Open Letter to Chris Ward, MP for Brighton Kemptown

You Say You Share My Anger Over Gaza – If That’s True Then You Will Resign as Starmer’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, Bag Carrier & Fixer

UN says it still hasn't been able to distribute any aid in Gaza

Chris Ward is the Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown, which was a Tory seat from 1950 until it went Labour in 1964 when Dennis Hobden won by a margin of 7 votes after 7 recounts.

This was the first time any Sussex seat had been won by Labour and it owed a great deal to the personality of the Labour candidate, Dennis Hobden who was a son of the working class. Hobden was the son of a train driver and worked most of his life in the Post Office.

In 1966 when Harold Wilson won a landslide victory by 98 seats Dennis only held on to Kemptown by 831 votes. In 1970 he was defeated by Andrew Bowden, the self-styled pensioners' champion. Bowden held the seat till 1997 when he disgraced himself after well founded allegations of having received a £5,000 cash bribe from Mohamed al-Fayed.

I knew Dennis when I was in the Labour Party in the 80s when he was considered on the left though it was hard to pigeonhole him. When a row blew up over a statement of the then councillor Richard Stanton who defended the IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel as a legitimate target, it caused a storm amongst the Labour Right. Hobden was staunch in Richard’s support when others on the left, including Militant, were found wanting. Hobden was also a freemason!

In 2010 Simon Kirby won the seat for the Tories by 1,328 votes and in 2015 by 690 votes. In 2017 he was overwhelmed by the Corbyn surge when Lloyd Russell-Moyle overturned a small majority to win by nearly 10,000. The Labour Party in Brighton was the largest in the country.

An Israeli soldier in the world's most moral army looking for a baby to kill

Brighton was at the centre of the Corbyn movement. When the local District Labour Party held its AGM in July 2016, Momentum held a pre-meeting in Brighthelm Community Centre. It was the largest meeting I had ever seen at the Centre. People then moved on to the AGM at City College where the Left won all the officer posts by a margin of 2-1.

Unfortunately Corbyn had done nothing about Labour’s right-wing civil service. John Stolliday, the head of the Compliance Unit and Council leader Warren Morgan immediately moved to have the results cancelled on the basis of fabricated allegations of spitting.

Although Russell-Moyle was elected in 2017 and re-elected by over 8,000 in 2019 he proved a great disappointment, shifting from left to right as the political winds changed direction. As Bob Dylan noted, you don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows and Moyle was nothing if not a political weatherman.  An opportunist who was ultimately defeated by his own opportunism.

Gaza's landscape could be that of Nagasaki

The removal of Moyle in 2024 and the imposition of Chris Ward, the ex-Starmer aide and political lobbyist who worked for Hanbury Strategy, who had no discernible support in the local Labour Party, was an example of the dishonesty of the current Labour leadership. Hanbury Strategy specialised in lobbying for the gambling and fossil fuels industry.

Lewis Aaron on Rejecting Starmer Labour's Request for Social Media Help

As Andy Winter wrote,  ‘can you imagine a less appropriate candidate for a seat in Brighton and Hove?’

Allegations from eight years ago have been made (against Moyle), from before he was an MP. The timing that these allegations have surfaced go well beyond suspicion. While ... they may be serious or they might have no substance whatsoever, it shows control-freakery of the worst kind by Starmer and his henchmen and women.

Ancient allegations against Moyle were cynically resurrected, having originally been rejected, thus enabling the leadership to have a pretext for suspending him. Similar behaviour by Jennie Formby, Corbyn’s General Secretarym in suspending Chris Williamson in 2019 met with Moyle’s approval. Literally Moyle was hoist by his own petard.

Chris Ward experenced a 7% swing against him and the Tory had a 14% swing against her as the Green candidate Elaine Hills came within a whisker of the Tories. As befits a former crony Ward was appointed Starmer’s PPS.

Victoria Derbyshire Demolishes Gilad Erdan, Israel's UN Ambassador

I recently signed a petition to MPs including Chris Ward. Some weeks later I got an email from him telling me ‘how angry’ he was ‘at the frankly intolerable humanitarian situation in Gaza’.

The strange thing about his email is that not once did the word ‘genocide’ cross his lips. So I thought I would send him an email!

Dear Chris Ward,

You wrote (16 May) that

I share your anger and outrage at the frankly intolerable humanitarian situation in Gaza and much of the occupied territories’.

I am pleased to hear that we agree on so much because we didn’t last October when I wrote to you. You say that

Israel's decision to block aid into Gaza - and to effectively starve a civilian population that is already suffering terribly – is both cruel and completely indefensible.

                                    

Aamer Anwar Crushes Sky TV Presenter

I agree. However I note that you avoid using the word ‘genocide’. Perhaps you can tell me what else is starvation other than an intention to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, which is the Geneva Convention definition of Genocide?

Words are cheap. What counts is what you don't say not what you do say.

Israel has been imposing a starvation blockade on Gaza since 2 March. Since 7 October it has waged a war on the Palestinians in Gaza whilst doing its best to prevent aid whilst lying to the contrary.

Moshe Feiglin, an ex-Likud MK's genocidal comments

At the start of Israel’s attack on Gaza Defence Minister Yoav Gallant declared that

‘I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed’ adding that ‘We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.’

It was not as if Israel’s leaders hid what their intentions were. Genocidal statements were made from Netanyahu down. Throughout this whole period you, Lammy and Starmer remained silent.

Law for Palestine has documented over 500 examples of genocidal statements. Israel's Ministers made explicit their desire to ethnically  cleanse and settle Gaza. For example Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi said, on 28 January 2024 at a conference calling for the resettlement of Gaza:

We must establish settlements. We need security forces. We need to settle this land because it’s our land.

This despite the decision of the International Court of Justice that Israel’s occupation of Gaza was illegal. Gaza belongs to the Palestinians not Israel. When Russia made far more convincing claims to parts of Ukraine, with the agreement of the people of Crimea and the Donbass, Britain and Europe immediately slapped sanctions on Russia. Why the double standards?

‘Massacre’: Dozens killed by Israeli fire in Gaza while collecting food aid

Even when aid was allowed in Israel did its best to stop it being distributed and we had the flour massacres when starving people, queuing for food, were murdered by Israel in cold blood. Even today, Israel is still blocking aid and the entry of aid lorries.

Bursting Netanyahu's 'Lies'; Point-By-Point Fact Check Of Israeli PM's U.S. Congress Speech

Nothing Israel’s government says can be trusted. They are proven liars. They murdered 5 year old Hind Rajab after falsely assuring Red Crescent paramedics that they would be safe if they rescued her from her parent’s car where the rest of her family lay dead. When the paramedics reached Hind a tank opened fire killing them all.

Israel Deliberately Kills Kids - Hind Rajab's Murder Exposed As DELIBERATE

Sky News investigates slaughter of Palestinian family fleeing fighting

Israel’s lies about the murder of 15 Red Crescent workers are well known. Israel first claimed that the ambulances had approached ‘suspiciously’ without their lights on. When this was disproved by footage from a mobile phone found on one of the dead aid workers they switched to their usual lie -  they were members of Hamas. Yet this government has continued to take the word of Israel’s genocidal leaders and army on trust.

Lammy greeting Israel's No. 1 War Criminal

On Tuesday David Lammy criticised the ‘intolerable’ and ‘extremist’ Israeli blockade and offensive. Indeed he employed almost every adjective except the one that was most appropriate. Israel’s starvation blockade of Gaza is genocidal. Are you prepared to call Israel’s policy, which is the same as the policy of the Nazis in the Polish Jewish ghettos, a Genocide?

New video contradicts Israeli account of Gaza aid convoy attack

I am not interested in how angry you are. I am more interested in what you intend to do. Lammy’s measures were pathetically inadequate – suspension of trade talks not trade. Nothing about halting arms supplies to continue the genocide. Token sanctions on settlers in the West Bank. All mouth and no trousers. Are  you prepared to speak out and demonstrate that your anger is more than a form of words?

I want to ask you a few questions, bearing in mind you are in a unique position to make a difference being the PPS to Starmer.

i.              Will you call for the immediate halt of all RAF flights overflying Gaza which provide intelligence to Israel’s killers? Will you call for the end of any military co-operation with the IDF?

ii.           Will you support and call for the prosecution of any British citizen who is found to have fought in Israel’s genocidal army?

iii.        Will you call for a complete end to the arms trade with Israel?

iv.        Will you make it a criminal offence to trade with the settlements? You say that ‘There also needs to be an end to Israeli settlement building.’ Good. Let’s impose sanctions on trade with them.

v.           Will you demand that the UK enforce the arrest warrants of the International Criminal Court  against Netanyahu and Gallant

          The MORONS who control Youtube removed this video because they said it breached their 'hate' policy.   It seems a video exposing the racism of Israeli school children's singing songs about how they hate and want to kill Arabs is the same as encouraging it.

vi.        Will you call for an end to the attacks on the Palestine solidarity movement and the libel that opposition to Zionism equals anti-Semitism?

vii.     Will you call for the Government to jettison the IHRA which equates opposition to genocide with anti-Semitism?

viii.  Will you call for sanctions on Israel as and until it becomes a state of its own citizens rather than an apartheid, Jewish Supremacist state where Arabs are subjects not citizens?

ix.        Will you also call for the removal of Hamas from the list of proscribed ‘terrorist’ organisations? It is clear that it is Israel not Hamas who are the terrorists. 

What is happening in Gaza is a continuation of the Nakba in 1948 when 750,000 Palestinian  refugees were driven from their homes to create a ‘Jewish’ state. Israel has recently invaded Syria and Lebanon in order to capture more territory without justification following the fall of Assad.

What is happening in Gaza is not a consequence of October 7 but a continuation of the Zionist project of ethnic cleansing and genocide that began in 1948. October 7 was no different from the slave rebellions and anti-colonial resistance of the past. As Omar Bartov, the Israeli holocaust scholar wrote in Infinite License:

'On January 12, 1904, the Herero people of German Southwest Africa—today’s Namibia—launched a series of attacks on scattered German farms in the territory... the German settlers who had begun to arrive in the late nineteenth century increasingly encroached on their grazing lands.

The rebels destroyed many of the farms and killed more than a hundred settlers, mostly sparing women and children. For the settlers the rebellion served as a final proof of the need to eradicate the Herero, whom they described as “baboons.” ...  the German governor appealed to Berlin, which sent some 10,000 soldiers. By August they had crushed the Herero fighters. In October the German commander, Lieutenant General Lothar von Trotha, issued what has come to be known as his Vernichtungsbefehl (extermination order) to those who remained:

.... Any Herero found inside the German frontier,... will be executed. I shall spare neither women nor children. Most of the Herero were shot or died of thirst and hunger in the desert to which they had been expelled. Several thousand were taken to forced labor camps....

Germany’s famous Vergangenheitsbewältigung  (coming to terms with or overcoming the past) was about the Holocaust, not long-forgotten colonial crimes. Only in 2021 did the German government officially apologize....

That remote genocide at the dawn of the twentieth century shares some remarkable similarities with the campaign of ethnic cleansing and annihilation prosecuted by Israel in Gaza. Israel saw the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, in much the same way that the Germans saw the Herero attack 119 years earlier: as confirmation that the militant group was utterly savage and barbaric, that resistance to Israeli occupation would always incline toward murder, and that Gaza’s Palestinian population as a whole should be removed from the moral universe of civilization.'

“GAS CHAMBERS” In Gaza: Prominent Israeli Demands “HOLOCAUST”

Those who define Israel’s genocide, as Lammy did, in terms of fighting terrorism or Israel’s ‘right of self-defence’ are justifying what Israel has done. It is futile to ask Israel not to complete the Endlosung (Final Solution) of the Palestinians. Lammy and Starmer, by making October 7, rather than the Nakba, the reference point are justifying Netanyahu’s extermination of the Palestinians in exactly the same way as those who supported the genocide of the Herero.

There is no difference, apart from 120 years, between the German genocide of 1904 and the Zionist genocide of 2024. When Nissim Vaturi, the Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, says that there are ‘no innocents' and that Gaza should be ‘burned now’ or when MK Galit Distel Atbaryan calls for ‘Erasing all of Gaza from the face of the earth.’ they are following in the footsteps of Von Trotha and Himmler.

When Israeli Channel 14 producer, Elad Barashi, posted on X:

‘Good morning, let there be a Shoa (Holocaust) in Gaza.’ and writes ‘I can't understand the people here in the State of Israel who don't want to fill Gaza with gas showers... or train cars... and finish this story! Let there be a Holocaust in Gaza.’

he is not an outlier. He is reflecting majority opinion among Israeli Jews.

When Israeli Jews were asked whether they supported or opposed the idea that Israel should allow the transfer of humanitarian aid, food and medicines, to Gaza residents, 68% of them said they were opposed to allowing in aid, even if Hamas and UNWRA were excluded from its distribution. 

The exterminationist mentality of Israel’s Jewish citizens is crystal clear. Israel is now echoing Nazi Germany’s treatment of the Jews. Israel is a settler colonial state with the facade of democracy. It is an ethnocracy and far from supporting its ‘right to exist’ we should be calling for its dismantlement in order that the Palestinians can live.

If your anger is genuine Chris Ward, given that Starmer is a ‘Zionist without qualification’ you have no choice but to resign as his PPS. It may be the one good thing you have done in your political life.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Greenstein 

Never Before Has A Party Won An Election with Less Than 34% of the Vote – Starmer’s Government Lacks All Political Legitimacy

The Question is Whether Or Not We Can Unite to Defeat Britain’s Macron & Learn From the French Left How to Defeat ‘Centrist’ Warmongers

This coming Friday at 6.30 the Socialist Labour Network has invited a range of different speakers to give their views on the election that has just gone by and the prospects, as they see them for the Left during the Starmer government.

Register here:

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_K7IgyMP5TcKfyPnp-5oYYw

Never before has a government been elected with a huge majority to almost universal public indifference if not hostility. The voting turnout, 59.8%, speaks for itself. The second lowest since the war. This says everything about the decay of bourgeois democracy. Anyone who remembers the 1964 election of Harold Wilson’s government with a nail biting majority of 4, after 13 long years of Tory government, cannot help but notice the difference.

1964 was a time of the Beatles and optimism. Change was in the air. It was no mere slogan. With Starmer Change is a PR slogan signifying nothing more than a change in the Board of Directors of UK Ltd. It is the kind of change that Big Brother would have approved of in 1984.

In 1966 Wilson achieved a majority of 98. The Labour government abolished capital punishment, outlawed racial discrimination, introduced equal pay for women, homosexual law reform as a result of the Wolfenden Report and the 1967 Abortion Act.

Unlike Starmer’s toadying to the USA, Wilson refused the request from US President Lyndon Johnson for British soldiers to fight in Vietnam. In a curious reversal of US policy, which up till then had been to eliminate British influence in the Middle East, the Americans argued against Dennis Healey’s decision to retreat from East of Suez. See The Fall and Rise of Britain’s ‘East of Suez’ Basing Strategy

In 1951, 1955, 1959, 1970, 1979, 1992 and 2017 (under Corbyn!) Labour had a higher % of the vote but didn’t win the election. Under Corbyn in 2017 Labour won 40% compared to Starmer’s 33.8% and yet it won 150 fewer seats.

Starmer Labour went out of its way to dampen expectations. His main selling point was that he would be no different from the Tories. Whatever else you can say about Blair people were excited by his victory. Starmer by way of contrast is a personality free zone. A man entirely devoid of charm or charisma. He is the personification of the Coercive State. He is the face of corporate capital.

Nowhere was this more evident than in his own constituency Holborn and St Pancras. In 2017, under Corbyn, Starmer received 41,343 votes, (70.1%). In 2019 he gained 36,641 votes (64.5%). In 2024 his vote halved to 18,884 (48.9%). Socialist Independent Andrew Feinstein came from nowhere to pick up 7,312 votes (18.9%). Starmer repels even his own constituents.

Putting it another way, in 2024 Labour received 600,000 fewer votes than in the ‘disaster’ of 2019. Whichever way you look at it, Starmer’s Labour Party did not receive a vote of confidence.

Starmer’s support for genocide in Gaza has cost it dearly. Four right-wing Labour MPs lost their seats to candidates opposing Starmer's support for Israel's Nazi behaviour.

Despite predictions from the pollsters, Jeremy Corbyn sailed home winning by over 7,200 votes.  Even the BBC found it hard to find critical voices in his constituency. George Galloway unfortunately lost his seat in Rochdale but by less than 1,500 votes.

If you are wondering who UK's new PM @Keir_Starmer is, wait no further.

This will be an interesting thread. pic.twitter.com/ZmoSEPzp5o

— Esha K (@eshaLegal) July 5, 2024

The Green Party had their best ever general election performance and gained 3 seats compared to their previous one, including a 10,000 vote victory over obnoxious war monger Thangam Debbonaire in Bristol West. However as I have previously warned, the Green Party is not a left-wing party although they make radical noises. They support staying in NATO and want to green capitalism.

The other highlight of the night was the defeat of Jonathan Ashworth, shadow Paymaster General. Ashworth lost his Leicester South seat by nearly 1,000 votes to Shockat Adam, who said: “This is for Gaza.”

Craig Murray - stabbed in the back by Muslim communalists

In Blackburn, the constituency once held by Barbara Castle and Jack Straw, Labour’s Kate Hollern lost by 132 votes to Adnan Hussain. Craig Murray for the Workers Party got over 7,000 votes too.

Ayoub Khan - the new independent MP for Birmingham Perry Barr

In Dewsbury and Batley, Labour’s Heather Iqbal, lost by nearly 7,000 votes to Iqbal Mohamed. In Birmingham Perry Barr the corrupt former Labour MP and Henry Jackson Society member Khalid Mahmood lost to Ayoub Khan causing the Jewish Chronicle’s David  Rose to froth at the mouth over his having questioned Israel’s fictitious rape narrative and stories of beheaded babies.

Really ugly scenes during @jessphillips‘ acceptance speech. Absolutely appalling; men shouting down a woman when she’s legitimately won an election is disgraceful and a bad look for our democracy. pic.twitter.com/2aO7TbPqRG

— Ferhanasṭīn 🍉 (find them @ferhankhan.bsky.social) (@QueerhanKhan) July 5, 2024

In Birmingham Hodge Hill, former cabinet minister Liam Byrne won by 1,566 votes over James Giles, the Worker’s Party candidate. In Birmingham Yardley Jess Phillips won by 693 votes against the Workers’ Party Jody McIntyre.

 In Birmingham Ladywood Labour’s Shabana Mahmood defeated Akhmed Yakoob of the Workers’ Party by 3,421. In 2019 Mahmood won by 28,582 votes. Mahmood was the shadow justice secretary before the election. Birmingham Ladywood is another area with a high proportion of Muslim voters.

This produced a backlash by far-right ex-Jewish Chronicle Editor Stephen Pollard who described them as “the rise of sectarian voting”, while Telegraph columnist Sam Ashworth-Hayes condemned their victories as: “Total, utter failures of integration.” It is a bit rich of Pollard to call Muslim voters ‘sectarian’ given the campaign he waged amongst Jewish voters not to vote Labour under Corbyn!

In Bethnal Green and Bow, where many were also angered by Starmer’s talk about deporting Bangladeshi people, Labour’s Rushanara Ali won by less than 1700 votes against independent Ajmal Masroor .

This election saw a determined challenge to Starmer and his most loyal sycophants by two main groups. One was by the Workers Party which fielded 150 candidates and which aimed to build itself through its opposition to genocide in Gaza, aiming at the Muslim vote.

The other was a determined campaign by left and Muslim campaigners that saw Ashworth defeated and Wes Streeting very nearly defeated by Leanne Mohamad in Ilford North. Just 500 votes separated them.  If the Green Party hadn’t stood, Streeting might now be out in the cold.

The example of the French where a united left campaign has squashed the fascist National Renewal’s hopes of winning control of the government, should be a lesson to us. A united left in Britain could also do this but this means burying the tradition of sectarianism which means that one’s differences over who said what in 1917 are more important than today’s struggles.

There is a very useful compilation of all of the left’s candidates that has been compiled by the very public sociologist blog. It includes all the left groups that stood. I have compiled a table of how many candidates each group stood and their average results.

The list is effectively divided into two: on the one hand the socialist and Muslim independents did relatively well.  The Workers Party candidates also did well but not on the scale of the above.

On the other a kaleidoscope of left sects did very badly, making no impression. It is to be hoped that some of the latter might eventually realise that standing candidates who receive only a fraction of 1% achieves nothing other than a lost deposit.

1.           The Socialist Independents

There were 65 candidates and in total they gained just under a quarter of a million votes with an average of 8.9%. This is clearly a promising start.

They included Corbyn. People were primarily campaigning over one issue, Gaza. It included Muslims and the thousands of socialist exiles from the Labour Party that was.

What distinguished many of the campaigns was a wide community involvement. I can only speak from personal experience in Hove where British Palestinian, Tanushka Marah, was elected at an all-Brighton meeting of 150 people. The campaign came primarily out of the wider Palestine solidarity campaign in Brighton & Hove against genocide in Gaza.

Socialists, feminists and environmental campaigners participated in an energetic campaign. We chose Hove because the current Labour MP, Peter ‘Killer’ Kyle, is an ardent supporter of genocide in Gaza and Vice-Chair of Labour Friends of Israel.

Hove is not a naturally left constituency. When I came to Brighton 50 years ago it was one of the safest Tory seats in the country. All three Brighton & Hove seats were Tory. Brighton Pavilion was represented by Monday Club MP Sir Julian ‘gunboats’ Amery. Kemptown’s MP was Andrew Bowden, who finally got caught up in a corruption scandal and was ousted in 1997. Only Kemptown had ever been Labour, during the Wilson era when it was won in 1964 by Dennis Hobden by 7 votes.

Hove was won in the Blair landslide of 1997. Before this year left candidates usually got derisory votes, usually under 500.  So the achievement by Tanuksha of 3,048 votes (5.9%) marked a real triumph. She also saved her deposit.

Overall 27 of the 65 independent candidates got over 5% and thereby saved their deposits. The total vote for the independents was nearly a quarter of a million

2.           Workers’ Party [WP]

The Workers Party is very much the creation of George Galloway whose profile has never been far from the limelight. When George won a by-election in Rochdale in February and slimy Sunak slithered out of 10 Downing Street to condemn the election result (one wonders whether he or Paul Mason had considering making it a criminal offence to vote for George) his reputation was established nationally.

Soon after George announced an intention by the WP to contest 500 seats but that proved too difficult and the final tally was 152. The 152 candidates gained a total of 210, 000 votes with an average of 3.48%. Although some candidates did well, a lot got derisory votes. 26 WP candidates (17.1%) saved their deposit compared to 41.5% of the Independents.

It obviously makes sense for the Independents and the Workers’ Party to join forces in future elections but there are formidable political obstacles to this. The targeting by Galloway of migrants and refugees as a threat to British workers’ standard of living, pay and conditions is unacceptable.

Galloway fails to recognise why it is that the boat people crossing the Channel are scapegoated despite being a fraction of overall migration. Our rulers only rule because they are able to divide and rule, setting one section of the poor against another. Galloway plays into this and thinks he’s being smart by being seen to be tough on law and order and refugees.

‘Patriotic socialism’ has a long and inglorious history. It resulted in social democratic parties supporting their own ruling classes in World War I. It has been tried, not least by Henry Hyndman of the Socialist Federation, who was an anti-Semite and a supporter of imperialism and the Boers. It has always been a disaster. Patriotism is how the ruling class fools the working class into supporting their imperialist ventures and dying in their wars.

3.      People Before Profit

People Before Profit stood 3 candidates in one of Britain’s remaining colonies, Northern Ireland. They gained an average of 2,80l votes and 7.1%, saving two of their deposits.

4.      The Left Sects

One must not forget the 84 candidates that a variety of the left sects stood. Without fail they gained derisory votes and lost their deposits. One wonders what is the point of such an exercise in futility but to some like Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party what matters is keeping the flag flying. Scargill has spent nearly 40 years since the Miner’s Strike trashing his own political reputation.  It is rather sad.

The main group is the Trade union and Socialist Coalition  [TUSC]. At one time it was sponsored by the RMT under Bob Crowe but since then it has distanced itself from it. TUSC was the creation of the Socialist Party.

TUSC stood 40 candidates and without exception they did abysmally. Not one of them saved their deposit or gained over 1000 votes. The highest vote was by Dave Nellist, the former Coventry MP, who secured 2.2% in Coventry East. They secured an average of 0.79%.

Given the success of the socialist independents it’s time that TUSC called it a day and threw its lot in with other socialists. It is clear that their project has failed.

The Communist Party of Britain, which prints the Morning Star, stood 14 candidates. They did even worse than TUSC.  They secured an average of 0.46% which is less than 1 in 200. My advice to them is to join with other socialists, ditch your resident Zionist Mary Davis and stop plugging the two-state apartheid solution for Palestine.

Scargill’s  Socialist Labour Party was formed after Labour ditched Clause 4. It stood 12 candidates who got an average of 0.7%. Scargill once turned up at a party AGM with more votes in his back pocket than the rest of the delegates put together, representing the previously unknown Lancashire Miners Welfare Organisation! The SLP today is the living dead and is unlikely to survive Arthur’s passing.

The grandly titled Workers Revolutionary Party stood 5 candidates obtaining an average of 0.52%. The WRP has been around a long time and it was led by Gerry Healey before he was expelled for raping women comrades. This did not stop Corin Redgrave extolling his ‘achievements’ and proclaiming that “If this is the work of a rapist, let’s recruit more rapists.”

Other left fragment which stood candidates included the Alliance for Green Socialism (in 2005 I was a candidate for them!) which stood 2 candidates who gained an average of 0.3%.

There is Communist Future, of which I know nothing, which stood one candidate who obtained 0.3%.

Communist League stood 2 candidates who obtained an average of 0.4%. It is one of the splinters of the old International Marxist Group and supports the American Socialist Workers Party, which is no longer on the left, supporting as it does Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Socialist Equality Party is another Trotskyist sect, an offspring of the WRP, led by David North. It publishes the World Socialist Web Site which often has well informed articles. It also stood 2 candidates, obtaining an average of 0.3%, one of whom stood against Starmer, thus splitting the socialist opposition, or rather they would have done if Tom Scripps had obtained more than 0.2%!

The Socialist Party of Great Britain was founded in 1904. They are the Jehovah Witnesses of the left. They stood 2 candidates obtaining an average of 0.25%.

The newly inaugurated Transform also stood 2 candidates obtaining an average of 0.75%. Clearly they haven’t transformed anything.

One would hope that all these groups would either disappear or join with other socialists but I suspect life would have no meaning for them if they were to make an acquaintance with reality.

Tony Greenstein