Tag Archives: Lisa

After police abused the new Public Order Act, above-the-law politicians won’t change it

A reminder: here’s Republic chief executive Graham Smith being arrested for not breaking any laws, by at least eight police officers.

There can’t be any doubt now that the big story of the Coronation weekend is the abuse of the new Public Order Act by police, to arrest and detain people who had every right to protest against a monarchy they do not want.

Graham Smith, chief executive of the anti-monarch group Republic, was jailed early on Saturday morning, on suspicion of conspiring to cause a public nuisance by disrupting the celebrations on London’s streets.

He has made it clear that neither he nor anybody else in his group had any intention to break the law.

Indeed, Republic has made it clear that it co-operated fully with the Metropolitan Police before the event even started:

Graham Smith, speaking for Republic on 3 May, said: “We have had two meetings with the Met police, and numerous phone conversations. They have repeatedly said they have no concerns about Republic’s plans.”

Mr Smith was released on Saturday but police retained his phone and luggage straps that they had claimed could have been used for “locking on” – attaching protesters to street furniture to cause disruption.

These items were returned on Monday evening, when officers admitted they were not able to find any reason to charge Mr Smith with a crime. Here are his comments:

Do you believe the claim of regret by the police? Richard Murphy, of Funding the Future, doesn’t:

I do not believe the police. Politely, they are asking us to believe in yet more fairytales if they expect us to think that these arrests were a mistake.

They announced zero tolerance of protest in advance of the coronation.

They got new powers enacted days in advance of the coronation to arrest without reason.

Republic had been completely open and honest about their intentions, I know. I get their emails. And so there was no new “intelligence” for the police to act on to justify their actions, as they and those seeking to excuse them (Ed Balls, I am looking at you) claimed. There was just a police conspiracy to appease Suella Braverman by showing zero tolerance that backfired spectacularly in both the UK and around the world.

And now they have not only had to eat humble pie, because their actions were so obviously unjustified and unjustifiable –  because not only was the protest peaceful but there was never a conspiracy that it should be anything else  – but they have now paved the way for rightful demands that use of this law be restricted until such time as it can be repealed.

The only impediment to that happening is Labour’s support for these laws – which looks most especially crass now.

I fear Mr Murphy’s hope for Labour may be forlorn. More on this below.

This morning (Tuesday, May 9), Mr Smith was interviewed by Kay Burley of Sky News, who did her level best to undermine his assertions – and he made mincemeat of her. Fair play to her for posting the clip, though!

This Writer cannot understand why Burley kept harping on about the cost of the Coronation. I had heard the £250m line too – and whether it cost that much or the more modest £100m figure that has been more widely-quoted, it’s still money that could have been put to better use in a country whose people are struggling financially because the government has sucked all the money out of it.

And she was unable to stop Mr Smith from making his point that “there was no evidence of any intent or capacity to commit any offence” and “no suggestion of wrongdoing… at all”.

While Burley was putting forward a pro-Establishment view, other journalists went very strongly the other way. Here’s Michael Crick – and I know he’s problematic too, but his words are worth hearing – on LBC:

Sadly, it doesn’t matter what the commenterati say about it; the political elite in Westminster have closed ranks to deny that anything untoward happened at all – and they certainly won’t consider revising or repealing the vague law that allowed this scandal to happen.

Here’s prime minister Rishi Sunak. First he said he supported what the police did:

“The police are operationally independent of Government, they’ll make these decisions based on what they think is best,” he told broadcasters in Hertfordshire.

“Actually I’m grateful to the police and everyone who played a part in ensuring that this weekend has gone so well, so successfully and so safely, that was an extraordinary effort by so many people and I’m grateful to them for all their hard work.”

Then he repeated his assertions to TV reporters:

It’s interesting that Sunak claimed the arrests were “operational decisions made by the police at the time”. I wonder if we can have that confirmed? I’ll try to contact the Met and see what response I get.

Meanwhile, here’s Tory MP Peter Bone, who supports his prime ministers point of view, having his derriere turned into burger meat and handed back to him by Marina Purkiss:

So much for the Tory point of view.

And what about Labour?

Lisa Nandy, on the morning media round, made it clear that her party sides with the Tories and repeated the assertion (although not in as many words) that Labour wants to be able to clamp down on protesters just as hard as the Tories appear to have done:

Even Barry Gardiner, usually excellent at presenting his party in a reasonable light, struggled in a discussion of the scandal on the BBC’s Politics Live:

And what does Labour think of Republic, and the right of anti-monarchists to be able to present their point of view?

Admittedly, party MPs have protested:

John McDonnell, the former shadow chancellor, questioned the rules this week, saying: “I can’t see that allowing local parties to participate in groups like these is going to bring down civilisation as we know it.

“A form of institutional paranoia has emerged in the higher echelons of the party’s bureaucracy which has led to a level of control-freakery in relation to the activities of local CLPs which borders on farce.”

Another MP and former shadow frontbencher, Clive Lewis, who will address anti-monarchy protesters staging a demonstration against the coronation in London on Saturday, said he had “serious misgivings” about the rule preventing affiliation with Republic, adding there was a long history of branches having relationships with democratic campaigning organisations.

Lewis said: “It feels wrong, and sits uncomfortably with me. I think a lot of people will find it problematic, even people who are going to be supportive of the coronation and the king. Many of them will also be people who believe in freedom of speech, freedom of expression and having an open, honest political debate about the future of this country.

“If you join the Labour party, you often joined because you want to make a difference to make your country better, and those are the kind of people who will want to ask questions about the kind of democracy we have.”

But Starmer seems to feel he has to act this way because it might win him some votes – despite the fact that it makes him (yet again) a hypocrite:

Labour under Keir Starmer’s leadership has attempted to underline its patriotism in order to reconnect with voters in “red wall” seats. In the past, Starmer had advocated abolishing the monarchy.

Meanwhile…

Yes, littering is indeed a crime, but it seems nobody has been punished for it.

Instead, the police concentrated their resources on persecuting people who had not broken the law at all.

It really is the big story of the weekend: supporters of the monarchy attacked, arrested, and imprisoned dozens of people on the day their icon was crowned – not for any crime, but simply for having a different point of view.

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Lisa Nandy’s attacks on the left only betray her own repulsiveness

Nandy: a mouthpiece for Labour attack lines without any apparent intelligence to filter out the offensive nonsense.

A confrontation between Labour MPs has won an inordinate amount of attention on the social media, considering the failures of one of the participants.

I refer of course to the argument between right-winger Lisa Nandy and left-wing former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell over their party’s current line of attack adverts – in particular the one accusing Rishi Sunak of wanting child sex offenders to escape prison.

Here’s the relevant part of the discussion on Robert Peston’s ITV show:

Both of them were wrong, in different ways.

Mr McDonnell was mistaken to suggest that Nandy would not make personal attacks – quite clearly, because her response to his reasonable assertion that Labour should not have made an unsupportable personal attack was to make an unsupportable personal attack.

And Nandy was wrong in her entire approach – supporting the advert and attacking Mr McDonnell with the old line about anti-Semitism.

For the record, the manufactured anti-Semitism crisis, in which people like Nandy persuaded much of the country that under Jeremy Corbyn, two-thirds of their party were anti-Semites (in fact, I believe the true figure was found to be fewer than one per cent), was not the worst stain on Labour’s history.

But don’t take my words on it. Here’s Cornish Damo with a detailed breakdown of the incident, the issues, and why Nandy is as vile as she undoubtedly is:

This Writer wonders whether she’s happy now, having done what seems to be her real job – propping up the Tories.

They will get a sympathy bounce because the claims against Rishi Sunak are not supportable, and thinking right-wingers will support them because they will see Labour as divided.

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Lisa Nandy ‘antisemitism’ interview falls apart under examination

Nandy: the mouth is open but nothing of any interest comes out.

The Starmer Party’s right-wing leaders can’t let this go, can they?

Here’s an interview with Lisa Nandy, who waxes lyrical about the so-called Labour anti-Semitism crisis and the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s report on it:

There are just a few problems with her interpretation. “Let’s take this line by line, shall we?” tweets Simon Maginn.

And on the basis of those two disputed cases, right-wing underlings of Keir Starmer have spent two and a half years vilifying Jeremy Corbyn.

Even now, despite the fact that the motion to have him barred from standing as a Labour election candidate doesn’t mention the EHRC report or anti-Semitism in any way, people like Nandy have been turning up all over the media with their mouths stuffed full of it.

They’re full of something, but I can describe it using only four letters.

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Starmer’s policy on unions in disarray as Labour reps join picket lines [tweets]

Turncoat: Lisa Nandy was actually doing the right thing by joining a CWU picket line – but it was a staggering act of hypocrisy and betrayal of Keir Starmer. Why did she do it?

No wonder Keir Starmer is losing public trust to loony Liz Truss!

He sacked Sam Tarry as Shadow Transport Minister for giving interviews from a picket line last Wednesday (July 27).

Starmer said Labour could not be the “party of protest” – ignoring the possibility that a party that does not protest against government failures is the “party of collusion” with them.

It has also been suggested that Starmer has a personal animosity towards Mr Tarry – possibly over political differences.

But yesterday (August 1), key Starmer crony Lisa Nandy turned up at a CWU picket line and gave interviews there:

This creates a problem for Starmer:

Some might say that Starmer is only going to sack Labour MPs who defy his orders… but then there’s this:

Nandy’s decision certainly seems to have thrown Labour into chaos. Here’s Ben Bradshaw being taken down hard:

Meanwhile, it seems other Labour bigwigs are also defying Starmer – although it could be said that his decree about frontbenchers doesn’t extend to them…

In the face of what seems to be open rebellion from his party, is it any wonder that public support for Starmer is crumbling?

And it seems he can’t do anything about the ringleader of this little rebellion – because he’s too scared. And that won’t help him at all:

But what of Nandy herself?

Well, it seems she’s either a hypocrite or a brazen opportunist, because – well, here she was a couple of weeks ago:

The only conclusion This Writer can draw is that Labour’s current leaders have no interest in winning elections; their job is to drag that party through the dirt.

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Keir Starmer ‘preparing successors’ Streeting, Nandy and Cooper for Labour leadership if he has to quit

Keir Starmer: he has bored most of us away from Labour and now he wants his boring friends to finish the job if he can’t.

It seems Keir Starmer is determined to steer Labour into disaster – from behind the scenes, if he has to.

After handing in his questionnaire about possible breaches of Covid-19 lockdown rules at an online campaigning event last year, it seems he has contacted the people he sees as potential successors, instructing them to prepare for a leadership contest.

These include Lisa Nandy, Yvette Cooper, and even Wes Streeting. God help the Labour Party if any of them get the top spot!

Apparently he has told friends, “I will not let our hard-won gains be squandered so we will need to be ready in the unlikely event that the worst comes to worst.”

What “hard-won gains”?

Under Starmer, Labour has haemorrhaged party members and, if it hasn’t lost seats, it has certainly failed to gain them. He has struggled to gain even a polling parity with the most overtly corrupt Tory prime minister of our lifetimes.

Starmer’s time as Labour leader has been an abject failure. Any leadership by his anointed successors will certainly continue the trend.

Source: Keir Starmer ‘preparing successors’ for Labour leadership if he’s forced to quit

Lisa Nandy’s plan to backstab Corbyn means handing a bigger election victory to the Tories

Nandy: speaking before thinking, again?

Nandy should be expelled from the Labour Party for even suggesting this.

She won’t – because Keir Starmer runs a party with one rule book for the rank-and-file members and a completely different one for his privileged elite MPs like Nandy. Doesn’t he?

Here’s another example of Starmerite double-standards:

But let’s get back to Nandy.

She has been doing the media rounds, saying that she would doorknock for any Labour candidate who stands against Jeremy Corbyn in his constituency of Islington North.

She accuses Corbyn of trying to make Labour’s falsified anti-Semitism crisis “all about himself”.*

And she reckons Corbyn should go because he has not apologised for his response to the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s report on anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.**

She misses the operative point though: he has no reason to.

Nothing Corbyn said was wrong; it was entirely in line with the findings of the EHRC.

Here’s a comment on that from the president of a union that is calling on its members to vote on disaffiliating from the party because of false claims made about him by StarmerLabour:

Nandy’s problem is that Corbyn did not kowtow to the propaganda – the lies – put about by her failure of a leader, Keir Starmer. She thinks her side must now make an example of Corbyn, to show what happens when the grassroots (Corbyn supporters) take sides against elites like her and Starmer.

She wants us to accept her model of the Labour Party – with herself, Starmer and the right-whingers in power as an undemocratic aristocracy, forcing their demands on the majority of the party’s population.

But isn’t that exactly the system that Labour was originally founded to oppose?

I’ll give you a clue: Yes it is.

If Nandy is any kind of politician at all – and that is questionable – she isn’t a Labour politician.

According to the Labour rule book, any party member who announces an intention to campaign against a party representative or vote against one who is seeking election is breaking the rules and must face disciplinary procedures that will lead to their expulsion.

Nandy has been making exactly that threat on the national news media. The rule is clear. She should be expelled. The email should already have arrived in her inbox.

But you can bet it hasn’t, because Keir Starmer’s party is more corrupt than the Conservatives.

Worse still is the fact that what Nandy has proposed would cause such outrage among the grassroots, rank-and-file Labour membership, most of whom (even now) joined the party to support Corbyn, that Labour would lose the general election in which she carried out her plan. The Tories would probably get an even larger majority than Boris Johnson achieved in 2019.

She’s just too arrogant to admit it. She thinks Labour’s voters have no choice but to vote for the party, even though everything she does shows that it has been usurped by entryist Tories like her.

But don’t just take my word for it! The backlash has been strong, so judge by the words of these people instead, if you like:

Ultimately, we are left with one clear message:

But what will it take for Nandy, Starmer and their ilk to understand ours? Here it is:

*The facts about this are closer to the view put forward by “Frank Owen’s Legendary Paintbrush”: “Dear @lisanandy, Corbyn didn’t make the “antisemitism crisis” about him. YOU and your fellow plotters did. Why don’t you tell us about the money Sir Trevor Chinn of pro-Israel lobbyists BICOM “donated” to you? Or that he’s also a co-director of your company, Labour Together?

“As for campaigning against Corbyn in Islington North, you should be more worried about your own seat in Wigan. If Corbyn decided to set up a proper socialist party before the next GE, you’d be toast. Left-wing voters take a dim view of corruption, duplicity and treachery.”

**Oh, and Nandy’s claim to be trying to repair Labour’s relationship with “the Jewish community” is a lie. There is no single, monolithic Jewish community and Labour has, in fact, sided with a very narrow group of Zionist Jews who support the government of Israel in its persecution of Palestinians – as directed by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, that was recently outed as an arm of the Israeli Embassy.

As “Frank Owen’s Legendary Paintbrush” states: “That @lisanandy used to be chair of Labour Friends of Palestine [sic] shows how heavily the cards were stacked against @jeremycorbyn .

“Just last week, Nandy claimed the United Nations unfairly singles out Israel.

“Make no mistake, Labour is an anti-Palestine/pro-apartheid party.”

Billy J Wells makes the point clearly: “THE Jewish community? Just one big homogenous group with a hive mentality? That Jewish community?

“There is no the Jewish community, lots of Jewish communities would be more accurate but hey, what about the hurt caused by the Labour Party to Jews who do not conform to the Zionist cause?

“Those Jews who do not support Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people and dared to speak out for Palestinians?

“What about those left wing Jews who dared support Jeremy Corbyn? Never reported though, those Jews are the wrong type of Jews so no one gives a damn about their pain and hurt.

“Let’s get this in perspective…..there was never a crisis of anti-Semitism until it was weaponised to destroy Jeremy Corbyn. Those who instigated and played their part – they are the ones who caused hurt and not just to British Jews.”

Simon Maginn puts it succinctly:

And Aron Keller adds: “If you care about hurt to minority communities, I’d politely suggest not treating their views as monolithic – thereby denying their basic humanity – so that you can use them to fight your factional wars.”

There’s also this:

 

Motormouth Nandy shouldn’t be a Labour MP. She accuses Corbyn, but SHE is the genuine anti-Semite

Open mouth, insert feet: it seems Lisa Nandy can’t open her mouth without saying something stupid – and she spends a lot of time with her mouth open, looking stupid.

What an ignorant thing for a Labour front-bencher to say.

Shadow Foreign Secretary Lisa Nandy has told right-wing talk radio station LBC that Jeremy Corbyn should not be re-admitted to the Parliamentary Labour Party until he apologises for hurt he has caused to the Jewish community.

He already has:

But he shouldn’t have done it then and he has no need to do it now.

Nandy, on the other hand, has no reason to be anywhere near the Labour Party; she disgraces it by her presence.

Remember when she described anti-Semitism as “a particular kind of racism, that punches up instead of punching down”?

Labour recorded multiple complaints against Nandy for that howler – not only from Jews who rightly regarded it as anti-Semitic (separating Jews from everybody else), but also from BAME communities who rightly regarded her as putting them beneath the rest of us.

StarmerLabour quietly swept these complaints under the carpet and let racist anti-Semite Nandy stay in her frontbench position. How hypocritical.

Remember when she supported a plan for a new system to investigate anti-Semitism allegations against Labour members, that was actually illegal?

She wanted to share information on disciplinary cases with other organisations – including the media – but as a data controller, Labour is under an obligation to keep data on its members confidential.

Remember when she advocated the use of force to prevent Scotland from gaining independence from the Union?

She infamously said that the UK should “look to Catalonia” for lessons on how to defeat Scottish nationalism.

She was referring to the Spanish government’s use of force to try to stop a disputed independence referendum in Catalonia, in 2017.

She has no moral authority to pronounce any kind of judgement on Jeremy Corbyn.

He is a far better Labour MP than she will ever be – even when she sits on the Labour benches and he has been banished from them.

Source: Lisa Nandy: Jeremy Corbyn shouldn’t be a Labour MP until he apologises to Jewish community – LBC

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#Starmergeddon as panicking Labour leader lashes out in night of swivel-eyed lunacy

Now you see her…: Keir Starmer seems to have been taking notes from the Tories again – he has kept a scapegoat handy to take the blame for his failures. But it isn’t working.

Keir Starmer has thrown the Labour Party into a pit of bitter recriminations after its local election disaster, sacking soft-left MPs from the shadow cabinet rather than taking responsibility for his decisions.

The principle scapegoat appears to be Angela Rayner – who is certainly no angel, but is unlikely to have been responsible for the catastrophe in Hartlepool, which was apparently run from Starmer’s own office by his personal private secretary Jenny Chapman. She is not in the firing-line, it seems, despite having chosen the candidate and the date of the by-election. She was also the person who communicated all decisions about the campaign to other party members and MPs.

Other victims of Starmer’s reshuffle appear to be Annaliese Dodds and Lisa Nandy, prompting questions about the Labour leader’s misogyny against women from northern England.

I spent Saturday (May 8) watching this farce unfold on Twitter as a panicking Labour leader deliberately set his party on self-destruct in order to divert blame from himself.

Let’s start here, with a couple of comments about the broad effect of Starmer’s decisions:

Rayner’s sacking fooled nobody. It was taken as an attempt by Starmer to deflect blame from himself and avoid taking responsibility. Most considered it a desperate attempt to avoid calls for his own resignation and/or a vote of “no confidence” in his leadership.

There is an upside to this, as some were quick to notice. Rayner’s sacking could be an opportunity for long-suppressed information to come out:

But I don’t think it will. Rayner may have backstabbed Jeremy Corbyn as soon as it suited her but he was no longer in a position of power at the time. Starmer is, and she is still an ambitious politician.

Indeed, it is possible that her prior, unscrupulous, behaviour was intended by Starmer to mitigate in his favour; a backstabbing schemer having her comeuppance after failing to deliver an expected election victory.

But that is to assume that Labour members and supporters are stupid, which is (again) not a good look for a leader. Commenters pointed out that it is entirely possible for Rayner to be an opportunist who sold out the Left – and for her sacking to be an act of cowardice and diversion:

The verdict: Rayner deserved to be ditched – but for something she did herself, rather than a defeat that was not her fault.

Bizarrely, after the party leadership realised sacking Rayner had only undermined Starmer further, attempts were made to backtrack. I’ll say more about that later, but what’s remarkable here is that these efforts only made matters worse. Here’s how, in two short tweets:

And what about the woman who’s alleged to have been genuinely responsible for the loss of Hartlepool? Tim Shipman, political editor of The Sunday Times, tweeted a very odd snippet of information and immediately deleted it – but it’s out there and we need to know what to make of it:

If Starmer was having an affair with his secretary then events would have turned really grisly (if cliched). The tweet raises questions about why a Labour apparatchik who is apparently responsible for the failed Hartlepool campaign is avoiding the axe when there is a strong suggestion of animosity against her. What leverage does she have?

In the wider Parliamentary Labour Party, it is being reported that the sacking of Rayner has been met with shock:

The New Statesman was quick to follow up on this with an article featuring comments from some of these MPs, as follows:

“It is wrong on every level,” said one Labour shadow cabinet minister. “Keir Starmer said he would take ‘full responsibility’. I don’t see how sacking Angela does that. You can’t be sacking Angela Rayner, who is a working-class northern woman who’s been working her arse off. It’s madness.”

(She’s not working-class, in fact. She might have been, once, but if you’re deputy leader of the largest political party in the UK, then by definition you cannot be working-class.)

“The PLP is absolutely gobsmacked,” another frontbencher said. “We know Angela had nothing to do with the defeat in Hartlepool.” Rayner was officially the Campaign Coordinator of these elections, but MPs are adamant she was not the decision-maker in relation to the Hartlepool by-election. “Everything has been decided by the leader’s office,” one shadow cabinet member said.

“This is utter madness. Angela Rayner is not the problem. The PLP is up in arms and even my local party is outraged. At the advice of Ben Nunn [director of communications] and Chris Ward [another aide in the leader’s office], Keir is doubling down and making a deliberate shift rightwards,” one MP from the party’s left said.

So now we have a few more names to watch. If Starmer is being influenced by unelected suits, then he is certainly not fit for his job. The leader should form policy, not his flunkies.

Many Labour MPs have yet to provide their opinions. Simon Vessey, below, suggests a reason for that – and Mary-Ellen provides good advice:

But one Labour source, quoted by the ever-reliable (ha ha) Gabriel Pogrund of The Sunday Times, suggested that Rayner’s sacking could split Labour apart:

Many have been saying that this was Starmer’s objective all along.

If so, then his possible choice to replace Rayner – and other colleagues likely to feel the axe – should finish the job. What madness could possibly influence him into thinking Wes Streeting might be a reasonable choice to chair the Labour Party?

Rayner was not the only ShadCab member in line for a sacking – although at the time of writing she is the only one on whom the axe has already fallen.

Other names facing banishment to the backbenches include Lisa Nandy…

Nick Brown (who?)…

Annaliese Dodds and Jon Ashworth…

And others…

Did you spot some of the names touted as replacements?

They are the aforementioned Wes Streeting, along with Rachel Reeves, Jess Phillips, and Steve Reed – all members of what you might call Labour’s hard-right.

Also mooted for a comeback are New Labour hardliners Yvette Cooper and Hilary “my father is spinning in his grave” Benn.

Commenter Simon Maginn described these possibilities as “a right-turn so hard it’d give you whiplash”.

Others have met the suggestions with sarcasm:

None of the above makes Starmer look any better after Thursday’s election shocks. It all makes him look much worse.

So, guess what? It seems he has spotted the backlash on the social media – and is now backpedalling furiously. Announcements about who is to be sacked have stopped being leaked to favoured mainstream media stenographers and it seems he has run away to hide think:

It won’t help him. It is now too late. I’ll let these others explain the reasons:

If Andrew Adonis is right, it is only a matter of time until Starmer has to go. If Andrew Feinstein and Rachel Shabi are right, he’ll delay doing so until the moment that will do the most crippling harm to the party’s future election hopes.

We will judge him – and his advisers – by his decisions.

The clock is ticking.

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Labour anti-Semitism: Nandy investigated but not suspended – where’s the fairness?

Keir Starmer’s Labour leadership has shown its innate bias yet again, with an investigation but no suspension after multiple complaints against Lisa Nandy. Meanwhile left-wingers continue to face immediate suspension.

The party’s infamous Disputes office is said to be investigating multiple complaints after Nandy described anti-Semitism on BBC Radio 4 as “a form of racism that punches up”.

The Prole Star reported that “Nandy’s remarks have been equally offensive to other BAME communities who felt the idea of ‘punching down’ depicted them as being somehow beneath the racists attacking them”.

And despite being chair of Labour Friends of Palestine, Nandy failed to secure a meeting with Starmer for leading British Palestinians who are concerned that the party’s approach to antisemitism was preventing them raising real abuses inflicted every day by the Israeli state on occupied Palestine.

He said he was too busy. And she also declined to meet them.

Contrast this with the treatment of Wirral Labour councillor Jo Bird, who has been suspended by the party for a third time after commenting on the EHRC’s report about anti-Semitism in the party, and on the suspension of former leader Jeremy Corbyn that followed it. Cllr Bird is Jewish.

After Bristol West CLP voted to condemn Jeremy Corbyn’s suspension and demand his reinstatement to the party, and to oppose any and all politically motivated disciplinary actions against the left by the leadership, chair Dr Hannah Little and co-secretary Darran McLaughlin have been suspended by the party. No complaints were said to have been made.

This is clear victimisation. The two named members may have allowed the motion to be discussed but every member present had a vote. Why have they not been accused? Is it too much bother? Is it easier to select two high-profile members for a “show trial”?

Meanwhile, Labour members across the UK continue to defy Starmers diktat that they must not criticise his leadership over the EHRC report and/or about Corbyn’s suspension – including in his own Holborn constituency.

The Highgate branch has expressed its solidarity with Corbyn as a “lifelong campaigner against racism and antisemitism”. The motion stated: “We believe that unity, not division, is important for the Party to make progress and effectively challenge racism, fascism, antisemitism and harassment in whatever form this may take” in a clear jab at Starmer’s protestations that he wants to unify the Labour Party.

His idea of unity seems to be to drive out or silence anybody who disagrees with his diktats.

This Site has said it before and no doubt I’ll say it again: Starmer can say what he likes but he cannot stop party members from acting in accordance with the rules and there is no rule to stop them discussing the activities of the leadership.

If you all do it, there’s nothing he can do about it.

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StarmerLabour supports Biden because he supported Thatcher’s Falklands war. What does that say about StarmerLabour?

Nandy: all mouth, no brain?

StarmerLabour mouth Lisa Nandy was doing the media rounds this morning, telling us that her party’s leadership wants Joe Biden to be the new US president.

There’s nothing wrong with that if she had stopped there but she didn’t.

She went on to say that this was because Biden had supported former Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s Falklands war.

That is not a good position for Labour to take and I’ll explain the reason,

Once the Falklands had been invaded by General Galtieri’s Argentinian forces (he wanted control of huge oil reserves beneath the South Atlantic), the UK had to go out and liberate the people who lived there and identify as UK citizens – there’s no doubt about that.

But it is widely argued that the reason they needed rescuing in the first place is that Thatcher withdrew naval support from the area, deliberately making the Falklands an attractive target for the Argentinian dictator.

The intention was tacitly to invite him into starting a war that Thatcher could win, in order to create a surge of public support for herself and the Conservative Party here in the UK that would carry them to a stronger victory at the next general election. And it succeeded.

That’s the belief. In the light of it, Nandy’s comment is tone deaf:

It shows that StarmerLabour rejects its own party as it was in the early 1980s, preferring to trumpet its support for the Tory leader who championed the neoliberal ideology that brought disaster down on working-class families across the UK.

It should come as no surprise that Nandy said this was a good thing. Her talent for media stupidity is fast becoming legendary. Here…

… is a clip of her from the BBC’s PM on October 29, presenting the anti-Semitic view that all Jews are rich and that hatred of them is “punching up”. She gets away with making racist comments – and inciting racism with them – because she is on Starmer’s side and for no other reason.

Sadly, she would probably have got away with such a comment, even under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, either because complaints would have been dismissed by right-wingers in the Governance and Legal Unit who would want her to continue as an embarrassment to Corbyn, or because Corbyn, assailed by false accusations, did not want to rock the boat. That was his weakness and ultimately the reason he lost two elections and his Labour Party membership has now been suspended.

Fortunately the tweeting public has no such restraint:

Other comments by the daft Nandy have also attracted justified criticism:

Finally, this comment stands as a harsh reminder to us all of the backstabbing ways adopted by Nandy and her kind of Labour MP:

If they get into power, they would backstab all of the voters who put them there.

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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