The Main Task of the Left in the General Election is to Start Building an Opposition to Starmer’s Racist, Imperialist & neo-Liberal Politics

Why I Am Supporting Two British‑Palestinian Candidates Samar Ammar & Tanushka Mara

Tanuksha Mara & Leanne Mohamad at STAND UP 4 PALESTINE Speaking About Why They Are Standing in the General Election

In the current election there are some excellent candidates such as Andrew Feinstein in Holborn and St. Pancras, who is standing against Starmer and Leanne Mohamad who is going up against Wes Streeting in Ilford North. I want to focus on two excellent British Palestinian candidates.

Tanuksha Mara is standing as an Independent Socialist candidate in Hove, which used to be the posher part of Brighton.  Currently it is represented by ‘Killer Kyle’ the Vice Chair of Labour Friends of Israel. Kyle is a hard-line supporter of Starmer, an open Zionist and someone almost devoid of charisma or personality.

Picket of Kyle's Offices in Hove

Tanuksha is an award winning theatre director of Jordanian-Palestinian origin. Her family now lives in Jordan. She also writes for Middle East International

Samar Ammar was until recently the Chair of Bromsgrove Labour Party and a local councillor as well as a member of Unite. She had been put forward by her local party, with unanimous support, to become the MP for Bromsgrove.

She had only one disadvantage. She was of Palestinian origin and in Starmer’s Labour Party having any connection with the Palestinians automatically rules someone out of the running.

When Starmer parachuted in one of his clones, Samar resigned.

Being an overt Zionist and racist however is a distinct advantage which is why genocide supporter and professional Zionist Luke Akehurst was parachuted into the North Durham seat.

Akehurst supported in 2018 Israel shooting some 300 unarmed demonstrators at the Gaza fence dead and wounding thousands.  Amongst the dead were over 50 children but according to Akehurst they were all ‘Hamas terrorists’.

However in the eyes of Starmer and his racist supporters, support for the cold-blooded murder of Palestinians is seen as an advantage. Which is why Samar didn’t stand a chance of being selected. She has therefore decided to stand as an Independent candidate.  Please contribute to her Crowdfunder as she is fighting the campaign on a shoe-string.

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/sam-ammar-for-bromsgrove

My Own View on the Likely Outcome of the Most Boring Election on Record

This is a strange election. Not since 1997 has it been clear that one party is going to win overwhelmingly. The Tory Party is in a state of collapse with some even predicting that Sunak could lose his seat.

More worrying is the rise of the Reform Party who are tipped by some polls to get 3‑5 seats. What is difficult to predict is what is going to happen to the Independent Socialist candidates, not least Jeremy Corbyn.

I hope very much that Corbyn and George Galloway win their respective contests but I fear that a depoliticised and defeated working class may well reject them.  Likewise my fear is that the independent socialist candidates may also not fare as well as we hope. I suspect we are going to have a mixed bag of results.

It is a great pity that instead of Galloway announcing a fait accompli of 500 Workers Party candidates standing (which became 150) that he didn’t call for a convention of the left to decide these things. This is leaving aside such his appalling concession to Farage and the racists by calling for the British navy to be used in the Channel to repel asylum seekers. Instead of calling out the demonisation and scapegoating of refugees by the Tories/Farage and Starmer Galloway went along with it.

Leanne Mohamad Independent Socialist - Ilford North

At a time of increased privatisation of the NHS, the scandal of water companies pouring sewerage into the sea whilst paying their shareholders millions in dividends, Galloway chose cheap populist rhetoric. He could have pointed to the billions of pounds paid to the Tories through fraudulent COVID contracts or even the fact that refugees come here because we went to their countries and started wars.

Corbyn once again has demonstrated that he has the tactical nous of a lemming. If he was going to stand why wait till the last minute to announce it?  Why not declare early on that he was standing, throw down the gauntlet to Starmer and call for the formation of an alternative socialist party based around the manifesto he stood on in 2017?

The Canary has published a useful list of 17 independent candidates but there are many more.

There are also some on the left who still have illusions in the Green Party. They should stop their wishful thinking.

In Brighton Kemptown the local candidate in my constituency, Elaine Hills, has put out a leaflet that is entirely parochial. It doesn’t even mention Gaza or genocide. There is no mention of NATO, any conflict internationally or racism. It really sums up the Greens. Kitchen-table politics.

My own recommendation is to only vote for the Green Party as a very last resort. Where a socialist candidate is standing you should vote for them.

The Green Party is a pro-capitalist party. It seeks to green capitalism. It has adopted the Zionists’ IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism which was designed with no other purpose than to conflate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. We see it being used constantly to defame student encampments and protests against genocide, despite the fact that those taking part include many Jews.

Recently I learnt from a statement posted by Jewish Greens, which is on the Green Party website, that the Green Party leadership has been meeting with ex-Labour MP John Mann, now Lord Mann, ‘to discuss the important issue of antisemitism’.

In fact anti-Semitism is extremely unimportant. If it was a problem does anyone think that a bigot like Suella Braverman would be concerned about it?

The only reference to Gaza by Jewish Greens is a statement referring to the ‘atrocious attacks on Israel by Hamas’. No mention of the genocidal attacks on the Palestinians of Gaza for over half a century. Quite what Jo Bird is doing in such an outfit beggars belief.

Lord Mann is best remembered for his hectoring and bullying attack on Ken Livingstone for having dared to mention the pro-Zionist policy of the Nazi state which resulted in the Ha'avara trading agreement which broke the Jewish Boycott of Nazi Germany.

Mann has a lengthy past record of racism, whether it is supporting Phil Woolas MP when the High Court removed him from Parliament after having run a nakedly racist campaign designed to ‘make the White folks angry’ with Muslims in his constituency of Oldham East & Saddleworth. In 2007 he produced a handbook on anti-social behaviour which targeted Gypsies and Roma as an example of anti-social behaviour.

I have correctly predicted the outcomes of the last 3 elections. I had no doubt that Miliband would fail in 2015 and Corbyn in 2019 and almost alone, I predicted that Corbyn could win in 2017 would do very well if not. But today it is difficult to hazard a guess, not only because of the volatility of the polls but because it is next to impossible to forecast how the Independent Socialists will do. 

It is clear that Starmer’s Labour Party will win. The toxic Tories are in a state of collapse having presided over rampant corruption, undemocratic legislation, bribes to their friends in high offices and racist attacks on migrants and asylum seekers for the past years.

However there is no enthusiasm for Starmer. I predict a low turnout as people see no reason for having to choose between two sets of Tories.  I imagine that many Tories will turn to the Lib Dems, who are a thoroughly pro-capitalist party. Whether they get more than 50 seats is anyone’s guess. Likewise it is unlikely that the Tories will get much more than 120 seats.

The unknown factor is the far-right Reform Party which has come out of nowhere. Farage is predicted to win the seat of Clacton. I hope not.

The SNP is predicted at the moment, after the fall-out from the corruption surrounding its former leader, Nicola Sturgeon, to do badly against the Labour Party. Not living in Scotland I have no idea if this will turn out to be true given that the Labour Party is a unionist party. But if they do badly it will be a self-inflicted defeat.

I also predict that overall the socialist independents are not going to fare very well because of a lack of any unified impact, although there may be exceptions. Although I support Galloway and the Workers Party where they are not standing against other socialist candidates, I fear that even Galloway may lose. I hope not because we need his oratory in Parliament, not least over Gaza.

I also hope that Chris Williamson, who is a thoroughly decent and principled socialist, wins in Derby North but I fear that this won’t happen.

What is clear is that after the dust has settled, after July 4, the Left seriously needs to get its act together like the Left in France. There is no reason for different left sects and parties to compete with each other. Unity around a minimum set of demands should be the order of the day.  Otherwise we will let the bigots and racists around Farage win by default.

I urge people in Hove and Bromsgrove in particular to support two British Palestinian candidates – Tanuksha Mara and Samar Ammar.

Tony Greenstein