Today, nothing is more important than to say that we will not be silent on the dreadful oppression of the Palestinian people; the daily beatings, killings, humiliations, demolitions, expropriations and destruction of groves that are the concomitant of Israeli illegal occupation.
We will never be browbeaten into silence on the slow genocide of the Palestinian people.
Nobody with any grasp on the location of their right mind believes Jeremy Corbyn to be an anti-Semite. Nobody with any grasp on their right mind believes the Labour Party is now anything but the substitutes’ bench for the Neoconservative team. Under Keir Starmer, the Labour Party has failed to oppose the granting of legal powers to the security services to kill, torture, entrap, forge and fake with impunity. It has failed to oppose the limitation of prosecution of British soldiers for war crimes. The Labour Party now seeks to erase all trace that it might once have been a party that offered an alternative to the right wing security state.
As Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer pressurised Swedish prosecutors who wished to drop the case against Julian Assange, to persist in order that he might be rendered to the USA. He further persuaded them not to interview Julian here, which is standard practice when he was never charged but only wanted for questioning, and which would have reduced Julian’s ordeal by four years.
Starmer received £50,000 in personal donations from lobbyist Sir Trevor Chinn to fund his leadership bid.
It is perfectly plain that Starmer’s aim in suspending Corbyn is to drive the mass membership that Corbyn attracted out of the Labour Party, and make it a reliable arm of the right wing security state. He wants the Labour Party to be financially dependent not on its members, who have annoying principles, but on donors like Chinn.
The media and political elite have attained their aim; there is no longer any point in voting in Westminster elections. A right wing government supporting the neo-con status quo and the ever tightening security state is now firmly guaranteed and cannot be influenced by a Westminster election.
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Keir Starmer will be the one mentioned that has destroyed the Labour Party. I feel sick at the acceptance of fascism ala Bibi, three cheers to Shai Masot and his undermining of socialist values with smears.iBi by its Blairite members.
Great Post Craig thank you. Disgusting what they did Corbyn
In this clip from today, Chris Williamson on EHRC report..Gives a no holds barred telling off of Starmer –
.’This is about stopping free speech on Israel’ | Chris Williamson on EHRC report
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G92jzXYWCtk
Agree completely.
No point in voting Labour any more, it is no longer offering a vision for the future.
Hi Craig, I think you must have accidentally deleted the part of your post which expressed sympathy and condolences with the victims of the antisemitism which the EHRC set out in its report. Maybe a line or two about the abuse and harassment of female Jewish Labour MPs would be a good addition?
Maybe after acknowledgement from you that antisemitism is 100x more prevalent on your side of the political spectrum.
Hi John, could you let us know the names of victims that died as a result of Labour Party behavior that Craig did not express condolences for. I haven’t been able to find them in my reading of the EHRC report.
The “abuse and harassment of female Jewish MPs” to which you refer never actually occurred. This is well known. Your refusal to be truthful is all of a piece with the utterly ludicrous charge that Corbyn is anti-semitic or ever has been. People who play around with charges of anti-semitism are involved in a very dangerous game. And a disgraceful one.
Craig is absolutely correct in seeing that we are indeed all Palestinians now. Jeremy Corbyn, Ken Livingstone and Chris Williamson are among those treated with the contempt and injustice which characterises the Israeli government – a fascist regime.
I am sorry, the attacks on Jewish MPs by members of the Labour Party are well documented and you do your cause no good by pretending otherwise. Just as Craig Murray does the cause of defeating the Conservative government no good by pretending that there is no difference between the parties.
I don’t know anything about these alleged attacks… but the case to prove of course is they they were motivated by anti-semitism. MPs are fair targets for attack, whatever their ethnic origin, if they are, for example, treacherous shits like Starmer.
(To avoid wilful misrepresentation I should say that from the context I assume we are discussing verbal “attacks” rather than physical assault, which I obviously condemn)
When it comes to anti-semitism, there *is* a difference between the two parties, and that is that the prevalence of anti-semitism within the Labour Party runs at less than the rate in society at large, whereas the Tories runs at the same rate or in excess. The manufactured anti-semitism campaign against the Corbyn-led Labour Party studiously ignored this fact, as did their supporters in the press. It would have been a more honest campaign if it had not been focused on only one of the two main UK political parties, but as the actual intention was to discipline Labour and make examples of those who dare to oppose the state of Israel, this was never an option.
” … the dreadful oppression of the Palestinian people ; the daily beatings, killings, humiliations, demolitions …. ”
Which part of the above, Mr Ganz, don’t you understand?
I wouldn’t hold your breath, Franc. Some have lost their capacity for that kind of understanding. Assuming they ever had any to begin with. They think that one group is above the rest, and are way too intellectually truncated to see that all humans ought to be valued.
What is the relevance of your comment? I am not asking for that evident oppression to be ignored. Nor for the treatment of Jewish MOs in the Labour Party, which most who comment here seem to regard as right and proper, alas.
First of all, criticism of politicians is par for the course. I can’t imagine anyone being naive enough to become a politician and think they will be immune to this. You can ramp up the language, and call it an attack, if you like; but just be sure to remember that it is not only Jewish politicians who will be subject to such ‘attack’.
Second, abuse and harrassment of female politicians, black politicians and even Jewish politicians, is going inevitably to be more pronounced within a xenophobic racist Tory culture. The sad thing is that some are too stupid to understand that Jews are not the only ones subject to this abuse. Or perhaps they don’t regard other victims of abuse as being human enough to qualify for an EHRC review. For every case of antisemitic abuse, one could probably count a billion cases of other racially motivated forms of abuse. But lets go on denying that with John and David above. Thumbs down to both of them for perceptiveness.
Third, David might not be totally incorrect in saying that there is no difference between Labour and Conservative. Labour is still better at pretending to be decent, pretending it cares about green stuff and our childrens’ future, pretending it is interested in equality. Well, let’s face it. It has to pretend, because otherwise there is going to be another pre-decided Tory-funded EHRC review for the press-dogs to lap up. Meanwhile, you can behave as sexist or Patelesque as you like if you belong to that other party, and the worst that can happen is that some morally outraged blogger that nobody reads will call it out.
bevin – ‘The “abuse and harassment of female Jewish MPs” to which you refer never actually occurred.’
It did – 4 right wing extremists got gaol time for their anti-semitism against Luciana Berger (Liverpool Wavertree).
There was a dreadful interview by Emma Barnet today (BBC radio 5) with Luciana Berger, where Barnet manipulated the interview to give the impression that Berger had received anti-semitic treatment from Corbyn supporters. The fact that it was extreme right wingers that had been prosecuted for anti-semitism wasn’t mentioned.
On the other hand, the Jewish Chronicle lost a libel case for false accusations of anti-semitism against Audrey White in respect of Louise Ellman (Liverpool Riverside)..
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/jewish-chronicle-pay-damages-over-anti-semitism-libel
What part of 0.06% is difficult? If your virtue was as real as you signal, you’d be apologising for scaring them out of their minds with your lies. And that’s a fact.
Speaking on speaking out..
Glenn Greenwald have to resign from the news outlet the Intercept, after he wanted to criticze Biden..
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1321869227226222593
Well that takes the biscuit, Glenn resigns from The Intercept, he created, because they wouldn’t publish stuff about the Hunter emails and related things. It does make me feel a bit sick, the suspension of Corbyn and everything else. It has been on the cards for awhile, but now it is real. They have won.
It feels like for 4 decades now that we have take steps in the wrong direction in regard to freedom and an equitable economy. The security services have encircled politics, the State has eaten itself. The State’s function is supposed to provide its citizens the best possible life, instead it’s function has become to preserve itself.
So now the powerful have great control of the media, politics and the economy. With first past the post, as well, its gonna take some doing to change things.
The Security services are as corrupt as their masters and the finance sector. Utter disgust and contempt is all I feel for the Govt, the City and their adjuncts.
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/10/29/britains-profiteering-spymasters-ignored-the-countrys-biggest-threats/
Greenwalds resignation letter is well worth a read:
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/my-resignation-from-the-intercept
As is his article which they refused to publish:
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/article-on-joe-and-hunter-biden-censored
Reading his resignation piece it is impossible not to recognise every single mainstream news outlet in the UK but also to be awestruck by the role silicon valley played in censoring articles referring to the Biden scandal, something Craig has had to put up with in his reporting of the Assange court case. This is truly a scandal on a worldwide scale.
Indeed. The arc of Greenwald’s career describes an era. I began reading him when he was blogging on Google’s blogspot platform in the days of the open internet. He attracted a large following and then began a period of moving into the mainstream, first with Salon, and then with the Guardian, from where he delivered the Iraq war logs and the Snowden files, at a time when Wikileaks was the darling of all the major liberal newspapers. In 2013, he left the Guardian, where relationships with Wikileaks were beginning to break down and started The Intercept, which delivered on its promise until some atrocious hires and smear pieces (again, of Julian Assange/WL, which has always served as the canary in the coal mine), turned it into an outfit indistinguishable from The Nation, Mother Jones, even Vox. And here we are, 2020, Julian Assange having a show trial almost behind closed doors, Corbyn suspended from the Labour Party, and Greenwald resigning from The Intercept because his editors refuse to countenance any criticism of Joe Biden. And so, full circle, Greenwald has gone back to blogging, but in an era of a closed rather than open internet, and when those he attacked during the Bush/Cheney years are front and center again, setting the news agenda sometimes literally, with countless former CIA officers now acting as pundits on the cable news networks. Looking back, older, wiser, and sadder, those days of the mid-2000s hardly seem as hellish now, when one couldn’t, in one’s innocence, imagine anything worse than a Bush/Cheney administration was possible.
Thank you a brilliantly expressed comment.
Thanks, Craig!
Yes, pretty shocking stuff. His resignation letter is well worth a read as is the article in question which caused it.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/article-on-joe-and-hunter-biden-censored
Wholesale censorship by silicon valley on a worldwide scale, something Craig has experienced on his articles written during the Assange trial.
He was just on Joe Rogan as well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0rcLsoIKgA&ab_channel=PowerfulJRE
Corbyn supports the Palestine struggle for existence. That’s enough to condemn him in most Israeli circles. Simultaneously, Corbyn is left-wing and therefore an obvious target for Starmer and other resurrected people from Labour central – Tony Blair rewritten for the 2020s. The whole thing stinks.
The Conservatives should be strung up becase they’re heading for fascism. Labour likewise because they have forgotten their roots and will sell their sould to anyone if it means being re-elected.
I am not racist. I have relatives in Israel. But I see things from an external perspective.
Can’t believe how they threw Corbyn under the bus just like that, what kind of people/ideology have taken over the Labour past years one wonder.
Cowards who value the Holy Establishment beyond the population. Post brexit the UK is finished so its circle the wagons, coopt all anti capitalist movements, tighten the security services beyond the control of the STASI and pretend left is right and right is left. I doubt Starmer will get any more votes than Corbyn did at the next election. He’s one of ‘them’ but the new labourites will love him, neoliberalism to the core, I wonder who his first war would be with (on behalf of the US of course) Dangerous people, the enemy is wholly within not without.
Who do you think is going to vote for him?
I don’t think you realise how bad a position the Labour party is in in terms of what the electorate think of it. I don’t think you realise quite how much hatred there was for Blair and how contemptuous people will be about bringing his kind of people back in to the cabal.
People have lost faith in both the major parties: it is open season now for people to ignore the media, ignore the tax avoiders and just vote for who they want to vote for.
Not convinced the centre-right reactionary-ism Starmer represents will have any electoral appeal. Removing members and left-wing MPs is more in preparation for the moment when that lack of appeal becomes obvious. People don’t want a repeat of New Labour and the Blair era : been there, done that, got the bloodstained Iraqi kids’ T-shirts.
The Labour Party will now go the way of the Lib Dems.
Thanks Craig,
Has to be said.
It really is time for Jeremy Corbyn to spell out in terms precisely what is being done to him – and the Labour Party – which I joined when I was in my teens half a century ago.
It has never been more important for Scotland to become independent of the cesspit that is UK and Westminster government.
I hope the SNP can soon sort itself out and return to its one and only purpose:
Independence, Independence, Independence,
Corbyn may say it, but who will publish it?
I don’t quite frankly think that the SNP is any better than the Labour Party, right now. Said of course as a non-Scot looking in, as opposed to someone with skin in the game….
Well, maybe you are right after all. I have friends who keep telling me that people in England are just too dim or conservative to understand what is hitting them. It is not a very generous assessment of the English, but I suppose if decent Scots cannot count on the support of decent Englanders (who are maybe just too dim or conservative, insofar as there is a difference in the meaning of those two words), then perhaps you are right to chant independence. That chant to me is starting to sound like you’d be happy to throw your brother under the wheels of a truck to save your own ass, but maybe it is a matter of saving at least one ass.
I wonder what happened to Labour’s Corbyn base. Starmer is a political body snatcher, so to speak.
The fact that he played a role in the Assange case, a vile role, which I didn’t know, is devastating. This alone should be enough to get a real Labour member to fight Starmer to the hilt. He is the end of the party.
I think the hope (of Starmer et al) is that the Corbyn supporters resign their memberships so that they no longer interfere in the party elections etc.. Sadly it may be the case that you don’t really need enthusiastic supporters to win elections any more, and perhaps they even get in the way; you just need to nudge a few swing voters in the right marginals.
I’m holding my nose and not resigning my labour membership in the hope that my future votes can counter the move to the right. Seems futile though, and maybe I’m better donating My four quid to people like Mr Murray?
Starmer has fulfilled his mission and done what he was paid to do. Ironically, today of all days I received a letter “from” Angela Rayner reminding me that my membership had expired! I pointed out that it was Corbyn who inspired me, and hundreds of thousands like me, to join the Party and to be a very active member for four years, loyally canvassing for, as it happens, a right-wing local candidate who did all he could to dissociate himself from Corbyn. Dozens of young activists were coming from 80 miles away to get this candidate elected. I was inspired by their enthusiasm, but disgusted by the cynicism of the Party elite, and by the absolute contempt which they expressed towards these young people.
The CAA has just written a 72 page letter to Starmer demanding action against notorious anti Semites in the Labour Party including RLB, Diane Abbott, and, yes, Angela Rayner.
The purge is just beginning.
If you suspend nearly 100 labour MPs you in effect start a new left wing party
See I don’t believe Starmer is an evil Genius. I think he’s a clueless yes man that is out of his depth and bending to the pressures of whatever power block is leaning on him.
What the labour right achieved in Scotland they are now attempting in the rest of the UK – self immolation
Bring it on!
RLB & Diane Abbott signed this in July:-
https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/57256/julian-assange-press-freedom-and-publicinterest-journalism
Craig you don’t need me to tell you are right.. but I need to tell you so I can look myself in the mirror tomorrow morning. One day the average person in the uk will realise what a golden opportunity Jeremy corbyn represented. By then I fear it will be too late
That sort of person will merely say to his/herself that things would’ve been worse under Corbyn, because every source of information they’ll receive will be telling them that.
As we know full well from the nightmarish Assange situation; it isn’t just what’s reported that shapes opinion, it’s what isn’t reported – what’s deliberately suppressed.
himself
Not in my constituency it didn’t: it would have taken a 1945 seismic shift and then some to overturn the Tory majority in my constituency….500 Labour MPs to get one in my constituency.
The guardian closed its comments hours earlier than normal because they could see ‘politically informed’ opinion was outraged by its stance and reporting. The Guardian seems to think only certain people have a right to an opinion on this and there is no objective truth. But any fair-minded objective assessment could only conclude that Corbyn is far more sinned against than sinning.
Corbyn inherited an administrative mess in 2015, which was in place until 2018, and evidence has since come to light that suggests the resolution of disciplinary cases during that time were deliberately delayed to cause maximum damage to Corbyn and bad publicity for the party. Starmer thought this new evidence unworthy of bringing to the attention of the EHRC, and the party has reached financial settlements with some of these staffers who are alleged to have sabotaged the party.
The Guardian has been central to the war on Mr Corbyn and the social democrats in the Labour Party as it has been central to the persecution of Julian Assange. It helped to make Starmer. The Guardian is not so much a newspaper as a tool of the security state.
It’s slavishly pushed its reactionary, pro-censorship agenda for so long now, it probably believes its own ‘good vs evil’ online war propaganda. Of course they claim they value robust debate and free expression, but its opaque ‘btl’ comment policies and arbitrary censorship and worse, its urging social media ‘crackdowns’, make it one of the main enemies of free speech in the west today. It’s become an atrocious newspaper under Viner.
That’s what she was put there for (a plant). Job well done…
The journos voted for her in a ballot of editorial staff, held in early 2015 ,after Alan Rusbridger stood down. Janine Gibson, Emily Bell, Wolfgang Blau and Katherine Viner stood. Janine Gibson would’ve been a far better choice imho. She showed courage handling the Snowden stuff and wouldn’t be intimidated by anyone.
Kath Viner is shaping a staff in her own image, so when she goes someone similar will likely replace her. The guardian seems doomed to ignobly fade away as the audience for risk-averse reporting and centrism dwindles.
I made a critical comment about one of their articles being rubbish (no swears, pretty anodyne) and got put into ‘pre-moderation’ for several months for bad behaviour, in which time they randomly pulled comments seemingly on a whim. I complained a couple of weeks ago and received an email saying I had been reinstated, ‘as my behaviour had improved’. It’s so depressing – there really is nowhere else to go in terms of mainstream newspapers.
” there really is nowhere else to go in terms of mainstream newspapers.”
So farewell then mainstream newspapers.
There’s really no point commenting at the Guardian – all you’re doing is providing free content for it.
The comments section is a never-ending bar room brawl, populated nowadays largely by sock puppets for the various political parties, lobbies, and think tanks, constantly churning out the same arguments to each other day in day out, whilst the Graun sits back, saying, “let’s you and him fight!”, and counting the clicks to sell advertising.
What are the guardians below the line comments policies. ? I can never find any below the line comments under guardian articles. I think there used to be loads of them. But there don’t seem to be any now. Why is this?
They are very selective about which articles can be commented on now, you need to look for the ones with the comment bubble bottom right, keep scrolling down underneath. But they are open for comment for a much shorter time than they used to be, usually closed by the time I get round to them. And don’t be rude about the journalist or you will get pre-moderated. As Mr Shigemitsu said, there’s little point in engaging any more.
Why try to keep reading it. It is a closed mind, propaganda-spewing hate vehicle?
Much better to have nothing more to do with it.
I was a Guardian reader for many years but stopped about 4 years ago. Unfortunately my wife still reads it and subscribes. She is a Corbyn supporter but hasn’t yet been suffienly revolted by its role in Corbyn’s assassination. Yeah I know! What’ll it take?
It was abundantly clear well before the last election, indeed the very moment Corbyn assumed the Labour leadership, that the concerted efforts of the Jewish and by implication Israeli lobby – clearly expressed by the head of the Board of Deputies in an interview on BBC Newsnight by Jeremy Paxman – were dedicated to ensuring that the very idea of Labour being lead by a socialist was entirely unacceptable to the self-appointed representatives of the Jewish community. Let alone a socialist with a conscience that impelled him to criticise the abhorrent nature of the Israeli regime. I confess that the concerted and virulent efforts which were then immediately set in motion, fully supported by virtually all the British mass media including the BBC, almost took my breath away.. That Corbyn failed to conceive this calls into question some of the political advice he was getting. The opposition within the PLP and the media should have convinced him to either drum all these reptiles out of the party or start a new one. Of course he would have been crucified by the press. What’s new? Now he should ride the wave of sympathy following his suspension – which will be followed by expulsion – and start a new party which truly represents the huge craving for social justice that still remains in the UK, especially amongst the young – who I for one feel deep guilt and remorse for having abandoned and stolen their future (aided and abetted by a vile mass media who perpetuated the myth that sound economics demanded austerity to preserve their future while in reality it only preserved the power and privilege of the financial community and their wealthy clients).
What can we do about the Israeli lobby?
Even a million people marching in the street in London couldn’t stop the illegal attack on Iraq. Now, even prominent journalists and newspapers cannot publish items that are prohibited by the lobby. Holocaust denial has been designated ‘hate speech’, whereas blasphemous cartoons of Muhammed are ‘free speech’.
Freedom for the Palestinians was the most important ’cause’ for me. I cannot bear to write (or even privately acknowledge to myself) that it is a lost cause. It is too painful. Now, all I cling to is the hope that public solidarity and pressure can result in the release of Julian Assange.
Every other hope for the future, for me, is gone.
What you can do is to tell Jewish people in this country that they must choose between the State of Israel and UK Citizenship. They represent 0.5% of the UK population so are a complete democratic irrelevance.
There is more that I would say personally, but Mr Murray would not approve of it. His blog, his rules….
I don’t think there is a Jewish lobby in the UK. There are plenty of Jews who oppose Zionism and the actions of Israel.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180620-uk-jews-condemn-board-of-deputies-of-british-jews-for-endorsing-gaza-massacre/
The Board of Deputies purports to represent orthodox Jews, i.e. about 25% of British Jews. I think they regard reformed Jews as not really Jews at all, so they are hardly likely to claim they represent them.
Note that the BOD welcomed Trump’s and Johnson’s election. They organised a demonstration against Corbyn’s Labour party. They have never organised a demonstration against a right wing party, e.g. the National Front and the BNP. Indeed I think they advised Jews not to demonstrate against the black shirts intention to march down cable street.
The BOD have been about for a very long time, and will be fully aware of how the game is played in the UK. Trouble is, they have over the last few years been facing mounting competition for donations from outfits like the Community Safety crowd, and the Rebranded Hope not Hate. The donation pot is of a finite size which has forced the BOD to engage in the silly assertions that Anti Semitism is a growth area, and in so doing embark upon a course that will de value the coin in the same way as shouting Wolf.
No doubt, and should Anti Semitism arise again in a dangerous form, the result will be the same as it was for the fabled youth of old.
It’s my belief that it is in the interest of Zionists to stoke the fires of anti semitism; the more Jews are attacked, whether politically or verbally, the stronger their victimhood stands.
It’s rather obvious that the lobby has been keen to invent or exaggerate those attacks when none or few existed.
I honestly don’t think Zionists are really too bothered about the treatment of ordinary people following the faith of their forefathers, whether converts to Judaism or not, as long as it contributes positively to their predetermined agenda.
The bigger the victim the bigger the sympathy, hence the need to empathise the six million of a single faith, not the eleven million of all faiths and none. Even Simon Wiesenthal admitted to that message.
I don’t care who the Board of Deputies represent. Even if they represented 100% of British Jews, that would be around 250,000 people, 0.5% of the UK population at best.
They are absolute racists if they think that they should have a decisive role in UK democracy.
All they are entitled to is equality under the law. Nothing more….
You are inspiring. Bon courage.
I’m well aware that the right wing of the Labour Party and the many Establishments that run our society are hoping that, the disgust felt by left wing Labour members, will result in a mass exodus of the Party, thereby removing the financial base of the Labour Party. I myself left the Party after more than twenty years as a member and many more years as a Labour voter. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the treatment of Ken Livingston, Chris Williamson, Jackie Walker et al.
My Labour friends (and some family members) have attacked me over this decision on the basis that I had some sort of moral obligation to remain in the Party in order to try and change it. Even though they felt lots of distaste at some of the things the Labour Party stood for,or supported, they followed the ‘ lesser of two evils’ logic arguing that a flawed Labour Party was better than a Tory government.
For many years I voted Labour with a peg over my nose. But now, with the complete take over by the right wing and the complicit spinelessness of the overwhelming bulk of the PLP, I no longer feel compelled by any moral obligation to support a Labour Party as right wing in many respects as the Tories. Corbyn, McDonnell and others kept silent whilst the progressives were isolated and suspended from the Party in full view and with much trumpeting by Starmer and his acolytes. At the last election Labour was openly putting forward policies to make capitalism work, Mc Donnell falling over himself to be accepted by City people and seeking to get the war-criminal and liar Alistair Campbell rehabilitated back into the Party.
When there is not even a cigarette paper between the Labour Party and the Tories there is no moral compunction to support Labour. All this without even considering that, even had Labour won the election (which several posters here including myself believed happened) there is no way that Labour could have instituted progressive policies, even if they had them. The open threats by members of the security services to prevent this were not idle.
The erroneous assumption held by those who remain in the Labour Party, advocating change from within, is that parliamentary democracy is the same as democracy and that Parliament will facilitate the transformation of society required. Change, in the degree and to the extent required has never, and will never, come from this Parliament. And so it really makes no difference what Labour says it will do when in opposition or if it’s in government. If it’s radical it will never be elected and if we’re to be elected capital, with all the power it holds will prevent change.
This may read as a counsel of despair but surely it’s better to recognise this than tying your hope to the unicorn of the Labour Party riding to the end of the rainbow to a pit of gold.
The Starmer-led Labour Party does not want members.
The fewer the better; they will only cause trouble at conference, and attempt to hamper the movement to eradicate any trace of socialism.
It will instead revert back for its funding to the Blairite days of substantial political donations from high net worth individuals, right wing trusts, and corporations – much like the US Democratic Party.
When they need canvassers, they’ll simply hire them.
Any socialist remaining in the party is wasting their time; what’s the point being a member of a party that you have to constantly fight? You don’t join a rugby club and struggle for years trying to persuade it to play cricket! Better to form a new one and use the energy constructively, somewhere where everyone shares your aims and values, and doesn’t oppose, sabotage, and betray them.
Besides which, once its understood that the British Labour Party has existed for many decades precisely to *prevent* socialism, rather than introduce it, everything that has happened in its postwar history will make a great deal more sense.
What the people can do is what they could always do: refuse to vote for the Labour Party.
The Party can be funded by millionaire Jews, but those millionaire Jews are few and do not have the ability to force anyone to vote for their supine party candidates.
There is nothing to be scared of. Bury the Labour Party with sadness and find a new alternative. It may not be perfect, it may take time to take hold, but no millionaires can ever make you vote for a party that does not want you as a member, does not want to represent you and acts in ways entirely against your interests.
Agree with everything you say Mr Shigemitsu except that there is an assumption that votes will change anything. If they could, they’d abolish elections. The body politic is corrupt. As corrupt as the US’s so called democracy.
AS is the 2+2=5 that Orwell wrote about.
Considering the degrees of hatred directed at the Muslims, blacks, browns, yellows, and other religions that are tolerated, accepted and become dinner table talk topics. However any slight/perceived slight to Judaic religion is considered as the end times that world ought to unite to fight against.
The anomalies of Jackie Walker a black Jewish labour activist getting kicked out of Labour party for stating a simple historical fact, the same happening to Ken Livingston, all point to 2+2=5
Hence today Corbyn who put up with this slur instead of ridding the party from the machinations of the rotten blair brigade whom everyday committed a small act to undermine Corbyn has culminated to the point of Corbyn’s expulsion form the party he has helped to build to this point.
We have accepted this state of affairs and we put up with it, hence the bandwagon rolls on.
Will the end of Empire US see the end of 2+2=5?
Regarding Corbyn, Anti Semitism and The Leader of ‘The Workers Party’ Sir Kier Starmer:
https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4555-the-case-against-keir-starmer
“when the SNP proposed an investigation into Blair’s apparent lying in the run up to the war – bolstered by findings from the Chilcot report – Sir Keir voted against it.”
Starmer voted for Trident in 2016, and worked tirelessly to secure Labour’s support for the Investigatory Power Bill, which expanded state surveillance and authorised the bulk collection of digital communications.
As Labour Leader he whipped his members to abstain this month in the vote on the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill which allows Government Employees and informants commit crimes without the risk of prosecution.
As DPP, Sir Keir tempered his love of liberty by fast-tracking the extradition of Julian Assange (a process now making its way through the courts).
He flouted legal precedents by advising Swedish lawyers not to question Assange in Britain: a decision that prolonged the latter’s legal purgatory, denied closure to his accusers in Sweden, and sealed his fate before a US show trial.”
Starmer also approved a decision not to prosecute any police over the shooting (execution) of Jean Charles de Menezes in Operation Kratos – described by critics as a “shoot to kill” policy.
The Met had been trained/advised by Israeli security forces in the months leading up to this shooting in July 2005.
Sir Keir Starmer also apparently helped paedophile Jimmy Saville evade justice in 2009. It’s claimed that the Police force referred four cases to Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service – headed by Kier Starmer.
https://www.politicalite.com/lab/labour/new-leader-new-danger-keir-starmer-helped-paedophile-jimmy-saville-evade-justice/
That’s before you look at his connections to Israeli lobbyists a personal donation of £50,000 from Sir Trevor Chin who has made donations to many leading Labour figures in the past including Tony Blair and Tom Watson!
https://www.thecanary.co/exclusive/2020/04/17/keir-starmer-received-50000-donation-from-pro-israel-lobbyist-in-leadership-bid/
And this from Starmer himself “I said it loud and clear — and meant it — that I support Zionism without qualification.”
https://www.timesofisrael.com/keir-starmer-elected-uk-labour-chief-apologizes-to-jews-for-party-anti-semitism/
BritNat Labour is the UK Establishments B-Team and they are being rehabilitated in the public consciousness via the BBC/MSM in preparation to replace the Tories, lest real change occurs which threatens their place at the top of the greasy pole!
Note the constant media attacks on Labour have stopped now Corbyn has been binned and a self confessed Zionist (link above) Neo-Con has been installed as Leader (Imagine the media frenzy if Corbyn had hit a cyclist while driving a car)!
Excellent post JWT.
Am I correct in thinking/ believing that the execrable Starmer also managed to conceal the source of his funding until after the leadership voting took place?
Perhaps I’ve become cynical (…….) but think that the notion of “staying in the party to fight” put forward by too many members is sheer self delusion. If you “fight” displays any sort of principle you’ll be chucked out by a kangaroo court on a trumped up charge, & in any case your continued membership will inevitably be seen as endorsement of the great leader.
The lesser of two evils is still evil, just look at the pantomime of corruption going on in the US right now, that is what we are heading for. The US has always been a bipartisan project with the occasional role swap. So is the UK. Labour voters need to leave the establishment party that it has become and set up a real democratic workers party, the country is screaming for it and by god we’re going to need it after brexit more than ever.
Staying in the party for a fight.
The Labour Party has been burdoned with a constitution that lends itself to plotting since its inception by an allaince of seperate organisations.
There is no longer a Labour Party it might well just rebrand itself as Social Democrat, Wishywashy, or whatever. Forget it.
I have also looked at the EHRC report and I am astounded at how lacking in substance it is. I then looked at the people who make up the Commission and am unsurprised from their mainly capitalist backgrounds that they can represent something so thin and which I am sure would have difficulty in standing up before a court of law. I have always supported equality and its advancement through legislation but if this is all the EHRC can produce then it is ripe for abolition and something better put in place. It needs to get its priorities right. There is a lot more racism going on than anti-semitism, which belongs in the main as it always has been to the british imperialists and brexiteering, xenophopbic right wings of society, and who along with the Israel “lobby” must at this moment be aflame with schadenfreude.
There’s a hierarchy of permitted antisemitism depending on whether the individual is otherwise neutral or supportive of the Israeli govt’s current objectives. The way Trump’s casual antisemitism has been excused proves this.
Boris Johnson depicted Jews as controlling the media and being able to “fiddle” elections in a little-known 2004 novel written while he was a Tory MP, but compare this to the publicity Corbyn’s received around that mural he supposedly’liked’ in 2012, a mural in which just two of the six characters depicted were Jewish. And even this story has been misrepresented because he was actually being supportive of the American artist’s plea for the work not to be destroyed.
The EHRC is not what it seems; and is certainly not impartial.
Chris Williamson has made a short and very revealing video about it, available on his Twitter feed.
Actually there is a huge amount of regional racism amongst London lefties. London absolutely hates the English regions, treats white english heterosexual men with complete contempt. Oh, they have their schticks about wimmin, Jews, Muslims, gays, and the like. But when it comes to their fellow Caucasian brethren, they are worse than anyone going. But because they do it in complex ways, not calling them paki c**ts or the like, people seem to think it’s OK. It’s not….
Has a single scribbler in the MSM defended Jeremy Corbyn? They seem to be competing with each other to demonstrate who can kick him the hardest when he’s down, falling over themselves to paint his suspension as a marvellous and inevitable event, and eagerly demonstrating to their babyburning Z–n-zi masters – whom they would never dare irritate, let alone annoy – that ever since they left school they were in the front line telling Corbyn to stop supporting the Palestinians – oops, I mean to “stop being anti-Semitic”.
A single two-word phrase uttered by Jeremy Corbyn, Ken Livingstone, or any other leading figure on the Labour left could have changed how this was going to develop several years ago. That phrase is “J–ish racism“. Omitting to say those words is a cop-out. But nobody ever kept their job on a mainstream British newspaper by writing this phrase. The subs would of course redact them out and report the transgression, with the ineluctable effect of “bye bye, career”.
Let’s remember what the 2019 Labour manifesto promised, namely
1. The immediate recognition of the state of Palestine.
2. An immediate suspension of the sale of weapons to I–a-l “used in violation of the human rights of Palestinian civilians”.
3. Accountability for breaches of human rights and international law, such as the illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip. (This would include prosecution of I–a-lis for war crimes and crimes against humanity.)
THAT is why J–ish fascists destroyed the most leftwing Labour party for nearly 40 years.
Ironically, N_, establishment attacks on Corbyn are pretty much a mirror of your regular attacks on supporters of Scottish independence on this site.
All you need to do is go through them and exchange “anti-semite” for “fascist” and you’re pretty much there…
is it possible to start a new political party in the uk?? i live in canada, but by the sounds of it, this is what is needed… get corbyn as one of the leaders or advisers to the new party..
the new working class party… call it something like that, or something to reflect its roots… i know it is a lot of work to do this.. but it would be worth it in the long run…
George Galloway is trying to start a Workers’ Party.
Unfortunately, George Galloway repels as many people as he attracts, if not more!
His Workers Party also need to get a quick lesson on Macroeconomics – their campaign for a “Corona Tax” on the wealthy to fund extra public spending, for example, is economically illiterate dog whistling – taxes don’t fund spending in the U.K., and Galloway is channelling Thatcher in promulgating the lie that they do.
Hi James it’s been tried even by the anti Corbyn people in the last election but it doesn’t work because 99% of people just tick “labour” or “conservative” depending on how they were brought up
Not so true in 2019, was it? Look at all those working class people who voted Conservative after decades of voting Labour. Same happened in Scotland 10 years before when Labour diehards all switched to the SNP.
There was never a better time to break the mould, confidence in both main parties is terminally gone.
Yes you can start another political party. The problem is the first past the post system of deciding the winner. Few will vote for your new party because they expect it to lose. Therefore creating a self fulfilling prophecy. The only way to succeed is to somehow catch a surge in public opinion. As the media is almost entirely right wing or establishment there is little chance for a left wing party.
Scottish independence would be a catalyst for democratic change in England. They’d have to take the English regions seriously, or run the risk of new independence movements starting up. Expect all manner of dirty tricks to thwart independence. If the SNP do win convincingly next year and Johnson concedes an S.30 for another referendum, they should bring in international observers & make people vote in person – no 80% ‘No’ postal vote shenanigans.
A Labour govt would barely be viable without Scotland it’d turbocharge calls for a proportionate system.
“As the media is almost entirely right wing or establishment there is little chance for a left wing party.”
You have nailed it right there and combined with facebook/twitter/google censorship and inability to gather due to COVID19 restrictions the chances of a breakthrough are approximately nil
A new Labour party would be steadfasly bombarded with questions about anti semitism, and nothing else. The Bbc would make it impossible to get much publicity for any policys discussed or adppted.
The same charade would drag them through the mud to give the 0.03% of Keirs leftover party the attention they crave for supporting the Zionist inhumanities in Palestine.
But a new party, with no animosities towards the misguided PLP, but without letting them join unless they signed up to represent all factions within, not pander to selfserving policies and or the foreign policies of a rogue state, or its actors, a country without declared borders, signing up to work with the stated foreign policy aims of this country.
We are where we are, about to leave the transition period of Brexit, having already exited the EU, due entirely to the existence, campaigning, and Tory fear of a political party that never had more than one MP, and whose leader couldn’t even win a parliamentary seat!
The power of extra-parliamentary politics should not be underestimated.
The mistake would be to consider the MSM as any route whatever to gaining popularity. First off, the young of today simply don’t buy newspapers any more. They use alt-media online.
You need to use digital viral marketing strategies, avoiding Twitter and Facebook. Simple txt messaging strategies guiding people to party websites.
You need to target those who simply ignore the MSM nowadays.
James, as many others have pointed out, it is of course possible to form a new political party. But it is naive in the extreme to believe that Westminster parliamentary elections will achieve anything. The civil service, the court’s, the City, the military and the security services will not permit change that they don’t agree with. So the rich will get richer off the backs of the poor who will face starvation. Until the point where the cost of action is zero. Then the proverbial brown stuff will hit the fan.
That moment will arrive much quicker than a lot suspect, post brexit with on going covid restrictions and 5 million on the dole the brown stuff will be coursing through the streets. Its been a long time coming but capitalism has had its day and even now is in the process of collapse, the city, the security forces and the establishment as a whole have been preparing for it since 2008, they can’t even take the war option as the west would lose convincingly against either the Russians or the Chinese so the only remaining option is prevent revolution by tightening the screws. Starmer is part of it. The fragmentation of the UK would heavily undermine this but I think Scotland is in fine Westminster hands with Sturgeon. There will be no vote until they are sure it will lose.
Keir Starmer received £50,000 donation from pro-Israel lobbyist in leadership bid.
https://www.thecanary.co/exclusive/2020/04/17/keir-starmer-received-50000-donation-from-pro-israel-lobbyist-in-leadership-bid/
There’s no doubt about it, millionaire Knight of the Realm Starmer, will attempt to rid the party of any left leaning Palestinian support, whilst also knocking socialism in the party on the head in the process. The result will be a red and a blue party both diametrically opposed outwardly for the eyes of the public, but in reality both will sing from the same hymn sheet within. Though both will try to out do each other on who can accommodate Israeli interests the most.
International law guarantees Palestinians the right to resist, against the illegal occupying military apartheid forces of Israel, as more and more UK politicians take up the offer of an all expenses paid trip to Israel, where they are, shall we say persuaded to look out for Israeli interests over those of the oppressed Palestinian people, when they return to the HoC.
Corbyn on the other hand saw what was happening, and pushed back against it, the result the demonisation of him and the Labour party, then a relentless character assassination by the pro-Israeli media in the UK, had to take place, to stop Corbyn becoming PM and rejecting the interests of Israel over not just that of the Palestinians, but that of the people of the UK. Now Starmer means to finish the job, the expulsion of Corbyn and the witch hunt for socialist MP’s sympathetic to the Palestinians unjust suffering within the Labour party will go on.
Great statement: Andrew Feinstein You tube. http://www. https://youtu.be/VMc_0gaeoBU
Yes indeed. I watched brave, honest Andrew’s interview on Channel 4 News this evening.
Naturally, no such commentator has appeared on the BBC state propaganda machine – and indeed I am watching the odious Kirsty (Salmond is Guilty despite the verdict) Wark prattling along with that agenda on Newsnight.
This was obviously pre-arranged – and a trap was set for Corbyn -which as an honest, guileless, holy fool he walked right into it.
The British Establishment are going for broke – eliminating any possible constitutional opposition within the system.
Anyone who has ever believed that there is a (UK) Parliamentary route to socialism – or even mild, limp-wristed wishy washy liberalism, is sadly deluded.
The gloves are coming off – the ducks are being lined up for the shoot. Fascism is accelerating. No opposition will be tolerated.
Time well past for Scotland to escape.
That channel four piece. Feinstein interview at the end https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN2jxTfr2JI
“The media and political elite have attained their aim; there is no longer any point in voting in Westminster elections. A right wing government supporting the neo-con status quo and the ever tightening security state is now firmly guaranteed and cannot be influenced by a Westminster election.”
Absolutely unvarnished truth. It’s time for the ship to desert the sinking rats.
Even if the Tories are re elected by their own members, only, they and the bbc would claim to have the support of the whole country.
The only option would be a new party. But the electoral commission is now privatised and its aims would always be their own survival first, hence a nw party might face hurdles set up to please the o.o3%.
The terrible thing is, that these manifestly false claims of anti-semitism encourage and enablethe rise of actual antisemitism, by bringing claims and claimers of real antisemitism into disrepute. The cynicism is despicable.
Naturally “Islington’s Enver Hodgea” Margaret Hodges was wheeled on Newsnight by odious Kirsty Wark out to speak calumny against Jeremy Corbyn.
There is much I could say about the disgusting Hodges, but I could not do better than this by Matthew Norman of the Independent -which has the merit, unlike having been legalled by that newspaper, will not leave either myself or Craig Murray, being sued by the multimillionaire socialist Ms Hodges.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/past-hers-margaret-hodge-might-show-bit-more-humility-10098871.html
“As leader of Islington Council, a post she held from 1982-92, Hodge was aware of previous, horrendous child sex abuse in the care homes for which she was responsible, and did nothing about it. This was not an either/or. She was incompetent, completely and utterly incompetent, and she knew about it.
She was guilty of rather more than a casual failure of oversight. She dismissed the detailed, accurate reporting of the London Evening Standard – whose editor, Stewart Steven, battled with typical ferocity to hold her to account – as “a sensationalist piece of gutter journalism”. Not content with shutting her eyes to his front pages, our latter-day champion of the whistleblower closed her ears to the courageous whistle-blowing of a social worker, Liz Davies. In an open letter to the BBC after it investigated a range of monstrous abuse (child prostitution, torture, alleged murders), Hodge libelled one of its victims as “seriously disturbed”.
Years later, in 2003, she was forced to pay Demetrius Panton £10,000 in damages for that, though understandably he was not assuaged by her apology. In a prescient echo of her words to Fairhead on Monday, he called on Hodge to resign. By then, her friend and neighbour Mr Tony Blair had seen fit to promote her to – what else? – minister for children.
Her transformation from Islington’s Enver Hodgea (the Red Flag was raised over the town hall and a bust of Lenin imported on her first day as council leader) to relentlessly on-message New Labour parrot was complete. Blair gave her his unconditional support, and unlike the generic football club chairman, he meant it. She did not resign.”
When appointed head of Royal Holloway University Hodges asked for a salary of £20,000 for the previously unpaid post, and once appointed tried to pass rules keeping teaching staff from any influence on. The governance of Royal Holloway.
If only the crooks, misnamed MPs, had your integrity.
Starmer’s removal of the party whip from Jeremy Corbyn for ”antisemitism” is scandalous, unjustified and unforgivable. It is also an unmistakable indicator of the extent to which the Israel Lobby has penetrated English politics, and demonstrates its ultimate success in conflating anti-Zionism and support of Palestinian rights with the bogus slur of antisemitism. Bear in mind that the occupation of Palestinian territory and human rights violations by the Israeli State are illegal under international law. [To shield a terrorist state by punishing criticism of it is , frankly, frightening for the future of morality and free speech in the UK. Mass resignation from the Labour Party is the least that is now required.
Mr Murray. I have re-blogged your excellent article here : https://mpbondblog.wordpress.com/
I’m no fan of Corbyn, to be sure. He’s just a professional agitator and reminds me of those student union “Socialist Worker” idiots who had little to do with either socialism or work.
But the accusation that Corbyn is an anti-Semite is clearly ridiculous.
Support for Palestinian rights not to be turned out of their houses and farms and caged in enclaves can’t necessarily be anti-Semitic.
Any real anti-Semitism in the Labour Party (and there were some cases documented in the report that were actually quite shocking), I’m absolutely sure Corbyn would be first in line with anti-discrimination, affirmative action, protests and proposals in support of anybody in the slightest oppressed because of their religious or cultural identity.
There is a very simple fact which, once accepted, makes thinking much easier and options much clearer.
Nobody to the left of Tony Blair will ever again be allowed to become Prime Minister of the UK.
Chris Williamson is right. The Labour Party he gave his life to, is no different to the Tories. The outrage people express at Jeremy’s suspension should be directed at the Labour MP’s who betrayed who are in the pockets of the Security state.
The Israel Lobby will be celebrating
“there is no longer any point in voting in Westminster elections.”
I disagree. If you can find someone you agree with enough to vote for you should vote for them even if they are a no hoper because it signals opposition and it encourages the candidate and their supporters to continue their work. Not voting signals acceptance of the status quo.
I agree that one should vote and think your advice sound but I don’t expect my vote to change or influence any pre ordained result. I have no doubt at all that sufficient results were rigged in the December 2019 General Election and firmly believe that this will become the norm.
Change to the Tory B Team/Labour for Likud will be allowed when the people who decide these things fear that public unrest will follow another term of the A Team.
There is not a single office or function of the UK state that is not comprehensively corrupted, not the courts, the CPS, the police, the military, local government and the security services.
I may register my non acceptance of the status quo but it alone won’t change it.