We should all congratulate Laura Murray on her emphatic victory against the Daily Telegraph and the dreadful apartheid Israel stooge Lord Ian Austin, who I am happy to say have been forced to pay substantial damages. (Update: I originally stated Laura had won her libel case – this was incorrect as the libelers caved in before the case got to court).
As a favour to the Daily Telegraph, I reproduce their apology so people can see it, as it is hidden behind their paywall.
Apart from justice for Ms Murray, the court judgement is important because it affirms a key finding of the suppressed internal report on anti-semitism in the Labour Party, the finding that Corbyn and the staff he brought in were actively trying to improve the party’s handling of anti-semitism complaints, and were certainly not the source of anti-semitism themselves. The analysis I wrote of that 850 page report is to this day the article on this blog with the largest direct UK audience on this site, of well over a million.
It must not be forgotten that Keir Starmer suppressed that report, and it remains suppressed to this day, as he has continued to use false allegations of anti-semitism as his primary weapon to expel non-Blairites from the party. It must also not be forgotten that the report contained compelling, documentary evidence that the Blairite staff at Labour HQ were actively working for a Tory victory over Corbyn in the general elections.
Here is an extract from my article on the report:
The headlines of course have been grabbed by the report’s stunning exposure of the fact that Labour HQ was staffed by right wingers so vehemently anti-Corbyn that they actively wanted the Conservatives to win elections. I think it is important to understand just how right wing they really are. Senior members of staff were messaging each other opposing any increase in corporation tax and opposing re-nationalisation of the railways as “Trot” policies.
The case of the horrible and very right wing John McTernan is instructive. McTernan had taken to writing articles in the Daily Telegraph praising the Tories and attacking Labour, but the Governance and Legal Unit of Party HQ refused to take action against him. They finally took action when he wrote an article urging the Tories to “crush the rail unions” for hampering the operations of private railway companies; but the action taken was to suspend a member who called McTernan out on his Tory support. p.140
From the report:
John McTernan, meanwhile, formerly involved in New Labour and a delegate to 2016 party conference, was repeatedly reported from 25 July onwards for abusive language on Twitter and elsewhere, including describing Labour MPs who nominated Corbyn as “morons”; tweeting twice that Corbyn was a “traitor”; describing “Corbynistas” as racist; telling an SNP MP that he should “Come down to Peckham and try saying that, mate”; calling Corbyn a “Putin-hugging, terrorist-loving, Trident-hater”; and writing in the Daily Telegraph that all of Corbyn’s supporters were “online trolls”.368
No action was taken, and McTernan received the staff decision “No action – removed at referral”. On 18 August, however, Dan Hogan did report a member of McTernan’s CLP, Omar Baggili, who – in response to an article by McTernan in “The Telegraph” urging the Conservative government to “crush the rail unions once and for all” – tweeted at him “seriously John why haven’t you got yourself a Tory membership card. They’re anti unions & pro privatisation like you.”369 Baggili was suspended for “abuse”.
This is by no means an isolated example. One of my favourites is the case of Andy Bigham (pp538-45), who initially came to the attention of the Governance and Legal Unit for suggesting Corbyn was a traitor and Diane Abbot should be “locked in a box”. This was considered insufficient for action to be taken against him, and incredibly this stance was still maintained even when he subsequently posted that he had voted Conservative, urged others to vote Conservative and became the administrator of a Conservative Party Facebook Group.
Meanwhile left wingers were being thrown out of the party for having advocated a Green vote years before they joined, or for calling MPs who supported the Iraq war “warmonger”. The report makes an overwhelming case that the Governance and Legal Unit of the Labour Party failed to take action on accusations of anti-semitism because it was devoting all of its energies to a factional effort to remove Corbyn supporters from the party.
These right wing staff were hoping for Labour electoral defeats in order to get rid of Corbyn. Senior Labour staff were actually hoping Labour would lose its seat in the Manchester Gorton by-election.
27/02/2017, 16:53 – Patrick Heneghan: Just had discussion at strategy meeting We will meet Steve and Andy next Monday – we are looking at all 3 in May but select in Gorton within 4 weeks Katy will speak to you/Iain
27/02/2017, 16:53 – Patrick Heneghan: From karie
27/02/2017, 16:54 – Patrick Heneghan: They didn’t include us in the discussion.
27/02/2017, 16:54 – Patrick Heneghan: Well let’s hope the lib dems can do it….113It has long been known that there was tension between Corbyn and Labour HQ staff over allocation of resources to key marginals in the 2017 general election. What I had not known prior to this report is that HQ staff set up another organisation (p.92), based in another building, to divert party funds and secretly channel them to the campaigns of their favoured right wing MPs. On p.103 is detailed the horror expressed by Labour Party HQ staff at the Labour Party’s good performance in the 2017 election. People were “sickened” by the exit poll showing the Tories losing their majority.
I shall raise a glass to Laura Murray this evening. I am not sure how many good people have remained inside Starmer’s neo-con Labour Party, but I hope they have been heartened to the fight.
With grateful thanks to those who donated or subscribed to make this reporting possible. This article, as with all the content of my blog, is entirely free to reproduce and publish, including in translation.
Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with the every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.
Choose subscription amount from dropdown box:
Paypal address for one-off donations: [email protected]
Alternatively by bank transfer or standing order:
Account name
MURRAY CJ
Account number 3 2 1 5 0 9 6 2
Sort code 6 0 – 4 0 – 0 5
IBAN GB98NWBK60400532150962
BIC NWBKGB2L
Bank address Natwest, PO Box 414, 38 Strand, London, WC2H 5JB
Bitcoin: bc1q3sdm60rshynxtvfnkhhqjn83vk3e3nyw78cjx9
Ethereum/ERC-20: 0x764a6054783e86C321Cb8208442477d24834861a
Subscriptions are still preferred to donations as I can’t run the blog without some certainty of future income, but I understand why some people prefer not to commit to that.
I dislike anti-semitism. I also dislike the attempt to portray all criticism of the policies of Israeli governments as anti-semitic.
I can see that many anti-semites will presumably be critical of Israel but it’s an elementary logical point that criticism of Israel does not prove anti-semitism.
Declaration of interest: my policy on Israel/Palestine; I have no policy on Israel/Palestine.
dearieme,
” Declaration of interest: my policy on Israel/Palestine; I have no policy on Israel/Palestine”
Not even that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and the building of settlements on Palestinian land should end?
Courtenay.. Not only should the occupation end, they are grave war crimes under article 49 paragraph 6 of the 1949 Geneva convention, It is a grave war crime for an occupying state to transfer its own citizens into occupied territory. There is also the Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and B’tselem reports accusing Israel of Apartheid, not forgetting the UN report headed by Richard Falk.
Harry Law,
Your name is telling when you say this:-
” Not only should the occupation end, they are grave war crimes under article 49 paragraph 6 of the 1949 Geneva convention, It is a grave war crime for an occupying state to transfer its own citizens into occupied territory. There is also the Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and B’tselem reports accusing Israel of Apartheid, not forgetting the UN report headed by Richard Falk.”
Interesting. I am a lawyer of over forty years active experience. I just got off the phone with a US lawyer and by mistake thought of another case with a Canadian counterpart. Well into the conversation she was gracious and said that she well understood post Covid-19 work overload. We then worked out a viable cross-jurisdictional strategy.
So – are you a lawyer – Harry Law?
All you say above I agree with – but – one law for them and another for ‘us’.
Who in a million years will ever bring Bush Jr. or PM Tony Blair to book for crimes against humanity.
But who the ‘F…’ really cares about the manifest hypocrisy?
Certainly no-one on the US grifter circuit that prints money, steals billions, murders millions and lies to billions.
> I have no policy on Israel/Palestine.
I guess it’s just as well that, not being a political party nor a nation-state, your personal “policy” isn’t very important.
Jimmeh
“I guess it’s just as well that, not being a political party nor a nation-state, your personal “policy” isn’t very important.”
But aren’t political parties and a nation-state made up of people with views – which translate ultimately into policy?
i dont think the views of the majority are translated ultimately into policy.
pretzelattack,
Yes – the qualifier ‘hopefully’ would have to be added.
You are absolutely correct – should we reflect on the 2003 protests against the war in Iraq and Blair’s response to same.
Thank you, Craig. Finally some good news at last!
All the way through Corbyn’s time as leader Labour MPs like Austin, John Woodcock and John Mann were represented by the Guardian, BBC, C4 News etc as voicing and embodying the values of the respectable liberal left. These were true Labour standing up to the racist corbyn and the hordes of antisemitic members, men who represented everything noble and good about Britain.
Strange then isn’t it that there has never been a peep from the entire liberal commentariat when these figures were all knighted by a very openly racist Tory government?
Ever feel like you’re living in the most cynical, disgusting country on the planet, with the most dishonest and hypocritical media and politics?
Sorry to be pedantic, but rather than being knighted, Lords Austin, Woodcock and Mann* were in fact ennobled to the barony – which handily for them means that, rather than having to be chivalrous, they can make £323 tax-free a day just for sitting in The House of Lords for a while, before or after hitting the subsidised Westmonster bars.
* Despite being raised in Pudsey, going to grammar school (on a likely state-funded scholarship) in Bradford, going to university (on a full grant) in Manchester, becoming a councillor in Lambeth and then the MP for Bassetlaw in Nottinghamshire, John Mann, for some reason, chose his lordly territorial designation to be Holbeck in the City of Leeds – a place that has a bit of a reputation, if you know what I mean.
House of Lords rather yes, thanks. Enobled for services to the Tory Party. No comment from any of their erstwhile boosters in the liberal media. You really could not make this country up.
Thanks for your reply, Anthony. I have a correction to make to my previous comment: After an illustrious nine-year career on the opposition back-benches, at the ripe old age of 42, John Woodcock of course became Lord Walney, not Lord Woodcock as stated. Apologies for any confusion caused.
Apparently the ‘managed approach’ in Holbeck was discontinued last year after a wide divergence between official academic evaluations and on-the-ground feedback from those concerned….
Thanks for your reply Rhys. John Mann became Lord Mann of Holbeck in 2019, a few months before the officially tolerated managed area was suspended during the pandemic. I’m aware that it’s now closed for business permanently after the council finally took on board residents’ concerns, though you’d have to be a fool not to realise that it still continues unofficially – that light & dark won’t pay for itself you know.
I doubt whether you’d find Lord Austin of Dudley indulging in anything like that. He seems to have other interests:
https://www.reddit.com/r/196/comments/n0jcny/heres_a_tweet_of_disgraced_former_mp_ian_austin/
Out of curiosity: can a full time baron afford a dwelling in London, or he would have some hellishly long commute, leaving him a little for the drinks, however subsidized ( £323 for day when Lords are in session may be below “middle class”).
In the words of a poet “And at a salary! A Pooh-Bah paid for his services! I a salaried minion! But I do it! it revolts me, but I do it!”
I do feel I’might living in the most disgusting hypocritcal corrupt country in the world with an MSM that would shame any country that had a modicum of decency.
I think the U.S. is giving you a good run in that contest.
I had the same feeling, how could the Labour Party, or rather part of it and it’s salaried staff, have been allowed to actually work against their party? But they did and so far they seem to have got away with it, now Britain has Her Majesty’s government and “Her Majesty’s Government N°2 but Without Power”. HMGBWP.
This is highly convenient in the present world situation, no chance at all of an alternative voice in Parliament, unless the nationalist parties have anything dissident to say? I haven’t heard anything even though Scotland with it’s nuclear missile installations would clearly be a prime target in the case of nuclear war.
It disgusts me what Labour has become. When Corbyn led them I had hope for the party and would have liked to have seen them in government. I’m no longer a Labour voter unfortunately, they moved away from me and many others and now I vote for SNP and Alba (for a super majority). Currently Labour is Labour only due to the name. Whilst there is an alternative in Scotland I feel for my friends and family in England who can only continue to vote Labour no matter what they do. If another party like SNP existed in England I think we could see the end of Labour (which genuinely would be sad). Starmer’s view is ‘who else are they going to vote for?’. But they’ve already shown that they are willing to vote for other parties. I can only hope he is not leading them in the next GE.
I actually think that the only hope left is to vote for a local Independent who actually represents electors and isn’t another PPE graduate on the gravy train.
A good one. BTW, the apology is not hidden behind a paywall. Anyone can read all of it without paying.
I can’t. When I click on the above link I get a paywall. Might be, for example, that you can read x articles a month before getting blocked.
craig – I tend to clear my `cookies’ every day. With The Telegraph, if you don’t have too many cookies stored and if you press the `esc’ button, just after the article has begun to load, this can disable the script that puts up the paywall – and then you can read the article.
I don’t do this (at least not very often) because I am an honest man. I also don’t subscribe to the Daily Telegraph, because I tend to find it offensive right wing rubbish, but I tried it on the Laura Murray article that you linked to – and it worked.
Press ‘escape’ button (on a mac) as the article loads…
Craig, as far as I am aware, the Telegraph doesn’t offer any free articles, nor does it offer a “registration” option (i.e., one that allows you see a specified number of articles in a given period). It might possibly make a few articles free to everybody when it considers spreading the word more important than money, but I’m not aware of any such articles.
I can see the apology without having to go through a paywall, and I have certainly never paid a subscription to read the Telegraph.
My guess is that Laura Murray’s lawyers have forced the Telegraph to publish the apology outside the paywall. In that case, it might work if you try again?
I don’t know if the Telegraph still does it, but several years ago you could sign up for a couple of free articles a week, and so I DID, and I’m still able to check out articles when I want to – ie check out what lies and falsehoods they’re dissembling about whatever!
Immediately I posted my above comment, it reminded me of an article I came across recently (linked to in an article about Jeremy Corbyn) in The Spectator, which if he’s never seen it, I think Craig would find rather interesting, published on March 16th, 2018:
‘Jeremy Corbyn is right about Russia’
But really, in this as in so much else the question is, cui bono? Who gains from this blatant attempted murder? It’s by no means certain that the Russian state gains a great deal…..
Those who do stand to benefit from this attempted murder are opponents of the Russian regime; either organised criminals, Mr Corbyn’s ‘Russia mafia-style groups’ or other states – I dunno, maybe Ukraine? – which gain rather than lose if the Putin regime is even further discredited.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/jeremy-corbyn-is-right-about-russia
There is an addon for firefox and chrome called bypass paywall:
https://github.com/iamadamdev
It doesn’t work for everywhere and you have to give it permissions but it does help and so far regularly maintained and updated.
Paywalls usually allow a small number of free visits before asking you to subscribe and blocking further access. They are usually based on cookies. If you know how your web browser works you can delete the offending cookie and restore access, at least until you exceed the number of pages is visited once more.
Using an Incognito window can also work.
However, I don’t think the Telegraph offers any free page views
Yep. Also depends on which browser is used, and privacy settings (i.e. whether blocking pop-ups automatically).
Useful to have a couple of browsers and have one set to clear everything upon exit. A few sites place cookies allowing so many articles to be viewed before restricting. As is, or was the case with the FT, New Statesman and Spectator iirc.
As for the UK parties, no one could look at the people in power here and claim we a a real representative democracy. In the US they call it the ‘uniparty problem’ whereby both sides agree on everything, and that’s exactly the model they wish to impose here.
There is an extension, Bypass Paywalls, that will take care of it for you.
this’ll get you past paywalls,
https://archive.is/
Go to archive.org, and paste in the URL of the page you want to read. E.g.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220317191157/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2022/03/17/laura-murray-apology/
Craig has posted the entire content of the apology; there’s no need to follow this link. But this is a general solution to the problem of paywalled articles.
We shall also raise a glass to her – and wish for better times. In this country today all that was good is being deconstructed and turned into a caricature of societal evil, in service to the usual power-hungry psychopaths. Take any of their pronouncements and stick the word NOT in front of them, and you will find yourself much closer to the truth of the matter. We are now in upside-down-land, where the Assanges and Murrays are to be detained and vilified and Justice is blind only to save her blushes. We must celebrate our victories!
I see from the registrar of members interests (https://members.parliament.uk/member/1511/registeredinterests) that Ian Austin is the Chair of the campaign again extremism. Am I alone in finding it odd that someone with such a job would author an article accusing someone of being an anti-Jewish racist and of vile anti-Semitism without any evidence to back it up? Is that the right person for such a job? Should he not pack it in?
Pete they appointed him precisely because he is that dishonest.
“Am I alone in finding it odd..”?
You would certainly think so if you follow the man’s antics and appointments through the lens of political correspondents / pundits. Not one of them thinks there is anything odd about it all. In fact nothing could be more normal, responsible and admirable.
I have said to Craig on twitter that he has got this wrong – the court case in question is the Riley vs Murray libel case that Riley won last year. Murray has not won a libel case against the Telegraph and Austin – the apology is presumably to avoid a case and the Telegraph conceded probably because of the gross language used as generally it is a matter of honest opinion to consider someone an antisemite based on reasonable belief.
https://www.5rb.com/news/rachel-riley-wins-libel-action-against-laura-murray/
To which court, then, is the Telegraph referring when it states in its apology, “the court heard in unchallenged evidence…”?
The court referred to is the Riley vs Murray case. It’s confusing but if you think about it it is vanishingly unlikely that any court hearings we didn’t know about happened in the few weeks of the new year. They usually take a year or more and there is an initial hearing on meanings that would then allow a case to proceed if established. This isn’t to say that Murray can’t have her day in court but the settlement makes this very unlikely.
Here’s a new piece on the Riley vs Murray judgement that shows what a crock it is and how it’s fuelled rubbish like Austin’s article.
https://www.truthdefence.org/post/mischievous-and-provocative-the-riley-murray-libel-judgment-and-the-threat-to-democratic-speech
The apology refers to an article dated 23rd December 2021. Did a court sit between Xmas and the New Year?
Hi Craig,
Do you agree with me the destruction of the Labour Party started during that failed coup d’état when Winston Churchill jnr and a number of other Tory MPs were forced to resign, along with a large number of senior military officers in 1974.
Labour currently is a cesspool. I cannot understand why people continue to stay members of such an organisation. Everything the evil Starmer and Riley’s say and do is being implicitely condoned by the people who remain members.
Recently, as I remember, people like John McDonnell and Diane Abbott signed a petition from the Stop the War Coalition. Starmer threatened them and they removed their signatures. WTF. Labour membership is obviously more important than beliefs.
It’s a hijacked party, but some of the passengers remain unaware, or simply in denial (incl. unions).
There really is no point for the Labour party to even exist in its current political form. Nor much reason for the Lib Dems either. What do either add to the UK’s political discourse by constantly reminding everyone they’re in lockstep on the major issues?
“ There really is no point for the Labour party to even exist in its current political form.”
Oh, but there very much is.
The Labour Party now, and arguably for most of its history, serves a very important purpose: that of preventing socialism from ever being implemented in the U.K.
Once this is understood, everything it does makes perfect sense.
Well, of course there’s that. 🙂
A short while back, I stated a belief Corbyn wouldn’t have lasted long as PM due to opposition from within the PLP using anything to trigger a leadership coup.
If the UK’s high Covid death rate hadn’t already brought him down, any decision by a PM Corbyn NOT to supply Ukraine with sophisticated anti-tank/aircraft weapons surely would have.
Near total unity in support in our parliament for arming Ukraine, and the crazy thing is, we and the rest of the EU are supplying all this stuff to gawd knows who eg. many mercenaries etc, to use or possibly sell to terrorists? And all politicians will profess shock/surprise if that stuff ends up being used in Western Europe.
Just read ‘How Yugoslavia’s Military-Grade Weapons Haunt Western Europe’ (2020) …it explains how that stuff ended up in ‘the hands of a shadowy network of arms traders tied to organized crime.’
Will post-war Ukraine be better?
Reported tonight that the US is sending a further..
800 Stinger anti-aircraft systems
2,000 of the now famously deadly Javelin rockets
100 “tactical” drones
20 million rounds of small arms ammunition
25,000 sets of helmets and body armor
Where does this stuff go if the war ends somehow messily as seems likely? Seems highly irresponsible dumping sophisticated weaponry in a European country that is likely to be chaotic and largely ungoverned with stuff flowing out across porous open borders.
Good points well made, Goose. Looks like that in ten years’ time, in addition to a common or garden Glock and/or Skorpion machine pistol, your friendly local light & dark purveyor could come equipped with a FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missile.
“The Labour Party now, and arguably for most of its history, serves a very important purpose: that of preventing socialism from ever being implemented in the U.K.”
It is interesting that the only time this country has has a really socialist government was when the majority of the male working class were trained soldiers and there were plenty of arms floating about.
I have a memory of Tony Benn making this very point. The strong Labour movement in the UK meant that it diverted more extreme left movements because the Labour party so dominated left discourse and gave a place for clever leftists to develop a mainstream career.
The current controversy is surely another iteration of the tension between an acceptance of two-party state in a conservative country where Conservatism is dominant. To have any chance of success with this electorate, the left/opposition party must not be radical and must conform with closely argued, detailed, policy which achieves change by stealth and tweakery. The result of closely tracking the right-leaning majority is that progressive policy and radical thinkers are squeezed out of debate.
Unfortunately for this kind of politics, the truth will (eventually) out.
I suppose this political status quo has more or less worked until recently with the Blair/Brown era but the discontent with this ‘analysis’ has fallen apart with the Blair/Brown illegal war in the middle east and Afghanistan, and the monstrous hypocrisy in relation to the Saudi regime. The Ukraine war has simply re-opened these old Labour wounds as only the most craven apologists can condemn Ukraine/Russia/Putin while turning a blind eye to our own wars of aggression or complicity in terror and slaughter as in Yemen.
It is difficult not to see the Palestine/Israeli issue as anything but a gross abuse of power by the superiorly armed Israelis but the wider historical context demands there are scapegoats. I dare ask the question (in this forum) whether, if the power positions were reversed, there would be any jewish Israelis alive.
it appears to me that the consensus two-party politics and the underlying assumptions we have seen for decades is breaking down. It is getting ever more intolerable to hold on to the fiction of the UK as a bastion of reason and informed self-interest.Brexit has revealed many shortcomings.
The gross incompetence of the Johnston regime is one aspect of that breakdown. Brexit is another. The desperation of the Labour party stalwarts like Austin was an attempt to ‘right’ the labour party ship when it lurched to port under the Corbyn experiment.nNo amount of rewarding of the political sycophants such as Austin in order to stifle challenge will hide the growing discontents as food and essentials become unaffordable and the viability of the consumerism that currently sustains our lives crumbles under the weight of chaos it invites.
Any word from Lord Ian on the Azov lot?
As a member of the Labour Party I am well aware of what the party is. I have decided to stay put and campaign against the right wing leadership. The Starmer wing is recycled New Labour and it seems some of you can’t grasp that he isn’t god, he’ll be gone when he’s gone, fear not.
There are some posters here who seem oblivious to the base of support for a socialist/left change. Momentum and Corbyn did not appear by magic, the foundation of suppprt for a left social democratic party has always been a part of the Labour Party and it always will be.
I gave my support to Corbyn, but could quite happily have throttled Momentum.
I can only scorn those who are saying a new party should be formed…..on what basis would such a party exist? It’s pie in the sky to make empty headed rhetoric a substitute for getting stuck in to the right wing of whatever party you inhabit. I’m enjoying taking on this lot in my party…_
IMO.
When you personalize ‘things’ you implicitly undermine them.
Starmer is not Labour; Putin is not Russia; Zelensky is not the Ukraine; Biden is not the USA; Bozo is not the Tories.
The rot is always within the organisations and the people behind the scenes working to achieve their corrupt agendas. Just removing the figurehead won’t change the corruption within.
The danger for Labour and socialism was always the Blairites. Getting rid of Starmer won’t suddenly make Labour palatable. Corbyn was undermined and removed by the conspirators. They still remain.
Remove the figureheads by all means, but the song remains the same !
«When you personalize ‘things’ you implicitly undermine them.
Starmer is not Labour; Putin is not Russia; Zelensky is not the Ukraine; Biden is not the USA; Bozo is not the Tories.»
A very important point that even a vicious but not stupid person like Stalin understood, when some people suggested “reducing” Germany:
Ioseb dze Jughashvili, “The Order #55 of the National Commissar for the Defense”, 23 February 1942.
“Hitlers come and go, but Germany and the German people remain.”
Stevie Boy, exactly. Why do you think that the MSM are so keen for everyone to think of Starmer not Labour; Putin not Russia; Zelensky not the Ukraine; Biden not the USA; Bozo not the Tories?
And no doubt doing yourself a lot of harm by hitting your head against a brick wall. The Labour Party should perhaps be sued for trading under a false name for it is certainly now no longer a party of labour,
“The Labour Party should perhaps be sued for trading under a false name for it is certainly now no longer a party of labour”
Roy Hattersley, trot witchhunter, wrote already in 2001:
«It’s no longer my party
It has been a difficult four years for the Labour Party’s unrepentant social democrats. One by one, the policies which define our philosophy have been rejected by the Prime Minister. […] In fact, success has emboldened the Prime Minister to move further to the Right. […] Now that the Labour Party – at least according to its leader – bases its whole programme on an alien ideology, I, and thousands of likeminded party members, have to decide if our loyalty is to a name or to an idea. […] A Labour government should not be talking about escape routes from poverty and deprivation. By their nature they are only available to a highly-motivated minority. The Labour Party was created to change society in such a way that there is no poverty and deprivation from which to escape. […] The certain knowledge that the Conservative Party would be a worse government than Labour is not enough to sustain what used to be a party of principles. […] At this moment Labour stands for very little that can be identified with social democracy. […] Or, believing that the party does not belong to Tony Blair, we could rise up against the coup d’état which overthrew the legitimate philosophy.»
I disagree with both, a new parliamentary partei will perforce not be democratic and Liarbour is beyond redemption. Stop wasting your time.
So, should we all just vote Tory?
@Bayard, a Liarbour vote is a tory vote and always has been. I only vote in democratic ballot anyway, which means Union elections and the independence referendum.
“@Bayard, a Liarbour vote is a tory vote and always has been.”
I appreciate that, that’s why I asked. If there are no new parties, the only choice is which type of Tory, Red, Blue, Yellow or Tartan, to vote for, if you are going to vote at all.
Make a new party of the left and call it “New Labour”, The name is familiar and many would vote for it if led by Corbyn. Just my opinion.
Nah, that would confuse people too much. It’s got Blair’s cheesy mug plastered all over it and it contrasts with “Old Labour”, which many of the Corbynites would have more affinities with.
“True Labour” has a ring of familiarity and would get the right point across. The converse of that is “False Labour” – which is perfect description of Starmer’s puppetshow of careerist neoliberals.
Self-described “Zionist” Starmer ( https://www.timesofisrael.com/keir-starmer-elected-uk-labour-chief-apologizes-to-jews-for-party-anti-semitism/) popped up from no-where, and before you know it is leading the (New-Tory) party.
There can surely be little doubt that he is an Establishment/Security State plant. Doing a great job for his sponsors.
Since its early infiltration by Establishment shills, the Labour Party has been for the whole of the last century a conspiracy against the working class. That’s how the Brit establishment works.
“The Parliamentary road to socialism” has always been a sick joke. You cannot get socialism through a bourgeoise Parliament.
“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”
Emma Goldman
(not all Jewish people are Zionists)
«Self-described “Zionist” Starmer»
Jeremy Corbyn has also been for decades a sterling zionist:
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/153303/jeremy-corbyn-must-do-more-address-concerns-says-board-deputies-after-meeting
«Mr Corbyn and two advisers held talks with Board of Deputies president Jonathan Arkush and chief executive Gillian Merron this afternoon. Following the meeting Mr Arkush said: “We had a positive and constructive meeting and were pleased that Mr Corbyn gave a very solid commitment to the right of Israel to live within secure and recognised boundaries as part of a two state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. […]“
“The Jewish community is a vibrant and much valued part of our diverse UK society, and I will continue to defend the right to religious freedom and practice, including specifically shechitah and the brit milah, Jewish faith schools, and culturally sensitive youth and social care services.
I have a long interest in campaigning for peace and justice in the Middle East, and reiterated my commitment to a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Israelis and Palestinians both have the right to a state, and to live in peace and security.”
«There can surely be little doubt that he is an Establishment/Security State plant. Doing a great job for his sponsors.»
I reckon it is a bit narrower than that, he seems to be a committed representative of the whig globalist faction of “The Establishment”, the second coming of David Cameron.
«“The Parliamentary road to socialism” has always been a sick joke. You cannot get socialism through a ” Parliament.»
Of course, but the 1950-1970s era of “bourgeoise” social-democratic policy was in the context quite a lot better than the relentless thatcherism of the past 40 years; and there are “bourgeoise” systems where social-democracy is in retreat but still a lot better than thatcherism. They show that the amount of crumbs that fall off the table to the workers is actually negotiable, even if it takes tough action.
Should we just give up and hope that “real soon now” with “one last heave”, the mythical “last general strike”, will bring about the socialist paradise under the legendary leadership of Supreme Commissar Of The People Arthur Scargill? 🙂
> “The Parliamentary road to socialism” has always been a sick joke.
I know how you feel. But let’s not forget the construction of the NHS by the postwar Labour government – that was a mighty achievement.
The problem is the parliamentary party, which is always to the right of the rank and file; and certain of the old trades unions, like the AUEW, who were always more interested in pay differentials than social change.
All political parties are coalitions, especially in a 1PTP system; and coalition politics encourages policuy-,making by focus group, rather than real leadership. Labour tends to make policy by triangulating public opinion, which is usually scared, and so small-c conservative.
I believe that if John McDonnell had been leader, rather than JC, he would have fought harder against the PLP zionists, maybe expelling a bunch of them. JC is a “nice guy” – blood on the carpet isn’t his style. I like to think that McDonnell might have spilled blood to reform the party. I dunno, but my sense is that Corbyn should have fought back vigorously against the anti-semitism claims; instead, he more-or-less rolled over.
I vote, so I don’t follow the “Don’t vote, it only encourages them” line. That means I often end up voting Green, because my stomach isn’t strong enough to vote for one of these Labour candidates. To some people, that means I’ve thrown my vote away; I don’t see it that way, I reckon I’m voting to protect my candidate from losing their deposit.
I’d like a PR system that isn’t party-list (the kind of PR that Labour would favour, if they were to advocate PR). PR would encourage the development of small parties, allowing me to vote for a platform that I actually agreed with. All my adult life I’ve been faced with two parties, neither of which had a platform I wanted to support. I’d favour multi-member PR consituencies – which would either imply a much bigger HoC, which I’m against; or much bigger constituencies, which isn’t great, but hell; most people don’t know who their MP is now.
Party-list would be a nightmare. It would turn local parties into irrelevant talking shops, and make parachute politicians like Mandelson the standard.
McDonnell was a key aide to them not only on the antisemitism nonsense but even more critically on the People’s Vote nonsense. There’s no need to speculate about what he would have done.
“but hell; most people don’t know who their MP is now.”
That’s much more to do with a lack of interest by both MP and constituents than any fault of the system.
With multi-member constituencies,a far greater percentage of the electorate get the MP they voted for. Why would you care who your MP is if they represent a party you detest?
I am a peace loving person always Labour voter (until Iraq but resumed with Corbyn as leader) who hates no single person and likes to see all sides of an issue, but I have to confess to a visceral hatred of the Labour Party and all that it stands for under Starmer for its treatment of Jeremy Corbyn as described in the aforementioned report and Craig’s excellent review of it. I hope Laura Murray’s damages are fitting for the grave injustice caused by the despicable Austin and Telegraph.
If Jeremy Corbyn pursued all his smearers, slanderers and libellers and exacted similar justice from them he would have more than enough resources to start that new party that many are urging him to do so that we can start cleansing the filthy corrupt undemocratic political stables and power holders that goes for governance in this country at present.
Corbyn would have had to be not Corbyn to defend himself against the minnows who attacked him, he would have had to have been someone like George Galloway.
Galloway craves establishment approval far more than Corbyn does, look at all his Tory mates, and his manner would have repelled far more people. You cannot trust or take seriously a politician who in their sixties does a complete 180 in terms of their position in issues like immigration, the EU, vulnerable minority groups etc.
Perhaps true but how would he have defeated the antisemitism slur? Craven subservience or counter-attack?
Thank you very much for this chink of light, Craig. Something to celebrate, at least.
And I would agree with you, Crispa. I feel the same.
For me it’s partly to do with some kind of honesty. Tories oppose us and our values, but at least they don’t pretend about it. Or not in the same way.
Labour’s Right actively hounds socialists and destroys progressive values and ideas from within, while pretending to represent the interests of ordinary people.
It is breathtaking, almost fiendish, in its hypocrisy, to use people’s goodwill against them like that.
In 2019, in what used to be my CLP, Regional HQ diverted election funds from our vaguely leftist candidate in a marginal but winnable seat to the adjacent safe seat where a Blairite had a huge majority already.
They also forbade us to tackle postal voters where we knew the Tories had a lead, in 2017.
I now want Starmer’s Labour to fail. Not something I’m proud of, or comfortable about, as it leaves us nowhere to go. Where now the parliamentary road?
In fact my sense is that we live in a time, yes, as Orwell might say, of universal deceit, but also of tectonic shifts.
Until and unless the people doing real labour in Britain(or England or Scotland or Wales, etc) feel themselves to be aggrieved, and threatened, nothing can or will change.
Clark suggested in Craig’s previous Assange post, only NVDA, Non-violent Direct Action, can succeed.
Who will marshall it? Not me, sadly.
“I now want Starmer’s Labour to fail. Not something I’m proud of, or comfortable about, as it leaves us nowhere to go. Where now the parliamentary road?”
The next election would be a good one to lose for the Labour Party. Not only might a miserable performance from a Starmer-led Party increase the likelihood of unseating him, but whichever party wins will suffer the fall in house prices that comes round every eighteen years and which the electorate don’t forgive unless there’s a war on.
Now is the time for every good man to come to the aid of the Party – by doing nothing.
> I now want Starmer’s Labour to fail.
So do I. I’ve finally come to the view that Labour can’t be fixed, and that something similar to a revolution is needed. Unfortunately revolutions tend to have rather unpredictable consequences, so it’s taken me a very long time to come to this conclusion.
MIO, well, you don’t have to worry much about that – The mad media consuming ‘public’ are so Pavlovianly trained after a couple of generations to basically gnaw their own leg off and sell their kids to indentured slavery and let their grannies die in filthy homes covered in their own shit because they don’t want to spend the ‘inheritance’ on social care – that they are able to jump up and say no to any Labour manifesto no matter how much better it would make their and their families lives.
I have personally seen supposed hardcore leftists who believed the AS bs, as they readily believe Putin is Hitler but don’t realise that there are actual real nazis who are trained and supplied by NATO/SIS, and they are dumb as dumber and dumbest can get.
There is no hope for these suckers – maybe their grandkids will get a bit uppity when they realise how all the benefits earned by the ‘great generation’s sacrifices were set to self destruct after the Trente Glorious decades and the future means that they will return to the early 20th century serfs living their whole lives in the parishes they are assigned – no moving out and about without ‘authorisation’
Les Trente Glorieuses didn’t self-destruct, unless you consider the 1973 oil crisis to have been self-inflicted. Energy underpins all.
@The Master I was there in 1973 but I didn’t know until this year, that the oil barons in the Middle East, put the price up after the US vastly increased the price of its grain exports. (vide Superimperialism by Michael Hudson.)
«I was there in 1973 but I didn’t know until this year, that the oil barons in the Middle East, put the price up after the US vastly increased the price of its grain exports. (vide Superimperialism by Michael Hudson.)»
M. Hudson often gets it more right, but I found on a blog (forgotten which one sorry) a much better explanation:
* Especially as far back as 1973 the ruling elites of Arabia reckoned income and wealth in gold, in part because of traditional attitudes in part because they are well aware that if they reckon the oil price in central bank IOUs, oil importers can print as much as they like and drive down the real price of oil. There is anyhow a remarkable long term relationship (with oscillations) between the price of oil and that of gold, as to the price of a barrel of in ounce of gold (14 barrels per ounce of gold is the long term average).
* When the USA government for various reasons removed the last element of dollar convertibility into gold, the price of gold in dollars rapidly quadrupled, which meant that the price of oil in gold ounces had become a quarter of the previous level. The oil sheiks then quadrupled the oil price in dollars.
The relationship with wheat prices is right, but a consequence:* Some countries reckon costs in bushels of cereals, because the price of cereal staples is very politically sensitive etc.; for example the PRC did government accounts for many years in “jins” of millet, and the japanese used the “koku” of rice.
* When the price of gold in dollars quadrupled, the price of USA cereals in dollars also quadrupled, because in effect this devalued the dollar to a fourth of its previous valuation in international trade.
I don’t know who your “public” is but the working class was impoverished in the 70s. We’ve nothing to inherit. (On a personal note, I disinherited myself but that’s another story.)
Unfortunately DG I reluctantly agree.
The speed with which people (including some of my friends and family) can be made to believe utter BS i(against their own interests) is staggering as it is sobering.
“the speed with which people (including some of my friends and family) can be made to believe utter BS”
I reckon that in large part it is a survival trait: for the servant classes to be nuisances and troublemakers can mean ruin, see how our blogger has been made an example of.
«The speed with which people (including some of my friends and family) can be made to believe utter BS»
“reckon that in large part it is a survival trait”
350 years ago S. Pepys wrote as to that:
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1664/08/07/
“While we were talking came by several poor creatures carried by, by constables, for being at a conventicle. They go like lambs, without any resistance. I would to God they would either conform, or be more wise, and not be catched!”
Also, about many centuries of survival trait selection:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3058
Thomas Hardy “What The Shepherd Saw” (1913)
“He walked once round the trilithon, and next advanced towards the clump concealing the hut, the moonlight shining full upon his face and revealing him to be the Duke. Fear seized upon the shepherd-boy: the Duke was Jove himself to the rural population, whom to offend was starvation, homelessness, and death, and whom to look at was to be mentally scathed and dumbfoundered. He closed the stove, so that not a spark of light appeared, and hastily buried himself in the straw that lay in a corner.”
«Until and unless the people doing real labour in Britain(or England or Scotland or Wales, etc) feel themselves to be aggrieved, and threatened, nothing can or will change.»
A large part of the problem is that the “leftoids” keep repeating the same old slogans etc., while there is a new political factor: a large part of the working class now own property, make huge profits from property, and reckon that their interests are more aligned with those of the Duke of Westminster than those of a warehouse operative.
In particular many people in the higher staff levels of CLPs, regional HQs, and national HQ, are affluent, well-paid oldies who accordingly bought property 20-30-40 years ago and whose number one priority is to protect their subsequent massive property profits, for which they thank Thatcher and Blair.
A commenter on a blog reported: «I raised the problematic policy on my CLP Facebook group. I was stunned by the support for the policy from the countless landlords who were Party members! “I can’t afford to give my tenants a rent holiday” “This is my pension, I’ll go bust” etc etc. Absolutely stunning. I had no idea how many private landlords there were in the Party. Kinda explains a lot…»
Tony Blair himself reported about the famous “Sierra Man”: «I was canvassing in the Midlands on an ordinary suburban estate. I met a man polishing his Ford Sierra, self-employed electrician, Dad always voted Labour. He used to vote Labour, he said, but he bought his own home, he had set up his own business, he was doing quite nicely, so he said I’ve become a Tory.»
Even those who remained in the Labour party and kept being Labour (and trade union) cadres have become in effect tories, at best “one nation” tories, or more often radical liberals, quite satisfied with thatcherite economics, but wanting to be more progressive on identity politics.
Because with increasing prices the large minority of property owners is shrinking, the majority of renters/workers/buyers could theoretically vote a socialdemocratic government into power, but in practice all major parties have thatcherite leaderships and staff and that is the historic role of Starmer, to ensure that her command that “There Is No Alternative” is obeyed.
Those who know their history of the Labour Party (and readers of New Left Review, the Socialist Register et al, where authors such as John Saville, Perry Anderson and Tom Nairn documented its systematic betrayals of the working class from the early-1960s onwards) will see in the anti-Semitism attempted “soft” coup against Jeremy Corbyn (the UK’s version of Russiagate) merely old wine in new bottles, for the “Socialist” Labour Party has not only routinely victimised and expelled real socialists from its ranks over the decades and acted as a “safety valve” against revolutionary Socialism but also tarnished the name of Socialism tout court in much the same way as Stalin and Mao have done Communism.
Those who argue that “change from within” is possible after the example of JC are either blissfully ignorant or calculatedly meretricious. Take your pick.
good comparison “UK’s version of Russiagate”. The Democratic Party plays the same role as the Labour Party.
@ Fred Dagg & Mods,
Yep, that’s the one. I’m happy for my comment to be deleted now.
Many thanks.
A measure of justice for her and a large schadenfreude for me. ;O)
Good for Laura Murray. Good for Justice.
Here here!! Every victory small or large against forces trying to subvert the true functioning of a citizen’s democracy need to be heralded.
Some background regarding the original libel case brought by Rachel Riley against Laura Murray:
In January 2019, in response to an assault on Nick Griffin, Owen Jones tweeted: ‘if you don’t want eggs thrown at you, don’t be a Nazi’. Two months later, Jeremy Corbyn had an egg thrown at him by a Brexiteer. In response, Riley tweeted a screenshot of OJ’s tweet, together with the phrase ‘Good advice’. Murray then tweeted the following: ‘Rachel Riley tweets that Jeremy Corbyn deserves to be violently attacked because he is a Nazi’. Is that not a statement of fact, and if not, can it not be construed as a reasonable belief? The judge didn’t think so, and awarded Riley £10,000 in damages (plus her substantial legal fees I’d imagine) because of the serious harm caused to her reputation.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/dec/20/rachel-riley-damages-over-ex-corbyn-aide-tweet
UK libel laws are a joke. Anyway, Happy Paddy’s Day everyone.
Jones himseld was one of the main pillars on the left of the whole AS “crisis” scam. He still is.
Thanks for your reply, Brian. Largely agree with you regarding OJ. Anyway, for all his many faults, seeing as Nick Griffin is unlikely to have actually been a member of the NSDAP and/or pledged fealty to Adolf Hitler, I wonder if he could extract a few tens of thousands out of him via our esteemed libel courts.
Nice to see the RMT being shown up as worthless scum who take their members’ money and leave them on the dole. Same as unions everywhere.
They blocked the use of the Pentalina Catamarans to replace the broken Calmac ferries. They happily destroyed Scots islanders’ lives for their pathetic union rules. Hell mend them.
The RMT aren’t the ones being shown up. Britain itself is. No other country allows its key infrastructure and utilities to be owned so completely by foreign vultures.
CM -“McTernan had taken to writing articles in the Daily Telegraph praising the Tories and attacking Labour”
Perhaps we shouldn’t be too hard on John McTernan. It was after all McTernan and Jim Murphy who ran the Scottish Labour Party’s 2015 election campaign which led to the loss of 40 seats for Labour in Scotland. The 2015 result then led to the election of Corbyn as leader of the Labour party.
Congratulations to Laura Murray on winning her case. I looked for a report on the BBC web site re this item. Didn’t find one, but did find this https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60778554 (Russians zombified by propaganda – journalist says Russians should stop listening to state broadcaster).
The BBC can’t afford to give a scintilla of credence to the AS “crisis” being a scam perpetrated by bad actors like themselves. If the penny dropped on that one it would undermine their entire zombifying operation.
I am glad that the Tory press is getting what they deserve. Party politics is dead, the public should take the ignorance shown towards it as a cue.
Select local Independent candidates now and break councils/tge Government by shifting to a local direct democracy driven by needs first and delegate certain powers to people who serve centrally and internationally, cause by cause.
If ‘None of the above’ is more than 50% of a vote, elections should re run with new candidates.
(none of the above)
With a super-tight grip on how elections will be run forever -to bias the big two parties only- there has to be a palatable way to make them change the rules in a way they can’t either avoid, or think would ever topple them.
If 10 independents stand for a seat in an election, they split their vote and the incumbent survives, and why would 9 of them stand aside for a clear run by some other narrow-focused little rival they probably don’t agree with either, in the first instance.
I suspect your “none of the above” would be the only way to rally opposition and clear the slate. But you would need two votes, otherwise the little guy wouldn’t get any (cos you voted NOTA).
I think you have to allow the re-run with the highest voted candidates still on the slate, but just with some clever formula like lowest one plus lost-deposits have to drop out.
That way the 50% NOTA could focus on the independent and move away from the negative voting we’ve always done (I’m not voting red / blue no matter what cos the other guy will get in)
Safe spaces are were you will find Unicorns. In case some of you haven’t noticed, the world is not a safe space. So stop trying to make things nice.
Austin was a little creep in my view, I’m sure he would have been one of the kids at school who I would bully or beat up when the chance arose. None of us have empty closets.
Am I pleased that the case went against him and in favour of Laura Murray? You need to ask?……. but what bloody use is it to us now.
The Labour Party is a particular type of party. It’s a ‘broad church’ marriage of convenience, for comrades who hate each other.
All political parties are where like-minded misanthropes meet together for a festival of mutual loathing, what’s not to like about being political…_
My right to silence is a sacred right. I have nothing to say…_
[ ?
? ]
Sir Kneel Starmer is the establishment sweetheart because he was a fully signed up member of the horrific “peoples vote” which would have been an absolute disaster on all levels.
Jeremy Corbyn had to go though, because he is not representative of the population. His policies, beliefs and actions are of the extreme far left.
Wrong. His policies other than the People’s Vote pledge were very popular and still are. Reactionary, selfish pensioners are not representative of the entire population; ever less so with each passing year. No, it was the antidemocratic 2nd Referendum policy that lost Corbyn the election, obvious from the fact all the seats he lost were Brexit seats. So it made zero sense to replace him with an ardent Remainer let alone the person who authored the 2nd Referendum policy.
His policies were very popular. Who with? Only with others on the extreme left, who are thankfully a minority. Also, I would point out that popular isn’t always actually possible in the real world (like free high speed broadband for everyone forever).
Define “extreme left”. Thirty years ago that term referred to street fighting anarchists and leftists who killed people and advocated violent revolution. The Baader Meinhof group for example.
Peruse the BBC and the ostensibly left wing Guardian and you’ll see them refer to middle of the road social democratic views, eg as advocated by Jeremy Corbyn, as “extreme”. In the US the Trump campaign in 2020 put up billboards proclaiming that Joe Biden and Hilary Clinton are “radical Marxists”.
Sorry, but I can’t take seriously anyone who in the 21st century moans about the “extreme left”.
Define extreme left. Peruse the BBC and even they will not come up with any of the nonsense below..
“His policies were very popular. Who with?”
I liked them. They are what used to be mainstream in the 70s.
“Nobody mentioned your dreaded hedge fund managers.”
Perhaps small honest buisnesses would be better off in an economy that was not biased towards hedge fund managers.
Brian C – whilst I agree with you that Corbyn’s policies were extremely popular with the 500,000 or so members he recruited into the Labour Party, the fact is that the electoral population of the UK is closer to 50 million, so that 500,000 represents only 1% or so of the total voting population.
There’s always a great danger that a large active caucus within an organisation thinks that it is representative of the whole electorate, because they spend most of their time together and don’t confront the people who really disagree with them.
The difficulty anyone like Corbyn will have, left or right wing, is that if they refuse to see the USA as our Lord and Master, then the USA’s global trashing machine, along with the Zionist agenda formers, will always organise the muck spreading to try and destroy the legitimate aspirations of the electorate.
My view is that the top priority of any serious politician now is to wean the electorate off the MSM in its entirety. There is zero chance of serious, proper politics re-emerging until the MSM, the National Dailies and their websites and the 24hr rolling news format is murdered in a ditch…..
“His policies, beliefs and actions are of the extreme far left.”
You are looking at these things through the eyes of the media who immediately categorise policies as being left or right, extreme or moderate,.
Most people ask themselves not whether Marx or Adam Smith would approve of a policy, but whether re-nationalising the Railways and putting them under social control would lead to desirable results.
To the media, run by capitalists, any reform or regulation of the capitalist system threatens their interests. To the public, whose interest is in the service received, rather than the profits to be made out of their needs, what is of interest is whether nationalised utilities, as recommended by Adam Smith, would serve them better not whether Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t wear a tie.
No, I am looking at these things through the eyes of someone who grew up in the UK, and who knows extreme left wing politics when he sees and hears it.
When an enterprise is run by people with no financial stake, they often stand by and watch money evaporate. That is what happens all too often in nationalised industries.
Oh my. The idea that hard-nosed capitalists are masters of efficiency and “fiscal responsibility” was debunked eons ago. One very obvious example is the privatizing of British Rail but there is no shortage of examples where companies and banks under the tutelage of your lauded “financial stakeholders” have been run into the ground and destroyed.
If 40 years of neoliberalism hasn’t convinced you that letting bankers, businessmen and hedge fund managers run the world is an unqualified disaster you are beyond hope.
Enjoy your loot while you still can.
Oh my! Witness the twisting of my words to suit your interpretation.
Nobody mentioned your dreaded hedge fund managers. If you are running a small business, every penny has a home and any bad decisions come out of your own pocket.
Politicians and civil servants who are spending other people’s money often waste millions without batting an eye.
Of course with the language you used in the last post I would suspect that anyone running a small honest business is in your eyes Tory scum.
The idea that public institutions “waste” money, while private companies are highly “efficient” (but never maximising handouts to directors and shareholders) is just one of those myths trotted out by “on message” right wingers; who insist that if a lie is said enough times it automatically becomes the truth. Hypocrisy is a word missing from every right wingers’ dictionary.
Would a nationalised UK shipping company sack its entire workforce by video-link. Imagine the Murdoch-owned headlines if Sealink had tried that in the days of BR owned cross channel ferries.
Baalbek – there need to be different discussions about different kinds of organisations. Economists have actually identified some industries which function most efficiently as monopolies, and for them, the profit motive is no longer appropriate.
The profit motive is appropriate when young nascent sectors see lots of entrepreneurs try out their different approaches to determine which best serves society. It works very well in the SME sector, particularly small family businesses where market power of individual businesses is very dilute. It can work very well in employee-incentivised businesses, where employees own shares.
My view is that solvency is often a better motive for long-term business stability. If you seek to serve a community providing traditional ‘building society’ services i.e. mortgages for the young and interest-bearing accounts for the cashed up and determined savers, then what is important is not ripping off savers and borrowers, rather to create win-win conditions for both and a fair rate of return for the service provider. Banks have a term called ‘Tier 1 Solvency Ratio’ which is what percentage of their outstanding loan book they retain in dedicated cash-like funds. Some of the smaller, most well-run banks actually have ratios in excess of 10%, whereas their profitability might not be as high as some fleecing operations on the High Street.
If you are running a cooperative, then solvency once again is more important than ‘profitability’.
For those that are interested, there are all kinds of legal forms of organisations whose motives do not revolve around ‘maximising shareholder value’, which is the goal of the Limited Company or plc. The sooner that those with political aspirations engage in detailed discussions about all of them, where they are best applied within economies and what economies would look like with different ratios of different legal forms, the better.
The lesson few learn at school is that ‘the profit motive is only appropriate in scenarios where the customer has the viable option of not engaging in the market concerned’.
That makes the profit motive inappropriate for essential services, unless society can ensure that cartel-like behaviour never emerges. That’s not succeeded in recent centuries in the West.
“When an enterprise is run by people with no financial stake, they often stand by and watch money evaporate. That is what happens all too often in nationalised industries.”
You can leave out the word “nationalised” and the statement would still be accurate. All organisations tend to be run for the benefit of their senior management. If that means the organisation is run into the ground, the senior management usually end up working for their own benefit in another organisation. It is only where the senior management benefit from the financial health of the organisation, e.g. where they are major shareholders, does anyone give a stuff about the organisation itself.
Anyone know what the Great Knight Dupe says about this?
Thank you for an article I can give him a bit of a shoeing for being what he is, one of the wormy apples in the barrel.
Starmer and co ignore it, as he did during the election.
Petrol, electric and gas through the roof – which guarantees inflation – which excuses the interest rates going up – which guarantees mortgage failures.
Media and Starmer ignore it.
Never mind. Let’s send lots of manpads anti-aircraft missiles proudly made in U.K. to a war zone with lots of mercenaries/jihadists/nazis who are going to ship them off for use elsewhere later.
Watch as our made-in-U.K. weapons bring down airlines here, there and everywhere – “no blame on us we just make them. We do no wrong!”
Starmer joins the government and media and academia and religious leaders as they spew daily hate towards the unmentionables vowing to fight them to the last … Ukrainian.
Who cares about Covid now? Who cares about vaccine efficacy now? Who cares that actual data is no longer being published anymore that would answer these questions now? Why are we still bothering with vaccine passports? What pandemic? What lockdown? What clapping for the nurses and NHS?
There are hundreds of thousand dead in the U.K. millions more hospitalised. Over the last two years.
As the numbers this week reveal we are taking massive casualties in our Covid war which we have never been on the wining side of.
Thanks SuckerStarmer – thanks very much – straight to the Lords with you for your great work in stopping that greatest threat to Privatisations, Oligarchs and MIC – the true PM of the U.K. ousted in a election fixing coup – J C.
His fake apology has received next to no publicity of course and has provoked no public discussion of the broad scam. No politician or media outlet has said hang on this is only the very tip of the iceberg or suggested that a person like Austin should not be in the lords or chairing government campaigns against extremism. It has provoked no belated questioning of why Austin and fellow Labour politicians Woodcock and Mann were made lords by the Tories. Just continued omerta about the huge lie that at the centre of British public life for five years (and still going strong). But lots of puffed up talk now someone else has done an illegal invasion about Our Values. Our politicians and thought leaders are the goodies.
I think it’s quite in line with the current Labour Party that the Party views its mission as a deflecting shield for the voters when the worst aspects of Capitalism becomes intolerable to the masses.
It has never been too bothered about the labour it was set up to represent in Parliament.
When Corbyn scared the crap out of the centre and centre right in 2017 that’s when the Blairites went into overdrive in conjunction with the so called liberal media.
For the aspirers ( Mann – Tiernan etc) there was no way they could secure jobs with the buyers of their owners if ‘” Corbyn’s lot ” had got into power.
Even if there had been a leftish Labour government under Corbyn every device would have been used to undermine that government.
Personally I am sort of glad that Corbyn dodged a bullet with what has happened since and the PR performing Monkey Starmer has and will never have any answers to ordinary people’s problems..
Jo Co and her well upholstered mates on at dinner time were discussing all this on the ordinary people as you would discuss Fruit Flies but their main concern was for the Tories and how they will fare in the GE of 2024.
Starmer has no chance of winning that election for the simple reason that tempering the worst excesses of rampant capitalism by a tweak here and there (Blairism in a nutshell) could work in 1997 but the things to come for the populace are many many times more serious than that period 24 years on.
Perhaps they agree with Biden’s dictum that “Nothing will fundamentally change” but changing it is, before the world’s eyes, and how.
If they don’t change the world then the world will change them.
Change is coming and how it will pan out I don’t know but nothing has ever stayed the same – no matter how much politicians and the media would want no change at all.
Thank you Craig for highlighting this. Excellent!
Also, what is this about? (Cited in the Telegraph)
Liz Truss is facing a Foreign Office mutiny after a senior diplomat resigned in protest over a departmental shake-up designed to prioritise its work on Ukraine.
Staff were told the Russian invasion represents a “paradigm shift” for the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and “changes the context” of its work.
It seems that all bets, the farm, family jewels to the exclusion of everything else, including our economy, must be bet on the Ukraine narrative, which is the worst, uncalled for atrocity since…Afghanistan? Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Yugoslavia,Panama, Grenada, Nicaragua, Viet Nam, Laos or Cambodia? It is astonishing to watch the dissonance and mass hypnosis how most Brits champ at the bit to be allocated their daily rations of Kool-aid.
They’re all sat on a branch that Biden is busy sawing away at. We are all going to be screwed left, right and centre for American exceptionalism and war mongering.
And still the masses think Ze is a plucky hero and would vote Bozo in again tomorrow.
“forgive them lord for they know not what they do”.
“And still the masses think Ze is a plucky hero”
Ze will probabaly recieve the Nobel Peace Prize like that bloke who murdered all those cambodians with ariel bombing.
yeah henry kissinger’s winning it was the ultimate farce.
Former Presidents’ George W. Bush and Bill Clinton are pictured on Twitter visiting a Ukrainian church in Chicago, in a show of solidarity. Dubya Bush of the illegal 2003 Iraq invasion and Clinton of ‘Monica’s Missiles’.
One of the reasons I despise crude sanctions is because I remember how powerless I felt when Blair announced the start of the illegal second Gulf War. Why should ordinary people suffer because of leadership decisions? I also actually think western sanctions could strengthen Putin’s hold on Russians; as it’s hard to promote the west as ‘friendly’ when we are making their lives hell. Iran’s regime has survived railing against hateful western ‘sanctions’ oppressors, who’d deny Iranians medicines and life-saving medical equipment.
Russia’s destructive actions in Ukraine are atrocious and indefensible. They’ve also fallen into a trap laid for them. The entire US establishment seem to be reinvigorated happily dumping on Russia – as if a plan long in the making, using Ukraine as a proxy ‘anti-Russia’ irritant, has finally come to come to fruition. They’re also trying to use Ukraine to whitewash their own bloody history of imperial aggression; coups, invasions and violations of sovereignty.
By bypassing the UN, to launch our ‘wars of choice’ we in the west very much set the precedent for Russia’s outrageous behaviour today.
Am I right in presuming, Goose, that you have no quarrel with the seven year long assault on the Donbas ? And will defend the Ukrainian government decision, clearly supported by NATO, not to implement the Minsk accords and thus prevent the reconciliation of the two parties?
You are right in thinking that Russia was trapped into this war – it was obvious, from its exhaustion of all other means of solving the crisis, that it did not want war. It said so repeatedly, while offering the US and its satraps the chance to avoid it by formal treaty.
On the other hand what would you have done? The US wanted Russia to accept its diktat, get used to the implications of Ukraine, armed to the teeth and full of NATO bases, becoming a permanent threat to its integrity.
That is the problem: Russia drew the line short of submission to the Empire.
We are all the beneficiaries of its national courage and sacrifice.
I think there is blame on all sides the US, European, NATO, Ukrainian and now mainly Russia as it’s they who are destroying the country.
One of the great disinformation scandals in the west, due to a MSM that seems far from independent and acting more like State propagandists, is the idea Ukraine was a happy, corruption free, well-governed peaceful country, with a much loved President, prior to this Russian invasion. US/UK Ukrainian knowledge seems to start in Feb 2022, with no understanding of the last the last 20 years, US interference and the colour revolution plus coup.
Russia alone made the catastrophic invasion decision though, so now blame falls squarely on them. Russia can only emerge damaged and if Moscow’s hopes rested with the idea the previously persecuted ethnic Russian half of Ukraine, would see them as trying to empower them against an anti-Russian govt in Kyiv. Well, there’s little sign ethnic Russian Ukrainians do take that view because Russia has had to fight its way through even previously pro-Russia areas. Surely Putin and his military planners never expected this much resistance in the Eastern half of Ukraine? There are reports they thought it’d be like civil policing in the East, not all out war.
@bevin
Have you noticed how little support for this invasion there is on social media? Nearly everyone condemns it.
Doesn’t that fact just show up the lies and exaggerations about Russia’s vast social media operations/presence for what they are…false. If ever Russia needed help with its PR and messaging it’s now, yet it barely exists; how can that be so, if they supposedly have all this presence. That’s the thing, it’s never been evidenced; it’s all theorised. If anything, Pro-Nato sockpuppets outnumber anyone taking a contrary position by at least 100 to 1.
The real purveyors of online influence ops are western officials acting on false info.
Furthermore…
I kinda hope Russia is disconnected from the internet, as Ukraine has called for – they want the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to revoke domains issued in Russia and shut down primary Domain Name System (DNS) servers in the country (Sorry, Tatyana) …not permanently maybe for a year.
Because, then we could have a full open debate about sockpuppet activity and psy-ops being carried out in the west against our own societies by our own side!!! Under the guise of countering Russian misinformation/disinformation which is asserted as prevalent however they never produce much evidence to support their assertions and many believe it’s just an excuse to manipulate society, intimidate and control dissent
“The entire US establishment seem to be reinvigorated happily dumping on Russia – as if a plan long in the making, using Ukraine as a proxy ‘anti-Russia’ irritant, has finally come to come to fruition.”
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_briefs/RB10000/RB10014/RAND_RB10014.pdf
“This brief summarizes a report that comprehensively examines nonviolent, cost-imposing options that the United States and its allies could pursue across economic, political, and military areas to stress — overextend and unbalance — Russia’s economy and armed forces and the regime’s political standing at home and abroad.”
That is how realpolitik works, and how to draw the USSR first and the Russian Federation later into costly quagmires has been a lively topic among think-tankers and strategists in the USA and the UK and other places.
@Blissex
Good read(link) on the real escalation risks from imposing crippling sanctions on a nuclear-armed great power .
https://warontherocks.com/2022/03/the-russian-sanctions-regime-and-the-risk-of-catastrophic-success/
Do US and European leaders know their history? From the article:
“Most importantly, it is vital that Western leaders combine sanctions with off-ramps for Moscow, especially if the conflict drags on. Both the Japanese in 1941 and the Germans in 1916–1917 attempted negotiating with their isolators before choosing escalation.”
What we’re seeing in Ukraine via increasing western weapons deliveries and crippling sanctions, plus the expressed desire among western politicians to expropriate Russian state assets, is the potential end of Ukraine and its absorption into Russia. Or a nuclear war.
I fear the idea of turning Kyiv into a car parking lot may look increasingly attractive, and indeed rational to Russia, if the west promise to expropriate Russia’s state wealth for the rebuilding of a anti-Russia, Zelensky-led Ukraine. If the UK starts pushing its luck, things a pre-emptive thermonuclear strike on London may become a serious possibility too. I wish that was hyperbole.
What would the UK be without London? This could potentially become that serious. Johnson, Ben Wallace and Liz Truss are clearly lightweights potentially unknowingly leading the UK to this nuclear danse macabre.
“US/UK Ukrainian knowledge seems to start in Feb 2022, with no understanding of the last the last 20 years, US interference and the colour revolution plus coup.”
Despite the fact that there must be people alive in Crimea who remember their being transferred from Russia to Ukraine at a stroke of a pen, the Western view seems to be that Crimea is, and always has been,. inalienably part of Ukraine.
Again, sadly, I think you are right about that.
Until supermarket shelves empty, petrol forecourts become battle-grounds and power cuts kick in. Which only favours the Ultra Right and the thugs.
Yes Goose I have noticed how little support for the Russian position there is in those lands afflicted with membership of NATO or English as the working language.
And I think that this is significant, because beyond the immediate reach of the western media, in most of the world, this hysteria- which is now approaching Belgian 1914 proportions- is regarded as a familiar sign of imperial hubris.
If people really believe that Russia has broken the rules then they are either ignorant or deluded. By all the precedents of the Unipolar Era, which began in about 1990, Russia’s actions are justified either as R2P- remember Libya and the ‘threat to Benghazi’s civilians? Well here is the Donbas with over 10,000 civilian casualties in the past seven years.
Remember the attack on Iraq (19 years ago to the day) ? Justified on the grounds that it had WMD-that nobody ever found? Well here was Zelenskyy, on the eve of the battle, boasting that Ukraine was building nuclear weapons. He didn’t mention that it already hosted NATO bases, manned by nuclear powers, and that more were being built.
And then there were the 31 Biolabs run by the Pentagon, of all people, carrying out secret research and collecting Russian DNA samples for research purposes. Why the devil would the Pentagon be running Biolabs in Ukraine.
Compare such evidence with Colin Powell’s ‘anthrax’ phial at the UN.
Finally there was the Russian charge that Ukraine had massed its troops on the borders of the Donbas in order to invade and crush all resistance there- that would have been on the 77th anniversary of the Firebomb Raid, which killed hundreds of thousands on Tokyo.
Then, of course, the world remembers the complaisance with which Israel’s ‘lawn mowing’ enormities in Gaza have been accepted in our social media- and elsewhere. If Israel has a right to defend itself the world wonders why Russia, under much greater threat , does not.
The strength of Russia’s case is widely accepted in lands accounting for 85% of the world’s population, which is why despite enormous pressure the US has been unable to rally support for sanctions from any country with a mind of its own.
The truth is that our ‘western’ societies have become terminally corrupted- public opinion cannot tell obvious truth from flagrant fiction. And the continual bulletins regarding the rights of transgendered people, and particularly ‘transgendered’ children, adds nothing to the credibility of these ante-rooms of Empire in which we live. In a world in which JK Rowling is a byword for bigotry, suggesting that Putin is the devil incarnate is not going to impress anyone.
Things have reached a pretty pass when the President of the United States cannot talk to the ruler Saudi Arabia or the UAE, because they have more important business to deal with.
The only hope that the US and its cheering section has left lies in a battlefield defeat of the Russian forces and it is a slender one.
The way Iran is suddenly back in favour has been a startling transformation to watch.
People are praising Liz Truss for Nazanin’s release, but I’d wager the UK got the okay from the US to allow making the outstanding £400m payment via Oman, the payment that freed Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe & Anoosheh Ashoori.
Diplomats are talking about the JCPOA being reactivated leading eventually to sanctions being lifted within 48hrs. This, after Iran launched 12 ballistic missiles into Iraq’s northern Kurdish regional capital Erbil, destroying buildings only a week ago. How desperate are the west for Iran’s oil and good behaviour esp. in the Strait of Hormuz? The latter is important as it relates to the largest producer of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the world, Qatar. If Qatar can’t deliver, European energy plans are screwed. Iran are in a remarkably strong position.
Meanwhile another nearby neighbour is panicking…
Israel or KSA?
It seems both are mightily upset over Iran’s sudden diplomatic rehabilitation and potential reintegration. It seems the US have finally abandoned el Presidente Juan Guaidó’s illegitimate claim to power too, maybe Venezuela can now get its gold back?
It’s understandable how sanctions impoverished Iran and Venezuela want to quickly turn the oil taps on. But it’s a seller’s market and they should drive a v.hard bargain.
“How desperate are the west for Iran’s oil and good behaviour esp. in the Strait of Hormuz?”
About as desperate as the west is to get their permanent hands on 1.2 trillion cubic metres of shale gas in the east of Ukraine.
The USA, in particular, seems the most desperate to grab oil and gas from other countries.
“The USA, in particular, seems the most desperate to grab oil and gas from other countries.”
It is not so much “grab” but “control”: the USA is what historians call a “hydraulic empire”, and their strategic goal is to control trade in hydrocarbons (oil etc.) and cereals (wheat etc.), in particular the ability to stop that trade, because most countries are net importers of hydrocarbons and cereals, and being able to stop their imports of those means being able to drive them to collapse at a very low cost.
Of course the USA also would like to grab directly oil- and wheat-producing areas, or control their governments directly, but being able to block their exports or imports is more important than that.
If all the states in the world the west has crippled, sanctioned and generally disrespected (secondary sanctions), united they could overcome and end what they perceive to be the US’s reign of terror.
In raw numbers: Russia, Iran. Iraq; China India and Pakistan are around 3.5 billion people and that’s without the leftist S.American countries. The US and EU 0.8 billion.
Many thanks for that bevin.
You cannot refer to Lord Austin, McTernan, Bigham or Hennegan as rightwingers. There are no rightwingers in the Labour Party. By universal media consent they are sensible moderate centrists, and will remain so regardless of what they do or say. Little wonder they say you are not a real journalist.
The western media is totally corrupt, they’ll literally ignore/dismiss any inconvenient fact, however grave the implications. It wouldn’t matter but for the problematic fact lies can lead to war.
Craig has highlighted the inconsistencies & anomalies in the Skripal story: the missing 4 hours (in which their phone GPS tracking was turned off), the very limited time window available to touch the door; the fact the Chief nurse of the British army was first on scene – coincidentally passing at just the right time. And the fact the Skripals last contact was with their handler. All these things are ignored by the press.
And … If the stuff with kids on Hunter Biden’s laptop is real (widely retweeted), then many US agencies are complicit in a massive criminal conspiracy.
So what should one call a group of retrograde, largely Blairite Labour politicians, intent to do anything to keep their positions, voting with every repressive, not at all sicialist measure under three Tory PM’s, whether it was Austerity measures, selling off prime NHS services or ‘enabling’ many benefit recipients who were disabled and imobile to reach upper floor DWP offices to be assessed, some taking their own lifes due to the pressure right wingers in red suits agreed to and voted with the opposition.
What do you call that lot? if not expedient right wingers, spineless apologists to anything, even now that the judiciary plays Bingo with its public.