Good Riddance to the Most Hated Prime Minister in British History

 Starmer’s Legacy Will Be That He Supplied Weapons to and Defended Israel’s Genocide in Gaza Whilst Destroying Civil Liberties in Britain

Mehdi Hassan Interviews Owen Jones About His Initial Support for Starmer & What Burnham Represents

You will forgive me if I can’t help gloating at the fall of the most amoral, unprincipled liar to have darkened the doors of No. 10. Compare to Starmer even Liz ‘Lettuce’ Truss and Boris Johnson smell like roses.

Even in his resignation speech Starmer couldn’t help but lie. He claimed to have ripped out the poison of anti-Semitism from the Labour Party whereas what he did was to expel the supporters of the Palestinians, opponents of Zionism and the Genocide that he helped enable.

I Hate Keir Starmer

Starmer managed to expel a record number of Jews, anti-Zionist and anti-racist Jews of course. Being Jewish in the Labour Party meant you were five times more likely to be expelled than non Jews. This was how Starmer fought ‘anti-Semitism’.

Underneath the rhetoric, Starmer was an anti-Semite. Jews were there to legitimise British imperialism. Anti-Zionist Jews were invisible as they didn’t suit his foreign policy agenda. Anti-Semitism and Zionism have always gone together and Starmer was the personification of the anti-Semitic non-Jewish Zionist.

I am surprised though that he forgot to mention in his statement the debt he owed to Peter Mandelson. It was Mandelson who brought Morgan McSweeney in from the cold and enabled his candidacy for Labour Leader even if he was in the end responsible for triggering the process that led to his resignation.

I thought at first it was an oversight but then I realised that paying tribute to a corrupt friend of Jeffrey Epstein, a Zionist and paedophile, would have been a step too far.

There was also no mention of Starmer’s role in attacking basic civil liberties alongside a compliant judiciary. All in the name of ‘national security’. Like in all police states there is no longer a right to demonstrate or protest. There was no difference between Starmer and Sunak/Truss when it came to the constant attacks on the right to protest.

Congratulations to @AndyBurnhamGM on his victory in the Makerfield by-election.

We look forward to working with you as you return to the Commons and wish you well as the new Labour MP for Makerfield. https://t.co/7HjUtTWMNA

— Labour Friends of Israel (@_LFI) June 19, 2026

I welcome the fact that the rat has deserted the sinking ship. It is no comfort of course that Starmer’s successor, Andy Burnham, will be no different. Changing the captain when the ship is heading for the rocks will make no difference unless it also changes course.

The failure of Starmer’s ‘Labour’ Government was not simply because of his own palpable inadequacies. The problem lies with the political project that sees Labour propping up a failing imperialist state.

Despite my loathing for Starmer and all he stood for, I take pride in two things. First the fact that Starmer was the first person to welcome my expulsion from the Labour Party, with a solitary word, ‘good’. One of his characteristics is that he is a man of few words and even fewer ideas.

Like Horatio Bottomley Starmer was a corrupt right-wing nationalist but unlike him he was anything but popular. Starmer’s corruption was not so much financial, though there was  plenty of that, but a corruption of the political process. Starmer came to power through the Labour Together outfit, who hid their donations for fear of what they might reveal.

Starmer also hid the donations he received from right-wing Zionists, businessmen and crooked financiers from Labour Party voters when he stood for Labour Leader. He relied on the rules rather than being honest and open about who was funding him. His cynicism was such that he stood on a left-wing manifesto whilst relying on right-wing businessmen to fund his campaign.

Amongst those who donated to Starmer was

Lord Waheed Alli         £100,000 (he also gave financial backing to Andy Burnham in the 2015 Labour leadership contest).

Bob Latham        £100,000. 

Martin Taylor      £95,000, a hedge fund manager.

Clive Hollick,       £50,000 a businessman & co-founder of the Institute for Public Policy Research. 

Trevor Chinn       £50,000 a notorious Zionist who funds Labour Friends of Israel. 

Peter Coates       £25,000, Bet365 owner. 

Martin Clarke     £25,000, former AA finance director

Paul Myners       £10,000, ex-CEO at Marks & Spencers. Along with Martin Taylor, Myners helped finance the anti-Corbyn group Labour Tomorrow.

This totalled £455,000 compared to £81,400 from three right-wing trade unions, UNISON, Community and USDAW. This is how Starmer’s Labour Party was captured.

It was an honour and pleasure for me to know that I had antagonised Starmer to the extent that he blocked me on X. Clearly my pearls of wisdom riled him.

Alexei Sayle brought out a brilliant video ‘Why I hate Keir Starmer’ which summed Starmer up perfectly. However I don’t hate Starmer, I despise him and all he stands for.

Starmer was a man of few talents with the exception of his ability to lie. Who else could make 10 Pledges to get elected and then break every single one?

The Pledge I loved the most was No. 4 – Titled ‘Promote peace and human rights’. He said

‘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.’

Starmer's idea of ‘peace and human rights’ was supplying arms and intelligence to Israel so it could carry out a genocide in Gaza. Starmer denied that there was a genocide in Gaza despite Israel massacring tens of thousands of civilians, destroying 90% of buildings including hospitals and schools and ethnic cleansing, raping and torturing. But Starmer had no problem describing other massacres as genocide.

Starmer never did explain why 8,000 dead in Srebenica was a genocide but Gaza wasn’t a genocide. I doubt that even the worst neo-Nazi holocaust denier could match him.

On 2 February 2020, two months before Labour’s leadership election, I wrote a blog Keir Starmer is the candidate that the Deep State & the British  Establishment want you to vote for’ .

Unfortunately most Labour Party members weren't able to see through Starmer and his record as Director of Public Prosecutions when he persecuted Julian Assange and protected Jimmy Saville.

There is less excuse for Owen Jones who wrote an article for The Guardian 'Starmer can succeed, and he deserves our support.'  There really was no excuse for this as a cursory dive into his record as DPP would have shown he was fiercely reactionary and pro-Police and contemptuous of civil liberties.  I take no pleasure in once again being right but the reason why it was so obvious was that I looked beyond the sound bites and the wishful thinking to what Starmer's actual record was. And incidentally there was no excuse for being taken in by Starmer's nonsense about 'antisemitism' either, except that Owen Jones too had not yet seen the light.

However let it not be said that Starmer didn’t provide us with a certain amusement. The man who proclaimed his honesty and integrity ended up taking over £100,000 in freebies. The highest of any MP. Lord Ali provided him and his wife with thousands of pounds of clothes. Even her knickers were paid for by the generous Ali.

Starmer declared himself a ‘Zionist (i.e. racist) without qualification.’ And he told LBC that Israel had the right to starve the Palestinians of Gaza and cut off water and fuel, before denying he said it.

Starmer was so right-wing that even the anti-Semitic Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, praised him.

Despite being a practiced liar Starmer was never very good at it. Indeed he was never very good at anything. His speeches were wooden, like a child trying too hard, with that squeaky voice which  told us he didn’t mean a word of it.

Starmer came to power via Labour Together as Paul Holden documented in The Fraud. He then rewarded the central players in the conspiracy, including Josh Simons and Morgan McSweeney. As soon as the heat became too much Simons abandoned him for Andy Burnham leaving Starmer high and dry. The irony is that Labour Together was anything but together.

Many people have commented on Starmer’s lack of personality or charisma. In a blog ‘Mogadon Man Assumes the Leadership of the Labour Party’ straight after he was elected Labour Leader I saw that Starmer’s personality was a reflection of his dishonesty.

To Starmer truth and lies were mere matters of convenience. All that mattered was choosing which was most beneficial. Starmer settled a libel action with Labour Party staff alleging ‘anti-Semitism’, even though they didn’t have a case, because he thought that that would ‘prove’ that Labour under Corbyn was anti-Semitic. The kind of trickery that lawyers regularly engage in.

Starmer’s lack of charisma was because he believed in nothing apart from his own personal advancement. Starmer was a human rights lawyer who didn’t believe in human rights.

It was no wonder that in his first speech as Labour leader all he could do was invent a story about his father. It was tedium magnified to listen to the same story about his toolmaker father who also owned the factory he worked in! Ironically Starmer’s dad was a Jeremy Corbyn supporter. He would have turned in his grave to see how his son turned out.

None of us know whether the rent boys who tried to set fire to Starmer’s house had something on him. Difficult as it is to imagine, there is clearly more to this story than meets the eye. And the one thing they were not is agents of Russia as the BBC tells us.

Still no one can say Starmer didn’t manage to achieve anything. He obtained the second highest Labour majority on the lowest vote for a majority government (34%), 6% less than Corbyn in 2017. Starmer even managed, as an incumbent Prime Minister, to secure a lower percentage of support in his own constituency in 2024 than in 2019. His majority was halved from 22,766 in 2019 to 11,572 in 2024.

Starmer expelled more Jewish members of the Labour Party ‘to combat antisemitism’ than all previous leaders combined. That’s like expelling people of colour to fight racism. He destroyed the left on a lie, he won power on lies & he resigned with more lies about his time in… https://t.co/BKNdDDJBTI

— Andrew Feinstein (@andrewfeinstein) June 22, 2026

Ironically this was because of the 7,312 votes of ex-ANC MP Andrew Feinstein, who besides being a Jewish anti-Zionist is, unlike Starmer principled.

However Starmer does have one achievement to his name. Starmer was the most hated and despised Prime Minister on record.

I won’t wish Starmer well in whatever new career he takes up because there are too many dead Palestinian children who might have lived but for him.

Contrary to the view of Mehdi Hassan in the interview with Owen Jones, I don't believe that Andy Burnham represents any fundamental change with Keir Starmer. He has already made his position clear that he doesn't believe there is a Genocide in Gaza.

It's not any surprise therefore that he has been given a warm welcome by the Israel Embassy front, Labour Friends of Israel. 

It is also reported that has had a blazing row with Starmer because he wants to increase 'Defence' i.e. War expenditure. If so we are  in for more of the same but with a smiling face .

I suspect that Burnham will have an equally short honeymoon to that which Starmer enjoyed or rather didn't enjoy. He supported the Iraq War and was a devoted Blairite. There is nothing left-wing about Burnham. His only virtue is not being Keir Starmer.

Tony Greenstein 

Despite The Best Efforts of the Institutionally Racist Metropolitan Police the ‘I Oppose Genocide – I Support Palestine Action Demonstration Went Ahead’

 The same Police Force that Welcomed the Nazi Police to London in the 30s is now Defending the Genocidal Israeli State

London's Metropolitan Police do their best to prevent support for Palestine Action on Sept. 6th

Despite arresting the organisers of the demonstration today, including Tim Crosland, and charging them with being 'terrorists' i.e. organising against the Police State that London is fast becoming, the demonstration against the ban on Palestine Action went ahead as planned.

I got to the demonstration in Parliament Square just before 1.00 p.m. and stayed till about 3.00 p.m. I displayed a poster – Genocide in Palestine – Action Needed Now to see if the Met Police were going to arrest me, as they have done with others holding the same poster.  They didn’t but most of the arrests took place after I left.

Police can't explain why holding a placard is terrorism but dropping bombs on children isn't

congratulations @metpoliceuk on arresting so many opponents of genocide - be under no illusions what you are supporting - Israel's bombing of a school football match killing at least 30 children

Home Office Disinformation Campaign 

well done Sir Mark Rowley - perhaps you will get a pay rise for such magnificent… https://t.co/YSOAxQmi3v pic.twitter.com/4nzdpk3fmK

— Tony Greenstein tonygreenstein.com (@TonyGreenstein) September 7, 2025

There was though a real buzz and energy at the demonstration and it should be clear, even to the thick-headed racist who is the Commissioner of the Met, Sir Mark Rowley, that however many arrests his violent thugs make the demonstrations will continue.

On September 5, 2025 Israeli war planes targeted children in a school bus burning them all alive

People should not be taken in by the claim that all the Police are doing is enforcing the law. When it comes to rape the offence has virtually been decriminalised. Don’t take my word. Vera Baird, the Victim’s Commissioner wrote in her 2021/22 Annual Report:

In my first annual report in 2020, I made headlines by saying that we were witnessing the effective decriminalisation of rape. During my subsequent years in post as Victims’ Commissioner, little has swayed me from that perspective. Despite a long-delayed end-to-end rape review, various governmental action plans and plenty of tinkering round the edges, you can’t escape the numbers; they continue to speak for themselves.

For victims, reporting rape is effectively a lottery and the odds are rarely in your favour. In the year to December 2021, there were 67,125 rape offences recorded – an all-time high. Yet the number of completed rape prosecutions plummeted from 5,190 in 2016-17 to just 2,409 in 2020-21. The numbers of convictions almost halved (2,689 in 2016/17 compared to 1,409 in 2020/21). Only 5% of rapes that were given an outcome by the police in the year ending December 2021 resulted in a charge.

Emeritus Professor Jonathan Rosenhead of the LSE and Jewish Voice for Labour Prepares to be Arrested

But we know why the Police deprioritise rape.  It is not seen by many Police as a crime. Not surprising given the number of rapists in their ranks and the way Wayne Couzens, the murderer of Sarah Everard was covered for by fellow officers who nicknamed him ‘the rapist’. The Met still has not explained why it didn’t act immediately when Couzens exposed himself in a drive in restaurant two days before.

Likewise the International Criminal Court Act 2001 which makes aiding a genocide a crime, has remained a dead letter as far as the Met is concerned. For the Met to go anywhere near an Act which makes aiding genocide a crime would be ‘political’.

Piers Corbyn, brother of Jeremy, prepares to be arrested

It is far easier to crack down on opponents of genocide. We can rely on the British state – be they politicians, police or judges – to know that relations with United States takes priority over the death of thousands of people in Gaza.

Even The Times Came Out Against the Ban

I hope to attend the next demonstration and will do my best to be arrested next time! Have no doubt that we are winning.  Palestine Action was proscribed, not because it is a terrorist organisation but because it has been so effective in shutting down Elbit.

Did Yvette Cooper, Britain's new foreign secretary, mislead parliament and the public when rushing to ban Palestine Action?

Internal government documents seen by Declassified suggest she did👇https://t.co/myDK39MVUt

— Declassified UK (@declassifiedUK) September 6, 2025

It is also now very clear from the documents released as part of the attempt to judicially review the decision to proscribe Palestine Action that Yvette Cooper lied about the intelligence evidence proving that Palestine Action was a terrorist group.

We learnt today that a fourth Elbit factory has been forced to close in Bristol. This at the same time as that human skunk, Keir Starmer, ponders giving Elbit Systems, Israel’s main arms company, a £2 billion contract to train the British army. One would assume that the British army had no need of training from Israel in how to commit war crimes but possibly they need a refresher.

Below are some of the photos I and others took.

Tony Greenstein

The Subpostmaster’s Scandal – The Questions That the Media Doesn’t Want To Ask

Why did the Legal System Fail So Badly – The Culpability of the Government and especially the Lib Dems

Sean Hudson’ account of the role of the National Federation of Sub Postmasters

The wrongful conviction between 1999 and 2015 of over 900 subpostmasters for theft and false accounting is rightly described as the worst case of miscarriage of justice in Britain. Except perhaps for the Irish cases such as the Birmingham 6 in the 70s and 80s.

Thanks to ITV’s Mr Bates vs The Post Office, which was broadcast in January this year, most people are aware of the conspiracy to frame the subpostmasters by the Board of the Post Office, Paula Vennells in particular, and Fujitsu, which was responsible for the Horizon computer system that so disastrously failed.

In fact the only people who seem unaware of what happened appear to be the Metropolitan Police who, as the BBC noted, have so far not only not charged anyone with any offence, but have interviewed just two people under caution. If they were climate protesters the Met would have been all over them.

The Lies of Paula Vennells

Potential offences should include conspiracy to pervert the cause of justice, obtaining monies by deception and perjury. It is of course understandable that the Met hasn’t yet got round to doing anything since they are more concerned with monitoring the speech of those protesting against genocide in Gaza and inspecting book covers to see whether or not they offend Zionists.

The first public airing of the scandal was in August 2015, Panorama’s Trouble at Post Office. This was followed up in 2020 by Panorama’s Scandal at the Post Office.

Like many people I was only dimly aware of what was happening, yet there were those in the legal profession and in the CPS who must have been aware, not least Britain’s liar-in-chief Sir Keir Starmer, who like in the case of Jimmy Saville, denied knowing anything.

There were about 983 prosecutions, 700 by the Post Office and the remainder by the CPS and associated bodies. Ed Davey, the leader of the Lib Dems, was Minister for the Post Office in 2012. In a letter to Alan Bates in 2010 Davey said that

The integrity of the Post Office Horizon system is an operational and contractual matter for POL [Post Office Ltd], whilst I do appreciate your concerns. I do not believe a meeting would serve any useful purpose.

The Lib Dems played a pivotal role in the scandalous privatisation of Royal Mail, from which the Post Office was hived off. Business Secretary Vince Cable undersold Royal Mail giving away billions of pounds to the City that had been paid for by the taxpayer.

Jo Swinson, a future leader of the Lib Dems was also a Post Office Minister and she was handed a briefing note about a ‘trickle’ of subpostmasters alleging miscarriages of justice and problems with Horizon. She not only chose to do nothing she has also refused to be interviewed over her role.

Swinson took over from Norman Lamb who succeeded Ed Davey, as Postal Affairs Minister. Swinson, a viciously anti-Corbyn MP, provided one of the highlights of the last election when she was defeated by the SNP. She backed up the position of the Post Office with a statement to the House of Commons that there was “absolutely no evidence of any systemic issues with the computer system”.

Like the other Lib Dem Ministers Swinson has subsequently said that she had been misled. But if she was misled by the Post Office that was because she was a willing victim. She chose to believe a large corporation against the little people it had been grinding down.

The National Federation of Subpostmasters

Another of the guilty parties was the National Federation of SubPostmasters to which all postmasters belong unless they take a decision to opt out. The NFSP was supposed to be the equivalent of the postmasters’ trade union but in reality it was a company union.

As Post Office trial observed it was a department of the Post Office. In return for a grant of over £2m a year it agreed not to do anything that displeased the Post Office. Far from supporting its members who were being prosecuted as part of the Horizon scandal it supported the Post Office right up to the bitter end. It signed a contract with the Post Office which meant that in the event of a conflict between the Post Office and its members it supported the former. Clauses included promises ‘not to engage in the following’:

5.3.1    undertaking any public activity which may prevent POL from implementing any of its initiatives, policies or strategies;

5.3.2    undertaking or inducing a third party to undertake media or political campaigns against POL;

5.3.3    organising or inducing a third party to organise public demonstrations, protests or petitions against POL;

5.3.4    organising or inducing a third party to organise boycotts of POL's business;...

5.3.6    other activities or behaviour the effect of which may be materially detrimental to POL....

5.7 The NFSP shall (and shall use best endeavours to ensure that all Personnel of the NFSP shall):

5.7.1    not act dishonestly or negligently at any time and/or not act directly or indirectly to the detriment of any Annual Plan and/or any Approved Project; and ...

5.8 The NFSP shall support POL and Post Office Operators in the rollout of the Network Transformation programme ... and shall work closely with POL to ensure that the objectives and requirements of the Network Transformation programme are effectively and positively communicated to current and future Post Office Operators.

Throughout the scandal the NFSP told members who came to it that they were the only ones having problems with the Horizon computer software and that they should plead guilty. It was, uniquely, in a position to know that this was a lie.

Until 2014 they were registered as a trade union until an employment tribunal ruled that its members were not employees. Its income was derived almost exclusively from the Post Office. With this agreement the NFSP could not do anything that might upset the Post Office. This lapdog was severely criticised by Mr Justice Cox when a class action was brought against the Post Office in 2019.

In paragraph 36 of his judgement Cox observed that the agreement between the Post Office and the NFSP was only made public

after a lengthy period of pressure by someone using the Freedom of Information Act. There seems to be a culture of secrecy and excessive confidentiality generally within the Post Office, but particularly focused on Horizon.

In his judgment of 15 March 2019 in the case of Alan Bates and others –v- Post Office Ltd. Cox J was scathing about the Post Office’s claim that its case was strengthened by the fact that the NFSP supported it. In paragraph 596 he found that:

The NFSP is not an organisation independent of the Post Office, in the sense that the word “independent” is usually understood in the English language. It is not only dependent upon the Post Office for its funding, but that funding is subject to stringent and detailed conditions that enable the Post Office to restrict the activities of the NFSP. The Post Office effectively controls the NFSP. The agreement also enables the Post Office to seek repayment of funds already paid to the NFSP. The NFSP is a company limited by guarantee and there was no evidence that it had any other source of funding. It is not likely to be able to repay any funds “clawed back” by the Post Office and therefore its very existence depends upon it not giving the Post Office grounds to challenge its activities. There is also evidence before the court that the NFSP has, in the past, put its own interests and the funding of its future above the interests of its members, in the e mail to which I have referred. In those circumstances, the fact that the NFSP does not support the Claimants in this litigation is entirely to be expected.

Sean Hudson of the Post Office Workers branch of the CWU, gave a fascinating account of the SFSP to a meeting of the Labour Left Alliance. For brevity I have excised the questioners and just left Sean’s answers to the questions that were asked.

If you download the NFSP’s accounts then however hard you look you will see no detail as to who is funding the NFSP.

There is a section on the Horizon scandal on the NFSP website which does its best to play down its scandalous role during the Horizon scandal when it worked closely with the Post Office management.

Michael Rudkin and the Subpostmaster’s Scandal

Indeed the NFSP penalised its own representative, Michael Rudkin, who stumbled on the fact that Fujitsu employees could access the individual accounts of postmasters. Computer Weekly reported that:

Former subpostmaster Michael Rudkin is certain he was singled out by the Post Office for asking difficult questions about remote access to Horizon. In August 2008, when he was chairman of the negotiating committee of the Federation of Subpostmasters, Rudkin visited a Fujitsu technology centre as part of a working group looking at how to improve bureau de change processes. During his visit, a Fujitsu employee demonstrated how he could make changes to subpostmaster branch accounts remotely, without the subpostmasters knowing.

Rudkin’s experience was confirmed in 2015 by former Fujitsu engineer Richard Roll. After contacting Alan Bates, the former subpostmaster who led the fight for justice for subpostmasters, Roll blew the whistle on remote access.

The NFSP ‘explanation’ is that:

Under its current leadership, the NFSP has appraised its own role in the Horizon scandal. It is a source of considerable regret to the current CEO and Board that the former leadership of the NFSP did not take more assertive action over the Horizon dispute. The NFSP could and should have done more to support subpostmasters affected by the scandal. 

They claim that:

contrary to much of the public discourse on the issue, the NFSP challenged PO on numerous occasions about the reliability of the Horizon system. PO’s response was always that the system was reliable, and that user-error was the primary cause of the problems.  

What they don’t say is that they told their members they were the only individuals affected by the scandal. The fact that even now they won’t admit their wrongdoing should put any postmaster on notice that if anything goes wrong in the future they’ll be on their own.

Post Office Trial in NFSP crawls out from under its rock described the NFSP as

crawling towards the moral high ground like some sort of rotting, zombified Uriah Heep, wringing its hands and bleating that it has been wronged.

I emailed the NFSP two days ago to say that I was going to publish a blog on what had happened and did they have any response. They have not replied.

A good summary of the case is Justice Lost in the Post by Private Eye which can be downloaded here. The Communication Workers Union has a branch for subpostmasters and anyone who wants protection would be well advised to join them and leave the NFSP.

The Legal System and its Failings

If the class action by 555 subpostmasters in 2017 that ended in victory in the High Court in 2019 represented a defeat for the Post Office and Fujitsu it was won at a very high price. At least 4 subpostmasters such as Martin Griffiths committed suicide and 33 others died, many driven to their deaths and there is a strong suspicion that others took their own life too or like Fiona McGowan were driven into depression and died soon after.

Others like Noel Thomas, who went to prison for a crime he did not commit, have suffered permanent psychological damage. Or Seema Misra who was gaoled whilst she was pregnant whilst her husband, Davindra, was attacked and abused by racist thugs on three occasions.

The question that hasn’t even been asked is how, over a period of 16 years, almost a thousand innocent people could be prosecuted for crimes that they did not commit, most of whom were convicted.

In January 2003 the NFSP had 6723 members. Even if we accept that over the 16 years of this scandal there were about 10,000 this still represents about 10% of all subpostmasters were prosecuted for fraud.

It beggars belief that no one in the legal world picked up on this high proportion of criminals that the world of subpostmasters were attracting. Given the type of person that became subpostmasters, respectable middle class this was an amazing statistic.

The responsibility for the Post Office in government during the Tory-Lib Dem coalition lay with the Lib-Dem Ministers; Vince Cable, Ed Davie, Norman Lamb and Jo Swinson. Did they have no subpostmasters as constituents who were being prosecuted.

Cable, Davey and Swinson, all of whom became leaders of the Lib Dems, demonstrated a total unconcern with the plight of the subpostmasters. They were content to accept the assurances of their civil servants and the Post Office. It was individual Conservative MPs such as James Arbuthnot and Andrew Brigden who took up the cases.

Was the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, whose CPS undertook around 200 prosecutions unaware of what was happening? Starmer of course accepts no responsibility for anything but it’s difficult to believe that he wasn’t aware of what was happening. If he didn’t know it was because he didn’t want to know. Or more likely, like the Lib Dems, he didn’t want to challenge corporate power.

And what about the judges? Almost to a man, and they are nearly all men, preferred to allow the Post Office claims of false accounting and theft to go unchallenged. Virtually none of them asked where the money that had allegedly been stolen had gone. None of them queried the ‘evidence’ that the Horizon computer system was reliable.

Prior to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 there was a long-standing common law principle that "mechanical instruments" should be assumed to be working properly - for example, that clocks can be relied on. Section 69 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 changed this requiring anyone introducing computer-generated evidence to show the system was operating correctly. However in 1999 section 69 of PACE was repealed by the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 that the Blair government introduced and the law reverted back to the common law principle.

It is a sign of the servility and their unquestioning acceptance of prosecution evidence that Crown Court judges refused to interpret these common law principles and demand proof that Horizon was fit for purpose. It should have been clear that there is a world of difference between a mechanical device like a clock or even a speedometer and a complex computer system like Horizon.

It is a well-known fact that these giant IT projects have always had an abundance of bugs and problems. Indeed Horizon itself was rejected by the DWP because of this.

In the case of Seema Misra the Judge N.A. Stewart refused defence requests for disclosure. See transcript Day 6. There was no justification for this apart from the judge's belief that the jury would be capable of making up their mind from the technical evidence as to whether the defendant was guilty or not. An absurd decision.  

Karl Flinders in Computer Weekly quoted Stephen Mason, editor of the practitioner text for judges and lawyers, Electronic Evidence.as expressing surprise at the refusal of judges to order proper disclosure in cases involving technical evidence.

 “For some reason that I cannot understand, judges often refuse defence requests for relevant evidence. This happened in the case of Seema Misra. If the judges in Seema Misra’s case had ordered appropriate disclosure by the Post Office, the members of the jury might have reached a different conclusion about her guilt.”

Judge Stewart, despite the fact that Seema Misra was pregnant, despite the fact that she had suffered miscarriages, despite the fact that she had a clean record, sentenced her to 15 months imprisonment.  This was a vicious and vindictive sentence. The fact that she had chosen to plead not guilty, i.e. assert her innocence, contributed to the length of the sentence.

You can read the transcript of the sentencing hearing when Stewart completely disregarded Seema’s mitigation. If justice is to be served then Stewart should be kicked off the bench in order that he doesn’t preside over any further miscarriages of justice but of course that won’t happen. Indeed all the judges who handed out prison sentences should be given their marching orders.

Many defendants pleaded guilty to charges of false accounting in order that they did not face a more serious charge of theft, in the belief that they wouldn’t be sentenced to prison.

It should be a principle of law that no one pleads guilty to one offence for fear of being charged with another more serious one. This is blackmail yet our judicial system encourages it by offering a discount on sentence for those who plead guilty. It is legal intimidation and corruption.

The problem defendants face is that they lack recourse to expert witness evidence when confronted, as with the Post Office, with a corporation that has deep pockets. Without being able to go into Fujitsu’s offices in Bracknell with a search warrant and examine whether or not Post Office accounts could be accessed and changed remotely there was little that any defendant could do to challenge the prosecution evidence.

In short the system was stacked against them from the start and the last thing that judges are wont to do is to challenge the system. Their job is to uphold it.

What is clear is that there was a conspiracy extending from the Post Office to Fujitsu. Horizon was one of their few profitable software ventures and they wanted to keep it that way. Despite this there is no indication that the Police have even begun investigating the Fujitsu end of the scandal because the police are more concerned with defending corporations than investigating corporate malpractice.

We know from the refusal of the Police to even investigate the multiple breaches of COVID regulations by Boris Johnson, until threatened with a judicial review, that the Police see their job as protecting not challenging the Establishment. If they were seriously concerned with law breaking they would have investigated Boris Johnson obtaining by deception a grant of a £100,000 for his mistress Jennifer Arcuri when he was Mayor of London, despite the fact she was based in California not London.

Today as Rishi Sunak continues to aid and abet war crimes in Gaza by supplying the Israeli army with weaponry, a flagrant breach of the International Criminal Court Act 2000, the Police simply sit on their hands. However they are more than eager to prosecute and persecute activists for supporting Hamas against Israel’s genocidal army.

One other aspect of the scandal that needs remedying is the ability of the Post Office to mount its own prosecutions and to interview people under caution. This is an outrageous power for a private company, even one owned by the government and this power should be removed, not only from the Post Office but rail companies too.

Even getting into court to sue the Post Office was a struggle. It took more than 500 people to provide the basis of a class action. There was a time when such an action could have been mounted on legal aid but civil legal aid has been all but abolished. This makes the law a plaything of the rich with judges, the most socially exclusive profession in Britain, at its pinnacle.

Even when the Subpostmasters won their case the compensation they obtained was derisory. Of the £58 million they achieved in a settlement no less than £48m went to the legal profession. The 550 claimants had to divide the remaining £10m between them, about £20,000 each.

The Post Office, a government owned corporation had limitless money to spend, courtesy of the tax payer, and it deliberately sought to inflate the costs knowing that the claimants had limited means.

There is now a public inquiry, which has been put on a statutory footing. It is to be hoped that among its recommendations is ensuring that in the future, should such a case arise that there will be equality of arms between the victims and their persecutors.

Finally why is Paula Vennels a free woman? She was at the apex of the conspiracy. She knew about the defects in the Horizon system and she knew, despite the denials, that Fujitsu had remote access to individual subpostmasters’ accounts. She was shamed into returning her CBE (awarded in 2019 when knowledge of her role in the affair was known) because the government did not see fit to strip a fellow crook of her honours.

Vennels is still an ordained priest in the Church of England. Why?  Presumably because Archbishop Justin Welby was strongly pushing for her to become the next Bishop of London. After all what’s a little miscarriage of justice when you support Genocide in Gaza. Welby was quick to recognise a kindred spirit when he saw one.

Why has no one been prosecuted at Fujitsu? The old adage of one law for the rich and one law for the poor was never more true than in the case of the subpostmaster’s scandal.

The answer to some of these questions was provided by Sam Fowles in an article which told how Fujitsu

donated  money to both Labour and the Conservatives, paying around £26,000 every year to host “lounges” at each party’s conference. Simon Blagden, Fujitsu UK’s chair until 2019, is a long-term Conservative donor. He has been part of the exclusive “Leader’s Group”, where “members are invited to join [the party leader] and other senior figures… at dinners”.

This is the real reason why these people escape unscathed. They are part of a corrupt Establishment.

Tony Greenstein