Why the Labour Party Candidate Kim Leadbeater Deserves to Lose in the Batley & Spen By-Election

Why I Support George Galloway as the best placed Left Candidate to Defeat Starmer Labour on July 1^st

This is what Starmer Supports When He Says he is a Zionist ‘Without Qualification’

Today the Labour Campaign for Free Speech Steering Committee unanimously issued the following statement:

The statement from a ‘senior Labour source’ during the Batley & Spen by-election that Labour was “haemorrhaging” Muslims voters, because of “what Keir has been doing on antisemitism” implies that Muslims are antisemitic – when in fact many voters oppose Starmer’s Labour, because he is bowing to the Israeli government and refuses to support the Palestinian struggle. That is not antisemitism, it is anti-Zionism. 

That this statement was issued has not been denied by Angela Rayner and the suspicion must be that it emanates from Starmer’s office if not Starmer himself. In the forthcoming Batley & Spen by-election, we refuse to support the Labour candidate, an incredible apolitical and nondescript candidate who was chosen by Keir Starmer directly.

There is no doubt that Starmer and his apparatchiks have been suspending and expelling people for supporting the Boycott of Israel and anything that is seen as critical of Israel. Calling Israel a racist state is guaranteed to get you expelled even though it’s true.

In the Daily Mail of 19^th June, Dan Hodges quoted a ‘senior Labour source’ as saying that:

'We're haemorrhaging votes among Muslim voters, and the reason for that is what Keir has been doing on antisemitism. Nobody really wants to talk about it, but that's the main factor. He challenged Corbyn on it, and there's been a backlash among certain sections of the community.'

The implication is clear. Muslims are anti-Semites who resent Starmer’s promise to ‘root out anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party. Except of course that Starmer has done no such thing. There is no anti-Semitism to root out.  He has been ‘rooting out’ supporters of Palestine and anti-Zionists and he has been doing so at the behest of the Israeli state and its local pawns, the Board of Deputies.

If Starmer was seriously concerned about ‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party he wouldn’t have suspended and expelled dozens of Jewish members of the Party or in my case welcomed my expulsion (which was the first time that this apology for a mannequin came to my attention!). In an interview with the Times of Israel Starmer gave away his real motives, namely that he is a ‘Zionist without qualification’.  In other words a racist without qualification.

The reasons are clear as to why Labour is going to lose another Red Wall seat. To all intents and purposes, the Labour Right acts like it is on a suicide mission. They lost working class Scottish voters under Ed Miliband, they forfeited much of the support of the Northern working class at the last election and now Starmer is determined to say goodbye to the votes of Britain’s 3.3 million Muslims.

At first glance it might seem as if Starmer is more concerned with the 300,000 Jews in Britain than a Muslim population over 10 times as big. However that would be a misreading. The Labour Right’s concern is not with the Jewish vote, not least because for 60 years (with the temporary exception of 1997 and 2001) the Jewish community has voted heavily for the Tories.

The real reason is that New Labour is wedded to slavishly following US foreign policy which is to support Israel as imperialism’s armed watchdog in the Middle East. Batley & Spen is the price they are going to pay for Starmer’s craven submission to imperialism.

police beat man

In addition, at the very beginning of his misleadership, Starmer tore up Labour’s policy to support Kashmiri independence. He preferred to cuddle up to Hindu racists who, like the Zionists, wish to colonise Kashmir and who have put it under martial law for the past two years. Starmer was more interested in supporting the communalist government of Narendra Modi of the BJP than supporting self-determination for the Kashmiris.

In the forthcoming Batley & Spen by-election, we are taking a leaf out of the Jewish Labour Movement’s book. The JLM refused to support Labour candidates who were seen to be pro-Jeremy Corbyn. They were supported in that by the Labour Right so they can’t complain now the boot is on the other foot.

Angela Rayner did not deny that the statement emanaged from the Labour Party. Indeed she all but admitted that the comments were genuine when she said that

“I will be ensuring that the party investigates this reported comment in line with our party’s rules and processes. Anybody who has made these comments should and will be dealt with in line with our independent disciplinary procedures, which I have no role in as deputy leader.””

However there is no need for an investigation. Dan Hodges is on good terms with Starmer and the Labour leadership. A ‘senior Labour source’ is code for either Keir Starmer himself or his advisers. Perhaps the hapless Rayner could have a quiet word with Sir Keir?

As the Guardian reported Labour’s candidate Kim Leadbeater,

received a hostile reception from voters who are unhappy with the party’s stance on foreign policy issues such as Palestine and Kashmir, amid a perception that the party takes some forms of racism more seriously than others.

The accusation “you’ve taken our votes for granted” was repeatedly levelled at Leadbeater and Lisa Nandy, the shadow foreign secretary and Wigan MP, who joined her on the campaign trail.

Perhaps the final straw was Starmer pulling out of a virtual Iftar event on the last night of Ramadan. The Jewish Chronicle had engaged in its usual Islamaphobic witchhunting. It reported that the CEO of the Muslim group which had organised the event, Omar Salha, supported the prisoner support group CAGE. Even worse, he had supported a boycott of Israeli dates!

In Starmer and the Board of Deputies view, boycotting Israeli Apartheid is anti-Semitic. Presumably boycotting the produce of South African Apartheid was also racist?  He might be a QC but Starmer is an intellectual lightweight.

Starmer and the Labour Right simply expected Muslims to take these insults on the chin and still support the Labour Party at the ballot box. They are in for a rude shock.

When a couple of idiots shouted anti-Semitic slogans, allegedly, in North London, Starmer rushed to condemn it in a joint statement with Boris Johnson and yet he had nothing to say about the hundreds of Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza, including 67 children, the pogroms against Palestinians in Israel itself and the massive Israeli Police violence in Jerusalem against worshippers.  To say nothing of the ethnic cleansing of Sheikh Jarrar and East Jerusalem. 

As a group of prominent Palestinians in the Labour Party wrote:

“The leader is practically treating the whole community as outcasts and is refusing to meet or even respond. We cannot separate this from the alarming shift in Labour’s approach to issues of race, or the shift in Labour’s position on Palestine.

“The message is loud and clear: I don’t care about you or your issues.”

Labour has elected not only a liar but an open racist in Starmer  A man who hid the funders of his leadership election campaign until it was over. Starmer received hundreds of thousands of pounds from rich businessmen including £50,000 from Trevor Chinn, a prominent Zionist. Labour simply doesn’t deserve to be supported as and until Starmer and Rayner are removed from the leadership and the posts are occupied by socialists.

I support George Galloway but not without criticisms. George has without doubt capitulated to a backward political consciousness amongst the white working class with his attack on ‘woke’ politics. His opposition to free movement of labour and his support for Brexit is a capitulation to British chauvinism.  In particular his previous support for Nigel Farage’s Brexit party.

Nonetheless George has been a staunch opponent of the Iraq War, US imperialism in the Middle East and above all a supporter of the Palestinians. Weighing all this in the balance I have no doubt that George Galloway, who let it not be forgot was expelled by Tony Blair, would make a good MP in comparison with the appalling Leadbetter. I also share his detestation of identity politics which alienate working class voters.

I have no hesitation in supporting George Galloway and I hope anyone living in Batley & Spen reading this does likewise.

Tony Greenstein

An Open Letter to John McDonnell – You Need Weep No More Over ‘Anti-Semitism’

The Chutzpah of Adam Langleben & the Jewish Labour Movement

Dear John,

 According to an old Yiddish joke an example of chutzpah is when a man who, having killed his father and mother, asks the court for mercy because he is now an orphan. This perfectly describes the behaviour of former Labour Zionist Councillor Adam Langleben.

It is a chutzpah because no one did more to instil in peoples’ minds the idea that the Labour Party is riddled with antisemitism than Langleben and the Jewish Labour Movement. Langleben’s electors believed him and therefore refused to vote for him. Some would call that poetic justice.

Not only did the Israeli Labour Party leader Herzog welcome Trump's election victory but they have even adopted the same language

In the wake of his defeat Langleben did a tour of TV and radio studios seeking to blame his defeat on everyone bar himself. I am however surprised that when Langleben first started whinging about ‘alt-Left’ conspiracy sites, i.e. Canary and Skwawkbox, that you rushed to appease him.  Not once have you met with Jewish members of the Labour Party who are socialists and don’t make false allegations of anti-Semitism.

In his conspiratorial rant of a video, besides getting all his facts wrong, Langleben called for the shutting down of what he termed the ‘Alt-left’ media sites.  Perhaps he thought he was in Israel where censorship is alive and kicking.  Langleben is not the first person to use the term ‘Alt-left’. This was how Donald Trump described the anti-fascist opponents of his neo-Nazi friends at Charlottesville.

Adam Langleben's rant on the 'Alt-left' media

Langleben is a member of the JLM, which describes the Israeli Labour Party as it ‘sister’ party. The ILP is not only historically a party of ethnic cleansing but to this day it is racist to the core. If the Labour Party bore any resemblance to the racism of the ILP then there would be just cause for complaint.  As one of its leaders, David HaCohen explained:

‘‘I had to fight my friends on the issue of Jewish socialism, to defend the fact that I would not accept Arabs in my Trade Union, the Histadrut; to defend preaching to housewives that they should not buy at Arab stores; to defend the fact that we stood guard at orchards to prevent Arab workers from getting jobs there... to pour kerosene on Arab tomatoes; to attack Jewish housewives in the markets and smash Arab eggs they had bought... to buy dozens of dunums from an Arab is permitted but to sell God forbid one Jewish dunum to an Arab is prohibited; to take Rothschild the incarnation of capitalism as a socialist and to name him the ‘benefactor’ – to do all that was not easy.’ (Ha’aretz, 15.11.69.)

The ILP’s last leader Isaac Herzog declared that his nightmare was waking up to find that Israel had an Arab Prime Minister and 61 Arab Members of Israel’s Knesset. Herzog also declared that he wanted to dispel the impression that the ILP were ‘Arab Lovers.’  Imagine that someone had denied that Labour was a ‘Jew lovers party.’

Herzog’s successor Avi Gabbay is even worse.  He declared that he would not join a coalition with members of the Joint List, parties representing the Arab citizens of Israel. He raised no objections however to a coalition with the nakedly anti-Arab far-right parties Yisrael Beteinu and Habayit Hayehudi.

Gabbay followed up declaring that “the Arabs have to be afraid of us” and that Israel need never evacuate any of its settlements built on occupied Palestinian land.  According to Gabbay ‘Settlements represent the ‘beautiful face of Zionism’.

In May 2012, Herzog wrote challenging arguments by human rights groups that Eritreans in Israel deserved protection as refugees. Today the ILP under Gabbay supports Netanyahu’s attempt to deport 40,000 Black African refugees.  Yet despite this Gabbay recently wrote to Jeremy Corbyn cutting his links with him on the spurious grounds of ‘anti-Semitism’.

The more McDonnell buys into the narrative of Labour 'antisemitism' the more he undermines Corbyn's leadership

As someone with a background of support for the Irish Republican movement you cannot be unaware of the fact that Protestant Supremacists in Northern Ireland identify with Zionism just as Republicans support the Palestinian struggle.  The recent ‘anti-racist’ Zionist demonstration outside Parliament included members of the DUP (& Norman Tebbit)!

In the words of Sir Ronald Storres, the British Military Governor of Jerusalem (1920-25) the Zionist project would be ‘one that blessed him that gave as well as him that took by forming for England “a little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of hostile Arabism.’ [Orientations, Nicholson & Watson, London 1943, p.345] 

Report by Daily Mail journalist Dan Hodges to divert attention from an award winning documentary

You declared last year that you could ‘weep' over Labour anti-Semitism row.  I can only suggest that you save your tears John.  If ‘anti-Semitism’ were really a problem in the Labour Party do you really think that Marc Wadsworth and myself would have been expelled?  That Jackie Walker and Ken Livingstone would be facing expulsion? Why do you think Black and Jewish anti-racists are the ones being disciplined?

The JLM protest of course that the ‘anti-Semitism’ smears have nothing to do with Israel but if that is so why do they push the 450 word IHRA definition of ‘anti-Semitism when anti-Semitism can be summed up in a few words i.e. ‘hatred of Jews as Jews’?  If Labour was indeed consumed with anti-Semitism do you really think that the Sun, Mail and Express press would be so concerned?

Rushing to appease Labour's Zionists is like digging your own grave

As long as you and Jeremy try to appease those who accuse the Labour Party of anti-Semitism, the more you will endanger your own position.  This fake campaign has but one target.  It is not to rid Labour of ‘anti-Semitism’ but to remove you and Jeremy from the leadership.  Marc, Jackie, Ken and myself are the collateral damage.

Adam Langleben’s JLM voted by 92% to 4% to support Owen Smith in the leadership election.  They are on Labour’s far-Right.  What you and Jeremy should be asking is why do we allow to operate, inside the Labour Party, the Labour Friends of Israeli Apartheid?

Langleben secretly videod Jackie Walker at a JLM 'training event' - she was suspended shortly after

The JLM does not represent all or even most Jews in the Labour Party.  Jews opposed to Zionism and the Israeli state are no different from Whites in South Africa who opposed Apartheid.  Would Labour then have identified with the Nationalists?

When Jonathan Arkush of the Board of Deputies attacked Jewdas, the Jewish group that Jeremy spent seder night with, he accused them of being ‘a source of virulent anti-Semitism.’  When Zionists talk of ‘anti-Semitism’ what they normally mean is anti-Zionism.  If you really want to be the first left-wing Chancellor of the Exchequer since Sir Stafford Cripps, you have to stand up to these racists not sing from the same song sheet.

In solidarity,

Tony Greenstein

Adam Langleben - Say Sorry

Langleben thinks that everyone but him is responsible for him losing his seat - when he was the author of his own misfortune

Some serving councillors lost their seats in last Thursday’s local elections. Many of those losing were from UKIP, and some were Tories. But although Labour gained ground, some of their councillors were among those losing. One of those was Adam Langleben, who had served on the council in the London Borough of Barnet.

The problem for Langleben is that he has been unable to accept defeat without blaming others, to the extent of making allegations which he will have significant trouble standing up. These have been made in a video he has posted. Here are some of the claims.

After saying “we just lost Barnet”, when Labour didn’t hold the council in the first place, he continues “we have conspiratorial anti-Semitism”, and then asserts “Right now, as I’m filming this, an alternative left-wing news website called Skwawkbox is going through all of the Tweets attacking me, as a Jewish Labour Party member … that accuses me of being a Mossad agent, that accuses me of trying to undermine the leadership”.

There was more. A lot more. “Accuses me of all sorts of things, and it is … propagating Labour anti-Semitism. Now, the Labour leadership can do something very simple and easy. It should say that these alternative fake news websites do not speak for them. Skwawkbox, The Canary … they are propagating conspiracy theory in the Labour Party. They allow it to fester. They spread the message”. And he wasn’t done yet.

 “Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, both have close links to these groups, to people who run these websites. They should say loudly and clearly that any conspiracy theory that these websites spread are false. They should be shut down. They do not have the support of the Labour leadership. And it’s a very very simple thing to do. John McDonnell, Jeremy Corbyn, come and speak out about these fake news websites”.

While it is entirely understandable that Langleben is unhappy about losing his seat, he has a problem here: much of what he claims is not merely untrue, but actionably so.

Consider the two New Left Media outlets he has accused.

The Canary has never mentioned Adam Langleben.

Skwawkbox has never mentioned Adam Langleben.

Neither Skwawkbox, nor The Canary, has linked Langleben to the Mossad, or of undermining the Labour leadership (as they haven’t mentioned him at all).

The only Twitter interaction between Skwawkbox and Adam Langleben is one reply from the former to the latter, inviting him to DM them.

There is no evidence whatever to support the claim that Skwawkbox is “going through all of the Tweets attacking me”. Indeed, that is itself a conspiracy theory.

As to the “close links” that Jezza and McDonnell are alleged to have to those sites, let me restate what Zelo Street had to say to the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog when they tried to make that accusation last year.

 “Skwawkbox has NEVER had any contact with Jeremy Corbyn’s office. There is NO contact between Evolve Politics and Corbyn’s office … The Canary has NO contact with Corbyn’s office.” Got that? No contact. At all.

And as to the idea that sites which displease Adam Langleben, or indeed anyone else, “should be shut down”, the sinister overtones are simply breathtaking. That’s the kind of behaviour that gives totalitarian dictatorships a bad name.

Not surprisingly, Skwawkbox has already registered its displeasure at Langleben’s totally untrue claims. The Canary may be following along shortly. There has been talk of legal action, and understandably so. But there is a straightforward solution here.

And that is for Adam Langleben to stop, think, realise he is wrong, and say sorry. Skwawkbox did not lose him his council seat. Nor did The Canary. Nor did any other New Left Media site. The only person who lost that seat is Adam Langleben. That is all.