Tag Archives: Mike

After nearly five years, it’s time to end my court crowdfunder

Many of you may remember This Writer was involved in a large court case, involving a nationally-known TV ‘celebrity’, for which I raised funds via the CrowdJustice website.

After nearly five years, and with donations of more than a quarter of a million pounds, it is time to end this campaign.​

My legal team has contacted me to say they are happy to close my account now, meaning there is nothing more for me to pay them and no reason to continue asking for donations.

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So it is time for me to thank everybody who supported me during my long and arduous legal battle – more than 11,000 of you.

Although I didn’t win the case, the fact that it took place made many thousands more people aware of the issues I had raised and allowed them to form their own opinions about my opponent.

So it seems that, in this case, it wasn’t necessary to win. The important thing was that I stood up for what I believed was right – and, in so doing, gave others the chance to decide what they believed as well.

This has been a long and exceptionally difficult campaign, and it would not have achieved anything at all without you. Everything I did achieve, I achieved with your help.

Thank you.


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Trade unionist expelled from Labour Party for supporting Labour political ideas

Expelled: Bernadette Gallagher.

Keir Starmer should slither back out of the Labour Party over this (although we know he won’t):

A higher living – I think ‘troovus’ meant minimum – wage and public ownership of energy firms are good Labour Party policies.

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And supporting the sentiment expressed in a tweet (as they were then known) is not the same as supporting the political organisation that published it.

Starmer has colleagues in the Parliamentary Labour Party who – along with the man himself – habitually say they agree with the policies of other parties. Starmer himself has even publicly agreed with actions of the Tories!

So, in having Bernadette Gallagher expelled, Starmer brands himself a hypocrite, a traitor to his party and a liar (in claiming that she had supported another political party, in violation of Labour rules).

That alone should render him unsuitable for your support in a general election.


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Labour’s ‘boil a frog’ tactic is pulling the party away from voters but towards rich donors

Many years ago, a right-wing cuckoo in the Labour Party called Peter Mandelson assured the party’s then-leaders that they could shift their policies as far to the political right as they fancied because Labour voters didn’t have anywhere else to go.

He was wrong; at every general election after the 1997 landslide, the party lost voters as socialists abandoned what they saw increasingly as a party of Tories in red ties. It took the arrival of Jeremy Corbyn as leader to reverse the trend, with the re-injection of genuinely transformative policies.

And we all know what happened to him: right-wingers he had allowed to remain in the party (in the belief that it should be a genuinely “broad church”, whatever that means?) stabbed him in the back and sabotaged the 2017 (and probably the 2019) general election, eventually forcing him out.

Now, under Mandelson acolyte Keir Starmer, Labour is once-again a hard-right party. He has abandoned any “continuity Corbyn” left-wing pledges in order to follow policies that are indistinguishable from those of Rishi Sunak’s current Conservative government.

Despite this, Starmer’s Substitute Tory Party (formerly Labour) is being tipped to win the next general election by a landslide. Why?

It could be because the Sunak government is now blatantly corrupt, with new evidence of ministers (including the prime minister) lining their own pockets and those of their cronies in big business emerging every day.

It could also be because Starmer has drip-fed his right-wing policies into Labour’s programme for government slowly – giving party members and tribal followers an opportunity to forget (or simply fail to notice) the cumulative lurch to the far right that they represent:

Look at the recent announcement that a Labour government will continue to inflict poverty on 1.1 million UK children in defiance of the party’s own reason for existing (lifting working and working-class people out of poverty).

After this announcement, polls showed no lessening of enthusiasm for a Labour government – and only 20 Labour MPs seem keen to remind their leaders of the party’s duty to its members and supporters:

Why the lurch rightwards?

Obviously this is where Starmer’s political loyalties lie. He was never interested in re-balancing the economy to stop rich employers from impoverishing their workers, or to stop the destruction of our environment for the sake of a quick profit, or to stop the privatisation of our national treasures like the NHS for another quick profit.

But there’s a financial necessity too. One clear detrimental result of his rightward lurch has been an exodus of members away from a Labour Party they now consider toxic. This, along with a series of poor financial decisions, mean Starmer’s party very quickly frittered away the more-than £12 million Jeremy Corbyn had put in its bank account.

It needed funds – and went looking in the same place as the Tories:

The result is clear: two parties – Labour and the Tories – with the same policies, because they have the same people bankrolling them.

And with Starmer’s Labour working for big business, another element of the UK’s broken political system is coming into clearer focus:

That’s right. It seems the UK has been controlled by the same tiny group of super-rich influencers for many decades, with the wishes of voters coming a distant second to their selfish desires.

Continuing to vote for Labour means continuing to let this tiny minority run the rest of us into the ground for their own profit and perverse enjoyment.

It makes no sense at all.

And yet the polls show that is exactly what the majority of people want.

If you know anybody who has been misled or is deluded in this way, then for the sake of the United Kingdom and everyone in it, please explain their mistake to them. It might take a while but it will be worth it in the long run.


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If black Labour MPs are demanding action against racism, Keir Starmer hasn’t tackled it

Starmer takes the knee for Black Lives Matter: to him it meant nothing more than a photo opportunity. Black lives don’t matter to him – as we discovered when he attacked the organisation shortly after.

Mike Katz of the Jewish Labour Movement is shown to be wrong once again.

After he tweeted a link to an article he had written, saying Keir Starmer had “stood up” to “racists” in the Labour Party, Twitter added “context” pointing out that a report for Labour by Martin Forde KC had shown that anti-black, anti-GRT and Islamophobic racism had been allowed to flourish within the party – and Labour had not engaged with him about it.

And then – on the same day (May 19, 2023), Channel 4 News reported that black Labour MPs had written to Starmer, demanding – well, see for yourself:

Take a look at what these black Labour MPs had to say:

That should stay as a complete refutation of Katz’s claim.

The damning part is in the report, when we’re told none of those who wrote to Starmer wanted to be interviewed on television, because they fear that he would expel them from the party in response.

That would be racist in itself.

And no wonder, when one considers this comment from a person This Writer knows personally – and I believe every word she wrote here:

Put it altogether and the evidence makes a monkey of Mike Katz.

There is more, though! Even though it’s not entirely relevant to the above, let’s pile on the agony for the JLM chairman:

There is clearly a wealth of evidence showing not only that racism is rampant in the Labour Party, but that Keir Starmer has done nothing whatsoever to put a stop to it.

Now that this has been pointed out, both to him and to Katz, do you think they’ll do anything about it?

Neither do I – although I reckon some black Labour MPs will be on their way out the door soon.


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70,000+ demand Labour restore whip to Corbyn. Will Starmer say they’re ALL anti-Semites?

Jeremy Corbyn: no, he wasn’t signing the petition for his own reinstatement in the Parliamentary Labour Party – in fact he was writing about Jews including Roza Robota, Szmul Zygielbojm and Anne Frank, in the Holocaust Educational Trust’s book of remembrance. Anti-Semite? Don’t make us laugh, Starmer.

Remember This Site’s article yesterday (May 20, 2023), ridiculing Jewish Labour Movement chair Mike Katz for praising Keir Starmer’s handling of “cranks”, “racists” and “extremists”?

I quoted his comments about Jeremy Corbyn as an example of this, in which he claimed of the most committed anti-racist in Parliament: “His reluctance to show any remorse and his continual denial and downplaying of the problem makes him the author of his own demise and negates any claim he can make to actually being anti-racist.”

And yet on the same day Vox Political published its article, more than 70,000 people were revealed to have signed a petition demanding that Starmer’s Labour restore the party whip to Mr Corbyn.

It also demands that the Labour Party in the Islington North constituency be allowed to select their own candidate for the next general election, after the party’s National Executive Committee supported a Starmer motion barring Mr Corbyn from standing.

According to the Morning Star,

The Islington North MP and former Labour leader had the party whip withdrawn after saying anti-semitism within Labour had been “overstated for political reasons” and was blocked from representing Labour in the next general election earlier this year by an unrelated motion to the NEC claiming he would undermine Labour’s chances of forming a government because he led it to defeat in 2019.

LAAA national organiser Matt Willgress criticised Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer for breaching a campaign promise that local party members should select their candidates for every election.

Young Labour activist and Arise volunteer Fraser McGuire said it is clear that many Labour members and supporters want to protect party democracy and allow Islington North CLP members to select their own candidate.

He said this would “undoubtedly” be Mr Corbyn.

Campaign for Labour Party Democracy co-chairwoman Rachel Garnham said it was unsurprising that tens of thousands feel “aggrieved by Starmer’s hypocrisy and top-down approach to candidate selection.”

An Islington Friends of Corbyn spokesperson said people are “angrier than ever about the continuing injustice” against Mr Corbyn and the constituency.

This Writer feels sure that these people won’t be voting Labour in a future election, if they don’t get their way.

What will Keir Starmer do in response – brand them all as anti-Semites?

Of course, the petition makes a nonsense of Katz’s claim that Starmer had properly handled “cranks”, “racists” and “extremists” in the Labour.

Instead, it strongly suggests that Starmer has vindictively attacked honest, hard-working Labour Party members whose only crime was standing up for the positive values the party was formed to represent – rather than the perverted, narcissistic, power-for-its-own-sake policies of the current leader.

And we haven’t even touched on StarmerLabour’s anti-black racism yet. Look for that in a future article.

Source: Over 70,000 sign petition demanding Labour restore the whip to Corbyn as mass support continues to grow | Morning Star


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Jewish Labour chief called out over false claims about Keir Starmer and racism

Mike Katz is a fine one to criticise others about the way they handle “cranks”, “racists” and “extremists”.

When he was vice-chair of the Jewish Labour Movement (a misnomer as you don’t have to be either Jewish or in the Labour Party to be a member), he ran a “training” session on anti-Semitism at a Labour conference that deliberately linked criticism of the policies of the Israeli government with anti-Semitism.

At that same session – billed as a “safe space” for attendees to discuss their understanding of anti-Semitism without fear of criticism – people speaking up were recorded. One of this recordings was then leaked to the press, to tar then-Momentum vice-chair Jackie Walker as an anti-Semite.

She had criticised the definitiion of anti-Semitism that Katz had put forward.

After Katz became chair of the organisation, the Jewish Labour Movement has run at least one more training session on anti-Semitism (in 2021). Before it happened, Ms Walker commented: “Undertaking AS training led by the JLM? Ask for assurance you won’t be filmed, reported to the Party or the media.”

Katz was also among those who accused then-Labour MP Chris Williamson of anti-Semitism after he made a speech in which he said the party had been “too apologetic” over the mere accusation of anti-Semtism.

Mr Williamson’s point had been that the party should have collected evidence and made a decision on whether any anti-Semitism had taken place, rather than automatically apologising as if it had, without any evidence at all.

Katz suggested that a decision to reinstate Mr Williamson’s Labour membership after he had been suspended for making the statements was because he represented a marginal constituency and there might be a snap election (this was in 2019).

He was quoted as follows: “It’s good to know that a party of anti-racists, led by an avowed anti-racist decides it’s OK to ignore anti-Jewish racism if there’s a vote to be won.”

But of course there was no anti-Jewish racism in what Mr Williamson had said.

And when Ken Loach announced that he had been expelled from Labour in 2021, for refusing to disown people who had already been expelled under false pretences, Katz accused him of “Holocaust inversion; tropes about a lobby controlling media & politics; claims Jews exploit the Holocaust for political ends.” None of these were in Mr Loach’s statement as reported in The Guardian (Katz’s source).

Katz has also attacked Jeremy Corbyn after The Guardian ran an editorial in support of him. In a letter to that paper, he claimed: “Your assertion that he had “a formidable record fighting against racism” will elicit a hollow laugh from the many Jewish Labour Movement members who suffered racist bullying and harassment – let alone the Jewish MPs hounded out of the party – all under his watch.

“His reluctance to show any remorse and his continual denial and downplaying of the problem makes him the author of his own demise and negates any claim he can make to actually being anti-racist.”

Jeremy Corbyn has been, and remains, probably the most committed anti-racist in Parliament, with a formidable record of support for those suffering racism that spans more than 40 years:

How pleasant it is, then, to see Katz’s latest attempt to spread falsehoods about anti-Semitism and racism trashed by members of the public!

On Twitter yesterday (May 19), he published the tweet you see at the top of this article, in which he praises comments made at last week’s National Conservatives conference.

“Keir Starmer has stood up to the cranks and racists in Labour. Rishi Sunak is happy to indulge the extremists in his party,” he tweeted.

Referring to a link in the tweet, he added: “Me for @timesredbox today on the lessons Sunak should learn from this week’s National Conservatism conference.”

Perhaps it would be best to skirt around the issues raised by a man claiming to support Jewish people endorsing comments made by the organisation This Writer describes as the Nat-Cs (think about it).

But his comments about what Keir Starmer has done are certainly fair game – especially considering his own poor record as described above – and Twitter now provides what it describes as “context” added by readers, that absolutely shreds Katz’s credibility.

“Labour’s own Forde Report details how anti-black and anti-GRT racism, and Islamophobia have been allowed to flourish unchecked within the party,” states one such addition.

The other seals it by pointing out: “Labour have not engaged with Martin Forde KC about the report.”

So not only has Katz allied himself with people who might as well call themselves fascists, but he has done it for the sake of a very large falsehood. This Writer thinks he should apologise and resign his position at the JLM. Does anybody agree?


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Is this the reason the Riley libel case ended the way it did?

Last time I wrote about Rachel Riley’s court case against me, I said I might discuss the judge’s reasons for reaching the conclusion she did.

You will recall that she based her judgment on information that was not factual but was merely supposition by Ms Riley’s legal team (that I had not researched the events in question when I wrote my article. I said then – and repeat now – that I had in fact researched it very thoroughly).

She also said that the conclusions I had reached were not reasonable – this time based on nothing but her own suppositions.The Appeal Court judge said she was entirely within her rights to reach such conclusions without any evidence from either side to even suggest them.

One is led to question why a court of law would make such pronouncements without any facts to support them.

I can only put forward the suggestion that was made to me by a third party, shortly after the hearing on my appeal: that UK law as administered by its courts is set up to defend the reputation of libel claimants – to prevent damage to their good name.

This might explain why a judge, presented with any excuse – no matter how flimsy, might decide that a journalist and former newspaper editor of 25 years’ experience did not carry out any research into an article her wrote, even though no evidence existed to prove the claim.

It might also explain why a judge ignored a series of fact-based arguments, supported by current understanding of certain ways of behaviour, to reach her own conclusions to justify the events that formed the basis of the case.

It certainly explains why I have continued to appeal for funds to pay my legal team – who worked for years in the belief that my evidence would be judged on its own merits.

I would ask you to judge for yourself whether that actually happened but, with only the written judgments of the High Court and the Court of Appeal available, that might be difficult.

Please continue to support me (and my legal team) according to your means, and in the way that has become well-known over the last four years:

Make a donation via the CrowdJustice page. Keep donating regularly until you see the total pass the amount I need.

Email your friends, asking them to pledge to the CrowdJustice site.

Post a link to Facebook, asking readers to pledge.

On Twitter, tweet in support, quoting the address of the appeal.

And don’t forget that if you’re having trouble, or simply don’t like donating via CrowdJustice, you can always donate direct to me via the Vox Political PayPal button, where it appears on that website. But please remember to include a message telling me it’s for the crowdfund!

I may discuss the law further in a future update, as efforts have been made to make it more even-handed but I fear that judges have been rejecting those efforts in practise.

Rachel Riley libel case: why I had to fight

A few of my friends have been – shall we say – teasing me about my court loss against Rachel Riley.

They’ve been playing devil’s advocate, taking her (professed) view that I never had any chance to win. And it occurs to me that others might be saying the same, out behind the tiny Mid Wales town I call my home.

To those other people, and my buddies, I’d like to off these words of the late trade union leader Bob Crow:

“If you fight, you won’t always win. But if you don’t fight, you will always lose.”

I chose to fight, and in the end I didn’t win, due to a decision of a judge that was not based on any discernible facts.

That is a shame. But in fighting, I protected dozens of other people from having to go through the same process.

How many of us did Rachel Riley threaten with court? 60? 70? And in the end she only managed to attack three or four of us, to my recollection.

And she lost against one.

Let’s not forget that her friend Tracy-Ann Oberman also threatened me with court but never followed through on it, and her window of opportunity has now long since closed.

I’m going to count that as a win.

So you see, this fight was worthwhile.

I’m going to repeat my appeal for funds to finish paying my legal team for their work on the application to appeal against that last, fact-free court decision. Please continue to consider supporting me (and them) according to your means, and in the way that has become well-known over the last four years:

Make a donation via the CrowdJustice page. Keep donating regularly until you see the total pass the amount I need.

Email your friends, asking them to pledge to the CrowdJustice site.

Post a link to Facebook, asking readers to pledge.

On Twitter, tweet in support, quoting the address of the appeal.

And don’t forget that if you’re having trouble, or simply don’t like donating via CrowdJustice, you can always donate direct to me via the Vox Political PayPal button, where it appears on that website. But please remember to include a message telling me it’s for the crowdfund!

I might expand on the reasons for the court’s decision in a future update.

It seems to me that it explains much about British justice.


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Rachel Riley libel case: a question of finances

Remember last time, when I asked the question: if Rachel Riley didn’t spend anything on her libel action against me, why did she demand more than £3,500 from me in costs to do with her strike-out application and my appeal against it?

Some of you have suggested that I should take advice on what to do about that, as it seems wrong to make such a demand if no money was actually spent.

There’s a problem with that, though: I haven’t finished paying my legal team for their most recent work. Until that is cleared, I can hardly ask for more!

This is the first time in four years – and more than £250,000 – of fundraising that I have found myself in this situation.

I would like to put the question to my advisors – but I would also like to pay them, and paying them comes first.

If you think they should be paid for their sterling work, please follow these time-honoured instructions:

Make a donation via the CrowdJustice page. Keep donating regularly until you see the total pass the amount I need.

Email your friends, asking them to pledge to the CrowdJustice site.

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I have still heard nothing from Ms Riley’s advisors on the subject of a deal regarding the judgment in my case, so I think I may be right in assuming that they are waiting to see if I manage to make enough money to pay the money the court has ordered, whether it is deserved or not.

I don’t want this hanging over me indefinitely, and would like to find a way to bring them back to the negotiating table.

This… irregularity? could be one such way.


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Rachel Riley’s libel case: something doesn’t add up

Why is Rachel Riley demanding a huge amount of money in court costs if she didn’t actually spend anything?

Take a look at the Jewish Chronicle report published after I lost my bid for permission to appeal against the judgment in my libel case. In it, her solicitor Mark Lewis stated about me:

“People have crowdfunded [a] quarter of a million pounds to pay his solicitors and barrister … He has outspent Rachel by approximately £250,000.”

This indicates that Rachel Riley paid no money at all towards her court costs.

It’s entirely possible. All of her legal team could have worked for free. Obviously, payment in donations from somebody else would not count because Mr Lewis would have had to mention them, as he mentions donations to my CrowdJustice fund.

But then, why did Ms Riley claim such a large amount of money from me when I appealed against a decision to strike out my defences (and won), back in 2021?

In May that year, the Court of Appeal assessed my costs – for the appeal – at £22,180 and varied the High Court’s order on Ms Riley’s costs – for the strike-out – down to £25,808. That means I had to make a payment of £3,628 to her at that time.

Now, it seems Mr Lewis is saying she did not spend any money on that (or any) part of the case – but she still demanded thousands of pounds from me. Does that seem fair?

If not, does it seem fair that the High Court has gone on to say I should pay £100,000 to her for court costs that her solicitor appears to have said she never paid?

Whatever the facts of the matter – and I doubt we will ever hear them from either Ms Riley or her solicitor – I certainly did incur legal fees, some of which remain outstanding and my representatives deserve to be paid for the outstanding work they did in resisting Ms Riley.

If any of the above disturbs you as much as it does me, please help in the now time-honoured way:

Make a donation via the CrowdJustice page. Keep donating regularly until you see the total pass the amount I need.

Email your friends, asking them to pledge to the CrowdJustice site.

Post a link to Facebook, asking readers to pledge.

On Twitter, tweet in support, quoting the address of the appeal.

And don’t forget that if you’re having trouble, or simply don’t like donating via CrowdJustice, you can always donate direct to me via the Vox Political PayPal button, where it appears on that website. But please remember to include a message telling me it’s for the crowdfund!

There remains no agreement over a possible deal; Ms Riley’s legal team simply have not been in touch, to my knowledge.

While I welcome their apparent reluctance to bankrupt me, I think they are hoping I will make enough money in the future to pay the money the court has ordered – cash that they may not deserve, if the above is accurate.

You may wish to draw your own conclusions about that.


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