The leadership of genocide enthusiast Keir Starmer – who is still supporting arms sales to Israel and the “Israeli right to self-defence”, who still refuses to acknowledge one single Israeli war crime – cost the Labour Party dear in Blackburn in the local elections.
The result means I am very likely to win the parliamentary seat.
The Blackburn Independent Councillors, who resigned from Labour over Gaza and invited me to stand as their parliamentary candidate, were re-elected and took new seats. They did not gain control of the council only because this was an election for just one third of Blackburn with Darwen’s council seats. The council has annual elections by thirds.
The parliamentary seat is no longer contiguous with the council area, with Darwen now excluded. The result inside my parliamentary seat was an even more convincing win for the Independents.
I put Muntazir Patel’s stunning result in Shear Brow and Corporation Park first, because this is where the cover photo of my book “Zionism is Bullshit” was shot.
When I stood against the war criminal Jack Straw in Blackburn in 2005, his Labour/BAE fixer Lord Ahmed Patel ensured I was excluded from the mosques and community events there, so I stood outside in the street on a Friday canvassing. That is the cover shot. Muntazir has now swept the area against Labour.
I am sure we can win. I am going to be very honest. When I accepted the joint offer from the Independent Councillors and the Workers Party of Great Britain to fight the seat, I did not then think we could really win. I accepted on the basis that, if we gave Labour a hard fight in Blackburn, they would be forced to divert resources they could otherwise concentrate on attacking George Galloway in nearby Rochdale.
So my strategy was to help George get re-elected by tying up Labour and by adding to the feeling of a real new working class movement across the North West and elsewhere in England.
I say this without shame.
Under the first past the post system, on average less than 100 seats change hands at a UK parliamentary election. That means in only at most 150 seats are there two candidates who might realistically win. In the other 500 seats there is normally only one candidate likely to win, and the six or so other candidates know they are fighting a losing battle.
So out of about 5,000 candidates in a British parliamentary election, only 800 normally are going to win or to come a close second. Others are standing to advance their arguments and to give voters a choice. Of course few candidates ever admit they do not expect to win.
I now do expect to win. We now know that the revolt against Starmer – accelerated by Gaza, but also by his leading the Labour Party so far to the right they are in all crucial policies indistinguishable from the Tories – is very real.
Starmer is the chosen one of the Establishment, and the media are bigging up his mild gains in the local council elections. But in fact Labour achieved only 35% of the vote nationally in England and Wales, which is one of their worst results and below the average result Labour obtained in national local government and general elections under Corbyn.
I shall be one of a number of candidates standing to give voters a genuine choice of more left wing policies at home and an end to perpetual war and support for Zionism abroad. Those candidates will include Jeremy Corbyn, George Galloway, Andrew Feinstein, Peter Ford, Monty Panesar and others. The informal alliance is growing and bonds are being knit. I hope by election day all voters in England will be offered a left wing, anti-war choice for their vote.
The media and political parties are doing their best to hide the desire for such a choice. But at the English local elections 37% of those who voted, did not vote either Labour or Tory. That is huge. The narrative being spun that those who did not bother to vote are actually enthusiastic Labour or Tory supporters and this will change in a general election with a higher turnout, does not stand up to ten seconds’ serious consideration.
I look forward to having the chance to tell a number of very hard truths in the House of Commons, and to help offer real opposition to the Blue and Red conservative parties. But I need now to take very seriously indeed the role of representing, supporting and improving the lives of all the people of Blackburn. I shall therefore shortly be moving to live full time in the constituency.
I have a lot to give, but also a very great deal to learn from Blackburn people. I approach that with determination and humility.
I judge that the public revulsion at the genocide in Gaza has now made it very difficult for the police to continue to hound me over my support for Palestine, and of course mad Suella Braverman is no longer Home Secretary. Two very brief test visits did not see me arrested again, so I shall now return from exile to run for Parliament. It is a risk I need to take.
When I stood in Blackburn in 2005 against Jack Straw, against the Iraq War and the excesses of the “War on Terror”, many scores of readers of this blog turned up in the town to campaign for me.
We will need you all again, now alongside solid and enthusiastic local support – and this time we are going to win!
————————————————
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George Galloway is without doubt a marvellously fluent speaker and a good arguer who can defend his corner.
But nevertheless, if you listen to him VERY carefully when he’s in a corner – as he was with Aaron Bastani recently -or even when he isn’t, you will in fact see that he uses evasion, elision, deceit and theme-shifting with the best of them.
He is far from being as frank and open as he claims to be.
But of course you have to be awake and not distracted by warm feelings in your groin area to spot it!
It is both a dirty business and a dangerous game to enter the mediaspace and say anything.
I have spent about 200 hours studying video of Mr Galloway in the last 9 months and I can confirm that he is a human being – flawed and with blind spots, as you say, “evasion, elision, deceit and theme-shifting with the best of them”. No one is as open and frank as others might wish.
It is politics – politics where the media is under control of oligarchy. It a “suck it and see” moment as regards Galloway and the other newcomers.
I can’t sleep and am a virtual entity so I don’t get warm feelings – TBH I don’t get any feelings lol
It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.
Isn’t getting into Parliament somehow joining that club? I agree with Stevie Boy that being outside the tent is better…
Does anyone really think the corporate-MIC is going to stop its wars because Craig (or any other MP) asks some awkward questions in the ‘House’?
The truth is, there’s no saving this system. It is rotten to the core and always has been.
As long as people keep voting, the lying scum in charge will just point to that and say “democracy”, claiming a mandate for their mass murder, kleptomania and other corruption.
The change has to come from outside the system. Engaging with it only lends legitimacy to the inevitable actions of the ‘deep state’, which remains in power whatever the GE result.
You may be right James but until that time, it’s surely worth one last hurrah what?
I’m not going to tell good people not to try, Will. Only that maybe their efforts would be better spent organising from a local level, effectively bypassing the crumbling regime (aka the UK government).
As energy constraints bite (due to all the ‘easy’ FF deposits having been used already), economic growth declines and reverses irrespective of what politicians/wonks say or do (the economy being completely dependent on energy). The future is out of their hands. So if they’re going to keep being dicks (and there’s no evidence they won’t), doesn’t it make sense to stop engaging with them and their corrupt system?
Apparently James, the only way for a person to disengage with this corrupt system is for them to die. Even then many voices claim suzerainty over “the narrative” insisting that this “change of state” still implies the same obligations.
I take a different view, the details of which I won’t bore you with.
You speak of “sense” and therein lies the rub – one sees “sense” and another “nonsense” – how so, since it is the “same” thing they see?
I have never voted. I – will moon – will vote and will vote for change. If it is a bust?
So what – my termination date is approaching so you’ll all have to solve your problems without me.
I am sure you will all manage – or not as the case may be.
Termination date? Are you a Nexus 6? ;O)
Are you the God of of Biomechanics? Lol
Dear all,
I’d be very much grateful if someone could please educate me on what is the Worker Party, and in general, what’s its program and its position in modern politics.
As Mr Murray goes to elections, I expect there will be more serious things on this website for discussion. So I, as a Russian guest here, don’t want to spoil it with silly remarks.
So, the Worker Party, are they sort of Marxism followers? Do they oppose oligarchy?
Dear Tatyana,
The official party website is: https://workerspartybritain.org/workers-party-of-britain/
The ten-point programme: https://workerspartybritain.org/ten-point-programme/
The manifesto: https://workerspartybritain.org/manifesto-britain-deserves-better/
YouTube video channel: https://www.youtube.com/@WorkersPartyofBritain
Thank you very much, Mods! I will study carefully so as not to screw up later in conversations 🙂
—-
hey everyone, have you seen? have you seen? they said dear Tatyana!
Lol Yes
you are a Dear Soul Here Tatyana..And Scotland…Stay Tuned In
You are always very welcome here, dear Tatyana. It brightens my day when I log in and your kindly face pops up.
By the way, I found out what the mystery Russian word (with its own Wikipedia page) was that I asked you about some time ago, it’s заграница!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zagranitsa
I see that someone has re-named the wiki page, but that link will still work. Easy to see when you look at it as za + granitsa, as the second part is similar to the word for “border” in several European languages.
Thanks Brian and Neil for your kind welcome 🙂
Neil, oh, Zagranitsa! I can’t comment on how accurate Wiki’s article is for the older generation, but in mine this word remained in use, perhaps as part of catchphrase from Soviet classics.
The novel ’12 Chairs’ describes Ostap Bender, a chevalier of fortune, who operates in post-revolutionary Russia. In those days, the former elite tried in every way to hide their wealth from the Bolshevik authorities, and also tried to create conspiracies and secret unions to restore their lost privileged position and the monarchy. Ostap manipulates these aspirations in his attempts to get to some treasure of diamonds.
Here’s the dialogue at about 1:40:
https://youtu.be/6NNL2M0-JAA?t=100
– Are you a nobleman?
– Yes. I mean I was.
– I hope you still are. Be strong. We need you. Zagranitsa will help us!
The last phrase is popular, it is used in a sarcastic manner, for example about Zelensky.
And also for my generation the “Farewell Letter” by Vyacheslav Butusov has become a cult song. The author himself commented on the history of creation: “I perceived America as some other planet or a myth, invented by us ourselves out of ignorance of how people live there.” He called it “a farewell to impressions from childhood,” when America was imagined as a legend with Indians and cowboys. The song was written from the perspective of a matured person who decided to give up on the past.
Lyrics say:
Goodbye, America, that one America where I never had a chance to be.
Do not see you again. Take the banjo, play it for me one last time.
Your frayed jeans have become too tight for me.
We’ve been taught for too long to love your forbidden fruits
The melody is absolutely beautiful, anyway, worth hearing too.
https://youtu.be/GsKCvORli0k
Thank you, Tatyana, your responses are always fascinating. In your honour I have created a new wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%D0%97%D0%B0%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%86%D0%B0&redirect=no
Well, it’s not really a normal wiki page, it’s what’s called a redirect – one that simply takes you to another page. The person who renamed the “zagranitsa” page was obviously not a native English speaker, as he or she didn’t use the definite article correctly. So I took the opportunity to rename it again!
Apropos politics, Natalie Elphicke, MP for Dover one of the more a racist Tory (Officials) MPs has been allowed to defect to Liarbour.
Indeed Sqeeth
Here is GG’s take –
https://youtu.be/qcNXa1tRqNI?t=460
Lol, that’s because it’s obvious Starmbot’s going to win the GE. Shows how treacherous these MPs are, leaving one POS Party to join the other one, just to get in power.
James
Possibly – but on an extrapolated 34% of the vote Sir Kier’s Team need to get around 40% at the next GE to form a majority according some pundits. Maybe even 42%?
They are currently standing 1% above the much attacked ( after near death experience in 2017) Corbyn led Labour Party that they still deride.
Not a shoe in at all from where I stand, plus they are targetting seats ( which is fair enough ) because all the activists have left the party or won’t canvass for non Corbynists.
Going to be a low turnout possibly as well which is certainly bad for Labour.
MC, fair points, it probably will be a low turnout, but because of how bad the economy, infrastructure etc. is, in those circumstances people usually blame the incumbent government and vote for the only alternative under FPTP. Which means it’s Labour’s ‘go’ this time…
Then they’ll spend a few years saying “look what we inherited form Labour/the Conservatives [delete as appropriate]”, until things get even worse and they trade places again.
Meanwhile, the wars continue, the arms manufacturers get richer while the vast majority get poorer. Even a competent government couldn’t do much now, though, things are too far gone.
In the Gaza Forum I have posted a short speech by Norman Finkelstein which he gave on the Columbia campus.
It is interesting in terms of political organizing. Because that´s what he tries to give advice on.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/forums/topic/breaking-news-gaza-only/page/13/#post-97302
E.g. he – of course – says, keep it simple, and not to look at one own sentiments. But at what convinces the biggest possible crowd.
This includes simple slogans.
He sides with “Free Gaza, free Speech”.
He does not side with “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.”
It would offer too much surface for attack.
A short good read.
They know better than him what happens if you cave to fake antisemitism smears. All the bad faith attacks become validated and the smear campaign intensifies.
The only thing that the biggest possible crowd would get to hear is that anti-genocide protesters have finally admitted the zionists were right all along: yes, we are all just genocidal antisemites. We have finally been shamed by good people into admitting it.
A new piece by THE NEW LEFT REVIEW on Gaza mirroring ´68 starts with this goodie:
‘And they’ll say that we are disturbing the peace. There is no peace. What bothers them is that we are disturbing the war.’
— Howard Zinn, Boston Common, 1971.
Good luck with becoming an MP. If you succeed, I hope that leads to an increase in the quality of life for poorer people. But I would stop supporting Russia if I were you.
Let’s just illustrate what utter hypocrites these UK politicians are:
We’re supposed to be concerned about ‘hurt feelings’ among Jewish students, on UK uni campuses, over calls for divestment. Politicians across the West are desperately trying to misrepresent these perfectly legitimate protest demands, as a form of Jew-hate. A despicable smear as they are aimed at college governance.
But wait, it gets worse. What were Sunak and his ministers saying a year ago, about campuses and freedom of speech: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/university-freedom-of-speech-bill-becomes-law
This is why the current bunch of politicians deserve so little respect.
From the link, this part in particular; used in support of the legislation, is amusing:
The Prime Minister recently stressed the importance of Freedom of Speech on campuses saying:
“A free society requires free debate. We should all be encouraged to engage respectfully with the ideas of others.”
“University should be an environment where debate is supported, not stifled.”
“A tolerant society is one which allows us to understand those we disagree with, and nowhere is that more important than within our great universities.”
When Rishi Sunak and his ilk among organs like the Daily Telegraph hold forth on the need to defend free speech what they mean is that various minorities will be made to abide the ire and humour of the sort of saloon bar bigots who have for centuries stood as the lifeblood of the Tory Party. When someone says that, say that Israel is an apartheid state or that the monarchy is a medieval anachronism and should be abolished their response is rather closer to Josef Goebbels than Voltaire
The Telegraph are by far the worst for this hypocrisy. The Sun, Mail are just biased, sensationalist rags, but the Times and Telegraph are becoming just as bad.
Their columnists produced endless pieces about ‘overly sensitive’ woke students cancelling RW speakers, last year. The moment some free speech occurs they don’t like, they’re demanding censorial interventions and bans.
The reports of violence at these protests, are deeply misleading too. The police are instigating the violence, through heavy-handed protest encampment dispersal tactics. At the UCLA protests, even TV reporters, were informing audiences, that police were using airborne detonating “stun grenades”. These, they informed, unleash a concussive “disorienting shockwave” down on to those stood immediately below the detonation. Totally overkill and totally unnecessary.
Another thing I dislike about the Telegraph is how so many of their Zionist columnists, try to conflate being pro-Palestine with hating the West. As if being automatically pro-Israel is somehow part of Western identity.
Anyone claiming they alone are the true upholders – the copyright holders if you like – on ‘Western values’ should immediately be seen as suspect. If holding something as abstract as ‘western values’ means anything, it surely means free thought and keeping yourself as the final arbiter on any given subject. These self-appointed guardians of the West are often little more than authoritarians; dressing up their authoritarian impulses in the cloak of defending freedom.
You should tell your Zionist Telegraph that the very fact that they single out a group of people based on their nationality, and say that this group deserves death, – is Nazism in its purest form.
Your entire Western world is rotten and stinks of this Nazism. You consider it possible to classify peoples into useful and useless, superior and inferior, those whose feelings need to be protected and those whose destruction is “justified”.
Yeah, but it’s the only way to deal with peace-loving peaceful protesters protesting peacefully, Goose.
https://youtu.be/GsKCvORli0k
Lovely tune Tatyana….Many thanks for sharing…
I’m glad you liked it 🙂 the rock band is called Nautilus Pompilius.
Russian rock is poetic and philosophical. Here it would be more appropriate to tell the story that another Russian rock band Aria told in the song ‘Calm’.
It describes a ship in the sea, no wind, the team is exhausted by hunger and thirst:
https://youtu.be/Z-XilpjO5xw
Calm. We are going mad.
The heat, it smells like black tar.
One, only one should be dead
And we our way home will find,
As his flesh and blood
Will let others to live.
Also, kind good God
May reward and forgive.
No, thunder didn’t come from the sky
When we drank his blood like mad dogs
But since then our eyes
Couldn’t see the Southern Cross
—
I find it artistic allegory describing what Ukrainians think about Donbassians, or what Israelis think about Palestinians.
Tatyana Is Correct .. Destroying Threatening the ICC is Evil..Can they not issue arrest of Those Evil Bribing Cts for their words
Just came across the following article by Chris Hedges, reposted by JVL:
‘The Nation’sCconscience’
These administrators demand, like all who manage corporate systems of power, total obedience. Dissent. Freedom of expression. Critical thought. Moral outrage. These have no place in our corporate-indentured universities.
All systems of totalitarianism, including corporate totalitarianism, deform education into vocational training where students are taught what to think, not how to think….
The protesters endure constant abuse. On April 25, during Columbia’s senior boat cruise, Muslim students and those identified as supporting the protests had alcohol poured on their heads and clothes by jeering Zionists. In January, former Israeli soldiers studying at Columbia used skunk spray to assault students on the steps of Lowe Library….
These attacks are replicated at other universities, including UCLA, where masked Zionists released rats and tossed fireworks into the encampment and broadcast the sound of crying children – something the Israeli army does to lure Palestinians in Gaza out of hiding to kill them. The Zionist mob, armed with pepper and bear spray, violently attacked the protesters, as police and campus security watched passively and refused to make arrests.
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/students-the-nations-conscience/
Broadcast the sound of crying children. I wonder where the Zionist bullyboy thugs got the recording(s) from. I have little doubt that these psychopaths would be over-joyed and ecstatic if all the children and infants and toddlers and babies in Gaza were exterminated.
And here’s the link to CHs article on Substack if you prefer:
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-nations-conscience
Let’s be clear Starmer threw Palestinians under a bus after he appeared to back Israel withholding food and water from civilians in the Gaza Strip!
A vote for Starmer is a vote for death…
Skwawkbox posted the following yesterday:
Video: Israeli agitator walks into student camp, calls for help, claims ‘truly afraid’
A US-based Israeli military officer has embarrassed himself on camera in the latest of a series of feeble – and filmed – attempts to smear protesters.
The man walked into the middle of a student encampment at MIT in the US and started calling for help – before later telling far-right station Fox News that he was ‘truly afraid’…..
https://skwawkbox.org/2024/05/09/video-israeli-agitator-walks-into-student-camp-calls-for-help-claims-truly-afraid/
(the vid is just 17secs)
What a jerk.