It wasn’t lying or support
for a sexual predator that caused Boris's downfall but his inability to deliver a Tory victory
It’s not often that I get a
prediction wrong. In my blog
on June 7 I wrote that ‘It is Doubtful
Whether Johnson Will Survive to the End of June’. I was one week out and he
has still managed to hang on as Prime Minister until September although, sad to
say, he has been forced
to move his wedding celebration from Chequers to some other venue!
The signs of course were clear when
41% of his own MPs, including 75%
of his backbenchers voted that they had no confidence in him. It was only a
matter of time before he came a cropper and lied again.
Tory MP after Tory MP proclaimed on
the BBC that Johnson had ‘let the Tory Party down’ by his continual lying, his defence
of sexual predator Chris Pincher (‘Pincher
by name, Pincher by nature) to say nothing of his fondness for granting
favours (from the public purse) to his latest mistress see
e.g. here
and here.
These are the same vermin,
(Aneurin Bevan) who were quite happy to tolerate Johnson’s lying
over £350 million pounds a week to the NHS if Brexit went through. The same
Johnson who lied
about securing £120K for his mistress Jennifer Arcuri at the Greater London
Authority when he didn’t disclose his relationship to her. The same Johnson who
was himself accused
of being a sexual predator and ‘handsy’ when he groped Spectator journalist
Charlotte Edwards.
This is the same Johnson who said
Black people had ‘water melon smiles’ and
called them ‘picanninies’. The same
Johnson who regretted
that British imperialism was no longer in charge of Africa.
Then there is his racist and
anti-Semitic novel 72 Virgins excerpts
from which have been posted here. The late David Graeber posted some of his choicest quotes
such as comments about the ‘Jewish
cabal who run the American media complex’.Passages
such as
‘Maybe there was some kind of
fiddling of the figures by the oligarchs who ran the TV stations (and who were
mainly, as some lost no time in pointing out, of Jewish origin).’
Imagine if Jeremy Corbyn had said
half these things, yet it was Corbyn not Johnson who was accused by the
Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland and the rest of the Presstitutes of
‘anti-Semitism’
Unsurprisingly, the book is
racist, classist, and sexist, and @VirginsJohnson features some of its most
disturbing passages. There’s references to “Islamic headcases” and “Islamic
nutcases”; Arabs are described to have “hook noses” and “slanty eyes”; a boy is
called “coffee-coloured”; and there are mentions of “pikeys” and people who are
“half-caste”.
Women are described as
having “lustrous eyes”, “long legs”, “good teeth and blonde hair” – there’s
even “a mega-titted six-footer” – presumably because that’s all we’re good for.
The charge sheet is endless. All of this was well known by
the ‘honourable’ MPs who nominated him. But it was precisely his ability to lie
and dissemble which appealed to them when he stood for the leadership
of the Tory Party and Prime Minister.
The professions of outrage should be taken with a heavy pinch
of salt. But it wasn’t just Tory MPs or lying editors who should take the
blame.
The Metropolitan Police chose to fine him for just one breach
of the lockdown rules. They have refused
to investigate at least 3 other breaches, just as the Durham Police have
now let
off Starmer. The Met have also turned a blind eye to the repeated acts of
corruption by Johnson. That is the answer to those who talk about the 'rule of law'. The criminal law is only meant to apply to us not them.
Of course if the Met had been doing their duty they would
have prosecuted Johnson and Matt Hancock for gross negligence manslaughter for decanting
thousands of old people with COVID into care homes with the result that at
least 20,000 people died. Even the High Court found that it was unlawful.
Rishi Sunak and Sajid David resigned, not because Johnson is
a liar but because they are intenton
ensuring that a regime of super austerity is imposed on the working class in
order to pay for the corrupt COVID contracts that they handed out to their
mates.
What is however remarkable is that in the midst of this
crisis Starmer has nothing to say. He is relying on the Tories collapsing of
their own accord. Labour is now in the lead in the opinion polls but it has
nothing to do with the actions of the Labour Party or Starmer himself.
I will therefore make another prediction. The Labour lead is
likely to disappear into thin air once a new Tory leader is elected. Anyone who thinks they
can rely on the Labour leadership or Starmer to reverse Tory cuts, energy price
rises or any of the other attacks on the working class is living in another world. It is, as Irish Republicans say, ‘ourselves alone’ who will find a
solution to this crisis.
The real question though is what we are going to do about the
energy price increases. In October 2021
they stood at £1,278. Last April prices rose by 54% to £1,971 per year. In October the price
cap on annual bills is now predicted
to increase to £3,244. In other words a rise of 154% in one year.
The energy price rises are completely avoidable. We could
follow the example of France which has just nationalised EDF but that would be
against Tory ‘principles’ of transferring wealth from the poor to the rich.
The answer is very simple. People can join a Can’t Pay Won’t Pay campaign from this
October, not least because for millions of people it will literally be a case
of Can’t Pay. The windfall tax of Sunak is a drop in the ocean in comparison.
What is also clear is that the useless Sir Keith will go
along with any and everything that the Tories will do. Sir Keith has torn
up the 10 pledges he stood for election to Labour’s leadership on,
including his pledge to take into public ownership the privatised utilities.
It is no wonder that Starmer has removed the 10 pledges from
his website!
It
is Doubtful Whether Johnson Will Survive to the End of June but Underlying the
Vote Are Political Differences Such as Brexit
There is a word for taking delight in someone else’s
misfortunes – Schadenfreude. It is
difficult to think of a more detestable character than Boris Johnson. A bona
fide racist,
homophobe,
anti-Semite,
Zionist,
arch imperialist
and warmonger,
anti-democratic, contemptuous of the poor, sexist. There aren’t enough
adjectives to describe this sociopath.
Johnson's nearly 3-year stint as Prime Minister has been one
unmitigated disaster. Brexit has resulted in political paralysis in Northern
Ireland and a £20
billion drop in exports to Europe compared to 2018, some 12%.
But it is in the sustained attack on refugees and asylum
seekers and democratic rights which marks this government out. The Police
& Crime Sentencing Act, the ‘Spy
Cops’ or Covert Human Intelligence
Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill, which allows government bodies to authorise
law-breaking by undercover operatives in the UK. The other is the Overseas
Operations Bill, which is gives state operatives a license to murder and
torture. The new Public
Order Bill continues the tradition.
The fact that Starmer’s Labour abstained on the first two
demonstrates just how far to the right the Labour Party now is. The proposed
Public Order Bill continues in the tradition of giving the Police yet more
powers whilst whittling away at the right to protest and demonstrate such as for
example locking on.
It even proposes
banning people from taking part in demonstrations. The Serious Disruption Prevention Orders can either be made following a
protester’s conviction or on application to a Magistrates’ Court from a Chief
Constable of a local police force. You do not need to be convicted of an offence to
be issued with one.Serious
Disruption Prevention Orders encourage the expansion of police intelligence
gathering on a range of social and political movements.
Jeremy Hunt, a leadership candidate stuck the knife in earlier today
So there are no regrets at Johnson’s imminent demise. However
there is no reason to believe that his successors will be any more enlightened.
It is the lack of any serious socialist challenge to the present ruling class consensus
which is most worrying.
Underneath the present crisis are the continuing tremors from
Brexit and Britain’s role in the world. Johnson was of course happy to throw in
British imperialism’s lot with US imperialism whereas his opponents looked to Europe.
Except that in the current crisis of a proxy war in Ukraine the European Union
has itself subordinated its foreign policy to the United States.
We can however enjoy the scene of the wretched corrupt Johnson
twisting in the wind as his opponents move in for the kill. Let us hope that he
takes Pritti Patel with him!
Sturmer demonstrates he is unable to rise to the occasion
Keir Starmer of course has demonstrated how useless he is,
even for a bourgeois politician. He is not only humourless and boring but he
has no political antennae. The obvious reaction to 41% of Tory MPs voting
against Johnson was to say he had lost the confidence of his own MPs (just 60
Tory backbenchers supported in addition to the payroll vote) and should resign.
What did Mogadon Man do?He said that Tory MPs should be condemned for their vote of confidence
in Johnson. A complete misreading of the situation as tomorrow’s newspaper
headlines will remind him. Even The Telegraph, Johnson’s old paper nicknamed
the Torygraph for its loyalty to the Tory Party has called
the vote a ‘Hollow Victory’ and said
that it ‘’tears the Tory party apart’ and
that Johnson’s authority is ‘crushed’ with
‘rebels circling to finish him off’.
The tragedy is that the Labour Party doesn’t have a similarly
ruthless way of finishing off the tailor’s dummy who is currently leading it.
If by some mischance Starmer were to become Prime Minister thenhis popularity and authority would decline at
an even faster rate than Johnson’s as they share the same poisonous politics
but Starmer lacks Johnson’s synthetic charisma. If Johnson’s aversion to the
truth was seen as his major personal handicap we should remember that Starmer
is no less the liar.
The 10
Pledges he used to win the Labour leadership election have been junked.
Starmer also deliberately hid the fact that he was backed by an assortment of
the mega rich including open
Zionists and other racists. After all Starmer is a ‘Zionist
without qualification’ and he has signed up Johnson’s agenda on NATO and Ukraine.
We should take the opportunity that Johnson’s imminent demise
offers to strengthen our own opposition to the raft of Tory legislation in the
offing.
The one exception to this in the Tory Party is Baroness Warsi who resigned from the
Cameron government over their support for Israel’s Operation Protective Edge attack
on Gaza in 2014.
Defending Free Speech on Israel/Palestine
Priti Patel is a byword for racism, with her ‘pushback’ scheme for
‘refugees in the Channel. Patel was previously sacked
by Theresa May for lying about her holiday in Israel where she proposed
diverting overseas aid money to fund the Israeli military.
Nadhim Zahawi, the second
richest man in the Commons (2017), like his predecessor, has spared no
effort, to support the Israeli state and its lobby, including the Union of
Jewish Students.
Zionism is an integral part of British foreign policy today and Zahawi is
its Black face. Zahawi recently distinguished himself by suggesting
that anyone chanting Palestine should be free ‘from the river to the sea’ should be arrested! This is rich coming
from a party that proclaims
it supports free speech on campus and which has complained about the
‘cancel’ culture. It seems that the Right only support freedom of speech when
they agree with it!
I therefore thought that in the interests of open government I should write
to Zahawi asking for an explanaton. Not that I expect an answer but in order to
demonstrate the lies behind Tory rhetoric:
Please forgive me for my naivety but until the advent of the current
government I laboured under the impression that one of the qualifications for
being Education Secretary was the possession of a modicum of intellectual, if
not emotional, intelligence.
That is the kind
of, in my view, antisemitic, intolerant, murderous attitude of the organisation
that’s proscribed (Hamas)”
Forgive me for my ignorance,
but why is it ‘anti-Semitic’ to say that Palestine should be free? Are you
really saying that opposing a repressive military tyranny is anti-Jewish? Isn’t
that a teeny, weeny bit anti-Semitic?
Apparently your reasoning,
if that is the right word, is that this is a Hamas slogan, Hamas is deemed a
terrorist organisation and therefore the slogan is a form of terrorism. Adopting
your ‘logic’, presumably if Hamas were to say that the Sun goes round the Earth
then that too would be a criminal offence? In which case Galileo was also a
terrorist?!
The decision to proscribe
Hamas’s political wing was a political not an evidenced based decision. There
was a time when Sinn Fein was called the political wing of the IRA, Although
the IRA was proscribed as a terrorist group Sinn Fein was not, despite calls
from Unionists.
Today Sinn Fein is the most
popular party in Ireland. Even the most wooden headed Loyalist no longer calls
for them to be banned.
Hamas, like the IRA, has a
political wing and it was this that was made illegal under anti-terrorism
legislation. A complete abuse of legislation which is supposedly about
terrorism not banning those whose politics you don’t like. It would seem that in
order to defend the world’s only Apartheid state, anything goes.
Hamas is the most popular
party amongst the Palestinians because, unlike Fateh, which is now a footstool
for the Israeli state, Hamas resists Israel’s military occupation. What you and
your party are doing, supported by your echo chamber Starmer, is banning democracy
amongst the Palestinians.
Since Hamas has never conducted
military operations outside Palestine/Israel it is no more a ‘terrorist’
organisation than the Ukrainian resistance fighters who you are arming.
I don’t know whether or not
your doctorate is one of those degrees that you can buy off the shelf from an
on-line university but it is difficult to believe that you earned it. Perhaps
you emulated Saif Gadaffi, who bought
his Ph D for a mere £1.5 million from the LSE.
However I will give you the
benefit of the doubt and assume that it was malevolence rather than stupidity
that caused you to describe the Palestinian chant ‘From the River to the Sea’ as a police matter.
As you are well aware, Palestine is anything but free. Palestinians, who
now constitute the majority population, live for the most part under permanent military
occupation without any civil or political rights. Even those who are Israeli
citizens possess fewer rights than Jews.
I will let you into a secret. I help raise
funds for the Al Tafawk Children’s Centre in Jenin. Last May the ‘most
moral army in the world’ wrecked it on the pretext of searching for arms.
Two weeks ago Mohammed a 15 year old boy was shot with a rubber bullet
fired by an Israeli soldier. Today I received this message:
I am so sorry to share this
terrible news ! Another child from the center has been shot at while he was
going to take his treatment in Jerusalem today. Ali is 6 years old has
cancer. He goes to Jerusalem every month. Please share his story he is a poor
kid without father .. We rely on you to save our children.
He was going in the early morning
to Jerusalem to have his treatment as he is sick with cancer and the
Israel military shot at the car he was inside... his condition is ok now ! But
he is so scared..
These actions are increasing these days.. I wish
the news could share this as they share what is going on in the other side !
It takes a particularly sick and twisted mind to describe opposition to
war crimes such as these as anti-Semitic. That is what ‘From the River to the Sea, Palestine Must Be Free’ means. Palestine
is anything but free.
Your concern about anti-Semitism might be slightly more convincing if the
British government weren’t supplying
neo-Nazi militias in Ukraine, such as the Azov Battalion, with advanced
weaponry.I can only assume that you
subscribe to the belief that there are ‘good’ as well as ‘bad’ neo-Nazis.
We were chanting ‘From the River to
the Sea’ back in 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon, i.e. at least 6 years
before Israel helped create Hamas. Clearly your ability to engage in even the
simplest research is not one of your strengths. Which is why I can only assume
that you bought or bribed your way into obtaining a PhD.
In your talk to vice-chancellors you told them that
the adoption of the IHRA
misdefinition of antisemitism was “essential
not optional”. Why is it that you are so concerned about ‘anti-Semitism’
when you have nothing to say about the deportation of Black British citizens to
the West Indies in the Windrush Scandal or
the attempt to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda?
The
reason why people oppose the IHRA is not because it has anything to do with
anti-Semitism but because it conflates opposition to Israel’s war crimes with
‘anti-Semitism’.
Why do
you need a definition of anti-Semitism? My dad took part in the Battle
of Cable Street in 1936. He didn’t need a definition of anti-Semitism to
know who and what he was fighting. The Tory Home Secretary of the day, Sir John
Simon, had agreed to Oswald Moseley’s fascist thugs marching through London’s
Jewish East End. At that time Tory MPs were still engaged in a love-in with
Hitler.
The
Jewish Chronicle asked
you whether Boycott Divestment and Sanctions had a place on campus and your
response was “Absolutely not.” Four
human rights groups – B’Tselem,
Human
Rights Watch, Amnesty
International and now the Harvard
Law Clinic, have declared that Israel is an apartheid state. How else can
you describe a state which bars its Arab citizens from 93% of the land?
Perhaps
you can explain why sanctions against Russia are fine, the more the merrier, but
sanctions against Israel’s are anti-Semitic?
40 years
ago Thatcher was hostile
to Sanctions against Apartheid because she supported a system of White racial
supremacy.Support for Jewish supremacy
is the reason for your opposition to BDS.
You have threatened the National Union of Students with
derecognition, not for anything it has done but because it has elected a Black
President, Shaima Dallali, who ten years ago tweeted
‘Khaybar Khaybar O Jews … Muhammad’s army
will return Gaza,”. Hardly the gravest crime given your support of
neo-Nazis in Ukraine.
On the basis of one tweet you
have accused NUS of ‘systemic antisemitism’. If one teenage tweet means NUS is
anti-Semitic then how would you describe a party that elected a leader who said
that Africans have ‘water melon smiles’ and
described people like you as ‘picanninies’?
If Shaima is guilty of
anti-Semitism how would you describe someone who spoke
of a ‘Jewish cabal who run the American
media complex’ and Russian Jewish oligarchs who fix
elections? To say nothing of a ‘a middle aged (Jewish) man with a proud
nose and curly hair’. If you don’t know who I mean you might care to read Boris
Johnson’s 72 Virgins!
But you already know this.
If hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, then dishonesty is the
price you are willing to pay for staying in a Cabinet dominated by an
all-purpose racist.
Your outburst followed ‘concerns raised by the Union of Jewish Students.’ Even by your standards this is pathetically thin gruel. The
UJS was revealed
by Al Jazeera’s The Lobby to be
funded by the Israeli Embassy.
UJS has a constitution(which has disappeared off the Internet) which commits it to ‘inspiring Jewish students to make an enduring commitment’ to Israel. In other words UJS has support for Israeli
apartheid at its heart.
UJS has a history
of trying to suppress views it disagrees with.Last year it did its best to ban Ken Loach, the world famous filmmaker from St Peters College because he
once directed a play Perditionbased
on a real life Israeli trial which involved Zionist-Nazi collaboration. Apparently
an 84 year old man was a ‘threat’ to the ‘safety’ of these Zionist snowflakes.
See Outrage as Oxford college holds event
with controversial filmmaker Ken Loach
As someone whose party is opposed
to the ‘cancel’ culture it would seem that you are only opposed to the
cancellation of racists.
It is perfectly understandable Nadhim that you should have
found a home in Boris Johnson’s government. In 1994 Geoffrey Archer, later
jailed for perjury, helped you campaign for a seat on Wandsworth council. And by way of thanks you were put in charge of Archer's corrupt
campaign for Mayor
of London in 1998.
In January 2016 Labour proposed an amendment that would have
required private landlords to make their homes "fit for human
habitation". According to the Parliamentary register of interests, you
were 1 of 72 Tory MPs who voted against the amendment. You just happen to be a
large private landlord.
In November The
Sunday Mirror caught you out after you had claimed £5,822 expenses from
the public purse for electricity for your riding school stables and a yard
manager's mobile home.It’s an easy
enough mistake to make. I do it all the time. If you had
been claiming social security you would have had the book thrown at you but
dishonest MPs are granted immunity by the Met.
I am even more surprised that your concern over
‘anti-Semitism’ does not extend to sexism against women. In January 2018 you
attended a men-only Presidents Clubdinner at the Dorchester Hotel in London. You will probably recall media
reports of female hostesses being subjected to sexual harassment, groping
and sexist abuse. The mere fact that you went to a men-only event such as this
speaks volumes.
It is no surprise, given that a Prime Minister who doesn’t
even know how many children he has and who has been accused
of serial sexual harassment by Sunday Times journalist Charlotte Edwards, that
you should have found yourself so at ease in his Cabinet.
Boris Johnson Lies About Groping Women
I have just one thing to ask of you.Do you think you could put a stop to this fake concern over
‘anti-Semitism’? You are no more concerned about Jews than Johnson or Starmer
are concerned about the truth.
As Starmer
faces a Police Investigation one thing is clear - Labour will never again
form a majority government
A Big Welcome to Sinn Fein's Historic Victory - Full Steam Ahead to a United Ireland
Blair’s
poisoned chalice to Starmer
Despite all the bluster by Starmer’s
sycophants that everything is fine, it is clear that Labour is headed for the
buffers.
Despite marginal advances in the Wales,
the South and Scotland, Labour’s performance is little better today than 4
years ago under Jeremy Corbyn. If you remember back then Corbyn was under
fierce attack because of the fake anti-Semitism campaign.
Indeed the jewel in Labour’s
triumph in the South, the capture of Worthing Council was due to a campaigning left-wing
Labour Party, including Palestinian supporters on the Council, having mounted a
campaign to dislodge an entrenched Tory Party, one of whose members, Tim Wills,
was forced to resign after revelations that he was a supporter
of the far-Right Patriotic Alternative.
In Hastings Labour lost control
thanks to the efforts of Starmer. Councillor Leah Levane, co-chair of Jewish
Voice for Labour, was expelled
during the 2019 Labour Party conference. The late Mike Howard, a Jewish former councillor,
was also disgracefully suspended
for ‘anti-Semitism’.
London where 3 Councils – Barnet, Westminster
and Wandsworth – were gained by Labour - is the exception. Why?Because Labour politics were radicalised
under the Greater London Council under Ken Livingstone becoming a major centre
of opposition to Thatcher in the 1980s and when Livingstone twice won the
mayoralty after Tony Blair fixed the Labour nomination in favour of the late
Frank Dobson.
But perhaps the most brilliant result of all was in the
elections for the Mayor of Tower Hamlets where Aspire candidate Lutfur Rahman
beat the incumbent Blairite, the anti-Palestinian racist John Biggs. Lutfur was
removed
in what I called in a letter to the Guardian in April 2015 a ‘ ‘Democratic’ Coup by an Unelected Judge’.
Guardian 10.6.15.
Starmer may take comfort by the fact that Labour overtook the Tories in
Scotland but anyone with any memory will remember how, under Thatcher, Labour
had over 50 seats in Scotland. Today they have just one. They will gained less
seats than the SNP.
In England Labour gained just 52 seats
(at the time of writing) compared to 113 for the Green Party and 191 for the Lib
Dems! In the North Labour fell back even further with the first results in Sunderland showing a swing against Labour.
However much Labour’s stuffed dummy of a leader may talk these results up
they clearly point to another victory of the Tories at the next general election.
All that the Tories need to do, and it is odds on that they will do it,
is to plunge a dagger in Johnson’s back. With a new leader and a weak
Opposition, whoever is the leader, the Tories will regain their lead.
It is not just that Starmer has all the charisma of a rubber duck, the
personality of his waxworks model at Mme Tussauds and the presence of a shadow.
The real problem is that he has nothing to say. For all the accusations that
Johnson is a liar, which is of course, true, it is Starmer who is the real
liar.
I defy anyone to explain how the 10 Pledges that Starmer
used to get elected as Labour leader are compatible with the positions he has
taken since. Take Pledge 4
‘No more illegal wars. Introduce a Prevention of
Military Intervention Act and put human rights at the heart of foreign policy.
Review all UK arms sales and make us a force for international peace and
justice.’
Is this the same man who is threatening to deselect any
Labour MP who supports Stop the War Coalition and who doesn’t support NATO?
Whereas Blair came to power on a series of pledges such as a
minimum wage and cutting hospital waiting lists, Starmer has nothing to offer
except the Union Jack.He is a blank
page whose only promise, to rid Labour of ‘anti-Semitism’ has resulted in Jewish
Labour Party members being five
times more likely to be expelled than non-Jews!You couldn’t make it up.
Starmer has demonstrated over Ukraine that he is a narrow
minded, pound shop patriot, a cheap John Bull who, everytime he opens his
mouth, reminds me of Samuel Johnson’s observation
that ‘patriotism is the last refuge of a
scoundrel.’. A cheapnationalist who
prefers flag waving to renationalisation of rail and the utilities. His support
of the State of Israel which the entire human rights community have accepted,
along with the UN’s rappoteur, as an apartheid state marks him out as a racist.
Corbyn appeased his enemies and threw his friends overboard
Unfortunately Corbyn did not stand up
to the Right and even worse, John McDonnell did his best with Owen Jones to
appease them, with results we all know.
Given these aspects of Starmer’s record, his most
recent McCarthyite outbursts should come as no surprise. Servility to NATO and
hostility to left-wing activists are inscribed in his political DNA. So far,
the Labour left’s approach to Starmer continues to entertain the notion that he
is susceptible to progressive pressure.
Writing about the Socialist Campaign Group Oliver says all
that needs to be said:
Its climbdowns will not be rewarded with an iota of
policy influence. At best, it will merely avoid expulsion from the party. But
if its membership is premised on embracing American power and disowning groups
like Stop the War, then how can it contribute to a viable Left strategy? Is the
continued presence of socialists a virtue in itself, even if it means forsaking
socialism?
Far from being a human rights lawyer Starmer, in his time as
Director of Public Prosecutions was an anti-human rights lawyer. Eagleton wrote:
He meted out
the same treatment to Gary McKinnon, the autistic IT expert whose extradition —
which could have seen him spend the rest of his life in a US jail for hacking
into military databases — was blocked
by Theresa May on humanitarian grounds. The same year, Starmer paved
the way for two Britons, Syed Talha Ahsan and Babar Ahmad, to be dispatched
to an American supermax
prison, where they were placed in indefinite solitary confinement for their
tangential links to an obscure Islamist website.
Perhaps most
notably, Starmer’s CPS intervened
in the case of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, pressuring Swedish state
prosecutors not to drop their charges against the journalist, in a move that
streamlined plans to send him onward to the United States. While Crown lawyers
hounded Assange for shedding light on US war crimes, Starmer simultaneously refused
to prosecute intelligence officials who were accused of complicity in torture —
despite the existence of eyewitnesses
and documentary
evidence.
Making predictions electorally is always a fraught task but I
would venture that if Starmer is not removed and Labour reverses track, which
is highly unlikely, Labour will do wellto return to Ed Miliband’s result in 2015 of 232 seats, somewhat less
than Corbyn’s 262 seats in 2017.
The Lib Dems gained nearly 4 times as many seats in the
elections (191). Even the Green Party gained more seats (60). There is no
obvious replacement for Starmer. The colourless Rachel Reeves will go down like
cold porridge. In any event it is not a question of personality but what Labour’s
program for change will be and under Starmer any change will be for the worse.
There is nothing radical about Starmer.He is as unimaginative as he looks. He has no
answer to the economic crisis apart from repression, which is why he has
supported Johnson's repressive agenda – the Spycops and Police Bill (Labour
nominally opposed the latter but with no enthusiasm after having originally
backed it). Starmer’s record on human rights is, as Eagleton says, abysmal and
he is certainly not going to increase taxes on the rich, renationalise anything
or disturb any of the privileges of the rich.
The next election is therefore headed for a hung Parliament
and all the associated political paralysis.It offers opportunities to the same far-Right that has prevailed in much
of Europe.It is for that, if no other
reason, that the Left has to get its act together.
For socialists to stay in the Labour Party is the equivalent
of trying to run up an escalator going down. It is a futile and hopeless task.
The one glimmer of hope is that Starmer has been caught on the
hook that he himself fashioned. If the investigation into Beergate leads to
Starmer being issued with a fixed notice penalty he may well be forced to
resign in which case we will be faced with a competition between a set of
colourless nonentities.
Harold Wilson - won 4 General Elections
The only exception I would make to this scenario is if
someone like Barry Gardiner is elected. He is one of the few intelligent and
articulate Labour MPs. He reminds me of Harold Wilson and he is intelligent, which is why Starmer sacked him. Contrary to widespread belief Starmer is anything but intelligent. Being a lawyer means being able to master gobblydook and ritual. It doesn't always mean intelligence.
In Starmer's case what he lacks in intelligence he makes up for in ruthlessness. To stay in Corbyn's shadow cabinet without protest suggests someone who is fundamentally dishonest. He is surrounded by cold, calculating technocrats like David Lammy and Rachel Reeves, neither of whom would recognise a principle if it bit them on their buttocks!
Gardiner would probably
tack left and seek to build an alliance with the soft left bringing back Corbyn.However most Labour MPs are too stupid and right-wing
to do as the Parliamentary Labour Party did in 1962. His main drawback is that he is a patron of Labour Friends of Apartheid Israel.
