Starmer to ban independent MP’s as a favour to the Israel Lobby?

Right, so we’ve seen a lot of disgruntled, frankly overly entitled former Labour MPs complaining that voters dared to vote them out and the one thing all of them appear to have latched onto, is that their opponents were liars, abusers, their supporters were bullies and behaved in an intimidating manner, when the truth of the matter was their party won a landslide in the General Election, so them losing their seats ought to tell them that a period of self reflection is in order.
Well things are taking a darker turn now, as those candidates who were successful, those independents who, against all the odds under a First Past The Post voting system, who won their seats may in fact be blocked from running again, as well as any other independents, due to said accusations and also, due to the nature of these Independents having won in no small part having stood on a pro Palestine, pro Gaza platform, now have the Israel Lobby demanding the current set of independent MPs and their supporters designated as extremists. Is the country about to see the level of authoritarianism they were warned would come under a Starmer government and with that same governing party so reliant on Israel Lobby donations, can they afford to not do as instructed, to what ends for us?
Right, so for all the bellyaching we’ve seen from the likes of Jonathan Ashworth and Thangham Debonnaire and Khalid Mahmood for example, who lost their seats in the General Election, blaming their opponents and generally acting like a bunch of sore losers, which they are, failing to stand up for their constituents, for which they have been punished. You lost, it’s a contest, it’s an election, the job isn’t yours by default, you have to actually do all the work, not get away with slavish ambition for your own ends and expect people to back you just because you wear a red rosette. It might have worked for others, but it didn’t for you and it shouldn’t work that way for anyone, but then this is why they won’t change the electoral system any more than the Tories will.
But all that moaning and groaning has been amplified of course by the media and is still going even today, with Angela Rayner having been wheeled out to make claims of abuse, when she’s hardly one to talk given her own scum comment once upon a time, no matter if we agree with her assessment of the Tories or not, which I do, but then as a politician you’ve boxed yourself in to point to other politicians being abused when you’ve done it yourself, except this time continuing to peddle the line of abuse, violence and intimidation because Labour MPs, your side, lost their seats.
To Labour, this is the only explanation that these people lost their seats and all of a sudden it’s not about he fact several of these MPs had large numbers of Muslim constituents, disgusted at Labour’s abject positioning in favour of Israel over Gaza that is the issue, but instead a viewpoint is being woven that will again reflect disproportionately on Muslim communities, when they are not alone in being disgusted at the situation in Gaza and the new government’s clear loyalties to Israel remain just as firm if not firmer than under the Tories, but they will now be scapegoated as the abusers and the intimidators, completely unfairly, because they chose to take their votes elsewhere and this is Labour’s hierarchy of racism now polluting governance of the UK. Islamophobia it clearly would be and that, even worse, could end up written into law yet, because I haven’t even got onto the Israel Lobby’s role in all of this yet.
For this, we have to turn now to the government’s adviser on political violence. We’ve heard this phrase political violence doing the rounds a bit, the condemnation of political violence over the shooting of Donald Trump for example, by numerous government Ministers, but equally it gets a free pass where Israel and Gaza are concerned, because where Benjamin Netanyahu faces an arrest warrant for war crimes, not only has our foreign secretary David Lammy already gone to Israel to press the flesh with him, but after going into the General Election saying they would withdraw the Tories legal attempt to block that arrest warrant, Labour have now U-turned, following David Lammy giving Israel assurances over it, and are going to see it through.
Well the independent adviser to the government on political violence and disruption, is a guy called Lord Walney and he held the same role under the Tories, Labour are more than happy to keep using him, he was after all, formerly the Labour MP for Barrow and Furness, John Woodcock once upon a time, so independent is a bit of a stretch.
He is very much Starmer’s faction though, though given what he’s coming out with here, he might see Starmer’s authoritarianism as being too much of a soft touch and actually it says it all that a former Labour MP took an advisory position and a peerage in the Boris Johnson’s 2019 Dissolution Honours List, as a non affiliated life peer, which read as a who’s who of right wing former Labour MPs. The reason for him being a former Labour MP though, ought to have been a point of consideration for Starmer before reappointing Woodcock to the same advisory position on political violence, because if we’re going to talk about violence and abuse then Woodcock ought to have had the investigation against him, the allegations of sexual harassment made against him in 2018, which led to his suspension, completed. Since this was an internal Labour Party investigation, Woodcock chose to quit the party preventing the investigation ever being seen through. Read into that what you will, but the fact the Tories appointed him to be an independent adviser on political violence and disruption was seen by many to be a sick joke, that Starmer has kept him on, doesn’t exactly scream the change he stood on an election platform of.
But Woodcock or Walney however you want to refer to him as, is also an ardent supporter of Israel, was as a Labour MP, a former chair of Labour Friends of Israel, and also the chair of Progress, the Blairite faction within Labour. He has absolutely benefitted from going on paid junkets on several occasions to the apartheid state, most recently in January of this year whilst they were in the midst of their assault on Gaza and while South Africa was taking them to court at the ICJ. He also has ties to the arms lobby too, again making you question his suitability to adjudicate to matters relating to violence.
He was the paid chair of the Purpose Defence Coalition, who’s website is now down, so not sure whether it’s now defunct, but members of which included Leonardo, who are one of the world’s largest arms manufacturer, with ties of it’s own to Israel.
He also campaigned as a Labour MP against Jeremy Corbyn becoming MP in the 2017 General Election, alongside his fellow former Labour MP in name only, turned peer under the Tories Ian Austin on the basis that Corbyn was a threat to the renewal of the Trident nuclear arms deterrent, despite the fact Labour Conference backed renewal, and Corbyn, unlike Starmer, actually respected Conference’s sovereignty.
So could there possibly be a guy less suitable to the role he currently has? Well you decide. At any rate, he’s now coming for our newly elected independent MPs, which, of course now includes Jeremy Corbyn again. Five independent MPs who defeated Labour candidates, including a number of incumbent MPs could now end up being labelled as extremists off the back of the allegations of abuse being bandied around by sore losers who ignored their constituents and got given their marching orders as a result. In the case of Jon Ashworth, who lost his Leicester South seat, a piece of video footage that went viral on social media of him being asked questions by constituents who he was running away from, not wishing to engage and excuse his words and his deeds, was subsequently arrested on terror offences and this has disturbing connotations as the director of CAGE, the anti-repression organisation in relation to counter-terrorism measures, which calls out the abuse of such measures as often proves to be the case, said on this:
‘The first few days of a Starmer-led government has seen the arrest of an anti genocide activist in Leicester, the arrests of 7 students protesting Israeli genocide at the SOAS encampment, and continuing silence in the wake of increasing Israeli slaughter of Palestinians with the full political and military support of Britain. Despite the change of party, it’s business as usual.
Like Julian Assange, the only crime Majid Freeman is guilty of is exposing Western complicity in genocide. The establishment’s Al Capone tactics of intimidation will not work. The people will continue to stand with the Palestinian resistance against Western-sponsored Israeli genocide.’
All the guy did was expose Ashworth for all to see, after horrendous comments and an unforgivable voting record on Gaza, it was Ashworth who blew his 23,000 vote majority, nobody else.
Sadly, we’ve not seen the last of this and in fact we could be about to see Independent candidates who showed themselves to be so successful, potentially recalled and removed and Independent candidates banned from standing for parliament, concreting in party politics, disenfranchising even more voters, an abuse of Starmer’s majority, earned off the back of the lowest turnout at a General Election, since the end of universal suffrage, nearly 100 years ago,as Walney has asked Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and Security Minister Dan Jarvis, to conduct an inquiry.
Skwawkbox have picked up on this too, here’s an excerpt from their piece:
‘Campaigners told Skwawkbox that they believe that, rather than address the concerns of anti-genocide campaigners – which would require a change of course over the support of successive UK governments for Israel’s war crimes – the Establishment plans to criminalise independents and use this as an excuse for exploiting Starmer’s huge unearned parliamentary majority to force ‘recall petitions’ to remove the independents as MPs and to proscribe campaigns that attempt to hold right-wing MPs to account.
The Labour right already has form for this, targeting Muslim woman MP Apsana Begum for prosecution over fictitious housing fraud – happily the attempt was thrown out by a court. Liverpool’s then-mayor Joe Anderson was also removed as mayor after being arrested over alleged fraud and bribery – then quietly de-arrested and the investigation dropped once the coup had been completed.
The right may also be planning to make allegations to an Election Court in the hope of disqualifying the independent MPs and rerun the elections.
Yvette Cooper and Dan Jarvis, like half of Keir Starmer’s Cabinet including Starmer himself, have accepted donations from pro-Israel lobbyists. Starmer, a ‘long-time servant of the British security state, has reportedly told the Israeli regime, via Foreign Secretary David Lammy, that the UK will try to prevent the International Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants for Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes.’
If you wondered how powerful and how in hock to the arms and Israel Lobby Starmer’s government are, well, it’s all here to see and if they push ahead with this utterly undemocratic idiocy, there needs to be a concerted pushback. It’s bad enough when our votes don’t count in our stupid electoral system, but ignoring them after they do count? That isn’t democracy anymore, that’s a dictatorship.
Meanwhile here’s more on the story of Starmer and David Lammy seeking to get Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant off the hook for war crimes at the International Criminal Court to what should be national shame and outrage and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.