, I dread to think of the international consequences.

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‘No confidence’ letters hit Boris Johnson – but who may replace him?

Boris Johnson: it seems we all think it’s time for him to go.

After the Tory corruption scandal, apparently falling asleep maskless next to David Attenborough, and Peppa Pig-gate, this should be no surprise at all:

Tories don’t like to be a laughing-stock – especially when the ridicule is coming from the mainstream UK media they demand must be loyal to them.

So the letters of ‘no confidence’ have started to arrive.

Only 15 per cent of Conservative MPs need to send such a letter to the chair of their backbench 1922 Committee – that would be 55 letters – for a vote of ‘no confidence’ to be triggered.

On his current performances, it is a vote that Boris Johnson is unlikely to win.

But who could possibly replace him?

Not Rishi Sunak, it seems. His star appears to be falling:

Probably not any of the other Cabinet members, either:

I hear Jeremy Hunt may be positioning himself for a bid – but we all remember how, as Health Secretary, he spent years preparing the NHS for the privatisation that the Tories have just voted in – don’t we?

Anyway: a Tory leadership battle is still a long way away. And when it comes, it will just be a matter of replacing the current poster boy for neoliberalism with a new disciple of Ayn Rand, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.

For now, we can look forward to a protracted period of Tory backstabbing as they all jockey for position to take over, and Johnson himself tries to foil them – by any means available:

It’s scant comfort after the brutal double-rape and murder of our health and social care systems over the last two days.

But This Writer would still be buying popcorn if I wasn’t stuck in self-isolation for another eight days.

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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