Tag Archives: Rachel

Experts ask: ‘why vote Labour? Starmer’s running a Substitute Tory Party!’

Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer: they are laughing at all the tribal Labour supporters they think don’t have any choice but to vote for them – even though their current policy platform will deliberately harm millions of those voters.

Here’s the issue: Keir Starmer’s neoliberal, right-wing Labour Party is in pole position (or should that be “poll” position) to win the next general election by a landslide – but has the same policies as Rishi Sunak’s Tory government.

Starmer, and his shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, have both said they will not impose any policies that change the current status quo that is making the super-rich much richer, driving working people and the poor further into poverty, and ushering privatisation into public services to make them cash cows for fat cats (as we’ve seen with energy and water).

So, what is the point of voting for their party?

It’s actually worse than ‘Tory Fibs’ is suggesting. Starmer, Reeves and the rest don’t just want power for its own sake – they want it in order to ensure that power cannot be taken by anybody with plans that would actually improve the quality of life here, with public services that actually serve the public well, fair pay for everyone and a social security system that doesn’t persecute people who need help.

Influential people are now starting to accept that this is the situation. It is the reason academics have contacted Starmer, urging him to change his mind.

The letter by 70 economists and social policy experts, states that they

are concerned that your current economic programme for government will not transform the economic orthodoxy that has made this country poorer, less cohesive and more unequal than fifteen years ago.

The maintenance or extension of cuts in the current economic climate will only serve to deepen the poverty and hardship many are already facing.

They urge Starmer to turn

from an out of date, economically and socially destructive approach towards a model which improves wellbeing, works in alignment with our environment, and achieves social justice.

Failure to table an alternative will mean not only wasting that opportunity but many lives and futures as well.

Unpack that a bit:

Starmer Labour’s current approach is out of date.

It is economically and socially destructive.

And the party’s current policies will destroy many lives.

Alternative – workable – policies are suggested all the time. Here’s one, from a former Labour leader:

But it has fallen on deaf ears. Starmer isn’t interested.

His attitude represents a huge u-turn for party still known as “Labour” and its leader. Only a few years ago, he was claiming that his party would replace the current system with something completely different. But this week Justin Madders, Starmer’s shadow minister for employment rights, confirmed that this had been abandoned for a “continuity Tory” approach:

Here’s Damo to explain Starmer’s – and Reeves’s – economic policy, and why it is so harmful, in a little more detail:

It seems clear that Starmer has undergone a major change of heart, turning away from the people Labour is supposed to serve, and towards the city fat cats who are leeching our money away from us.

Madders tried desperately to deny any such change during his media turn:

Saul Staniforth (above) is right: if a leader’s principles depend on economic circumstances, then they are not principles. If they were principles, Starmer would have the economic circumstances under constant review, with a demand out to all his advisers for them to provide him at all times with plans that would achieve the needs of those principles in any situation.

The situation now has been summed up – again by ‘Tory Fibs’ – thus:

Yes. Both are failing us – the citizens of the UK.

In times like this, the electorate has a duty to look elsewhere for a government-in-waiting – not to cling to forlorn hopes that Starmer is a secret socialist who will turn back to the left as soon as he has installed himself in Downing Street. We see no evidence for this at all.

The Green Party has good economic plans. So do the Independents who used to represent Labour but have left because of the likes of Starmer and Reeves.

Have you looked at what they are offering? Or are you determined to vote for policies that will harm you terribly, simply because of some outdated tribal loyalty?

Now is the time to work out what you stand for – and to demand it from your representatives.

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Rachel Reeves admits there is no point voting for Labour any more

The truth: if you oppose the Conservatives, you MUST now oppose Keir Starmer’s Labour as well – because they are on the same side as the Conservatives.

Obviously, she didn’t say it in as many words.

But the Labour Party was brought into being in order to re-balance the UK’s system of government so that people who had to work – or seek work – for a living would have improved rights and a fair share of the profits accruing from the work they did.

Part of the latter would come from pay deals, and part from a re-distribution of wealth using progressive taxation.

Keir Starmer’s version of that party has already kicked any plan for improved workers’ rights into the long grass, and his attitude to the current wave of strikes and the cost of living crisis shows that his party won’t be imposing better pay for workers on profit-gouging bosses.

And now Rachel Reeves is telling us there won’t be any change to progressive taxation under a Starmer Party government.

His Labour will support the current, corrupt system from the first day of any government it forms to the last.

Labour is finished – as a party representing working and working-class people. A change of name is in order but Starmer won’t go that far because he wants tribal party supporters to keep voting for him and his cronies, following the Peter Mandelson maxim that they don’t have anywhere else to go.

This Writer isn’t convinced about that, though.

The Green Party offer of a £70 billion wealth tax is looking mighty attractive just now.

You might also take a look at what the Breakthrough Party is doing.

And there are myriad Independents springing up to offer alternatives.

But those are thoughts for the future.

The message today is that if you don’t want to see Tory policies and corruption continue, then you must not vote for either the Conservatives or Labour at the next election.

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Has Rachel Riley libelled defenders of Michael Rosen? Will they sue?

Michael Rosen.

It seems Rachel Riley is playing her old games again – and this one appears to be in very poor taste.

She has responded to a piece of – journalism? – by someone called David Hirsh, raking over the behaviour of a person who is no longer alive and therefore unable to speak for himself. It is not clear to This Writer whether the deceased’s family were involved.

The piece about Peter Newbon, who was a leading figure in an organisation known as Labour Against Antisemitism (LAAS), appears to have made certain claims about the beloved children’s author and poet, Michael Rosen – on which Ms Riley commented as follows:

Note that she did not provide any information explaining the reason her “stomach turns” at the mention of Mr Rosen. This is familiar behaviour; by allowing others to draw their own conclusions, it may be possible to deny those conclusions later.

But is it possible to work out what one may reasonably deduce is the reason Mr Rosen has such an effect on Ms Riley’s digestive system? I have not read the Hirsh article – but I believe I have enough information from the following exchange between him and Mr Rosen:

(I’m not going to refer here to the Jamie Wilson court case, in which Newbon was also involved. If you want more information on that, details are available here.)

So the claim is that the late Mr Newbon was bullied by people including Mr Rosen, and that this led to his suicide.

In that case, we need to examine how Michael Rosen knew Peter Newbon. And we find this:

The image, tweeted by Newbon, shows former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn apparently reading the anti-Semitic book The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to children.

In fact, he had been reading Mr Rosen’s book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, and the words with which Newbon accompanied the image paraphrase that work: “Oh no! A J-…er, I mean a ZIONIST! A nasty, horrible Zionist! We can’t go over him, we can’t go under him, we’ll have to make an effigy…” instead of: “We can’t go over it, we can’t under it. Oh no! We have to go through it”.

Hirsh has said Newbon did not create the image; he merely shared it. But every share is a new publication of the image and any message it conveys. Furthermore, the words above the image appear to have been typed in by Newbon. Were they his words, or those of whoever created the meme? Either way, if he typed them into his tweet, we may infer that he agreed with the message that they convey.

Mr Rosen had contacted Newbon’s employer, Northumbria University, to complain about its lecturer sharing the image, which he described as “loathesome and antisemitic” – and he was not alone; the university received around 4,000 complaints in total.

I think we may reasonably infer that this is the “bullying” to which Hirsh referred. How he can describe Mr Rosen’s complaint in that manner, or as “antisemitic”, is a mystery as Mr Rosen, being Jewish, may quite clearly be seen as the victim of anti-Semitism here; the tweeted image links him – a Jew – with an anti-Semitic book which was once said to have been written by Jews and which makes claims calculated to provoke hatred against Jews.

I have no information on Newbon’s own ethnicity. If he was Jewish himself, then for Mr Rosen to have been anti-Semitic towards him, Mr Rosen’s complaint would have to have exhibited hatred towards him because he was a Jew – and we have no evidence of this.

And a complaint about a tweet that may clearly be taken as an attack on Mr Rosen may not be described as bullying in any way. Or so it seems to This Writer. It seems to me, based on the evidence, that he is the victim:

So I can find no clear basis for Ms Riley’s apparent comment that the Hirsh article reminds her of any reason her “stomach turns” at the mention of Mr Rosen.

Her tweet certainly appears to have turned the stomachs of people who enjoy his work or have personal experience of him. A few hours after her initial tweet, Ms Riley followed it up with this:

To This Writer, the comment is very strange – firstly because I can only find two responses to her previous tweet on the subject, that criticise her. Is that really enough for her to pass comment as though there was a large backlash?

Secondly, it does not make grammatical sense – and this leads me to suggest that it may be taken to mean something else: not that she isn’t bothered by people she claims are antisemites being upset at her comment about Mr Rosen, but that if people do criticise her for that comment, she is not bothered because they are all antisemites.

Again, there appears to be no evidence to support a claim that every respondent is an anti-Semite.

It strikes This Writer that these tweets may create something of a difficulty for Ms Riley, in legal terms, because anyone defending Mr Rosen in response to her comments – either before or after her “Antisemites upset again” tweet – may reasonably infer that tweet to refer to them. And they may consider it to be libellous against them.

So not only is it possible that she and her employers at Channel 4 may receive a complaint about her behaviour from Mr Rosen – they already have from at least one other person…

… but she may also receive a “letter before action”, either individually or as a group, from a large number of people, some of them celebrities in their own right.

Oh, and Jeremy Corbyn might also consider getting involved, considering the fact that he was also attacked in that doctored image, that an innocent person has suffered harm because of it, because of the Hirsh article and because of the Riley tweets, and that Hirsh himself has challenged him to take such action:

It seems clear that this kind of behaviour – that may harm the reputations and ruin the lives of good people – may continue until somebody with the wherewithal finally puts a stop to it.

Is it forlorn to hope that this could be the catalyst for that to happen?

While we wait to find out, please remember that I am one of those whose reputation and life has been harmed – and I’m still trying to pay my legal team after my own four-year battle with Ms Riley. If you have been moved by the story above, then please help in any of the following ways:

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!

ADDITIONAL NOTE: a few people on Facebook have suggested that people could not sue Ms Riley because “in order for a libel action to stand, the court has to be convinced that it could be interpreted as referring to a specific individual”. This is not true.

From my copy of Essential Law for Journalists:

“The test of whether the words identified the person suing is whether they would reasonably lead people acquainted with him to believe that he was the person referred to.” So, for example, Robin Ince (of The Infinite Monkey Cage on Radio 4) may have a prime facie case because he published a popular tweet defending Michael Rosen and Ms Riley tweeted words that may be taken as meaning anyone supporting him is an anti-Semite.

To continue: “During the late 1980s and 1990s the Police Federation, representing junior police officers, made good use of this aspect of the libel law in many actions against newspapers on behalf of their members… Many of the officers were not named… The test of identification is not whether the general reader knew who was referred to, but whether some individuals… did.”

Also, the person suing doesn’t even have to prove that the words they’re complaining about actually refer to them: “A journalist sued successfully over an article… which neither named nor described him. A person reading the article carefully would have noted various details which were inconsistent with a reference to [him]. However, the court said ordinary people often skimmed through such articles casually, not expecting a high degree of accuracy. If, as a result of such reading, they reached the conclusion that the article referred to the plaintiff, then identification was proved.”

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Why is Keir ‘I hate tree-huggers’ Starmer gaining points over global warming?

Crete wildfires: unless action is taken, these fires will spread. Crops will fail and the UK will be unable to afford to buy supplies in from countries that will also be struggling. Your leaders know this and are doing nothing. You need different leaders.

UK opinion pollsters are recording an unlikely boost for Keir Starmer’s STP (Substitute Tory Part – formerly Labour) over climate change.

Despite the fact that he says he hates “tree-huggers” and wants the London ULEZ (Ultra-Low Emissions Zone) scrapped after he blamed it and not his own poor leadership on his party’s failure to win the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election, the i‘s Editor’s Choice newsletter tells me his party is enjoying a “bounce” of support over the issue:

Our poll results … show a Labour bounce after days of Conservative backtracking over net zero pledges. Sir Keir Starmer is now on 44% support, compared to the Tories’ 27%. If replicated at a general election would hand Sir Keir Starmer a ­landslide majority on a scale not seen since 1997.

Note that, like This Writer, the i can apparently no longer bring itself to refer to Starmer’s party as Labour!

But it isn’t all roses for the party that colours itself red. While

only 15 per cent trust Rishi Sunak to deal with this crucial issue. Sir Keir Starmer fares slightly better (21 per cent) but nearly half of those polled placed no trust in either of them – a stat that is hugely worrying.

As if the “era of global warming” wasn’t a serious enough threat, this week, the UN secretary-general declared that we had entered “the era of global boiling” after scientists confirmed that July was on track to be the world’s hottest month on record.

Our exclusive poll shows that three out of four people want action taken now – a figure that understandably ramps up among those aged 24 and under. It is their planet to take on, after all.

We all have our part to play in the climate fight but there is only so much we can do without governments around the world stepping up to the challenge. And that needs to start at home. Now.

And it’s not happening.

Instead – and for example – the Starmer party’s shadow Climate Change secretary, Ed Miliband, appeared on TV to push a false claim about its current policy:

Reeves recently withdrew her promise to spend £28 billion a year on tackling the climate crisis.

Her – and Miliband’s – party’s current policy on climate change is to do nothing. There’s a vague offer to spend some money on it after being in office for an unspecified number of years.

Let’s remember (again) that Starmer himself – their party’s leader – used the ULEZ (Ultra-Low Emissions Zone) in London as the reason his party couldn’t win Uxbridge and South Ruislip in the recent by-election there and has tried to pressurise London Mayor Sadiq Khan to scrap it (in fact it seems that discontent with his own leadership had more to do with the failure to win that seat).

It is his stance that has encouraged Tory prime minister Rishi Sunak to water down his own policies on climate change. So perhaps it is poetic justice that Sunak’s own poll ratings have plummeted as a result.

But none of this does anything to stop the “global boiling” that is happening as I type these words. Our home is burning to a cinder and the men and women in suits are squabbling about money as though it matters.

They seem to have forgotten that money is made by using the natural resources produced by our planet and its eco-system. Destroy that system and those resources – in the way that these people have been doing (and yes, I mean Keir Starmer, Ed Miliband, Rachel Reeves, Rishi Sunak and all the shadowy businesspeople who employ them) – and not only will there not be any more money, but whatever they have will not be worth anything.

While they argue over whether cleaning the planet is cost-effective – like the imbeciles they are – some of us have been pointing out the obvious flaw in their thinking:

If Sunak, Starmer and the other stuffed suits can’t get their policies in line with that, then we need to fill Parliament with people who can.

I mean, it’s only a matter of survival. Ask your non-political friends how their non-voting – or even tactical voting – philosophy measures up to that.

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The news in tweets: Monday, July 17, 2023

Ruling-class privilege: there’s no ‘class ceiling’ for grotesqueries like Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer – they are laughing at you when they say they can’t do anything to help you. Remember: it is political choice that has dumped the UK in its current crisis.

Backlash against Starmer’s Substitute Tory Party grows as he insists he’ll do nothing for ordinary people

It’s a good question. Jeremy Corbyn promised to provide dentistry on the National Health Service but Keir Stürmer is promising to deny it to more people (although he hasn’t said it in as many words).

He’s also planning to inject much more privatisation into the NHS, probably to complete the transformation of the service into nothing more than a banner under which public money may be passed to private companies that perpetuate illness and refuse to provide cover where it is not profitable, making healthcare a postcode lottery:

More privatisation?

Read this:

There’s the problem with more privatisation in a nutshell. Once these private health bloodsuckers get a monopoly on the provision of care, they’ll push prices through the roof – knowing that you and I will have to pay for it, no matter what.

By supporting increased private involvement in healthcare, Starmer supports this plan to drain the public purse of its funds and effectively put you into debt to grotesquely rich corporate fatcats – forever.

He’s being nicknamed #SirKidStarver because he won’t end the two-child limit on child benefit and is therefore continuing to impose poverty on millions of children, nor will he provide free school meals for everybody who needs them.

Stürmer’s ‘Right-hand Liar’, Yvette Cooper, was pressed to justify the policy that will deliberately keep a quarter of a million children in poverty and 850,000 more in increased poverty, on the morning media round. Judge her failure by this clip:

Labour’s answer to criticism is apparently to say we should vote for the Substitute Tory Party because its members have ancestors who were working class:

It seems Stürmer and all his little stürmtroopers need a lesson on how a Labour Party governs a nation. Here’s one:

The consensus opinion is increasingly that Stürmer is lying:

Thankfully not everyone, even in the Parliamentary Labour Party, supports the wholesale betrayal of Labour Party values that Stürmer is preparing:

And outside the party, some of us are already agitating for direct action:

The article states that Stürmer is actively planning to fail the nation on many levels:

– Climate change
– Renewables
– Transport reform
– The economy
– Public sector pay
– The NHS
– Social care
– Education
– Law and order
– Housing
– Trade unions
– Reversing Tory policy
– Support for local government
– Electoral reform
– Europe
– Interest rates
– Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
– Defence
– Inequality
– Taxing the rich

It calls for us to make Stürmer as uncomfortable as possible, for as long as possible, on all those issues until the pressure on him to reform becomes unsurmountable and he is forced to change.

How to do this?

– Inform yourself
– Join groups
– Talk to people
– Write to MPs, councillors and anyone else
– Phone in to the radio (you are likely to get on)
– Consider peaceful protest
– Join a union if it is appropriate for you
– Write a blog
– Comment here
– Tweet, Thread, use Mastodon, create a YouTube, TikTok or Instagram post.

But just don’t suffer in silence. Starmer has to know he is failing, already. Only then might he change, or be forced to. Things are far too serious to accept the dire policy options as those Starmer is now proposing. We all have to demand better.

And in the short term there is only one option: anyone who understands how bad the situation is at the moment must vote for anybody but Labour or the Conservatives. Who the other party to support may be will only be apparent locally.

The best places to start are at Somerton and Frome, Selby and Ainsty, and Uxbridge and South Ruislip on Thursday (July 20, 2023).

Where is the evidence that the Tories are ‘transforming’ the economy?

It seems that the only evidence of any such action by the Conservatives is a plan to close down what Rishi Sunak calls “rip-off” degrees that don’t guarantee a job to graduates.

It seems a strange demand – that degree courses guarantee a job to the people taking them. By that standard, shouldn’t they all be shut down and a multi-billion pound education industry destroyed overnight?

You see, the point of most degrees isn’t to fit people into a job; it is to teach people how to think. That way, they can work out how to get, for themselves, the job that best suits them. This policy reveals Tory ideology: they don’t want people who can think – they just want livestock who can be slotted into jobs that will make money for their friends and funders:

But it’s hard to tell, because it seems the Tories are doing their utmost to hide what they are doing – probably because the only people they are helping are themselves.

Example:

How about the way government departments under the Tories have been blacklisting media organisations that publish information that is critical of them? Here’s Defence Secretary Ben Wallace apologising for such treatment of Declassified UK:

What else do they not want us to know?

Perhaps the fact that yet another Tory MP has been arrested – for sexual impropriety and misconduct in public office?

Perhaps the fact that 2022 was the worst year for real wage growth in nearly half a century since the early 1970s, meaning their fairy story that increases in your wages are fuelling inflation is a lie?

Perhaps the fact that they spent more than one-and-a-half times as much money on duff Covid-related contracts through their illegal “VIP lane” as they have allocated to the building of new NHS hospitals?

People are being stopped from renting homes because they have children. Sign the petition to stop this

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How can Labour clean politics by mirroring the Tories?

Blue Labour: under Keir Starmer, a once-great socialist organisation has become nothing but the Substitute Tory Party.

This is the dilemma facing voters who want change at the next UK general election:

It’s a valid criticism. The truth of it is partially in the quality of the people Keir Starmer is attracting, after his changes (This Writer can’t call them reforms):

And the truth of it is in what Labour will do, if it takes office after the next general election:

In other words, Labour would follow Tory policy until such time as the economy improves (and you can bet that the economy won’t improve enough for Keir Starmer to introduce any socialist ideas, or indeed any measures that would improve the lot of the “ordinary working people” he claims to represent.

Think about what Labour has already said it will not do:

Add to this the fact that Labour won’t build more houses:

This is while 1.2 million people are waiting for social housing.

Then again, Labour will continue the privatisation of the National Health Service in England, even though 7.4 million people are waiting for NHS treatment as a result of this progressive mismanagement.

Keir Starmer himself seems to believe he is above the concerns of the people he reckons should be voting for him.

We saw him, last week, shutting up young environmental activists who tried to speak out during his policy announcement on how Labour wanted young people to be able to express themselves in speech. And he lied to them; after promising to meet them after his own speech, Starmer ran away.

Is it because he hates “tree huggers”?

He’s not interested in “hope and change”, you see:

The economist Richard Murphy has highlighted that Starmer’s “tree huggers” comment indicates not only that he isn’t interested in new economic and policy thinking about the issues the UK faces as a country, but that he and the rest of the Shadow Cabinet are far more right-wing than Ed Miliband – and Ed (bless ‘im) is himself hardly the socialist his dad was.

In the article, Mr Murphy states:

This is the attitude of a prospective Labour Chancellor who  questions whether we can afford to save the planet because it is instead better to crush the well-being of millions with unnecessary interest rate rises.

Reeves says she and Starmer are as one on issues. I suspect that for now that is true. It is deeply dangerous that such a reactionary pair are in that position and are described as the Opposition when it is so apparent that their goal is perpetuation of the status quo.

Link that with the words of Ian Hodson, below:

The consensus is clear: Labour is now nothing but a Substitute Tory Party. We should call it the STP from now on.

That’s one reason why this claim by the party’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, is hard to take seriously:

Labour is itself riddled with cronyism.

Look at its attitude to the scandal of Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list: where once Labour had planned to get rid of the House of Lords altogether, it has shelved the idea – and in any case would want to keep the honours system and the possibility of gifting a place in the second House of Parliament to its… cronies.

It is clear that Keir Starmer’s (and Rachel Reeves’s, and even Ed Miliband’s) party will not be representative of the people of the UK and will not give us the change we desperately need – in fact it will deliberately frustrate any such aim.

It can do this because of the current “First Past The Post” electoral system that ensures each of the two largest parties in Parliament have “safe seats” that they can expect to win at every election. Knowing that, cronyism ensures that these seats go to those who most strongly support the right-wing views of the leaders – never mind what they’re saying to the voters. They don’t have to listen to us.

And that’s why the UK is regressing; our so-called leaders aren’t interested in building a dynamic, go-ahead nation with a restored economy – they just want to ride us all into ruin and then take what they can for themselves.

The answer is clear to those of us who can see it. We need to change the voting system to root out the rot.

Don’t vote Labour at the next election. And don’t vote Tory either.

Vote for candidates who support proportional representation.

Vote for independents who understand the needs of your constituency.

And make sure everyone you know does the same. Starmer’s treachery means it is your only hope.

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If Rachel Reeves represents Labour’s best thinking, the UK is deep in the you-know-what

Fakes: Rachel Reeves, the fake Labour Chancellor, with her fake Labour leader, Keir Starmer.

I don’t know what image Rachel Reeves hoped to present with her stage-managed interview in The Guardian yesterday (Monday, July 10, 2023) – but the one we got was utterly, utterly awful.

If you’ve got a strong stomach, read the article and you’ll see what I mean about stage-management. She comes across as a total fake.

The really disgraceful stuff is in the segment about Ken Loach. The legendary film director was expelled from Labour in August 2021. It came amid accusations of anti-Semitism but that was never given as the reason for pushing him out.

So in the article we get this from Reeves:

(Loach himself was expelled from Labour in 2021 for appearing on a Labour Against the Witchhunt platform way before that organisation was proscribed by the party. The group was formed to campaign against what were seen as politically motivated allegations of antisemitism in the Labour party). This doesn’t sound like a broad coalition, does it? “Look, Keir’s No 1 thing when he became leader was he was going to tear out antisemitism at the roots, and that means there is a zero-tolerance approach.”

I tell her I am Jewish and that I agree with a zero-tolerance approach to antisemitism, but the party is so gung-ho that it is now labelling people antisemitic who simply aren’t – and there is a danger of destroying lives in the process.

“Well, look, I’m not on the bodies that make those decisions, so I don’t know the details of that case. But it is so important that we are seen to – and we do – tackle antisemitism. Ken Loach, you might like his films, but his views … well, certainly, they are not ones I share.”

That doesn’t make him antisemitic, I say.

“You don’t think Ken Loach is antisemitic? OK. Well, I think we might have to agree to differ.”

Why does she think he is antisemitic? “Look, I’m not on the bodies that make these decisions, but I think it’s right we have a zero-tolerance approach,” she repeats.

You can’t make such an accusation without supporting it, I say.

“Well, look, I’m not on the body who makes these decisions,” she repeats yet again. Loach later tells me there was no due process in his expulsion: he was just told he was unfit to be a party member; antisemitism wasn’t mentioned.

She couldn’t support her claim that Mr Loach was anti-Semitic for one simple reason: he isn’t. And Labour doesn’t have any evidence to the contrary.

But I’ll tell you who was anti-Semitic: Nancy Astor.

Why do I mention this? Because of this:

If you want proof of Reeves’s support for Astor, I can provide it – because I called on Labour’s then-General Secretary to do something about it:

I never heard back from Jennie Formby. It seems that, like the Tories, the Labour leadership follows a One-Rule-For-You, A-Different-Rule-For-Us principle.

We can follow this through to some of the other things Reeves has said lately, like her refusal to commit to paying public sector workers a fair wage:

Public sector workers have seen their pay crumble away under the Tory government. Reeves, as a member of Parliament, has had her own pay shored up with public money, and her pay packet is worth as much in real terms as it was in 2010 when she was first elected.

As I suggested: one rule for us; a different rule for them.

She won’t put any public money into building new houses for people on councils’ waiting lists:

See? She wants to make profit for builders by getting them building private houses. Great for those who can afford it – but those most in need won’t be able to, because she won’t make sure they’re paid the living wage that is required to make that happen. One rule for them…

So she won’t support the “ordinary working people” (as Labour now defines us) – but she’ll happily speak up for a former member of the Tory government that inflicted on us the cruel austerity that has caused so many of these problems.

In so doing, she also took a swipe at protest movements – causing This Writer to note (in another article) that without protesters, she wouldn’t have the right to vote, let alone the chance to have the second-highest job in the land. Here’s Howard Beckett to explain:

That brings us back to the Guardian interview, that took place in Reeves’s home town.

It seems she was desperate to demonstrate that she was still in touch with her family roots.

Sadly, she and her party have long since left their political roots far behind them.

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Watch this junior doctor shred Tory claims about strikes

The Tory government’s policy on strike action by junior doctors was shredded into mincemeat when health minister Rachel Maclean tried to argue it out with Dr Robert Laurenson, co-chair of the British Medical Association’s Junior Doctors’ Committee on the BBC’s Politics Live (June 14, 2023).

Challenged over whether junior doctors should begin a strike in a heatwave, he pointed out that the NHS is in crisis whether in a heatwave or not – and specialist staff were in place to handle any respiratory issues (for example).

He pointed out to the government minister, whose salary has remained stable up to the present day, that her government has cut pay for junior doctors, repeatedly, for the past 15 years.

This is in line with overall pay stagnation across the UK since 2005, that has been reported recently. Tories like Ms Maclean have presided over the longest period of pay stagnation since Napoleonic times, while making decisions that made inflation skyrocket. Ms Maclean had claimed that pay is rising and this is not true.

The housing minister said strikes must be called off for talks to continue, but Dr Laurenson pointed out that this is not practical for junior doctors – they would be disarming and putting themselves in a position where the government could simply continue to cut pay, year on year.

The government didn’t even recognise the full recommendations of the “supposedly” independent pay review body that said without addressing junior doctor pay there would be a significant impact on patient safety, not because of strikes but because of the effect on productivity and staff retention, said Dr Laurenson.

Challenged over whether it was practical to give junior doctors the 35 per cent rise that would replace all the pay they had lost, he said it’s an increase from £14 per hour to £20 per hour, which is not a huge hike.

And when MPs have managed to keep their own already-high pay at parity with its level in 2010, they don’t have a leg to stand on.

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Labour does u-turn on green investment pledge. Does that party have ANY policies at all?

Rachel Reeves: it’s a big smile but the eyes are utterly vacant – like her policy platform.

Rachel Reeves has announced yet another StarmerLabour u-turn, leaving voters questioning whether the party has any policies it will not betray and asking why they should ever vote for it.

Speaking on the BBC’s Today programme, Reeves scrapped Labour’s promise to invest £28 billion per year on green projects, funded by borrowing. This was in line with a Labour commitment that it would only borrow to invest, and not to support day-to-day spending.

She said she would increase investment after the time of the election, reaching £28 billion per year “after 2027”.

How long after 2027? We’ve heard weasel words like these before. It’s a “sometime/never” promise that means nothing.

Remember: the entire planet is in an environmental crisis, with catastrophic and irreversible disaster only a few short years away if no change happens.

Tory politicians have been talked out of shifting to green policies by the fossil-fuel industrialists who stand to lose profit by the change. They probably threatened to cut donations to the party.

Has the same now happened to Labour?

The announcement has been greeted with disgust on the social media.

See what I mean?

That’s an easy question to answer: under Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves, Yvette Cooper, David Lammy, Wes Streeting and the rest, UK Labour stands for the acquisition of power for its own sake and the enrichment of the individuals named above – in the same way Tony Blair’s New Labour did. Or so it seems to me.

Labour’s problem now is the sense of betrayal that voters are feeling across the nation:

And those voters are already looking for alternatives:

People will certainly be looking for a political movement to support that won’t betray its promises and make liars of its representatives on a regular basis.

Obviously that won’t be Labour. Let’s be honest – it hasn’t been Labour for years. Think of the way Starmer lied his way into the party leadership and then systematically ditched every single promise he made in order to get there.

Who will you support, now?

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Rachel Reeves’s ‘Securonomics’ is a myth – and here’s why

Rachel Reeves: her right-wing blinkers are stopping her from seeing what she needs to do.

It seems Labour’s Rachel Reeves has been peddling a myth with her ‘Securonomics’ speech in the United States.

It seems she has been trying to promise security to businesses through a means that simply won’t allow it – de-globalisation.

She said “Globalisation, as we once knew it, is dead.” That creates problems for a politician who wants to create a high-wage, high-growth economy, for these reasons:

  • Stronger world trade means greater competition. That encourages firms to increase efficiency or to innovate more, both of which raise productivity.
  • Managers visit customers and suppliers overseas and so can more easily learn tricks of the trade from best practice overseas.
  • Globalization also cuts prices, thereby making people’s wages go further. The deglobalization caused by Brexit, for example, has greatly added (pdf) to UK food bills.

I dare say there are others.

The downside – that some industries decline and disappear – is seen by many as a benefit because it means low-productivity jobs disappear, to be replaced by high-productivity jobs (or at least, that’s what should happen. We know that, for example, under Thatcherism, that replacement didn’t happen. She simply destroyed the UK’s industrial base).

I would also dispute claims that, under Thatcherism, substantial growth came because inefficient firms closed, more efficient ones opened, and because big companies shifted output from their less efficient sites to more efficient ones. What is meant by “efficiency” here? Does it mean cutting wages by ending jobs in one firm and starting them at a lower level in another?

Back with Reeves, she claims Labour will create high productivity growth but doesn’t explain how that will happen. She isn’t offering any government help for a transition from low-productivity firms to high-productivity firms and she isn’t suggesting that new firms must offer high wages. She doesn’t even offer a more generous benefit system to support people whose jobs are destroyed and help them into newly-created positions.

And the creation of high-wage jobs means people won’t do low-wage jobs like care work, cleaning or shelf-stacking. To attract workers, these jobs need to be better-paid now, let alone in a high-productivity, high-wage economy that Reeves wants.

Government subsidy doesn’t work; it should not be applied to shelf-stackers or cleaners because their employers should be paying them, not relying on the public to do it for them. Supermarkets are currently making massive profits and can therefore easily afford to pay a living wage to all their workers.

Reeves makes the point that governments tend to focus policy on building the growth of economic success stories that are often few in number – and this neglects

the basics for a good life, strong communities and economic security – like childcare, social care, retail, hospitality and supermarkets

But she doesn’t say how she can make the maximum return on public money by investing in these traditionally low-paying jobs.

Market concentration also reduces competition, of course, meaning the “engine of productivity” has been left idling. I’ll come back to this.

Care is the one area in which the government may have a role, but this would require an enormous change in the way politicians think about it – both health-related care and child care. We don’t see that coming from Reeves.

If public money is spent on this, then taxes would rise to offset inflation – and taxes are already at their highest in 70 years (where’s the money going, Rishi Sunak?) so that’s not practical.

And which jobs will go? There’s an argument that some should be targeted:

the bullshit jobs described by David Graeber; the producers of environmental, intellectual and risk pollution; DWP and Border Force staff who harrass benefit claimants and migrants; or those in the bloated financial sector. Job destruction, as I’ve argued, is not a task which can be left to the market.

But it is left to the market. That’s how neoliberalism works and why that economic model has allowed so much corruption into society.

Reeves is silent on the possibility of weeding out the “bullshit” jobs to encourage the useful ones.

But she does argue that the State shapes markets; so Labour wants large-scale public investment in green energy (we’ll ignore the argument about nuclear power for now), and this, according to Simon Wren-Lewis at Mainly Macro,

can be thought of as a mission to get cheaper and sustainable energy, which involves public investment or government incentives in a wide range of industries

Mr Wren-Lewis also discusses failure to fund projects that would lead to lower public spending in some areas – so a 24 per cent cut in money for preventative health schemes by local government (stopping people from getting ill) means NHS costs skyrocket. He fails to take account of the current political reason for that, which is that healthcare is being turned into a profit-making industry and if the private firms that have been brought into the NHS are to make their money, more people need to be ill.

How does a government roll back market concentration and restore competition? One way is to start new businesses, and Reeves commits to that.

Brexit is also a limiting factor as it has shrunk the size of markets available to UK businesses. Reeves says she wants to reduce trading friction with the EU while staying outside the Customs Union and Single Market – but we can expect this to change. Brexit is a failure and Labour is only refusing to admit that for as long as it is politically expedient to do so. Expect agitation to get back into the EU, almost as soon as a Labour government is elected – from all sides of the House of Commons.

Put it all together and Reeves’s aim of a high-wage, high-productivity economy that does not take advantage of the global marketplace simply won’t work.

Rather than throw the baby out with the bathwater, she would be better-advised to retain what is succeeding and use its profits to invest in slower-yield but high-value projects. But I fear the right-wing blinkers she wears won’t allow her to see that.

Source: mainly macro: Rachel Reeves economic strategy