Labour members won’t campaign for Akehurst so Israel Lobby ‘step in’.

Right, so Luke Akehurst’s campaign to get elected as a Labour MP once more, after parachuting himself seemingly into the safe seat of North Durham is not going well by any stretch. Beginning with a protest against him at his own campaign launch which saw him hurriedly driven away and his wife telling protesters that their pro Palestine comments ‘belonged in Iran’ he has presented a somewhat lonely figure since, with few local members prepared to be seen with him, and local councillors being forced out to campaign as is happening across the country, unless they choose to quit of course, weakening Labour’s ground game still further. But help has come to Akehurst from pro Israeli sources, the Israel Lobby is coming to Akehurst’s rescue making you wonder even more, who Labour will actually be serving should they form the next government.
Right, so Luke Akehurst’s campaign in North Durham has appeared to be a lonely one. Disgusted members refusing to vote for him and even a counter campaign distributing materials to educate voters about who exactly Luke Akehurst is, having been parachuted into this safe seat all the way from Oxford by a Labour National Executive he just happens to have a seat on, in what has been described as effectively you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours as no fewer than 6 members of the Labour national executive have effectively selected themselves for safe seats, having taken over candidate selections conveniently once Sunak announced the election. It wasn’t as if Labour were rushing the process.
But the trouble with being imposed on people, on local Labour members, blocking them from having chosen one of their own, which is what Starmer promised his membership, another lie of course, I do hope more of them are catching onto his lying by now, it has become a bit of a theme to his politics now, is that you cannot make them campaign. Starmer thinks he can, he’s apparently demanding what campaigners he has left campaign in other constituencies they are twinned with, forcing volunteers to volunteer even more, or lose access to their constituency data in order to campaign how they would like, but this would only affect active campaigning members, many will be staying at home and short of threatening their memberships – frankly who’d put it past him – there’s nothing Starmer can do about them.
Fortunately for Akehurst though, it seems he’s been able to secure more help from another source as it seems representatives of the Israel Lobby, of which Akehurst is a paid lobbyist himself, but that does beg the question if he’s relying on the Israel lobby to get him elected as a Labour MP more than actual Labour members, who exactly does he represent more?
Let’s have a look at some of the people who have apparently been seen campaigning with Akehurst and for Akehurst up in North Durham, needless to say none of them are local either.
Arguably the most prominent of this bunch is a guy called Michael Rubin, who has been a director for Labour Friends of Israel since 2020 and has been working for them since 2016 as a parliamentary affairs and research manager. This is him circled in blue stood prominently next to Akehurst, I’ll come back to the chap circled in yellow in a bit.
Now if Rubin’s name isn’t familiar, if you’ve watched the Al Jazeera documentary The Lobby from early 2017, you might recall Rubin featuring in that program, as well as a then Israeli embassy diplomat who became infamous off the back of the program called Shai Masot who was later removed from his post following this documentary having been filmed plotting to take down MPs regarded to be hostile towards Israel and boasting about setting up various groups at least one of which was designed to influence Labour Party policy, whilst obscuring any obvious links to Israel in doing so.
As part of their The Lobby documentary, Masot recommended to Al Jazeera’s undercover reporter that they should speak to Michael Rubin about Masot’s plans to reach out to young people in the Labour Party via the Israeli embassy and Labour Friends of Israel, who Rubin at that point working for, having recently started with them at that point, but already somebody Masot would recommend and when Rubin was approached said to Al Jazeera:
‘I recently started at LFI, I worked for the Labour Party before that. I was chair of Labour Students. I knew Shai in my role at Labour Students, we did a couple of things together.
We’ve talked about having a launch event, like a drinks reception, hiring out the upstairs of a pub…putting a little bit of money behind the bar to get people there. You could get some of our parliamentary supporters, people like Joan Ryan, she could come along and speak and it gives people a chance to meet her.’
Joan Ryan was at that point the MP for Enfield North and chair of Labour Friends of Israel. She defected to Change UK along with several others ahead of the 2019 General Election and promptly lost her seat because of it, but don’t feel sorry for her too much, she’s still lobbying for Israel, now chief executive of ELNET-UK, still forging those ties between Israel and the UK.
Anyway, Rubin is up in North Durham campaigning for Akehurst, but whether it’s a campaign for Labour or a campaign for Israel, well that Al Jazeera documentary will absolutely make you wonder who they are most devoted to in my opinion.
I said I’d come back to the guy in that photo ringed in yellow. Now Akehurst, as well as having got himself back onto Labour’s National Executive Committee since Starmer took over, for years failing to get elected under Corbyn, he’s also a key figure in some of Labour’s right wing factions, such as Labour To Win, where he has ben the co-director since 2020 and also Labour First, where he has been the Secretary since 2006.
The chap in yellow is Ralph Ali, who has been working as an organiser in Labour To Win since last November and he just happens to be campaigning for his Labour To Win boss in North Durham, when he, like Rubin are both based in London. Is that an abuse of organisational assets though I wonder? I doubt anyone connected will be complaining somehow though. I’m minded to refer to Ali’s first 6 months of activity in the Labour Party, where he was the campaign manager for Organise 24, reaching out to Labour students and youth members and considering Akehurst’s ties and his pro Israel obsessions, plus the desire for pro Israel elements to reach out to young people in the Labour Party as documented by Al Jazeera, I can’t help but have my suspicions raised that maybe there is a connection here? Purely conjecture of course.
One other face that local people have said is constantly a fixture on Akehurst’s campaign, is that of a Councillor from Waltham Forest, called Kira Lewis, formerly an organiser for Akehurst’s other right wing faction Labour First, they then gained employment directly in the Labour Party as a regional digital officer before being elected to Waltham Forest Borough Council in May of 2022. By that August and still working there to date, Lewis began working as a communications associate at BICOM, the British Israel Communications and Research Centre and the parent group of Luke Akehurst’s own lobbying firm, We Believe in Israel. Working for them might be one thing, believing in what they stand for is perhaps another, however to put that postulation to bed, Lewis was forced to resign from a junior whip role on the council after putting out a tweet, now deleted, saying:
‘Hamas is no good for Palestinians and no good for Jews. It wants a fundamentalist Muslim dictatorship on the land from the river to the sea, devoid of all Jews. And Christians. And LGBTQ folk.
It is no good for anyone who believes in democracy. It is simply no good for humanity. What Israel faces now in Gaza is a moral dilemma. Hamas wanted the IDF to retaliate so it could make Israel look bad. It worked. What Israel is doing is bad – killing thousands of innocent people, including children. But not evil. Hamas is evil.
And while so many across the globe who promote Palestinian rights don’t want to see the difference, I do.’
What Israel is doing is not evil eh? And not only does Akehurst welcome Lewis’ support, he seems to be getting an awful lot of it, with local sources that Skwawkbox have been made aware of claiming Lewis is working full time in North Durham to get Akehurst elected, in which case have they taken unpaid leave from their paid job at BICOM, or is BICOM still paying them to campaign for Akehurst? And what of their constituents in Waltham Forest? Will they be impressed that their councillor is putting Akehurst before them?
Akehurst’s campaign is so dire, these are the lengths he’s having to go to, to be able to campaign in any way at all. I do hope the people of North Durham take their votes elsewhere.
On top of that of course there is the conduct of Akehurst himself, the non Jew telling Jewish people that they’ve lost their way and that their Jewish identity goes only as far as gathering around a bowl of chicken soup! I’m not sure where this guy gets off measuring how Jewish a group of people are by how devoutly they follow their own religion, a religion he doesn’t even share with them! It’s appalling and certainly to my mind antisemitic conduct, but he’s still a Labour candidate. Get the details of that shocker on this video recommendation here and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.