IF THERE’S NOTHING ELSE YOU WATCH THIS YEAR WATCH Ken Loach savage Starmer for his Treachery, Dishonesty And Contempt For Democracy

Like Brutus, Starmer bided his time, waiting for the opportunity when he could plunge the knife between Corbyn's shoulder blades

It’s not just that Starmer has the personality of a poodle pretending to be a German shepherd dog. Nor is it that when give the choice he prefers to lie. It’s not even that he portrayed himself as the unity candidate standing on 10 pledges from the Corbyn Manifesto. It isn’t even that Starmer has an utter contempt for Labour Party democracy, suspending whole parties for having the temerity to discuss and debate the suspension of a former leader, Jeremy Corbyn. 

It’s not even his treachery in staying in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet and ensuring that Labour’s approach to Brexit would spell disaster. It is all of these things and more. Starmer’s only achievement to date is that he has made dishonesty into a fine art. And let’s face it.  This is the best that New Labour can offer.

I looked at his 10 pledges and there isn’t one he has kept. The first pledge was to reverse Tory cuts to corporation tax.  So what did he do when the Tories raised corporation tax?  He opposed them!

He pledged to ‘put the Green New Deal at the heart of everything we do.’ Which presumably is why he tried to keep the GND off the agenda at this week’s Labour Party conference!

Perhaps it’s Pledge 4, Promote peace and human rights that sticks most in the gullet. He promised

‘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.’

So what did he do?  He supported the Tories Overseas Operations Bill, sacking 3 shadow cabinet members who voted against a bill that effectively grants immunity to British soldiers guilty of war crimes and torture! The Spycops Bill that would render the activities of the Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad legal, including its rape of women, was also supported by Starmer.

But perhaps the biggest lie of all was Pledge 10 that promised ‘Effective opposition to the Tories’. Instead we have had uncritical support of Boris Johnson throughout the COVID crisis and use of that crisis to further the privatisation of the NHS.

Ken Loach starts off by comparing Starmer to a Mr Bean who is trying to be Stalin, unlike Gordon Brown who took the reverse path! I’m not even sure that Stalin is the right comparison for this tin pot dictator who best resembles an incompetent Asiatic despot.

This is a superb demolition job on Starmer. Loach doesn’t spare Starmer as he pours contempt on this miserable man. The exodus of 150,000 members and the destruction of the party whose membership Corbyn virtually doubled into becoming the largest political party in Europe will be Starmer’s main legacy.

We only have to look at the lie that Starmer’s changing how leaders are elected in order to give power back to ordinary trade union members.  Just another small lie. If Starmer was serious about giving power to trade unionists he would pledge to get rid of the anti-trade union laws.

Starmer promised to ‘root out the poison’ of a non-existing anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. Yet what has he done? Jewish members of the Labour Party are 5 times more likely to be suspended or expelled than non-Jewish members. 

If Starmer (and the Labour Right) had had any honesty they would have admitted that their concern was support for the Israeli state not anti-Semitism.

Starmer waited until he was elected Labour leader to reveal that he was a ‘Zionist without qualification’. Just as he waited until he was elected to reveal that a host of millionaires had funded his campaign including Sir Trevor Chinn, who bankrolls a variety of Zionist groups including Labour Friends of Israel, to the tune of £445,000.

Starmer withdrew of a Ramadan iftar after the Board of Deputies lobbied him to do so after it was revealed, shock horror, that one of the organisers supported the boycott of Israeli dates!

And just to emphasise his racist and imperialist credentials, Starmer and that other waste of space, Angela Rayner, decided to speak at a Labour Friends of Israel/Jewish Labour Movement meeting on the same day as the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinians.

More Lies which the sheep swallowed

But Loach does not simply demolish Starmer.  He also provides us with an alternative. The Left has to grapple the nettle now or forever lose the opportunity that the Corbyn Project and its dissolution has provided it with. We need to build a new socialist movement, not a party, that can provide the basis for a challenge to a Labour Party that is now a Tory Party Mark II. 

The Labour Party today under Starmer is a party of the British ruling class and a safe alternative to the Tories when they fall out of favour with the electorate. A party which will not provide an alternative either to capitalism or imperialist war.

Watch it and enjoy.

Tony Greenstein

I am also reprinting this excellent resignation letter to Keir Starmer on Skwawkbox from Stephen Smith, Faringdon town councillor and Labour conference delegate. Stephen Smith has resigned his party membership and all his positions in the local party after being targeted for suspension as part of the Labour right’s attempt to protect Keir Starmer’s acting general secretary from democracy – he has yet to decide whether he will remain a councillor.

Councillor and delegate’s blistering resignation letter lists Starmer’s crimes against Labour, democracy and the people

by SKWAWKBOX (SW) 24/09/2021

‘I at least expected the most basic standards of honesty and integrity. How naive… You can’t even lie competently… How fucking dare you?!’ Councillor resigns membership and all party offices and tells Keir Starmer he is putting ‘insatiable factionalism’ above the needs of the country

Sir Keir Starmer MP

Leader of the Labour Party

21 September 2021BY POST AND EMAIL

Dear Keir,

I write to resign membership of the Labour Party and consequently my elected offices as Wantage CLP Policy Officer, Executive Committee member and Conference delegate. I will ask members of the Faringdon Labour Party branch for their view of my continued membership of Faringdon town council; but even if they wish me to continue, will no longer serve as a Labour Party councillor.

I do so reluctantly, having been a Labour Party member for many years, under 5 different Leaders. I am 58, a lifelong and active anti racist, a socialist most of my adult life and take the greatest possible exception to your insinuation I am in any way a racist or an anti-Semite. I cannot in all conscience remain a member of an organisation that would even consider this to be possible.

I am an elected Labour councillor. I am a solidarity member of Jewish Voice for Labour. I was a judge for the Ann Frank Awards in 2009. I visited Israel in Easter 2018 and prayed at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. I am a Grade 2 Krav Maga [Israeli martial art] practitioner. I was NASUWT’s Principal Officer for Equality for 7 years.

A ‘racist’? An ’anti-semite’? How fucking dare you?! How dare you preside over this McCarthyism and establish a Stalinist bureaucracy where lifelong anti-racists like me are being witch-hunted for entirely sectarian political reasons? How dare you allow the cancer of anti-semitism to be weaponised and trivialised for factional disputes – then look at yourself in a mirror when Jewish members are being suspended, expelled and disciplined in unprecedented numbers? It is beyond shameful.

Last week I answered spurious allegations made about me in full. That response has neither been considered nor evaluated – instead, exactly the same material has been used to ‘justify’ an administrative suspension 3 days before Conference. I understand from NEC member Mish Rahman that this has happened to hundreds of Conference delegates. It is a blatantly dishonest, anti-democratic and factional abuse of process and I will have nothing more to do with a Party prepared to plumb such depths.

How can you possibly allow tens of thousands of members to simply drift away from Labour, disheartened your leadership team’s abject failure to oppose the most incompetent and vicious Tory Government in living memory?

Labour is consistently struggling in opinion polls despite hundreds of thousands of unnecessary Covid deaths; leaving the European Union without a feasible deal; threats to peace in Northern Ireland; actively destroying the goodwill of our European neighbours; the Tories breaking election promises unchallenged; and an unprecedented and growing gap between rich and poor. It is an abject failure to offer a credible, coherent, principled alternative and an appalling indictment that you and this Party are consistently trailing in opinion polls and losing safe seats like Hartlepool. The record of the Labour Party under your stewardship is unprincipled, incompetent and abject:

– Refusing to oppose the Covert Human Intelligence Sources Bill, which gave state agents legal immunity for murder, rape, torture and kidnapping.

– Appointing David Evans, a man on record as opposed to the very concept of party democracy, as our General Secretary. A man chosen ahead of two more suitable women, and a Blairite dinosaur with a record of cronyism in Croydon, happily presiding over the McCarthyism destroying Labour’s integrity.

– Sacking Rebecca Long-Bailey on a pathetic pretext and for entirely sectarian political advantage; yet turning Nelson’s eye to Barry Sheerman and Steven Reed’s prima facie anti-Semitism. This was nauseating hypocrisy.

– Ignoring the genuine concerns of teaching and education unions in favour of your data-free and evidence-free grandstanding about ‘keeping schools open’, despite them being (and remaining) hotbeds of Covid infection.

– Undermining the findings of Labour’s own NEC by withdrawing the Parliamentary whip from Jeremy Corbyn: then lying about it by saying it was done by the General Secretary – then subsequently admitting on Jeremy Vine’s BBC Radio programme that it was in fact your decision. You can’t even lie competently!

– Burying the Forde Report, when the despicable behaviour, racism, bullying and destructive acts of Ian MacNicol [sic], Emilie Oldknow and other staffers should have been exposed and been grounds for disciplinary and legal action. (In short, people who actively worked AGAINST the interests of our Party were protected, for factional reasons) You have as a result undermined the standing of this Party amongst black and minority ethnic communities: it is indefensible.

– Refusing to defend Liverpool Labour council from a political takeover by a hard-right Conservative government: in fact, acquiescing in it. This was both shameful and spineless.

– Making even the discussion of Jeremy Corbyn’s suspension, grounds for suspension.

– Making CLP or Branch motions of confidence, in either you or David Evans, grounds for suspension. Portraying all of the above as, somehow, ‘anti-Semitic’.

– Calling for the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon – subsequently found not to have breached the Ministerial Code – yet refusing to do the same for Matt Hancock, Boris Johnson, Robert Jenrick, Priti Patel and Michael Gove, all of whom HAVE breached the Ministerial Code.

– Not calling for the resignation of Met Police Commissioner Cressida Dick, after the violent conduct of Met Police officers breaking up a peaceful women’s demonstration in Battersea.

– Reinstating staff named in ‘Labour Leaks’ documents, including those who – I can hardly believe I have to say this – actively campaigned AGAINST the Labour Party until 2019 and were involved in bullying, racism, misogyny and helping journalists hostile to the Labour Party, including being complicit in the shameful bullying of Diane Abbott.

– Interfering in the selection of Liverpool Mayoral candidates and sabotaging a shortlist of 3 women, all of whom held senior office within the City council – again for sectarian political reasons.

– Presiding over a Hartlepool ‘selection’ exercise which produced a shortlist (sic) of one white man, an apologist for the barbaric Saudi Arabian regime, who used social media posts to talk about ’Tory MILFs’ and was entirely unsuitable to contest the seat – a seat then lost to the Conservatives for the first time since it was created.

– Then saying you’d accept responsibility for that by-election result – but failing to do so and throwing Angela Rayner under the bus, sacking her from the Party Chair role.

– Proscribing 3 organisations simply for being critical of the current direction (sic) of the Labour Party leadership. This is pathetic, Poundland McCarthyism at the very time when this Government has presided over 150,000 excess deaths, allowing C-19 to rip through the population for the fourth time.

– Doing literally nothing when Labour (sic) MP Neil Coyle called for the mass expulsion of Jewish Voice for Labour – an organisation of exclusively Jewish Labour members! (If that doesn’t meet the most basic definition of anti-semitism, I’m not sure what does…..)

And even today, as I write this, your pre-Conference manoeuvre to tear up something as fundamental as ‘one person one vote’, in favour of a system giving an MP a thousand votes against the one that ‘ordinary’ Party members have. That is laughably undemocratic.

I could go on at length, but will save us both the time and heartache. Under your stewardship, and to the detriment of the people we seek to represent, I see no prospect of Labour being back in government. You made ten ‘pledges’ during the last Leadership election and have already broken each and every one.

You were therefore elected on an entirely false premise and while I did not vote for you, I at least expected the most basic standards of honesty and integrity. How naive…

Instead, you and the dinosaurs who ‘advise’ you have given life again to the notion that ‘all politicians are the same’ and can’t be trusted. There is no future in ‘split the difference’ politics, pandering to right wing media and re-heated Blairism. It is a political cul-de-sac. When a mainstream, experienced member of Labour like myself – a councillor, CLP office holder and a career trade union officer – struggles to offer credible reasons to vote Labour, what chance do other Labour members across the country have trying to enthuse people?

I hope, even now, you will consider your position and put the interests of the country and ordinary people before the insatiable factionalism of the right wing of the Parliamentary Labour Party. That you will either undertake to lead on the basis of your ‘promises’ and Party policies, or make way for someone with the courage and principle to speak up for our Party and our people.

Until that happens, I will remain an ex-member of the once-great Party, a Party you have already shown you are entirely unfit to lead.

Yours,Cllr. Stephen Smith

(ex) Policy Officer and Executive Committee member, Wantage Constituency Labour Party

cc: Chair, Wantage CLP; Executive Committee, Wantage CLP; Faringdon Branch Labour Party, members and officers.

Please Support the Labour Left Alliance’s 6 Candidates for Labour’s National Executive Elections

Roger Silverman is the only Jewish Anti-Zionist Candidate Standing because Jewish Voice for Labour Cowardly Accepted Momentum’s Veto and Withdrew Jo Bird

The Left has its back to the wall in the Labour Party.  The worst thing it can do is engage in wishful thinking.

As I predicted before the leadership elections, Keir Starmer is the candidate that the Deep State & the British Establishment want you to vote for. Despite Sturmer’s claim that he was the ‘Unity candidate’ ‘he is Establishment down to his manicured fingers’ and notwithstanding his youthful days of radicalism ‘Today he is the darling of the Right.’

I quoted from two Jewish members of his Holborn & St. Pancras constituency, Ruth Appleton and Amanda Sebestyen, that

Time and time again, as left-leaning members we have been subjected to hostility and abuse... Those that are close to Keir Starmer, rather than welcome involvement from the left, have actively prevented it....

Their advice was that

‘any socialist thinking about supporting Keir Starmer should think again and instead support a candidate that welcomes and supports socialist policies and encourages the active involvement of socialist members!’

Momentum was split. Half of them, including Laura Parker Lansman's right hand woman, supported Sturmer. They also supported Angela Rayner, a right-wing nonentity against Richard Burgon and on the day Sturmer’s election was announced they issued a ludicrous statement that claimed victory!

We are proud too that, in four and a half years, Jeremy Corbyn and the movement that supported him has changed our party for the better and given voice to the hopes of millions who felt unrepresented in politics.... ... This is our victory. And we should be proud.

Coming from the organisation that did more to secure Corbyn’s defeat than anyone, it is no surprise that they claimed Sturmer’s election as a victory.

My own reaction was slightly different: Mogadon Man Assumes the Leadership of the Labour Party as Lansman’s candidate is crushed ‘Starmer represents a return of the Blairite Right’ was my comment.

The Centre Left Grassroots Alliance Should Be Put Out To Grass

The Centre Left Grassroots Alliance was reconvened in order to stitch up a slate for the NEC.  The LLA was not invited. Meanwhile Momentum had held its own internal elections and Lansman’s Renewal slate was comprehensively defeatrf by the Momentum Forward group. Unfortunately there was no change of political perspective.

What Jo doesn't say is that she's standing for the Councillors' 2 seats because Lansman's successors and CLPD vetoed her candidature

Both Momentum Forward and the CLPD put a veto on Jo Bird, a Jewish anti-Zionist and member of JVL from being a candidate. Lansman had previously attacked JVL for not representing the ‘Jewish community’ which should be considered a good thing since the Jewish community is a reactionary and racist one that has voted Tory for the past half a century. Unfortunately, rather than refusing to back down and insist that Jewish anti-Zionists cannot be vetoed, JVL hauled up the white flag of surrender, suitably kosherised!

Jo Bird is now one of 2 candidates standing in the Councillors section which means she has no chance of being elected.

By way of contrast the lead candidate on the LLA slate is Roger Silverman, a Jewish anti-Zionist.  I have known Roger for over 20 years and he is a sound Marxist. For those who are interested in these things, Roger is the son of Sydney Silverman MP whose parliamentary life was devoted to the abolition of the death penalty.

I can therefore recommend, without a moment’s hesitation, that members, whoever else they vote for, put Roger at No. 1.  I would also recommend that the rest of the LLA slate be supported before you vote for any other candidates. The full slate is:

1.     Roger Silverman

2.     Chaudhry Qamer Iqbal

3.     Carol Taylor Spedding

4.     Ekua Bayunu

5.     Alec Price

6.     Steve Maggs

Even if the JVL doesn’t understand what is at stake, the Jewish Chronicle certainly does. ‘Liar’ Lee Harpin, its Political Correspondent, who was arrested in the hacking scandal, wrote a witchhunting article targeting shadow cabinet member Lyn Brown, the MP for West Ham, for supporting Roger and thus hinting to Sturmer that he should sack her for dangerous lefty tendencies.

The LLA has launched a petition which is an Open Letter to JVL calling on them to support Roger.  In view of the fake ‘anti-Semitism witchhunt continuing and even increasing there is a burning need for an anti-racist, anti-Zionist, socialist Jew on Labour’s National Executive to call out the racist stiff that goes by the name of Sturmer (for those who think I am misspelling his name Der Sturmer was the anti-Semitic paper of Nazi Julius Streicher, Gauleiter of Franconia who was hanged after the war).  Sturmer’s racist support for Israel should result in his suspension.

If Roger Silverman is the ‘wrong sort of Jew’ that is only because today most British Jews are, consciously or otherwise racists.  Anti-racists are a distinct minority in what is a very conservative community.  Ironically it was the Ultra Orthodox Union of Hebrew Congregations that dissociated themselves from the Board of Deputies attacks on Corbyn.

I recommend supporting 4 of the CLGA 6, Mish Rahman (who is a signatory of the LLA), Ann Henderson, Yasmin Dar, Gemma Bolton. Ann and Yasmin are already on the NEC and they have been good on the witchhunt.  Nadia Jama from Sheffied is a supporter of Lansman’s Renewal Momentum.  In Sheffield she supported Lansman’s coup and constitution, aimed at removing expelled members from Momentum.  She deserves absolutely no support.  I would rather see Luke Akehurst on the NEC than this treacherous Lansmanite.. 

Exactly the same goes for Laura Pidcock.  She made a name for herself early on as an MP for a number of ‘left wing’ anti-Tory soundbites but when it came to it she was as insubstantial as the rest of the Campaign Group.  Pidcock not only refused to speak out against Corbyn and Formby’s witchhunt but she personally told Chris Williamson, as co-Chair of the Campaign Group, that he should no longer attend group meetings. Chris was the only Labour MP with any guts and Pidcock not only scabbed on him but on Corbyn too, because the anti-Semitism allegations weren’t about me or Chris or Jackie but designed to remove Corbyn.

I would also recommend a vote for Cameron Mitchell and Mark MacDonald QC who, very kindly, gave me invaluable support legally in 2017 when, against the advice of all the other lawyers I consulted, he encouraged me to bring an action for an injumction against the Labour Party. The injunction succeeded  in December 2017 in delaying proceedings but not preventing them.

It really is shameful and an act of political cowardice that JVL accepted a veto on Jo Bird's candidacy.

Re Nadia Jama

There must be no return to the CLGA of old which put right-wingers like Ann Black on the NEC.  Come 2016 it was Black, as Chair of the Disputes Committee, who signed off on the suspension of Brighton & Hove and Wallasey Labour Parties.  The Leaked Labour Party Report makes it clear that both parties were stitched up.  I have twice emailed Black to ask if she regrets the decision she took to act on the allegations of lying right-wingers like Brighton Council Leader Warren Morgan.  Black has not responded!

Nadia Jama was prominent in the attempt by the Lansmanites in Sheffield Momentum to impose Lansman’s undemocratic constitution after his coup in January 2018. The first few attempts were defeated. Then Jama and her clique brought everybody and their granny to a meeting where they then had a (small) majority in favour of the constitution. Nadia Jama was a very vocal supporter of the constitution and of imposing it (which meant that 3 members of the local Momentum Steering Committee, who had been expelled by Labour, were unable to be re-elected to the SC - which was the point of the whole exercise. Everybody knew it and members debated at length how this was a witch-hunting constitution, because it barred from Momentum membership all those who had been expelled by the Labour Party. Needless to say, Sheffield Momentum imploded after that and the anti-witchhunt left went on to form Sheffield Labour Left. Local Momentum is now well and truly dead.

Nadia was briefly one of the two candidates supported by Lansman for the NEC by-election in February 2020, but he dumped her for Lauren Townsend and Leigh Brennan. She continued to stand though, but only got 13 CLP nominations.

However, she clearly remained a supporter of his (and vice versa) and was a signatory of Lansman's 'Momentum Renewal': She then apparently joined the LRC between February 2020 and August 2020, because it was the LRC who proposed her to be on the CLGA slate for this election, despite being told of what had happened the LRC nominated her.

Tony Greenstein