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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Perhaps a welcome opportunity to speak out on the long and silenced history of British activity in the eastern Mediterranean and the area we call the Middle East? Perhaps there are events which in some way foreshadow the British establishment support for Israeli genocide in Gaza and persecution of Palestinians in the West Bank? Events which might merit an article or two? Thus helping us understand how people from those regions might view us British? And how those histories are related or suppressed over there?
As representative of a Workers’ party, perhaps there are obvious themes of forced (slave) labour, and exploitation by Empires with racist ideologies (plus ironclads and gunboats)?
Good luck, Craig. It would be good to see you in parliament.
I have to say that I’m surprised Starmer has let the issue of Gaza come so much to the fore in the prospects for the upcoming election. I thought his reprehensible views on the issue, and his subservience to the Lobby, would be allowed to lurk in the dark, while he concentrated on the bread-and-butter issues of the cost of living which are of the greatest importance for the voter. But I suppose the horror of the genocide unrolling before our eyes is difficult to avoid, and I do wonder whether the Lobby cares that much whether Starmer gets into power or not, even if he is a faithful vassal. As far as I can see, Jews used to vote Labour, now they don’t; they’re all solidly Tory now, with just a few relics left in the old party.
“ I do wonder whether the Lobby cares”
The Lobby cares – they want their cake and eat it – as usual
What makes you wonder?
Good luck Craig! Hope you and the rest of the left independent candidates can smash it out of the park at the General Election! I will definitely be fully in support if any candidate who decides to stand in my own constituency in Sheffield.
Craig,
I honestly admit that when you ran the last time I did not see you as having any chance whatsoever. My reason was an embrace of practicality. I saw you as a highly effective activist but not a political animal who could then be elected. Now, the tide seems to have turned – so now I wish you well and truly hope that you win.
I look forward to your maiden speech in the House of Commons and will ensure I am tuned in to hear of your success on election night when it comes.
Craig has the same haircut as Boris Johnson (on the image!). Apparently British voters like that kind of haircut. It promises the post of Prime Minister.
AG, please get ‘with it’, the first time I have disagreed with you. You sound like a ‘square’ [1960’s] the woke and hip young person now sports a ‘perm’.
Good hair, good teeth, a fruity voice, and fashionable clothes have always been considered half the battle when it comes to getting elected. As well as a ready flow of soothing clichés, of course.
Tom on your list I only meet one criteria – a ready supply of clichés. Even though I do blow my own trumpet, I actually am endowed with a superfluity of these linguistic treasures.
Do you think that this will make up for my lack of the other qualities you mention if I stand for election? (Think something between “Dawn of the Dead” and “Worzel Gummidge” lol)
I think your main lack in such an event might turn out to be the lack of backing by a “major party” and the truckloads of dosh provided by its “investors”. (I have a missing front tooth, which I refuse to have replaced. I feel it serves as an excellent filter, saving me from having to deal with people who are too superficial).
As for clichés, they are perhaps excessively condemned. It’s remarkably difficult to dispense with them, either in speech or thought. Have you read Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language”?
For information:
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/
It would be funny Tom, to meet a fanatic determined not to use clichés, lol.
So long ago, only fragments remain of the book in my mind.
I take some offense on behalf of Craig and his hair for that comparison. It looks more than a tad different to me, since while Craig’s hair looks well-groomed and looked after, Boris Johnson’s hair can tell you with a glance that he has never heard of a comb, let alone anything fancier like shampoo, and clearly he’d rather not know what they are either. One head of hair would look stately in office, the other looks like that of a tramp who wandered into No 10 one day and everyone simply assumed if that’s where he is, that’s where he must belong.
The hair was Johnson’s gimmick – there was little else not eaten up by greed and corruption.
The many comments “on hair” shows you how important appearances to humans are after all. Merleau-Ponty would probably speak about the “phenomenology of hair in politics as an indicator of how power is oganized in democratic societies.”
(I USED TO HAVE A SIMILAR HAIRCUT LONG BEFORE BORIS. My Haircutter was then a British Expat and coined it “Brit-Pop-ish”.)
You’re starting to sound like a “conspiracy theorist” or you that you are involved in some sort of conspiracy – about haircuts.
You remember Brit 60’s sci-fi flick “The Midwich Cuckoos” – hair cuts straight from Chaucer. They all looked like B Johnson but In the film, they were aliens, I think.
There are memes going around about the neo-s**t-lib Tories. To the tune, that their real (unwitting & unspoken) campaign slogan is “Zero Seats”.
They certainly deserve that! So in that spirit true conservative minded people need to destroy the Tories and true Socialists need to destroy Labor.
Those are the most immediate political foes to their voters, not the so called rival parties.
The “eternal status quo” Nick Ferrari’s & “centrist dad” gatekeepers like Jame O’Brien and their type of voters.
Should go w**k themselves into a stupor about “correct, sensible, moral (ha!) and responsible voting choices”.
This polity and society isn’t going to be repaired by allowing the people (and heirs to same) who broke it in the first place to remain in power.
Anyway good luck in Blackburn Mr Murray!
Laith Marouf a Lebanese journalist has a wide-ranging interview here and details the arc of resistance and how Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey will be affected by the Gaza war, and that we are now entering phase 2 of the war. He also thinks the students in the US should protect themselves for a long hot summer of repression from the Zionist establishment and their Zionist hoodlum squads on the streets. In my opinion this knowledgeable journalist does not mince words. Although the interview is interrupted several times, it is well worth watching.
Sorry video here….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=RM7-djfITPA
@ harry law
Many thanks for the Video link. Brilliant!
Heartwarming, even.
Sussex councillor Hilary Schan has resigned from the Labour Party and from her position as Co-chair of Momentum in disgust with Starmer and the direction he has forced the Labour Party to.
Posting her resignation statement on Twitter/X she said: “I can no longer support a Labour Party led by a man who backed war crimes in Gaza, u-turns on climate & abandons children to poverty.”
She will continue to sit on Worthing council as an independent.
Her full statement is here:
https://twitter.com/HilarySchan/status/1787162795378651319
Yeah right. It’s taken her this long, rats and sinking ships comes to mind. These people only ever look after number one.
But when number one becomes everyone, what then Stevie Boy?
Nice phrase but something we’ll never see, Will!
Is that a belief or a statement of fact?
Yeah! I’d come and help but I live in Canada and we have our own and similar problems.
I don’t oppose the butchery in Gaza because I love Hamas or hate Jews or love Islam or hate America.
I don’t oppose the butchery in Gaza because I’m a lefty or a commie or an anarchist or an anti-imperialist.
I oppose the butchery in Gaza because I’m not a fucking psychopath.
— Caitlin Johnstone
I do not know where you get your energy from Craig, I wish you all the luck.
UN investigators find almost 400 bodies at al-Shifa. Massacred, shot, burnt, women, children included:
https://twitter.com/KenRoth/status/1787493702824316994
Now we await what Keir Starmer, the human rights advocate, have to say. Perhaps Israel have the right to burn palestinian children?
And while Keir is at the topic, here is the threatening letter the israelfirsters in the US congress sent to the ICC:
“If you hurt Israel, we will hurt you”
https://twitter.com/RothLindberg/status/1787506829653582254
What will Keir say about this? Is threatening the highest international judiciary just fine according to Starmer? Is hindering the investigation of gross human rights abuses…somehow right when it comes to Israel?
–
How could he live with himself? How could anyone today become so brainwashed when the evidence for serious crimes committed by Israel are posted everywhere? How could a so-called social/liberal like Keir actively support a far-right neo-fascist genocidal regime?
FPTP has always been a terribly undemocratic voting system. But its defects were to some extent papered over when Labour and the Tory parties were both in their respective ways broad based with members representing a wide spectrum of political ideas that were all given air time and subject to discussion and debate.
Now with both these parties’ agendas becoming so narrowly focused, intolerant of any ideas other than their own dogma and quite exclusive, I am sure many people feel like me feel they have nowhere to put a x except as a wasted vote. This is not apathy just a sense of alienation.
With such a corrosive system alternative parties’ candidates and independents tend not to get much of a look in except in exceptional circumstances. Perhaps the next election will be held in exceptional circumstances. Not just about Gaza but also about the increasingly real threat of World War 3 because of the irresponsible stupidity and delusions of both main parties when it comes to their USA dominated position on Israel, Russia and China.
There is just a chance that if the potential power of the independent media and social media can be orchestrated to support alternative party candidates like Craig for the Workers’, together with local awareness raising it could result in changes in voter behaviour in certain areas.
I can’t realistically this see happening nation wide but it would certainly help Galloway and Corbyn, who will certainly be re-elected one way or another, to have the support of people like Craig to offer a vocal oppositional support in parliament that is so currently lacking.
Postal voters should be required to show that they are who they are. When people are required to show a picture of themselves when voting at the ballot box, then there should be an equivalent that proofs that this postal voter has not moved away, that the postal vote does not come from an abandoned or empty building.
Shopping bags full of postal votes should be checked by the voter registration. No postal votes of deceased people applied for by proxy should be allowed and heavy fines be applied to those who organise such fraud.
Council should volunteer lists of those deceased who have been taken off the electoral register since the last GE.
Finally, the practise of councils sending out postal vote forms on election day should cease and a two day cut of date be applied to stop multiple voting.
The main parties all have form for cheating at elections and the Electoral commission, once warned of fraud occurring, should be required to act within 24 hrs. of a complaint received. But….
I can hear porkers in mid flight.
We can but dream nevermind
But if enough of us dream….
Good luck. I hope you get a chance to become an MP and give your voice a wider reach.
Wondering if you will keep posting to this website if/when you become an MP.
Yes. Good luck Craig but personally I’d prefer to have him outside pissing in than inside pissing out.
Funny you mention that image – I’ve been on the verge of using it for several days
The flight of birds, the organs of sacrificial animals, comments on a website, the alignment of the heavens, reading tea leaves, the Tarot, I Ching – this shit been going on a while now. What do think is the payoff here?
I remember that at the last general election one third of the electorate did not vote.
The abstainers have won most of the elections since 1997.
The very best of Br…. er, the best of luck to you Craig. I’m in no way psychic, but in a sane world I could see George as PM and you Craig as his foreign secretary (no pun intended), and Jeremy as his home and allotment secretary. Talking of which, I just came across the JC documentary on youtube a bit earlier, posted on there a couple of weeks ago by Platform Films:
‘Oh, Jeremy Corbyn – The Big Lie’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXvaWz4gpTc 59mins 30secs
And I also spotted this in the recommends, posted a year or so ago, which was somewhat of a surprise:
The HOUNDING Of Jeremy Corbyn (Owen Jones)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbPiD-C5U5g&t=63s 13mins 42secs
And it’s well worth checking out the first five/six minutes of the following vid posted by The Hill three hours ago (at the time of typing), in which Blinken (in a clip) dissembles a massive great big whopping Nazi/Goebbels-type lie…. Well, I suppose you could describe it as a double-lie, or even a triple-lie. You’ve got to hand it to these people (or inhumann beings, as I prefer to call them), the one thing they ARE talented at is disinformation:
Israel LOSING PR War? Antony Blinken BLAMES TikTok: Watch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C3QDPRWPUg 15mins 30secs
PS What I can’t understand about the local election results is why anyone would vote for any of the three main parties given their backing and support of BN and his fascist buddies and their mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza.
“ I’m in no way psychic”
I am very glad to hear this Alan. If one imagines how much worse things might if one could perceive the thoughts of other people, especially if the “ability” (more like disability) worked at very long distances – it is beyond arresting listening to my own thoughts lol. If psychics or mind readers or precogs or whatever exist, I bet their always “busy” – like the ones in the film “Minority Report” who don’t seem to have very fulfilling lives.
I take it you refer here to my “visions”? And why not? I can see that my attempt at levity has echoed with you. These things can be contagious. can’t they? Of course you realise I was only having a laugh when I claimed that I came into the possession of the identity of the mystery figure by having “visions”.
Au contraire Alan, precogs or whatnot have nothing to do with it. I have had knowledge of this information, that these things would come pass or not, for quite some considerable time, getting it straight from “the horse’s mouth”, so to speak. I ask your forgiveness for the poor quality of my use of metaphor here but it is hard to explain the exact nature of the concept or concepts that I refer to. I have been told many times before that it is “a bit like seeing snow for the first time after a life in the desert”. I only mention this because of the dominant statistical position this description has amongst those that are offered. There are many other descriptions but they all describe the same moment in the same place. Big LOL.
Psychic powers that allow the state to identify miscreants – or the technophilic equivalent of whatever stamp – will only ever serve as the fulcrum by which existing power relations are applied, and as such are a buttress of the status quo. Wikileaks provided ample evidence of multiple war crimes committed in Iraq by the US and its allies, yet the only people to be punished thereof are the two individuals who brought these crimes to light, each of whom has spent years in prison
One Ring to rule them all
One Ring to find them
One Ring to bring them all
And in the Darkness bind them
Tolkien was way ahead of you Cornudet
OK, so Jeremy would be the peace and justice secretary of course. As for allotments, well yes, obviously, but in a sane world everyone would have a nice garden (if they wanted one). I was just gonna say how I grew up on a council estate, and as toddlers my brother and I had a garden to play in, and then we were a bit older a park that our house backed on to to play in with all our friends (Tin Tan Topper and It etc, etc), and it occurred to me to see if there’ a wikipedia entry for council estates, and there were several, so I clicked on one of them and, in that moment, lost my internet connection (which keeps happening), and so I thought I’d check out BBC News whilst waiting for it to reconnect, and it just happened to be Hard Talk just starting AND it just happened to be a guy by the name of Jonathan Haidt who was being interviewed (who I’ve not heard of or come across before), and initially Stephen Sackur brought up the campus protests in the US, and shortly thereafter I was hooked (and forgot about my internet connection), and then – and in respect of his new book – they spoke about kids and the massive surge in mental health problems in the past ten/twelve years or so, and the loss of freedom for so many kids that previous generations experienced, and how they experience the world largely through their smart phones etc, etc.
And it reminded me of something a friend said to me about twenty years ago, which I’d completely forgotten about. He was a school teacher (and a parent of three young boys), and it was coming up to the Summer holidays for the schools, and he said something along the lines of how they’ll probably be another headline news story in the MSM a week or two before the holidays start about something horrific that happened to one or more youngish kids…… Yes, well the PTB don’t want kids going out and making their own fun and enjoyment and having adventures and being free.
A bit before my time, but you get the picture:
The hobbies and games children loved in the 1940s
Hobbies and games in the 1940s used to be simple and involve lots of imagination……..
https://www.yours.co.uk/leisure/nostalgia/1940s-toys/
In the 50s/60s we’d spend all the daylight hours during school holidays playing in the surrounding fields. All those fields are now modern housing estates. The thousands of houses were never needed by ‘locals’ they were primarily for overflows from the cities. And, a good proportion of those new houses were bought up by absent landlords to be rented back at exorbitant rates. Some call this progress.
My brother and I, from about the age of seven and eight (there was thirteen months difference between us) used to get a season ticket every year for the open-air swimming pool in Mill Hill (London NW7), which was about a mile away from where we lived, and spend a good percentage of the school holidays there all day (back then they used to close for an hour for lunch at 1.00pm, and so we’d come out and – along with a few other kids – queued up to get in again, and eat our sandwiches and lark about of course, and be first back in when they opened again). And also at weekends and after school from May onwards when it opened. It had five diving boards, two of which were spring boards, and two slides, one small one down the shallow end at one end, and a really big one. And I continued to go there fairly regularly after leaving school and starting work. But Thatcher and Co put paid to that in 79/80, and along with countless other open-air pools around the country – including the pools in Kingsbury and W Hendon – it was closed (and the grounds put out to tender and sold off). By this time there was an indoor pool at Copthall, but it’s not the same of course, and you don’t spend the day there (or the afternoon there) sunbathing and swimming. And there weren’t any diving boards or slides.
Keep getting disconnected (and then reconnected, and then disconnected again), but I managed to get this photo eventually (albeit in black and white), but it was obviously taken when the pool was closed for lunch, or whatever:
https://mempics.jalbum.net/Swimming%20Pool/slides/Swimming%20Pool%20open%20Air.jpg
When I did a search last night re council estates the following came up in the list of results. It wasn’t what I was looking for, but it looked interesting, and so I saved it into a new tab, and after watching Hard Talk read some of it and then stopped. But I didn’t twig where it was heading which, on reading on further as I just this minute did, I’ve now been enlightened. Well worth checking out:
The fall and rise of the council estate
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jul/13/aylesbury-estate-south-london-social-housing
I observe that those who write about council estates in the main stream media, don’t live on them
Conversely, Those who live on them, never get to write about them in the main stream media
It goes far beyond the Palestinian issue. Look at the current state of the UK. Think on what these “regime” parties promised vs their delivery of same.
Why would you as a voter, trust any of those parties? They’ve proven that they couldn’t run a bath.
It’s not an issue of policy or messaging, no-one really gives a f**k what those are. Because the system and the systemic parties are moribund.
They can’t deliver on a manifesto, not just won’t. Can’t!
These useless f**kers can’t do it. They cannot run a country, end of…
Allow me to rephrase my PS:
What I can’t understand about the local election results is why anyone would – or COULD – vote for any of the three main parties……
It’s something akin to a majority of the electorate voting for Blair and New Labour again in the years following the invasion of Iraq and Blair’s mammoth big lies about WMD etc. The difference of course being that the genocide in Gaza is happening right now.
@Allan Howard, you could just make lying in office a criminal offence.
It’s important to remember that, as important as the Gaza issue is, when it comes to the GE there are a whole load of other issues impacting the country that need to be addressed.
Here is some interesting forgotten/hidden history:
August 1947—Kristallnacht in the UK in response to Jewish anti-British terrorism in Palestine to the sergeants hanged in Palestine affair
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2024/05/03/august-1947-kristallnacht-in-the-uk-in-response-to-jewish-anti-british-terrorism-in-palestine-to-the-sergeants-hanged-in-palestine-affair/
Many thanks APT; like probably just about everyone I’d never heard about our very own ‘Kristallnacht’, and the two articles contain lots of very interesting details that I was unaware of, especially the second one. No wonder it’s been airbrushed from our history, as with the Haavara Agreement, which very few people knew about prior to the episode with Ken Livingstone in April 2016.
Zionist terrorism, if you please.
And the Zionist terrorists learned from the British imperial terrorists. Indeed the latter trained, armed and collaborated with the former. Even in a few cases overlapped.
I wonder if this history has anything to do with both the British Empire and Israel being outliers today in having no codified political constitution as almost all other current states have?
Excellent article SD, informative and enlightening, and all completely new to me. But you should post it again (as should APT and the article HE or SHE linked to), so that as many people as possible who follow Craig get to read it (them). And all of us share them far and wide.
It is important to get one’s papers and bonafide signatures from people who are on the up to date register. Ideally these forms should be handed in to the electoral registration officer, very likely placed there by decades under Straw’s rule and machinations .
The earlier the papers are in and checked with a fine-tooth comb the better, so if corrections are needed there is time to get them done.
A lot of running around can be saved by getting it right first time.
I do not know whether the rules have changed since 2010, but they will have to provide you with them.
It is important to be included in hustings on the panel, not in the audience.
They will try all sorts of tricks to exclude you. They will ensure that the majority of the audience is handpicked.
It is vital to get Umma TV including you in any televised debate, usually question will be vetted by them and candidates have little leeway to change their agenda.
I do not feel fit enough to perform the many tasks of an election agent, but I can help for what it’s worth.
There are more considerations to beware of, such as the daily/nightly press work, but that is for a later time nearer to when it matters.
What do British public VIPs say when they are confronted with such a quote?
“”I think we should’ve gone into Rafah yesterday already… There are no uninvolved (civilians) there. You have to go in and kill and kill and kill… We have to kill them before they kill us”
(quote by Shimon Boker, vice chairman of the World Likud)
Do they laugh it away? Or do they not answer the question? Or divert (“look, there is an alien spaceship!”)?
British comedy in the past could have made fine use of such idiotic behaviour by some Mr. Boker.
Presumably Boker (who I’ve not heard of before) said this recently. Do you have a link to it, so that I can post it on other sites? Thanks.
I did a search but couldn’t find anything, and all the results were for Simon Baker (whoever HE is), but there was one result by the Jerusalem Post which looked interesting, and turned out to be about him, claiming that ‘left-wing Israelis will burn synagogues’. I’ve no idea what it was all about, but he was talking complete bollocks of course.
Something else for the people of Blackburn to chew on.
Rachel Reeves’ speech to business leaders this morning was introduced by former Tory austerity minister Nick Boles.
She promised them that austerity will continue.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/24303339.ex-tory-minister-introduces-labour-speech-economy/
Craig, George Galloway’s comments on Novara are embarrassing for the party. I know you don’t share those views expressed that way. I know people have all kinds of different views across our society and they deserve representation. But it’s worrying to have a party leader speaking like this. If he did get real power I worry how far he would go. It also distracts from everything else. How to limit the damage? or is it irreparable?
S, What did George Galloway say exactly (could you post a link to said video as well – he’s done several interviews with NM recently – and also approximately where in the video/interview he says whatever he says – ie at 10 mins, or 15 mins. Many thanks
The comments objected to by an interviewer for Novara Media refer to George Galloway’s views on same-sex relationships and the law on abortion. GG does not view the former as ‘normal’ and would like the time limits for abortion to be reduced.
For the interviewer this would preclude him voting for George Galloway despite his being in general agreement with GG’s views on economic policy and foreign policy.
Thanks David. It’s difficult to know whether it stems from his Catholicism, or because of his strong Muslim base that he depends on, or both. Odd thing is that I used to watch his programme on RT with his wife quite regularly, and I’m pretty certain he never mentioned either of these issues and his views on them, because if he had, I would undoubtedly have been surprised and somewhat shocked, and remembered it precisely for that reason.
He was one of Parliament’s foremost champions of gay rights for decades. Also a fierce advocate for mass immigration. Craig could confirm this, along with anybody who listened to his show on TalkSport in the 2000s/10s. Those are Galloway’s true opinions.
His complete 180 on these issues in his late sixties was calculated to attract listeners from the reactionary side of the political spectrum. People he used to deride. If it insulted the intelligence of anyone who had heard his previous self .. so be it.
Thanks, but the Momentum crowd were largely not listening to TalkSport at that time. They might have voted for Workers Party candidates and would I think be fond of Craig Murray, but will be quite turned off by this. So if it just a cynical calculation, I hope it was made carefully, especially if this kind of stuff has to go in the manifesto, and candidates and voters have to sign up to it.
The Momentum-Novara crowd promoted both the Labour antisemitism “crisis” and second referendum scams fundamental to destroying Corbyn after 2017.
It should surprise no one that they’re now anxious to discredit George Galloway, one of the only politicians opposing the West’s genocide in Palestine.
Aaron Bastani’s missus, for full context, is the Labour leader on Portsmouth Council.
One of the big problems with the left today, is their insistence on absolute conformity on what are, as they view it, settled woke issues. That kind of ‘all or nothing’ absolutism; whereby regardless of all the things you agree on, if someone doesn’t say support gay marriage or trans self-ID, that makes them a terrible person! It’s what keeps the left from getting anywhere near power. Progressives need to be far more tolerant, and no, that doesn’t mean being tolerant of intolerance, it means welcoming debate, and arguing respectfully. But seeing the bigger picture and prize.
Establishments across the West, are dividing leftists (see SNP). Those who should and would be united, are getting into cul-de-sac fights or culture wars.
I’m personally on the fence about Galloway myself. The reason is, because everything he does seems slightly tongue-in-cheek. His venomous diatribes on MOATS are often like stand-up routines. Hard to tell whether Galloway’s in it to win it, or merely there for the shits and giggles, and a bit of self-promotion along the way? He’s clearly a clever guy though.
For me, Galloway showed his true colours when he appeared on a ‘reality’ TV programme. Someone who does that is duplicitous and lacking in gravitas, never to be trusted or taken seriously. Currently he is saying the right things about Gaza which has upped his popularity in certain quarters, but who is he really?
He was a Labour politician, as everyone knows, and he’s still very much a unionist.
I just can’t reconcile his scolding criticisms of US/UK leaders and our dreadful hypocrisy-based foreign policies, with his desire for Scotland’s status to remain like that of vassal to his feudal lord in London. Even if he supports devolution(?), Scotland’s elected parliament has zero input in shaping UK foreign policy. You’d imagine, for someone like Galloway, that arrangement would be unacceptable?
“never to be trusted or taken seriously”
While he contributed to some “light entertainment” of dubious merit, Tony Blair and his gang of grifting runts were helping to “reshape the Middle East” and played their parts in the death of millions – all for a fistful of dollars – scum
You seem to a have very different set of priorities from me Stevie Boy. Here are mine
Tony Blair, and the members of his Camarilla (which includes Starmer) should never be trusted or taken seriously
Agreed. Blair and his henchmen should be in prison, with most of the Tories and Liberal Democrats in adjoining cells, alternatively they should all be on the gallows. As a class, I fucking hate the modern politicians and wouldn’t trust a single one of them.
The point is, the likes of Galloway, Farage, Tice, etc. are dubious quantities that I suspect are just the ‘acceptable opposition’ to the mainstream scum – none of them have anything inspiring or original about them, and I wouldn’t entrust the country to any of them.
My priorities would be PR and a Swiss-style referendum-based government. But I don’t expect that to happen anytime soon, if ever.
It has always been like this Stevie Boy, I suspect. You ask for a choice that has never been. The way it works is “the people” get two choices – worse and less worse.
Nonetheless I feel we have hit rock bottom in terms “top people” so even if this is a “acceptable” channel, I can’t go down the other one – endless war and moral degradation.
Yet you would leave “the country” in the hands those who cause these problems. Why?
Goose: yes, very much so. Parties big enough to be contenders for power in an FPTP system are by necessity broad churches. Something the Tories seem to have forgotten. You support a party because it near enough represents your views and wishes. You can’t expect everything that everyone in that party says and does to align perfectly with your views. If you’re a party member, you hope it will listen to you and maybe move closer to those views and wishes. You may learn, as with Blair, that it’s a forlorn hope. It’s all a balancing act. However if that party starts taking the piss by positioning itself to be barely closer to your views than its opponents in the hope of hoovering up more of the political spectrum, it’s time to look elsewhere, including your right not to vote for any of them (or spoil your ballot if voting is compulsory).
Steve Hayes
Did you see the X/Twitter reaction to Galloway’s interview comments, from the supposed left?
Faux outrage everywhere : tweets about Galloway’s “abhorrent views” and plenty of fury with Bastani, simply for platforming him. Even Owen Jones, who has been otherwise excellent, in keeping Gaza interest high among his younger followers – this, as the BBC, ITV and others have tried to shield Israel by pushing reports on the situation in Gaza, further and further down the news agenda (we know what their game is). So yeah, even Owen Jones, broke off his stream of X/Twitter Gaza updates to stomp all over Galloway.
This is why many in the electorate find the modern left fundamentally unserious. It only takes a Galloway comment, or J.K. Rowling’s latest tweet about gender self-ID, to send them all into orbit.
They are all phonies, Jones, novara etc involved in a psyop, whether wittingly or not
When I was a child, over fifty years ago, the gays, the trans, the lesbians and bi stood with the despised – the ethnic minorities, the excluded – all useless eaters together.
Now they stand with Power and discuss the hues of political nail varnish – enough said
Yep. It’s all over the place. Our Union branch has members in the SWP and the Socialist Party who won’t cooperate even though there’s barely a fag paper between them. We were carrying our banner on the Pride march with a great atmosphere when it was soured by a counter demo of anti-trans women who I assume should have been marching with us. Everything you say about Owen Jones et al is of course true. The question is how much of the factionalism is inherent to the left and how much is stirred up and financed by our opponents.
I watched Novara until 2022 when they began broadcasting Ukrainian war propaganda. They are not the left. They have the appearance of being a cut-out for some government agency.
Steve, you are asking the wrong person: I am not on the left.
As for factionalism – this issue relates to our primate origins. There is some VERY interesting data out concerning the collective behaviour of chimpanzees available online. If this issue is paramount to you, several hours’ reading will allow you to eat it. It is a simple story, they are social animals yet limited in vocal resources; their solutions and directives illuminate factionalism/tribalism as concepts rather well. I found some of the mechanisms they had evolved for conditioning group behaviour unbelievable and ended up reading a fair bit to satisfy my curiosity. They do, apparently, do what they do, but I am still trying to digest what it is they do and its incredible implications.
Things can be pretty sour in a democracy like ours – surely it is better that people know not everyone agrees with them. The alternative seems worse – you can get some idea by watching Leni Riefenstahl’s six hour Nazi orgasmatron “Triumph of the Will”. With a cast of tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands marching “with a great atmosphere” and they all agree with the Fuhrer, lol.
Will: what was middle of the road, eg Macmillan, Wilson or Heath, is now Far Left. Rather, I was remarking on how the Tories normally manage to laud their “colleagues” to the sky in public even when we all know they detest each other. It’s breaking down now but usually they stick together like glue because they know that’s what they must do to keep their snouts in the trough. Meanwhile on what was once the middle of the road, people get torn apart because they appeared in a cat suit years ago or said something about a peripheral issue that someone else disagrees with. If you wanted to keep the left out of power, why not use your media to inflame every small difference and your chequebook to finance multiple squabbling factionlets. I can’t say that’s what’s happening but it’s at least as plausible as proposing some genetic difference between left and right.
Steve you misunderstand me
I am not proposing “some genetic difference between left and right.”. I have given the left and the right and the differences between them, since a couple of years into the T Blair administration, no thought at all.
I am proposing that the behaviour related to factionalism/tribalism in humans is more than remarkably similar to this behaviour in chimpanzees, minus language of course.
Yet there are several secrets to be learned by studying this data which, if it were more widely appreciated, would be of great relevance to the current situation in which we find ourselves politically, both in Britain and in the wider world. We are used to hearing behaviour explained in terms of language; however chimpanzees don’t use it to any degree close to the extent we do, yet they have developed several social mechanisms which appear to be only possible to explain by assuming they are language users. How is this to be explained? Is it our understanding of the concept of “language” that is flawed or is it our observational methodology that lacks some component or components which, if present, would allow for a full description and explanation of the observed phenomena?
As usual here, Steve, only time will tell. Scientific advance can be described as taking place in “stages”. The first of these is known as the “Context of Discovery”. Here you will find all those outliers burnt at the stake for “heresy”.
God, all too many people are like Kyle’s mom from South Park:
“Horrific, appalling violence is ok, as long as nobody says any naughty words.”
Regime mouthpieces will shill for & stagnant “centrists” will vote for a mendacious, wooden puppet like Starmer.
Who pretty much represents all that’s led the country to its current wretched state, but in a singularly boring way.
However someone who has by magnitudes far less to no responsibility for such things. Who doesn’t fetishize, every (frankly) niche concern in manner that totally conforms to current dictates of fashion.
Is utterly beyond the pale. Aye ok…
“ I worry how far he would go”
Yet the world is on the brink of annihilation. The Merchants of Death grow fat on the carcasses of the innocent, their products proliferate on five continents. The current political milieu, established by Thatcher and Reagan for the sole benefit of the super rich, consumes the lives of the poor in their millions across this world – all of this is the work of those who rule, not those who challenge. It is not about Galloway (yet).
Your worst “Galloway” nightmares have long been depicted in literature and art. The film “A Very British Coup” shows a “Galloway” coming to power. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend you watch it and feel your worries melt away.
S, I am not sure you and I live in same world.
Thanks Will, I don’t remember the Very British Coup having identity politics and divisive social issues. I just wish Workers Party could have stayed away from these divisions. I also would rather we didn’t have parties suggesting that they might undo sensible laws that give freedoms, in order to win votes, when as you say, there are other issues to worry about. As others have said, Galloway himself has himself voted for those freedoms in the past. So the whole situation is unnecessarily unpleasant.
I don’t bother with social media myself but surely it’s no surprise to anyone that they all got excited about it. Either Galloway knew what he was doing and wanted this, or he’s not savvy enough to lead a party.
No it didn’t, the issues back then were the “undeserving poor” and the colour of someone’s skin – same old, same old, equally divisive.
I note that gender equality has superseded racial equality in the political and media landscape. No one mentions racism unless it is bogus antisemtism. Social media seems to be the sole preserve of the “intelligence” services.
You worry about what he “might do” if he became the new Brit “Hitler” yet you also wonder whether he the “right person” to lead a party, his own party. You seem to have forgotten Savile and Thatcher, Maxwell and Prince Valiant, lying to start a War of Aggression in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, killing MILLIONS etc. etc. ad nauseum- sorry what were you saying about Galloway?
“Under the [fascist] first past the post system, on average less than 100 seats change hands at a UK parliamentary election.”
“those who did not bother to vote” you should save your pejorative terms for those who couldn’t bother to abstain. If you vote in a FPTP election you automatically rig your ballot.
FPTP.
rearrangement of constituency boundaries.
Voter ID.
Thanks to tory reforms, unopposed by the rest, our crap democracy is even crappier.
It isn’t a democracy and never was.
Good luck Craig! Local sevice will, of course, mean you will need to see to those 4,000 holes, as I doubt anyone in London has given much of a toss about lancashire since Lennon and McCartney wrote “A Day in the Life”.
All the best Craig…Give em hell The country Needs good souls like you in Office .
Absolutely, hats off for all you’re doing for Palestine.
Just a humble note that MPs are also there to take care of the problems in this country, and nothing gets people elected easier than a good understanding of actual problems faced by the electorate, and creative ways of addressing them.
You have written about many such problems, and I know you’re restricted by party manifesto, however you might find it useful to invite brainstorming about the challenges facing your voters.
Why has no one quizzed Sunak, Cameron, Mitchell; Starmer, Lammy et al about this:
Israel forcibly sterilized Ethiopian Jews without their consent : https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/biopolitical-times/israel-admits-targeting-ethiopian-jews-compulsory-contraception. Quite shocking really, they used long-lasting depo-type jabs; could any other State on earth get away with this?
Israel banned Black Jews from returning to the country, and those that remain face possible deportation. Is this why far-right white supremacists, and Third-Reich revivalist Germans, have seemingly latched on to white ethnoreligious Israel?
Does the FCDO & UK MoD think this ‘apartheid done right’ model a possible in the UK? Why are we in a close relationship with this strange country?
Something Naziesque about this policy Goose – the dark correlate of “blood and soil” policies the world over
The Nazi’s had something called the “Racial Purity Commission” which what I have read, caused terror – real terror to those who were investigated
will moon, all
Did anyone catch that recent video of Antony Blinken and Mitt Romney discussing the crisis? Romney was bemoaning the fact Israel had lost the PR battle – a fact which baffled Romney, because Israel is, ‘usually really good at this stuff, to which Blinken nodded.
It gave a shocking, if somewhat expected insight into the type of thinking among US political leaders. They know Israel have unhealthy levels of control over the US news media; they also know it’s the same story online with hasbara troll farms pushing propaganda 24/7. They don’t really care about that though, or about how many die, no, their concern is with whether Israel can get the messaging right.
These are the folks who want to ban TikTok. Presumably to allow Israel another platform to manipulate. In other words, the US problem with TikTok is likely that it’s too neutral and doesn’t currently positively discriminate in favour of Israel.
Craig, I remember you were at Elbit in Leicester a few months back.
Things have escalated somewhat 🙂
https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/local-news/palestine-supporters-smash-through-drone-9270651
I see Elbit are still lying about supplying components the IDF use……
Takeaway quote from drone supplier UAV Tactical Systems Ltd
“Only good fortune prevented serious injury.”
Clearly the people of Palestine are experiencing bad fortune resulting in serious injury or death.
Scratch another mark on the list of hypocrisies that can be seen from outer space
According to the Times of Israel in an article posted this morning: ‘US confirms holding up sale of heavy bombs it feared Israel would use in Rafah’, referring to a large shipment of 2,000 and 500-pound bombs. The US has supplied Israel with thousands and thousands of 2,000-pound bombs (that can kill people more than 300 meters away) during the past seven months which have undoubtedly killed and maimed tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza, but now they are supposedly concerned about Israel using them in Rafah. Yes, well according to most polls in the US, Trump is in the lead.
So we don’t mind if you kill lots of women and children and babies and elderly and disabled with smaller bombs and artillery, but we’d rather you didn’t do so with our big bombs.
Anyway, at the end of a pretty long article it says the following:
Eighty-eight Democrats signed a letter to Biden on Friday expressing “serious concerns regarding the Israeli government’s conduct of the war in Gaza as it pertains to the deliberate withholding of humanitarian aid.”
And then it’s the standard lying bollocks:
Israel insists that it does not block relief entering Gaza and that any shortages are the result of the inability of aid agencies to distribute it to those in need……
Which has nothing to do with aid workers being regularly assassinated and deterring the agencies from distributing aid of course. But how very highly amusing to blame the agencies for their inability, an inability that didn’t exist for most of the past seventy years or more.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-confirms-holding-up-sale-of-heavy-bombs-it-feared-israel-would-use-in-rafah/
Also came across the following on the ToI website posted yesterday:
Poll: Majority of Israelis support prioritizing hostage deal over Rafah operation
56 percent of Jewish Israelis would prefer an agreement over invading Hamas’s final remaining stronghold in Gaza, Israel Democracy Institute finds
A majority of Israelis believe that reaching a hostage deal with Hamas should be the country’s top national priority — more important than launching a military operation against the terror group in Rafah, according to polling by the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI).
A survey of 750 people, conducted in Hebrew and Arabic over May 1-5, found that 56 percent of Jewish Israelis prioritize reaching a deal over invading Hamas’s final remaining stronghold in Gaza, while 37% believe military action should take precedence.
Among those on the left and center, 92.5% and 78%, respectively, support prioritizing a deal, while 55% of those on the political right prefer launching an operation.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/poll-majority-of-israelis-support-prioritizing-hostage-deal-over-rafah-operation/
The ‘terror group’ in Rafah, whilst Israel has been raining down terror on Gaza for seven months solid (bar one week).
Just came across the following on zeteo via Al Jazeera – a recent poll of US voters finds a majority of Democrat voters believe Israel is committing genocide, and that 70% of voters in general support a permanent ceasefire, including 83% of Democrats:
EXCLUSIVE POLL: A Majority of Democratic Voters Believe Israel Is Committing Genocide
Mehdi’s Memo on the results of our new poll on Gaza and Iran
https://zeteo.com/p/gaza-israel-genocide-poll-ceasefire-us-voters
The poll was conducted between April 26 and 29, just prior to the crackdown and full-on Nazi demonisation of the campus protests/protesters, so it would be interesting to see how the results of a poll would pan out now.
Posted on Al Jazeera earlier today:
‟ US police break up Gaza protest encampment at George Washington University
Police say arrests made in Washington, DC, as US-wide crackdown continues on student-led demonstrations in support of Palestinians in Gaza. ”
Posted by Caitliin Johnstone yesterday:
‟ The Destruction Of Gaza SHOULD Be Radicalizing People
Right now, even as its own criminality hits fever pitch, the western political-media class is fretting with increasing shrillness about young people getting “radicalized” and turned against their government by the spread of information and ideas at campus demonstrations and on TikTok. ”
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-destruction-of-gaza-should-be
Yep, being radicalised by the evil and the terror being inflicted on the people of Gaza. Now fancy that!
“ how very highly amusing ”
Not that amusing
To THEM it is, Will – ie to BN and his fascist buddies.. And that was the point I was making of course. I was expressing my contempt..
Language means what it means Alan – nothing more, nothing less. It is one of the rules of the game – as Ludwig Wittgenstein called it , “the language game”.
There is no subject of “high amusement” in the information you impart
I suggest you be more careful in your use of language
You post a lot. If you are unable to manage the editing of so many comments, why not set your sights a little lower – less quantity, more quality, what?
—
[ Mod: Comment counts for this thread so far (9 May 2024 @ 1:42am):
Allan Howard = 14 comments
will moon = 40 comments
Sage advice indeed. ]
Will, you are spouting B/S for some reason (along with the Doc), and I’ll leave it at that.
Thanks Mod…. So if one deducts the 21 comments posted on the next page (at the time of typing) from the 208 comments posted in total (at the time….), and then say an additional 4 that have been added on this page, and subtract 25 from 208 (I might need my calculator for this bit), that leaves 183 (less my reply to the Doc)….. so my 13 comments in fact constituted 7.1428571428571% of the total, and the Doc was out by a factor of almost FIVE!
As for the line count….. well I think we can assume the Doc got THAT completely wrong tooo (but probably only by a factor of two, or three, maybe). But I’ll give him 6 out of 10 for his attempt at ridicule.
Fair point I will post less
Given that Craig will need to focus on establishing himself at Blackburn and, later on, on fighting an election, should he not hand over this blog – pro tem – to the splendidly vociferous poster named “Allan Howard”?
After all, “Allan Howard” seems to account for a good third of all posts on here, both in number and line total terms
Go “Allan”, you make this blog worth reading!
Or perhaps not….
As you may have guessed Doc, I’ve been diagnosed with Compulsive Poster Disorder. And apparently there’s no cure, so I’ve just got to somehow learn to live with it.
Oh no, I can feel yet ANOTHER one coming on:
Support from lecturers and no arrests as Spanish students protest for Gaza
Huge Palestinian flags are hanging on campuses across Spain as thousands of students protest against Israel’s war in Gaza.
Some classes have stopped this week as students demonstrate in Barcelona, Valencia, the Basque Country and Madrid.
Across Europe, similar sit-ins have taken place at universities in the Netherlands, France, the United Kingdom, Finland, Denmark and Germany, as young people join their United States peers who are facing a violent police response.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/8/support-from-lecturers-and-no-arrests-as-spanish-students-rally-for-gaza
“ I’ve just got to somehow learn to live with it.”
You are not the only one who has to learn to live with it lol
I’m not speaking for myself here, because I learnt a long, long time ago
@ Allan Howard
You’ve got my ear Allan. And please don’t hold back. As far as Mr bloody Moon goes, i completly ignore his drivel.