I got this reminder the other day from the Arise Festival of left Labour ideas that there’s a demonstration organised in London demanding a general election. I can’t go, but I’m putting it up for those who may be able to.
The People’s Assembly is asking for your continued support to help us take our simple message onto the streets – General Election Now! Let’s say No to another unelected Tory PM.
Full details & spread the word here – Labour bloc details here.‘
This, and other demonstrations and campaigns like it, contradict the theme of a recent Lotus Eaters’ video. This announced that democracy had had its day as people were giving up on it. No! People across the UK are demanding more democracy, because the Tories are withholding it!
Just found a video by mad arch-Brexiteer Mahyar Tousi claiming that this is the case. I haven’t watched it, so it might not be true. But if it is, it’s quick. Truss at least had nearly two months before the Tories went into meltdown and threw her out. Sunak’s only been in the job for about a week. There really can be no argument – we must have a general election. Now!
Here’s another piece I got yesterday from the pro-democracy group Open Britain, giving their damning opinion on our new, unelected Prime Minister and his wretched cabinet.
‘Dear David,
Here we go again. Rishi Sunak claims that he is a unifier, that his administration will be a fresh start, and that he will bring “integrity, professionalism, and accountability” to office. Unfortunately, his words are already conflicting with his actions.
Sunak may have seen off Jacob Rees-Mogg today but he went on to reinstate some of the most dangerous ideologues from the Johnson and Truss administrations. It doesn’t look like the fresh start we’ve been promised.
Dominic Raab, a man dead-set on dismantling our human rights framework with a bill that the Law Society says would “damage the rule of law” and “prevent access to justice”, is back in post. Even Truss saw the danger of this bill and it’s astonishing that it now looks to be back on the agenda.
Suella Braverman, anti-woke culture warrior and architect of the reprehensible Rwanda-deportation scheme, is back as Home Secretary. Just six days ago she resigned from office after breaking ministerial rules and jeopardising national security. Don’t forget, Braverman is a former chair of the European Research Group and her reappointment shows that the group’s stranglehold on government priorities did not depart with Liz Truss.
Michael Gove, Therese Coffey, Kemi Badenoch, Steve Barclay and others have also returned. It looks like this cabinet will be more or less a hybrid of Johnson and Truss’ senior teams…the very people who got us into this mess.
But what about Sunak’s programme for government? Well, we still haven’t heard much at all about what his plans are. Perhaps we will get some early clues at PMQs tomorrow, but it is astonishing that he has been installed in Number 10 on the say-so of about about 160 MPs with almost zero discussion of the plans he has to fix the economy and restore political stability. Surely a sign that our democracy is not exactly in tip-top shape.
And while all this was going on in Downing Street, in Parliament the Second Reading of the Retained EU Law Bill was taking place. If passed, that bill will automatically scrap regulations and protections associated with the EU, and give ministers massive powers to replace them with whatever they want. It will put all kinds of regulations in danger, including environmental rules, food safety standards, worker protection laws, and more. It will be a disaster for businesses and will undermine our democracy (Ministers should not have that much unchecked power).
We can be grateful that Boris Johnson isn’t back in office, but this cabinet and these bills remind us that not much has really changed. We’ll be watching what the new PM does over the coming days and weeks, but the early signs are that the chaos will continue and that our campaigning will be as important as ever.
Nothing that has happened in the last 48 hours or so has persuaded us that this is what the country needs. We are still firmly of the opinion that the only credible route to sustainable political stability is to let the people decide how we should move forward. We won’t stop pushing for a general election.
BREAKING: We’re about to have a new Prime Minister
Rishi Sunakwill become our third Prime Minister this year. [1] We didn’t vote for Liz Truss or the chaos she caused, and now she’s been replaced with ANOTHER unelected PM.
You’re one of the 108,000 of us who have signed The Mirror’s petition demanding a General Election so we, the British people, can choose who leads us out of this mess, and deliver the rescue plan to this cost of living crisis that we’ve needed all along. [2]
Together, we could make this our biggest petition this year, overwhelm the debate about what happens next and send a powerful message from the British public: we won’t be shut out and ignored, again.
Will you use the buttons below to share the petition RIGHT NOW on WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook today?If each of us get just three people to sign, we could make this 38 Degrees biggest petition of the year by the end of the day.
I got the email because I signed their petition. I’m not on these social media, but if any of the readers here are and wish to spread the message, please do so.
This is the petition I also received yesterday from 38 Degrees calling for a general election to stop the installation of yet another unelected Tory prime minister. I also signed it, because I think the more petitions calling for an election the more chance there just may be of one or all of them may be noticed by the political elite. Crazy notion, eh? Anyway, please sign it if you, like me, want an election instead of yet another Tory getting into power over the heads of the general public.
‘BREAKING: Liz Truss has resigned as Prime Minister after only 45 days of crashing the economy, the pound, and her own poll ratings. [1]
The next Prime Minister – our third since June – could be chosen by as few as 300 Conservative MPs. [2] This would mean ANOTHER unelected PM in the middle of a crushing cost of living catastrophe. We don’t need this: we need a Government that gives us confidence and can deliver a rescue plan for families, public services, and the economy.
It’s time to end the Westminster games and backroom bargaining. So, David, do you agree that we – the public – need to have our say in a general election?If you think we the British public need to have our say, sign the Daily Mirror’s petition below: [4]
Liz Truss’ resignation and the prospect of the installation of another Tory prime minister without a general election has prompted the internet democracy groups Avaaz and 38 Degrees to launch petitions calling for one. Here’s Avaaz’s, which I received yesterday.
‘Liz Truss is gone but Tory plans to replace her with another unelected Prime Minister makea mockery of democracy. The British people must have a say! Join the voters across the UK uniting to demandan immediate general election.
But under Tory plans, we’re not getting a vote on who replaces her. In just 7 days, they want to crown a new Prime Minister – the second unelected PM in two months.
It makes a mockery of democracy. They’ve already crashed the economy, making life worse for millions. Now they want to choose our next PM!
The British people must have a say. And they must have it now.
MPs care what their constituents think. Let’s build a massive urgent call for an immediate general election, and let’s ensure the British people, not a few Tory MPs, decide who leads the country through the economic crisis that Downing Street helped to create.
The Conservative Party has gone into complete meltdown. Political insanity has become the new normal. There is now no legitimate reason to deny the British people a say – every major political party except the Tories is calling for a general election.
Despite what Tory bigwigs would like to believe, Britain is still a democracy. Our people have the right to choose who leads them. Any leader imposed upon us would have no mandate and no legitimacy, as they make some of the most consequential decisions of a generation.
A massive call from the public right now could win us the election we need. Add your name and share with everyone you know – let’s take back our democracy, before more damage is done.
The Avaaz community has a long record of defending democracy. We’ve faced down the far right in EU elections, opposed Marine Le Pen in France, called for accountability for Trump and countered the spread of election disinformation. We won’t rest until everyone everywhere can vote.
Well, our farcical Prime Minister, Liz Truss, has finally done the right thing and resigned. She and Khazi Kwarteng together had trashed the economy, and she had succeeded in achieving a poll rating of -70+, making her one of the most unpopular British Prime Ministers. Before then, I thought the least popular PM was Gordon Brown, but I think his poll rating was only -44 or so. She has been in office for only 44 days, so she must also be one of the shortest serving prime ministers.
But there’s no democracy there. She was forced out by her MPs acting on the polls, not by the democratic will of the British people. She wasn’t put in No. 10 democratically either. This was done through Johnson resigning, also because of disastrous polling, and then the Tory party, MPs and ordinary members, choosing who they wanted to succeed him. The British electorate were excluded. And now her successor will be elected by an even smaller group, just the Tory MPs.
Britain isn’t a democracy, it’s a barely functioning oligarchy.
Labour has called for an immediate general election. However much I despise Starmer for his own hatred of party democracy and purging of the Corbynite left, Starmer’s absolutely right. We need a general election. Until then, there is no democracy and we do not have a properly elected prime minister.
I just got this email from the pro-democracy organisation, Open Britain, calling for Cheeselab to face a general election now to decide whether she should be Prime Minister.
‘Dear David,
Our petition says, “No new PM without a general election.” It draws a BIG RED LINE and promises REAL WORLD ACTION if the Conservative Party crosses it (and there’s a very real chance they will).
Some opponents on social media have pointed out that a number of past Prime Ministers have resigned from office and been replaced without a general election being called. That, of course, is true.
But the point now is that the Conservative Party has already played that card. An unprecedented accumulation of lies, incompetence and corruption eventually forced Conservative MPs to remove Boris Johnson from office and – after an inexplicably long leadership contest – they replaced him with Liz Truss.
They have had their chance to clear up the mess.
If any Prime Minister loses the confidence of Parliament and is forced to stand down, surely the very least their party must do is find a replacement that can command the support of a majority of MPs until the next election?
If that confidence evaporates in a matter of weeks then we are entitled to ask serious questions about the ability of those same people to form a competent government.
Allowing the Conservative Party to foist another Prime Minister on this country without a general election would be an affront to democracy, one that none of us should allow.
I hope – if you have not already done so – that you will sign the petition to make clear that you will not allow this democratic red line to be crossed.
You may have missed this, especially if you watch the Beeb, which didn’t cover it all. A day or so ago the SNP’s Ian Blackford called a vote to censure Boris Johnson for undermining the recommendations of the committee on standards in public life, ignoring independent advice on the breaches of international treaties and parliamentary standards by his ministers, proposing to limit the powers of the electoral commission, the granting of peerages to Tory donors and their opponent to government bodies like Ofgem, and ignoring calls for his salary to be reduced to just over £41,000. Well, Johnson definitely wouldn’t like that, as he was moaning only a few weeks ago that he couldn’t live on his salary of £81,000. He’s got six kids to send to public schools, don’t you know? The short answer is that he should make do with his salary like everyone else has to, and send his sprogs to the local comprehensive or academy where they’ll almost definitely get a broader and better education.
A few people from the Labour party, but not many, made it into the chamber to vote, but Starmer was conspicuous by his absence. Mike says that it’s possible he had paired off with a Tory colleague to do important parliamentary work elsewhere. Well, he could have done it. But nothing Starmer does gives me confidence that this was not an attempt by the purported leader of the Labour party to support Johnson. Starmer, the party bureaucracy and much of the parliamentary Labour party are Labour in name only. They’re Tory infiltrators, clinging desperately to failed and failing Tory zombie economics and far more interested in fighting and purging the traditional Labour party members and supporters than bringing down Johnson. Remember the way the bureaucracy actively campaigned to stop Corbyn winning the election in 2017? The way party apparatchiks were members of Tory social media groups, including one particular individual who was so venomously against his party’s left that the real Tories wondered why he wasn’t one of them? How the nominally Labour leaders of various constituency parties appealed to Conservatives and Lib Dems to join them in order to prevent them from being taken over by horrible Commie/ Stalinist/ Trotskyite/ any other smear we can think of/ members of Momentum?
In fact, some of the charges raised by Blackford read very much like what was done by Starmer’s precious Tony Blair. New Labour was thoroughly corporatist and massively corrupt, getting donations from big business, especially the big supermarkets, and then putting their leading executives and officers in charge of public departments and regulatory bodies. Representatives of private healthcare companies lobbying for the further privatisation of the NHS were given important posts in the Department of Health. Blair chummed up with big businessmen like Beardie Branson, who also wanted to get his Virgin Healthcare into the NHS.
And his disappearance from view also reminds me of the way Ed Miliband, when faced with votes that could cost Labour all those precious Tory voters he wanted his party to appeal to, would tell his MPs to abstain instead of voting against. As when the Tories were making further cuts to welfare benefits. It looks to me that Starmer didn’t want to bring down Bozo, but didn’t want to appear to be supporting him either. So he made a classic New Labour fudge and ran away.
Starmer’s record on tackling Johnson has been absolutely abysmal, especially compared to the sheer fanaticism in which he has set about bolstering the Blairite grip on the party and smearing and purging decent people on the left, especially Jewish critics of Israel. I don’t think Starmer really has any policies that are really different from those of the Tories. New Labour didn’t. Blair’s stance simply seemed to be ‘vote for me, because I’m not the Tories. But I’ll pick up their old, discarded policies and do them better’. In many ways Blair was more extreme than the Tories, especially in the privatisation of the NHS and the transformation of the schools into academies. Thatcher had tried it, seen it fail, and abandoned it. Blair picked it up out of the dustbin and made it official Labour policy. With catastrophic results. And this is, I’m afraid, what we can expect if Starmer gets into power.
Starmer’s a Tory who supports Tories and clearly wants to keep Johnson in as long as possible. He should in no way be leader of the Labour party, just as Johnson should be running the country. Get them both out!
Mike’s put up a number of pieces discussing and criticising Starmer’s demand that Labour MPs abstain on the wretched ‘Spycops’ bill. If passed, this would allow members of the police and security services to commit serious offences while undercover. Twenty Labour MPs initially defied him and voted against it, with several resigning in protest from the shadow cabinet. The Labour whips’ office has also broken party protocol to issue written reprimands to the rebels. If they defy party discipline, they will face a reprimand period of six months, which will be extended to twelve if they continue to break the whip. These letters have also been shared with the parliamentary committee, a group of backbench MPs elected by the parliamentary Labour party and currently dominated by the right. This committee will decide whether or not to inform the rebel MPs’ constituency parties and the NEC. The information could then be considered if an MP seeks reselection in preparation for a general election. As one MP has said, it’s intimidation, pure and simple. And a number of those MPs, who received the letters, are talking to union officials.
Starmer’s conduct shouldn’t really be a surprise. He’s a Blairite, and Blair’s tenure of the Labour leadership was marked by control freakery as he centralised power around himself and his faction away from the party’s ordinary members and grassroots. But Starmer is also very much an establishment figure. He was, after all, the director of public prosecutions. In this video below, comedian and presenter Lee Camp raises important and very provocative questions about Starmer’s connections to the British establishment and the deep state. Camp’s the presenter of a number of shows on RT America, which are deeply critical of the corporate establishment, and American militarism and imperialism. The video’s from their programme, Moment of Clarity. The questions asked about Starmer are those posed by Mac Kennard in an article in The Gray Zone. RT is owned by the Russian state, as it points out on the blurbs for its videos on YouTube. Putin is an authoritarian thug and kleptocrat, who has opposition journalists, politicos, activists and businessmen beaten and killed. But that doesn’t mean that RT’s programmes exposing and criticising western capitalism and imperialism and the corrupt activities and policies of our governments aren’t accurate and justified.
Camp begins the video by explaining how there was a comparable battle in the Labour party over Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership as there was in the American Democrat party over Bernie Sanders’ candidacy for the presidency. Just as Sanders was opposed by the Democrats’ corporate leadership and smeared as a Communist in a neo-McCarthyite witch hunt, so Jeremy Corbyn – a real progressive – was opposed by the corporatists in the Labour party. He was subjected to the same smears, as well as accusations of anti-Semitism because he supported Palestine. Camp states that there are leaked texts showing that leading figures in the Labour party were actively working to undermine him. Jeremy Corbyn has now gone and been replaced by Keir Starmer, about whom Kennard asks the following questions:
1. why did he meet the head of MI5 for drinks a year after his decision not to prosecute the intelligence agency for its role in torture?
Camp uses the term ‘deep state’ for the secret services, and realises that some of his viewers may be uncomfortable with the term because of its use by Trump. He tries to reassure them that the deep state, and the term itself, existed long before Trump. It’s just something the Orange Generalissimo has latched onto. Camp’s not wrong – the term was used for the network of covert intelligence and state law enforcement and security services long before Trump was elected. Lobster has been using the term for years in its articles exposing their grubby activities. More controversially, Camp believes that the deep state was responsible for the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK. JFK was supposedly assassinated because he was about to divulge publicly the deep state’s nefarious activities. This is obviously controversial because the JFK assassination is one of the classic conspiracy theories, and one that many critics of the British and American secret states don’t believe in. It may actually be that JFK really was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, a lone gunman. But Camp’s belief in this conspiracy theory doesn’t on its own disqualify his other allegations and criticisms about the secret state.
2. When and why did Starmer join the Trilateral Commission?
The Trilateral Commission was set up in 1973 by elite banker David Rockefeller as a discussion group to foster greater cooperation between Japan, the US and western Europe. According to Camp, it was really founded to roll back the advances of the hippy era as the corporate elite were horrified that ordinary people were being heard by governments instead of big businessmen. They looked back to the days when President Truman could listen to a couple of businessmen and no-one else. The Commission published a paper, ‘The Crisis of Democracy’, which claimed that democracy was in crisis because too many people were being heard. Ordinary people were making demands and getting them acted upon. This, the Commission decided, was anti-business. They made a series of recommendations themselves, which have since been implemented. These included the demand that the media should be aligned with business interests. Camp states that this doesn’t mean that there is uniformity of opinion amongst the mainstream media. The various media outlets do disagree with each other over policies and politicians. But it does mean that if the media decides that a story doesn’t fit with business interests, it doesn’t get published. The Commission also wanted the universities purged of left-wing progressives. The Commission’s members including such shining examples of humanity and decency as Henry Kissinger and the former director general of US National Intelligence, John Negroponte.
3. What did Starmer discuss with US attorney general Eric Holder when he met him on November 9th, 2011 in Washington D.C.?
Starmer was the director of public prosecutions at the time, and met not just Holder, but also five others from the Department of Justice. This was at the same time the Swedes were trying to extradite Julian Assange of Wikileaks infamy. Except that further leaked documents have shown that the Swedes were prepared to drop the case. But Britain wanted him extradited and tried, and successfully put pressure on the Swedes to do just that.
4. Why did Starmer develop such a close relationship with the Times newspaper?
Starmer held social gatherings with the Times’ staff, which is remarkable, as Camp points out, because it’s owned by Rupert Murdoch like Fox News in America.
Camp goes on to conclude that, at the very least, this all shows that Starmer is very much a member of the corporate establishment, and that the deep state has been working to assure that same corporate elite that he’s safe, just as they worked to reassure Wall Street about Obama. At the time Obama had only been senator for a couple of years, but nevertheless he succeeded in getting a meeting with a former treasury secretary. But now the corporate establishment in the Democrats and the Labour party has won. Jeremy Corbyn has been ousted and replaced with Starmer, while Sanders can’t even get a platform with the Democrats. This is because the Democrats have surrendered the platform to the Republicans because Trump contradicts himself so much they just can’t follow him.
While these are just questions and speculation, they do strongly indicate that Starmer is very much part of the establishment and has their interests at heart, not those of the traditional Labour party. His closeness to the Times shows just why he was willing to write articles for the Tory press behind paywalls. His role in the British state’s attempt to extradite Julian Assange and meetings with Holder also show why Starmer’s so determined not to oppose the ‘spycops’ bill. He is very much part of the British state establishment, and sees it has his role and duty to protect it and its secrets, and not the British public from the secret state.
As for the Trilateral Commission, they’re at the heart of any number of dodgy conspiracy theories, including those claiming that the American government has made covert pacts with evil aliens from Zeta Reticuli. However, as Camp says, his membership of the Commission does indeed show that he is very much a member of the global corporate elite. An elite that wanted to reduce democracy in order to promote the interests of big business.
As a corporate, establishment figure, Starmer very definitely should not be the head of a party founded to represent and defend ordinary people against exploitation and deprivation by business and the state. Dissatisfaction with his leadership inside the Labour party is growing. Hopefully it won’t be too long before he’s ousted in his turn, and the leadership taken by someone who genuinely represents the party, its history and its real mission to work for Britain’s working people.
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