I consider myself fairly well educated and I didn't know the phrase "thirty pieces of silver" alluded to Jewish betrayal. Does that mean if I used it I would be guilty of unconscious bias or just ill educated or is that the same thing.And what if the anti-racists are themselves being racist? Do we refrain from pointing this out because of who they are and ignore what they say or do?
There was a little twitter spat today featuring Dr Louise Raw who tweeted about Angela Rayner, who was defending the Corbyn suspension, and used the phrase ‘thirty pieces of silver’ to describe Rayner. It’s a small, but telling phrase. Linking Jews to betrayal when the issue being discussed is anti-semitism? Conscious or unconscious? The tweet has now been deleted.
My point is being a lifelong opponent of racism doesn’t give you a pass when it comes to one of the oldest forms of discrimination and racism on the planet. We all have blindspots.
If you follow this insanity to its conclusion, then all those Labour Party members who've contributed to Corbyn's legal fund, which is approaching £400k now, will have to be expelled. All those who've sent letters and in some cases flowers in support have to be expelled too.
I'm not exaggerating, this is taken from Starmer's statement regarding the EHRC's report....
"And if – after all the pain, all the grief, and all the evidence in this report, there are still those who think there’s no problem with anti-semitism in the Labour Party. That it’s all exaggerated, or a factional attack.
Then, frankly, you are part of the problem too. And you should be nowhere near the Labour Party either."
If he's serious, then we're not talking about a handful of Labour party members who need to be expelled, we're talking about the majority. Of course that won't happen, because, as I've said many times, Israel and the plight of the Palestinians rarely features in anyone's top ten list of grievances, Jewish conspiracy theories don't crop up much in conversation with party members in Yorkshire either, but social justice does, jobs does and the demonisation of the left by the right does.
Starmer has over stepped the mark here, maybe he misjudged the mood, maybe he thought talking tough would be enough. Because he didn't have to do this, he went beyond the report's recommendations with that last line.
I don't know enough about Starmer to judge, maybe he's just naive, maybe he's playing the long game, destroying the party to save it, New Labour Mark 2, that sort of thing. Maybe he doesn't like the party, and he's happy if the great unwashed and the unions fuck off and he can fill the coffers with corporate donations.
Who knows.
One thing's for certain, this isn't about anti-Semitism any more, if it ever was.
Either way, I've recently left the party and it had little to do with Starmer, so I stare at this fiasco with a profound sadness rather than anger.
The Labour right are ruthless, they have the same mindset as the Tories in that it is power at any cost. If that means the hard left and the centre left are casualties then so be it. We are a hinderance to their pursuit of power. As I said earlier a mass membership party is difficult to control, it makes demands on the leadership, Starmer doesn't want to hear those demands he wants power and is willingly to sacrifice the hard and centre left so that he has a party he can control and the shortcoming in funding will come from donors rather than members.Labour have managed to throw overboard Rascal, you, me and bluesa which I would argue covers essentially the whole spectrum of centre to left wing opinion.
My only question is who the fuck is left in the Party? Shambolic few years from Labour.
Are Labour taking the Netflix approach to membership? Getting people to sign up and praying they forget?
The Labour right are ruthless, they have the same mindset as the Tories in that it is power at any cost. If that means the hard left and the centre left are casualties then so be it. We are a hinderance to their pursuit of power. As I said earlier a mass membership party is difficult to control, it makes demands on the leadership, Starmer doesn't want to hear those demands he wants power and is willingly to sacrifice the hard and centre left so that he has a party he can control and the shortcoming in funding will come from donors rather than members.
Has your village listed you as missing?
That is a good post. Chapeau.I used to bang on and on about the idea that Labour cannot win an election without the centre and I stand by that 100%. On the flipside though, Labour cannot win an election without the left. This tit for tat infighting gravitates between pointless and embarrassing.
I believe that the idea of the modern Labour Party to be the best invention in British political history. Centrists and centre left people to appeal to "Mondeo Man" and the business types but the socialist core to advocate for the principles it stands upon. In my thoughts at least, Labour is at its best when the left is the heart and the right is the mind. With the pulling and pushing between these two, we come to a middle ground that has the rights of the worker front and centre while still appealing to business owners as a responsible economic party.
When Labour really synergises well within its ranks, there is no force in politics that can stop it. I truly believe that. It has the enthusiasm of youth, the benefit of wisdom, the protection of the working class and the vulnerable but the support for middle class aspirational people.
But one doesn't work without the other. Purging the left and the socialists is essentially taking the Labour out of the Labour Party. Just as I vehemently disagreed with jumped up outrage by Momentum types in order to pressure MPs including the threat of deselection, I vehemently disagree with this idea that Momentum cannot exist in the Party and are all racists who need to be expelled, expunged and excommunicated. When Labour goes too far left or too far right then we become unelectable and if we purposely become unelectable then we are essentially voting for the Conservatives and hold the moral baggage for their actions that we could have prevented if we were just willing to look past these ridiculous pseudo-religious conflicts.
For a party that has spent the last 25 years preaching the benefits of diversity, it sure doesn't seem to understand the importance of diversity of opinion. Not just as a great election strategy but also as a way to be constantly challenging currently held beliefs and forcing us to justify policies internally.
Let the police know you are safe, the villagers will be worried about you.It's true though. He rebelled against the Labour Party about 500 times iirc when they were in Government and was by far the most rebellious MP. His opposition wasn't Tory-like in substance but in scale. If Starmer lets him back in the party, people of all wings of the party know he won't be getting a loyal backbench MP and if the decision to expel him is popular with voters, I'm struggling to think of the reasoning to bring him back in.
We already know Labour can win without the Corbynite faction because Blair did it 3 times.
Let the police know you are safe, the villagers will be worried about you.
Have you rang them yet?Which bit do you disagree with?
I used to bang on and on about the idea that Labour cannot win an election without the centre and I stand by that 100%. On the flipside though, Labour cannot win an election without the left. This tit for tat infighting gravitates between pointless and embarrassing.
I believe that the idea of the modern Labour Party to be the best invention in British political history. Centrists and centre left people to appeal to "Mondeo Man" and the business types but the socialist core to advocate for the principles it stands upon. In my thoughts at least, Labour is at its best when the left is the heart and the right is the mind. With the pulling and pushing between these two, we come to a middle ground that has the rights of the worker front and centre while still appealing to business owners as a responsible economic party.
When Labour really synergises well within its ranks, there is no force in politics that can stop it. I truly believe that. It has the enthusiasm of youth, the benefit of wisdom, the protection of the working class and the vulnerable but the support for middle class aspirational people.
But one doesn't work without the other. Purging the left and the socialists is essentially taking the Labour out of the Labour Party. Just as I vehemently disagreed with jumped up outrage by Momentum types in order to pressure MPs including the threat of deselection, I vehemently disagree with this idea that Momentum cannot exist in the Party and are all racists who need to be expelled, expunged and excommunicated. When Labour goes too far left or too far right then we become unelectable and if we purposely become unelectable then we are essentially voting for the Conservatives and hold the moral baggage for their actions that we could have prevented if we were just willing to look past these ridiculous pseudo-religious conflicts.
For a party that has spent the last 25 years preaching the benefits of diversity, it sure doesn't seem to understand the importance of diversity of opinion. Not just as a great election strategy but also as a way to be constantly challenging currently held beliefs and forcing us to justify policies internally.
Just as I vehemently disagreed with jumped up outrage by Momentum types in order to pressure MPs including the threat of deselection
Have you rang them yet?
It seems that way. Also Starmer careful to position himself as a champion of the north and the inequalities between it and the south of England During his speech to the CBI.Starmer is putting the blame for the delays and the longer lock down rather than a circuit break a few weeks ago fairly and squarely on Sunak. Labour have given up on Johnson as they are aware his party has and they are targeting the likely successor - we are about to watch a man held up as a human shield for his party to hide behind as he takes round after round - Johnson is simply a carcass to blame now.
Two weeks after the north needed a champion.It seems that way. Also Starmer careful to position himself as a champion of the north and the inequalities between it and the south of England During his speech to the CBI.
I touched on that in my post on the previous page.The reason why Labour were rejected by the voters is because there is a perception that they have abandoned the working class in favour of minority interests and student union politics.
Do not recognise one part of the left you describe in our local party. The stuff around threats of deselection were real and not a myth.I agree with much of this, where I disagree is this.....
Threat of deselection? It's not in the Labour left's DNA, despite right wing propaganda that says otherwise. Who now could question the proposition, that to survive the left should've deselected every Blairite in the party who refused to accept the direction the party had taken when the membership had the temerity to elect Corbyn? Because in the end the left paid a heavy price for not doing so.
No such loyalty was shown by the right, then or now.
You remember the constant undermining of the Corbyn era, the ridiculous second leadership election, the shadow cabinet resignations, the defections, the leaks, Tom Watson for f**k sake! Change UK and all the other bollocks.
But the the left wrung its hands, as it always does, and called for party unity.
Contrast that with the right, they have no qualms with dirty politics, it's their meat and potatoes....
"Then, frankly, you are part of the problem too. And you should be nowhere near the Labour Party either."
And now we have Corbyn suspended, and we have the CAA coming for what? Twelve, fifteen left wing MPs? Including Starmer's deputy!
Your first thought might well be that's no way forward for the Labour party, that's no way to behave! Deselections and whatnot and my heart would be with you. But in that sense of broad church comradeship, which the left holds so dear, lies political weakness, because the left gets accused of all these shenanigans anyway, without actually doing any of it, while the right wields not a knife but a f**king meat cleaver and its called strength and leadership.
For a brief moment there was hope and genuine enthusiasm. It wasn't too long ago that crowds gathered in their thousands to hear Corbyn, a lacklustre orator at best, tell folk that it didn't have to be this way.
That couldn't be allowed to last.
So 2017 was sabotaged from within and the constant drip, drip of lies and half truths extinguished what hope there was.
Prestwich blue keeps haranguing me about why I show not one ounce of sympathy for the victims of the terrible hurt caused by Facebook and twitter outrages, and he deserves an answer.
I don't.
Because the embers of low level social network anti-Semitism, hurtful as they were, were deliberately fanned in to an illusory forest fire of hate, with the sole purpose of bringing about the destruction of a political movement, a movement that briefly offered hope to millions.
Ring Ring :))Aah ok, better to be cryptic than acknowledge Corbyn will add nothing (to put it mildly) to Labour's chances of getting elected.
Andy Burnam says 'thats not fair'.Two weeks after the north needed a champion.
Do not recognise one part of the left you describe in our local party. The stuff around threats of deselection were real and not a myth.