Apparently the latest polls are predicting a huge loss for the Conservatives at the next general election, that may make them only the third largest party – behind the SNP.
But are they really likely to lose 300 seats?
Well…
Here’s an interesting analysis by A Different Bias:
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Rishi Sunak: why is he smiling? If he’s looking at his popularity poll ratings he should be facepalming.
This is an excellent, information-packed analysis.
And it’s handy for This Writer, as I am busy preparing for my special court hearing on permission to appeal against the judgment in Rachel Riley’s libel case against me.
The blurb for the video states: “Rishi Sunak is being attacked over his sinking approval rating. Some of it valid, some not so valid. In this video, I explain my views on what forms a net approval rating and why comparing those of different leaders at different times is never really valuable.”
But there’s a lot more to it than that. Watch:
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Cosy chums: Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer both represent the over-privileged, entitled, suit-wearing twit class – but unlike Starmer, Johnson has a personality (even though it’s rotten). That’s why he beats Starmer in the polls.
This should be a big lesson for right-wingers in the Labour Party: be careful what you wish for, because you might just get it.
The so-called “Centrists” (in fact hard-right-wing politicians who would feel very much at home in the Conservative Party) dug a huge hole for their party in order to stop Jeremy Corbyn becoming prime minister in 2019.
Now they’re discovering that the leader they chose to replace Mr Corbyn – Keir Starmer – can’t get out of it. Instead, he is deepening the hole and dragging them all down with him:
Boris Johnson makes a better prime minister than Keir Starmer would despite Partygate, the cost of living crisis and the confidence vote in Johnson held by his MPs, according to the latest Observer poll.
28% think Johnson would make the best prime minister, 26% opted for Starmer.
Sadly, it seems Starmer’s team – if you can call it that – would rather delude themselves and gaslight us with blue-sky thinking than address the serious problems that their own idiocy has created.
Read the nonsense they’re spouting and weep:
“If you had said the morning after the 2019 election Labour could be back in one term, people would have laughed at you.”
They still would. Starmer is never going to win a general election.
“But the work that Keir has been doing to reform the party, often without fanfare, means that we can seriously talk about winning the next election. The fact we’ve climbed out of the hole we were in was never a given.”
It should have been, considering the people who dug it for Jeremy Corbyn tried hard to fill it in for Starmer.
But Corbyn attracted hundreds of thousands of people to join the party – and millions to vote for it, in spite of the bad press generated by his hard-right opponents – the people trying desperately to prop up their lame-duck leader now.
Starmer has scared off all those millions and turned Labour into the kind of party that can only score an advantage if Boris Johnson shoots himself in the foot.
What a shame.
Five years ago, we could have had a Labour prime minister if rightists squatting in the party had only accepted that the leader at the time was who people wanted.
Now they’re trying to force-feed us this bland sub-Tory faker and can’t understand why we refuse to swallow. Grotesque.
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Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer: there are only liars in this image.
Who are these any-way-the-wind-blows mouthpieces the poll companies magically find every time they want to show a change in public opinion?
Apparently the Labour Party has surged to an 11-point lead over the Conservatives (42 to Labour, 31 to the Tories).
Metro‘s report of the Savanta ComRes poll makes it clear that the result comes as increasing numbers of Conservative MPs are submitting letters of “no confidence” in Boris Johnson – or voicing dissent against him.
One thing it absolutely doesn’t reflect is any faith in the policies – or even the honesty of Labour leader Keir Starmer.
He – and his deputy Angela Rayner – has just been served with a questionnaire from Durham Police regarding their participation in allegedly lockdown-busting drinks at the constituency office of City of Durham MP Mary Foy on April 30 last year.
They both deny breaking any Covid-19-related rules that were in place at the time and have said they will tender their resignations from their party positions if they are fined.
And, given the light treatment of Boris Johnson by the Metropolitan Police and Sue Gray, it would seem highly incongruous if that happens.
But that doesn’t mean Starmer will be found to be entirely truthful in the court of public opinion. His personal history suggests the exact opposite – as Owen Jones points out in a recent Guardian article, here:
Last week, it was reported that Starmer is likely to abandon the party’s commitment to raise income tax on those earning more than £80,000 a year: that is, the top 5% of earners. Yet, during the leadership campaign, Starmer issued a document known as the 10 Pledges. The first of those pledges – still live on Starmer’s website – under the heading “Economic justice”, is “Increase income tax for the top 5% of earners”, driving it home with a final flourish: “No stepping back from our core principles.” Such was the Starmer campaign’s emphasis on this pledge that one of his key aides personally rang me up to underline its cast-iron nature.
Coupled with Starmer’s campaign promises that the 2017 Labour manifesto was the party’s “foundational document” and the warning, “don’t trash the last four years”, anyone who claims there is no dishonesty if the pledge is indeed dropped is being deceitful themselves.
Also here:
While Starmer has since claimed that pledge number five, which calls for “common ownership of rail, mail, energy and water” did not mean nationalisation when it came to energy, this does not explain why he stuck up his hand to support “nationalising water and electricity” in the televised hustings on BBC Two’s Newsnight during the campaign.
And here:
Maybe some believe his sixth pledge – “Defend free movement as we leave the EU”. It shouldn’t haven’t been made but it was, and it has been brazenly abandoned.
Finally, here:
As for “unite our party” and “promote pluralism”, Starmer personally reassured me at the end of 2020 that “I am not out to crush the left”, before 10 months later seeking to change the party’s leadership rules in a move clearly intended to prevent the left standing a candidate ever again. That Starmer simultaneously declared in the contest that “the attacks on Jeremy Corbyn were terrible, they vilified him” before removing the whip – while his aides briefed the Murdoch press they intend to expel leftwing MPs – points towards a duplicity beyond parody.
In fact – unless my recollection fails me – Starmer has rowed back on every single one of his 10 pledges.
And with what sparkling new policies has he replaced them?
Labour’s head of policy Anneliese Dodds was asked to name the biggest policy Labour is putting forward in response to the string of massive crises facing the UK at the moment – and was humiliatingly unable to name any policy, let alone the ‘big one’.
So we are left with a serious question:
If we’re all so dissatisfied with Boris Johnson’s dishonesty, shouldn’t we reject dishonest Keir Starmer as well?
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The bribery brothers: Rishi Sunak has u-turned on his opposition to a windfall tax for fossil fuel companies because he will use the cash to bribe you into supporting the Tory government again, after Sue Gray’s revelations about Boris Johnson’s wild Downing Street parties brought it into disgrace.
It’s a huge u-turn from the Chancellor who couldn’t care less a week ago.
At a time when the government has been enjoying record tax receipts – having raised taxes 15 times since Boris Johnson became prime minister and due to inflation that increases the tax attached to certain commercial items (like fuel) – Sunak had rejected proposals to reduce the tax burden on ordinary people.
Only days ago, Tory MPs rejected calls for a 40 per cent cut in fuel duty and VAT after a petition received more than 102,000 signatures, thereby forcing a discussion in the Commons.
The Government used a false argument that drivers are already saving £1,900 on their annual fuel bills compared with what they might have been paying had a pre-2010 fuel duty escalator remained in place. The pre-2010 rates were altered because times had changed; times have changed again.
And Sunak himself has been dodging the issue, claiming he could not affect the global circumstances driving the crisis. But that isn’t what he has been asked to do.
He had been asked to respond to the crisis in a way that saves ordinary people from impoverishment and prevents a recession and, until today, he had shown no interest in either goal.
George Dibb, in The Guardian, claimed solutions were staring Sunak in the face. He said:
Sunak’s first step should be investing in social security via increases in universal credit and legacy benefits to prevent families falling into destitution.
Second, we need a serious industrial strategy to boost confidence, give long-term business certainty and restore investment in the UK’s productive capacity. Sunak promised to increase private investment with a “super-deduction” incentive, but in fact it fell in the last quarter. To make this long-term vision work, Sunak should break up the Treasury and form a new Ministry for Economic Strategy with the target to drive investment-led, green growth.
Third, rather than continuing to slip on our green ambitions, every home should be insulated and more wind turbines erected across the UK in an investment needed before 2050 anyway. Green power is now the cheapest way of generating energy.
Next, the government must make clear to businesses that just as they were supported in the pandemic, now companies must themselves act responsibly by reducing their profits to keep prices down. Profits have gone up, particularly in uncompetitive, concentrated sectors – so for example petrol stations haven’t passed on the fuel duty cut to customers, benefiting their bottom line at the public’s expense. Evidence from the US suggests that recent rising prices have been disproportionately driven by rising profits, not wages.
Finally, as fossil fuel companies pile up huge, unexpected profits from the crisis that is pushing millions into absolute poverty, it is fair for the government to redistribute these into welfare and income support via a windfall tax.
Well, as I was typing this, Sunak u-turned on his opposition to a windfall tax and will impose a 25 per cent levy on oil and gas firms’ soaring profits, for precisely this purpose.
This isn’t a display of leadership; he has merely caved in to a reasonable proposal that he has previously – unreasonably – rejected.
Sunak is saying that his one-off charge will “tax extraordinary profits fairly and incentivise investments” – so it seems likely he will offer firms a chance to avoid paying the full amount by diverting the money into investment in green – unpolluting – fuel development.
This is another admission of failure, of course. Boris Johnson and others have spent weeks – months? – telling us they didn’t want a windfall tax because they wanted these companies to make the investments on their own initiative. Clearly they have not and, having ignored the carrot, must now endure the stick.
Sunak is using the money to scrap his hugely unpopular and controversial plan to provide £200 to everyone in England, Scotland and Wales in October – and then force us all to pay it back over the following five years.
Instead, he is doubling the amount to £400, which will be non-repayable; we get to keep it.
The poorest households will also get a payment of £650 to help with the cost of living. Eight million households on means-tested benefits will get the money paid directly into their bank accounts in two lump sums – one in July, the other this autumn.
There will also be separate one-off payments of £300 to pensioner households and £150 to individuals receiving disability benefits – groups who are “most vulnerable to rising prices”.
The whole package of payouts will be worth £15 billion – to be partly paid by the windfall tax. We know that inflation is set to increase UK tax receipts by £12.5 billion per year. And of course the National Insurance increase will bring £13 billion into the Treasury.
So the Tory government will still be quids-in and the offer to the people is, to quote Boris Johnson, “chickenfeed”.
But it looks good – and that is all Sunak hopes to achieve.
Remember: prime minister Boris Johnson took a huge hit to his credibility when Sue Gray published her report on the party culture he promoted at Downing Street while the rest of us were enduring Covid-19 lockdowns.
Johnson attended and fully participated in these parties and then lied about them to Parliament and to the public. His claim that he was assured they were permissible because they were “works events” is nonsense because such gatherings were not exempted from lockdown rules when he himself announced them – and he must have known that (otherwise he would be admitting he is too stupid to run the UK).
So Johnson currently stands exposed as unprincipled, untrustworthy and corrupt – a despot who habitually ignores his own laws and treats those he forces to conform to them with contempt. That’s you, by the way.
He desperately needs to bribe the public with an incentive to support him again.
So today, here’s Sunak with a handout for us all. How utterly cynical.
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Public opinion is swinging wildly against Boris Johnson over the allegations that a huge Christmas party was held in 10 Downing Street last December. But how far does it have to swing before his Tory colleagues stab him in the back and find another leader?
We all know what’s happened by now: a video clip has been made public, showing Downing Street staff laughing about a party at Downing Street on December 18, 2020, and discussing how to lie about it if questions are ever asked.
The revelation that government officials, and possibly ministers, were whooping it up at a time when the rest of London was in Tier 3 lockdown and people were dying alone because of social distancing restrictions they had helped impose, has provoked a wide variety of responses.
Some have been humorous (be warned that the first clip includes part of the Wham! track Last Christmas, so if you’re playing Whamageddon you may not wish to hear it. The second clip is also based on that track but isn’t the track itself so you should be okay):
Let me get this right. The Cabinet Secretary is going to investigate a party which didn't happen, but which he attended. He will then take his findings to Spaffer, who will decide whether to take the report to the Met – who have already decided not to investigate!!!😂😂
— Sarah Pegg🏴#RepublicofScotland (@sarahpegg9) December 8, 2021
If you’ve got the power to check security tapes and visitor logs
Funny how the media can find Matt Hancock having a fumble in a locked room, yet 50 people can have a party in actual 10 Downing St and not a single lobby journalist hears about it for a year.
John Bercow – "I'm sorry to say it, but I've known 12 Prime Minister's in my lifetime & by a country mile Boris Johnson is the worst… this guy stinks in the nostrils of decent people" #GMBpic.twitter.com/V2PIUAVF6M
This is a reversal of the usual situation, which puts the Tories on around 40 per cent and Labour in the low 30s. Keir Starmer has certainly done nothing to make this happen so the responsibility lies entirely with Johnson.
And with the media full of people in North Shropshire telling us how they’re planning to turn their back on the Conservative by-election candidate because of Johnson, it may be only a matter of days before Tory MPs decide to ditch him.
It’s what they always do, when a leader becomes a liability. And there’s ample evidence that that is what he has become.
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But don’t get any grand ideas – this commentator has it right:
Fwiw, I don't think it'll last. This is just damage to the Tories. A sustained long-term Labour poll lead requires the party to really start convincing people of their proposition.
Under Britain's archaic and preposterously unrepresentative voting system, they'd almost certainly still only get 1 MP if they won 11% of the vote at a General Election!
The Conservatives have lost their poll lead to Labour – momentarily. It’s not because of anything Labour has done, therefore Labour is not likely to maintain it.
The beneficiary of the votes the Tories lost is the Green Party – possibly because of the backlash against the Tories for allowing the wholesale pollution of our rivers with untreated sewage.
But the Greens are no threat to anybody for the reason AAV describes: it would translate to just one Commons seat, as usual.
Unless the First Past The Post system is scrapped in favour of proportional representation, no smaller party will ever gain influence.
And neither Labour nor the Tories will have that!
Which means that, even with a (temporary) poll lead, Labour is propping up the Conservatives.
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Keir Starmer: he was wrong and can’t admit it. The best he can do is quit but he’ll never willingly release the power he has, even if it is only power to attack his own party members.
The social media were full of this yesterday:
Labour takes the lead for the first time since January in our latest Westminster voting intention poll (8-9 Sep)
That’s right. Keir Starmer’s Labour was said to be ahead of Boris Johnson’s Conservatives for the first time since January, and Starmer’s fan club was crowing about it.
A pithy analysis from James Foster, there. Here’s some more detail – and I’ll pick out the most important elements:
2/ 35% is on the high end of #Labour's polling range under #Starmer this past year but it does not represent a significant uptick in support from what we've come to expect. The really interesting figure is that the Tories are on 33%…
4/ … and this is possibly the first time they have dropped below the high 30s. Essentially, the Tories have spent the past year chipping away at their own support base through mismanaging #COVID19, corruption and now the NI rise. Yet #Labour has barely benefitted…
6/ At this point its worth remembering that all polling is relative. When the Tories were up near 50% in May, it wasn't necessarily a sign of their huge popularity but their popularity relative to the available alternatives…
“Labour hasn’t crept into the lead, the Tories have snuck in behind them.”
8/ … and this is because the Tory narrative has never been seriously contested and there has been no functioning opposition. A lot of people have questioned why the Tories could remain so popular despite so many cock ups…
“Labour’s popularity hasn’t grown in any real sense.
“The Tory polling lead was softer than it appeared and this is because the Tory narrative has never been seriously contested and there has been no functioning opposition.”
And there is still no functioning opposition, is what they’re saying here.
10/ The combined vote share of the two main parties is now 68%. So while #Labour is comparatively more popular relative to the Tories, the main parties are together less popular than they were against all the other available alternatives…
“Perhaps [the Tories] never were that popular… just… preferable to Starmer’s godawful leadership.
“Starmer has never presented an alternative for people to vote for.
“The two parties are [now] together less popular than they were against all the other available alternatives.”
12/ This isn't good for Labour. Despite a big collapse in Tory support the party has failed to break out of the polling range it has been in for ages now. The lower base of Labour support this year has been 29 – 30%. 35% is a comparative high for them…
14/ It's also just one poll and may be an outlier. However, judging on past performance, #Starmer's team will likely see it as a vindication of their present "strategy," even though it absolutely isn't.
“Starmer’s team will likely see it as a vindication of their present “strategy”, even though it absolutely isn’t.”
And they did too. Fortunately, we have real people on the social media to bring the debate back down to Earth:
So, according to @YouGov, Labour have apparently gone up one whole percentage point in recent voter intention polls.
Perhaps @Keir_Starmer and all the other centrists and right-wingers, currently doing a merry jig, could tell us where the other 19 points promised got too?
No reason for Labour to cue the darts music and declare victory here
They're only in the lead (within the margin of error) by virtue of standing still as nearly one in ten Tory voters switch to Reform UK and a fith to Don't Know – who share their name with Labour's care policy https://t.co/PLXmH1Uz6N
And here’s a good reason. In fact, looking at Starmer’s performance failure in his interview with Beth Rigby, it will be good to compare what happened – and what was said about it – with what centrist mainstream media reporters said about Starmer after he was elected Labour leader.
The comparison shows up the centrist melts badly.
Exclusive: In Stoke today w @Keir_Starmer on a visit to a 6th form college – Asked 6 times, he finally says he backs a “wealth tax” (details to be worked out) to pay for social care – And why his conference speech is NOT make or break On @skynews 5pm pic.twitter.com/TkxrQNZU4y
#Starmer to @BethRigby after a school visit where pupils said he was ‘nice’ but not a ‘leader’: Starmer: ‘Leaders come in all shapes and sizes’. Leadership is neither a shape or a size. It’s this elusive quality that makes ppl believe, trust and follow.#RedFlag
Oh my God. Probably THE worst interview I've seen a politician give. Truly.
This is the tragic issue we have in Labour – Starmer is a man utterly devoid of policy or principle, destroying the party and offering zero opposition.
What’s going to happen at the next election when the media actually goes for him? He’s had an easy ride for 18 months and the public already don’t trust himpic.twitter.com/wbCoZYz18g
U.K. is so screwed. Watching Keir Starmer mumble and deflect answering a question on wealth tax was cringeworthy. A simple yes or no would have sufficed. Yet he couldn’t do it and the public are supposed to believe Labour are the answer to Tories 🤯 no difference between them.
This … the most puzzling aspect of the whole mess. But I guess the anti-Corbyn brigade within Labour gave every waking moment to his removal and simply had no time left for ideas or policies. https://t.co/3WZRnkh0ry
So has the British public – of Starmer and of his cult followers, both in the Labour party, the newspapers and television.
The issue that made Starmer choke in the Beth Rigby interview was reform of social care – causing deep confusion among Labour supporters who know that the party had devised a plan for a workable National Care Service along the same lines as the NHS.
Starmer could have – and should have – pushed it down Ms Rigby’s throat.
This is an incredible bit of work, put together by people who were serious about transforming social care. Any @UKLabour MP with integrity should be mining it for answers to the crisis we’re in right now, irrespective of what wing of the party they are on. https://t.co/5gxif4LQJbpic.twitter.com/dLaAvcaNy6
Burnham spot on here that we need a National Care Service. Rightly bold of him to deliver the point the day after Starmer rejected the idea. https://t.co/NQbqRaOJoL
Meanwhile, the creeps with whom Starmer has surrounded himself in preference to honest, genuine socialist politicians (he’s busy smearing them as anti-Semites, remember) are lining up to line their pockets…
You read stuff like this and think it really could be game over for Labour. A collection of spivs and 80s has-beens no discernibly different to the Tories.
And Starmer is still attacking his own – although his latest unjust assault against Young Labour chair Jess Barnard has collapsed after she called in her lawyers.
Skwawkbox explains what happened:
On Friday, Labour sent an email to Young Labour chair Jess Barnard, warning her that she was under investigation for supposedly ‘hostile’ language – when Barnard had in fact been ‘challenging transphobia’. The party quickly wilted under legal threat from her legal representatives and ‘rescinded’ the letter with a grovelling apology, claiming it had been sent ‘in error’.
The letter had been sent to Ms Barnard, who has made no secret of the mental stress she has suffered because of a series of vicious character attacks on her and Young Labour with no hint of support for her from the party’s leadership, at 1am on Friday.
Friday was World Suicide Prevention Day.
This is the state of the Labour leadership now.
This is Labour under Starmer.
He is the reason Labour is not popular – and no amount of “fluffing” by his client journalists will ever make him or his cronies acceptable to the public.
“What makes Keir Starmer so disappointing, is that unlike his predecessor, who gave supporters hope, he seems hell-bent on crushing it.”
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It will take more than yet another relaunch to save Keir Starmer’s Labour Party leadership.
And that’s doubly true when the slogan he chose – “Winning The Future” – corresponds with the Internet acronym WTF, which means “What The F***”.
That’s just a tone-deaf indication that the Labour leader is entirely out-of-touch with the rest of the UK, and particularly the electorate from whom he still demands support that he won’t get.
Pollsters Redfield and Wilton Strategies (who?) have recorded their lowest-ever net approval rating for Starmer: minus 18 per cent.
We all know the problem and we all know there is only one way to solve it:
It doesn’t matter what your Labour faction is; whether you’re a Blairite, a Corbyn supporter, a centrist, a Brownite, a Bennite or a Yvette Cooper fan, there is only one way to interpret this graph and only one solution to fix it. He has to go and go soon. https://t.co/BaoTetBvWK
Not against the Conservatives. Not against the dire response to Covid-19. Not against the disaster that is Brexit. Not against political corruption. Not against the injustices that have been heaped upon working-class people over the last 11 years of imbecilic Tory blunderings.
No – Team Starmer supports all of that insanity.
Instead, it seems the plan is to fight back against Jeremy Corbyn, who was recently proved right in his 20-year opposition of UK troops going to war in Afghanistan – and against the “straw man” pretend version of anti-Semitism that Starmer’s right-wing supporters have created in order to expel good socialists from the party.
A report quoted below refers to comments by Starmer insiders, referring to Corbyn’s suspension from the party, reinstatement, and suspension from the Parliamentary party:
“We looked on that as a moment of strength, but it seems the public saw it as weakness because one minute he was suspended, then he wasn’t, then he was again,” one source reveals. “All people took away from it was the mess and vacillation.”
A senior shadow minister adds: “What scares the Tories more than anything is if we make it clear that the loonies aren’t part of us anymore. The problem we have is we are 15 months into Keir’s leadership and we’re still talking about Corbyn and anti-Semitism.”
But one influential figure points out that unless the former leader complies with Starmer’s demands, he simply won’t be a Labour candidate at the next election. Crucially, despite his big majority, they are convinced Corbyn will lose if he runs as an independent.
There are so many false assumptions here that the mind boggles at how these people managed to squirm their way into positions of influence.
Firstly: there is no reason to believe the public thought Labour had been indecisive about the problem of Jeremy Corbyn, because most people don’t think Jeremy Corbyn is the problem. The problem is the determination of the swivel-eyed right-wingers to demonise him.
Next: The Tories aren’t worried that people like the “senior shadow minister” will be able to demonstrate that “the loonies aren’t part of us anymore”. That will never happen – that person is one of the loonies. It is the right-wing purge of Labour Party members who have done no wrong that is insane.
Starmer does have a problem in the fact that Labour is still bogged down in its attempts to persecute Corbyn and its false-flag “anti-Semitism” attack on left-wingers. But that’s not going to stop because of anything they do; it is being perpetuated by Tories like the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Why would they stop making false claims that weaken Labour and make it unable to oppose the Tories that they support?
This is the only explanation of the current situation that makes any sense at all.
As for whether Corbyn would fail to win an election as an independent – it’s a valid argument. No former Labour MP who has stood as an independent in recent history has got anywhere.
But Corbyn is not those people. They were all on the side of the Starmerites quoted above. And Corbyn’s popularity is demonstrable – he attracted rallies of tens of thousands of people as party leader while Starmer struggles to attract 10. They are making the critical mistake of comparing an apple with excrement.
Look at the comments attached to the quoted passage on Twitter. Solomon Hughes points out that “They think ‘we are not loonies’ is a winning message and have made a mess even of that.” Yes – because their actions scream the opposite.
And Aaron Bastani – himself demonised in some quarters – points out that denying Corbyn his Labour candidacy would simply “undermine” any campaign.
In politics there are enough problems without intentionally creating new ones.
Idea Labour would fight next GE – & a major talking point is the former leader is not allowed to run as a candidate – would massively undermine any campaign.
Starmer can’t even inspire hatred. His critics are simply sad that he has failed so monumentally.
Sad thing about Starmer, he could've kept 90% of 2017/19 manifesto, stood up to the Tories, hired a balanced cabinet, emboldened the membership, shown some backbone & he'd be on 45%+ by now. But he chose to listen to Mandelson instead, & is now dooming us to 5 more yrs of Tories.
… except where it comes to the witch-hunt. That has blood boiling – and rightly so.
Among the latest people to face false – let me reiterate it strongly: false – accusation is Pamela Fitzpatrick, a former applicant to succeed Jennie Formby as Labour’s General Secretary (Starmer appointed David Evans to the job and has yet to gain the approval of the party-at-large for the decision. Their record of persecution against large swathes of the membership suggests that this will now never happen).
She is facing auto-exclusion because she was interviewed by the proscribed organisation Socialist Appeal in May 2020 – more than a year before the decision was made to remove it and its members from any association with the party.
At that time, she had no reason to believe she was doing anything wrong. My understanding is that there was nothing in what she said that would justify penalties of any kind at all.
Absolutely sickening Stalinist behaviour from team Keith, team Paint, team resurrect Blair, team Mandy's back, or whatever they'll be called at the next relaunch. Whatever they are, it's unelectable, undemocratic & certainly not socialist.
Being threatened for expulsion from Labour for giving an interview to an organisation over a year *before* it was banned, seriously? This is the sort of thing the Soviet Union did under Stalin. Not a peep from the media that country’s main opposition party is doing it too. https://t.co/kWh1q5D1L8
It’s true. A new left-wing political organisation fronted by Corbyn and McDonnell would eclipse StarmerLabour humiliatingly, from startup.
But this is a battle for the soul of the Labour Party and – whether misguided or not – McDonnell and the other socialist Labour MPs have planted their flag there.
Others have also put their heads above the parapet:
I cannot see how expelling members for being 'guilty by association' in any way makes Labour more electable. Just look at the popularity of the 2017 election manifesto, imagine it without the PLP/media attacking the leadership and imagine what where we could be as a party.
Personally, I would take Ms Formby’s words more seriously if she had not presided over such “guilt by association” expulsions herself, while she was General Secretary. One of the false accusations against me followed that pattern. I pointed this out to her in correspondence but she never bothered to reply.
That said, the point she makes is valid.
We established during my NCC hearing that the reason Labour expelled me had nothing to do with its fabricated anti-Semitism claims; it was because I am a journalist who had criticised Labour policy fairly and accurately while being a party member.
It seems fairness is forbidden in Starmer’s right-wing party.
Tom London identifies the rot:
"Somebody must have made a false accusation against Josef K., for he was arrested one morning without having done anything wrong" – Kafka, The Trial
Something KAFKAESQUE is happening inside Starmer's Labour Party
Many facing expulsions without reasons, evidence or due process
Yes, BeastRabban is under investigation; he received the letter last week. The accusations are risible; it seems he is being persecuted because he wrote an article discussing comments by Tony Greenstein (a Jew who has long since been thrown out of the party). Guilt by association, again.
Leftworks, below, discusses one of the comments for which the Beast stands accused in detail, but the others are well worth examination too:
Just as a matter of interest: one of the charges against David Sivier is this. Apparently this is the quality of evidence that anonymous accusers have levelled against him. Seriously, this is part of the case against him. Someone actually wrote this charge down.@MidWalesMikepic.twitter.com/PYYoJTF0fy
— leftworks #WeAreCorbyn #IStandWithCraigMurray (@leftworks1) August 23, 2021
Yes indeed. The phrase “Two Jews, three opinions” is actually the title of a collection of quotations by American Jews, compiled by Sandee Brawarsky, arts and culture editor of Jewish Week, and Deborah Mark.
The use of the other quotations in Labour’s accusation suggest that the party now considers any criticism of Zionism as it is practised by the Israeli government, and/or that government itself, is unacceptable – no matter what is done in their name.
Does that seem reasonable to you?
Also considered beyond the pale is the claim that people who hold entirely reasonable opinions that are critical of Israel are being vilified, harassed and purged as racists and anti-Semites – despite the fact that the accusations against BeastRabban are an example of exactly such vilification and harassment – and that he faces being purged because of them.
What next from the @UKLabour – expelled for reading the Morning Star and The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist 😳😳😳😳
— SUSAN SIMPSON #NeverTrustaTory (@smartysue) August 23, 2021
Indeed.
It is this unreasonable – fascist – persecution of perfectly good Labour members on unreasonable grounds that marks out Starmer’s supporters such as those quoted above as the very kind of “loonies” they claim to oppose.
And it is Starmer’s own endorsement of the opinions taken by these supporters that has pitched him over the cliff-edge of public opinion and into the void.
He’ll never get out and Labour will never win an election with him at the helm. He’ll steer the party unerringly (dare I say forensically?) into oblivion.
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Rage: is this how Boris Johnson reacted to his latest fall in the opinion of the general public? Probably not. He’s so self-absorbed that he probably hasn’t noticed or doesn’t care.
Boris Johnson is now less popular with the UK’s voters than in January when the nation was in the grip of a Covid-19 wave he had failed to prevent, according to a new Opinium poll.
His approval rating is at -16, with 34 per cent approving and 49 per cent disapproving. Rounding accounts for the drop from -15 to -16.
Matters may become worse for the Bullingdon bully after an article stated that he is, basically, an emotionally-stunted overgrown schoolboy and is unfit for public office:
When you grasp this simple fact, in my case after a lifetime of conditioning myself to believe the opposite, so much slots in to place. Excellent article by @BeardRichard. Can’t wait to read his book. https://t.co/XlR2T4Ooyl
He had to be told how the Labour way “traditionally differs from the Tories”.
That has to be hugely worrying for the vast majority of Labour Party members and supporters: the party’s leader needed to be told how his approach needs to be different – nearly a year and a half after he got the job!
Interestingly, when Opinium asked voters who they would prefer to be prime minister, the most popular choice was “neither”.
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