‘I’ Report on Walkout by Left-Wing Labour NEC Members

Starmer’s attack on the Labour left and his drive to centralise authority around himself and the Blairites continues. On Tuesday the left-wing members of the party’s NEC staged a Virtual walkout at an online meeting in protest against Starmer’s imposition of Margaret Beckett as chair. Starmer’s action had breached party rules stating that the position was elected. The I published a piece about this, ‘Left-wingers ‘walk out’ after Beckett wins NEC chair’ by Harriet Line and Alan Jones in its edition for Wednesday 25th November 2020. This ran

Members on the left of Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee staged a digital walkout in protest at the election of veteran MP Dame Margaret Beckett as chairwoman.

In a letter to the party’s general secretary, David Evans, a dozen NEC members said the “longstanding protocol” of the vice-chair being elected as chair was not being followed.

They said Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer had lobbied for Dame Margaret to be elected to the position, and accused him of “promoting factional division within Labour”.

The members staged a Virtual walkout from the NEC’s “away day”, which was being conducted via Zoom, yesterday morning.

In the letter, they said: “We believe the true reason for the leader lobbying for Dame Margaret, and indeed the reason that had been given by senior party MPs in private, is because the vice-chair, Ian Murray, was a signature to the previous correspondence sent to you seeking admonishment of the Leader.”

Signatories to the letter are believed to include the NEC’s outgoing chiar, Andi Fox, Mick Whelan, the Aslef general secretary, former MP Laura Pidcock and youth rep Lara McNeill, as well as Mr Murray. Ms Fox said the “disregard and disrespect for the left is something we could not allow.”

Some in the NEC had already expressed anger at Sir Keir’s decision to withhold the whip from Jeremy Corbyn, despite the body allowing him to return as a party member.

On Monday, Labour’s chief whip Nick Brown asked Mr Corbyn to apologise for claiming that the scale of anti-Semitism in the party was “dramatically overstated for political reasons.” In a letter seen by the PA news agency, Mr Brown said Mr Corbyn’s response to a damning Equality and Human Rights Commission report caused “distress and pain” to the Jewish community.

This looks to me like Starmer trying to keep control of the NEC after a large number of people from the party’s left were elected. As for Starmer’s imposition of Beckett as chair, of course it’s not democratic. Starmer’s a Blairite, and Blair hated grassroots democracy in the party along with anything that smacked of traditional Labour values and policies. He did everything he could to centralise power about himself and the New Labour faction.

Corbyn’s comments about the exaggeration of anti-Semitism in the party for political reasons was absolutely correct, and he has nothing to apologise for. The actual incidence of real anti-Semitism in Labour was very, very low. In 2019 the party had the joint lowest level of anti-Semitism of all of them. And contrary to what we’re now being fed, anti-Semitism, like racism generally, comes overwhelmingly from the fascist and populist right. But the right-wing British political and media establishment exaggerated its incidence in Labour in order to smear Corbyn and his supporters. They took their cue from the self-proclaimed Jewish establishment – the Board, Chief Rabbinate and various other malign organisations – who don’t represent all of Britain’s diverse Jewish community by any means. These organisations just represent the United Synagogue and were not concerned with protecting Jews from real anti-Semitism as protecting Israel from criticism for its barbarous, inhuman treatment of the Palestinians.

The left-wingers on the NEC were entirely right to protest, especially as Starmer is continuing his abandonment of Corbyn’s genuinely popular policies. Policies that this country and its working people, Black, White, Asian, Muslim, Christian, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, atheist or pagan, desperately need.

But Starmer doesn’t want to represent them, only the interests of the elite and affluent, and the neoliberalism that enriches them.

Fib Dems Now Condemned by Editors’ Organisation for Disguising Campaign Literature as Newspapers

The Lib Dems’ capacity for lies, falsehood and deception truly seems to know no bounds. If they carry on at this rate, they’ll soon equal the Tories in the amount of deliberate misinformation they spread. I think this was dealt with by Mike over at Vox Political yesterday, but it’s now turned up in today’s I. According to an article written by Jane Clinton, ‘Party accused of disguising pamphlets as newspapers’, the trade organisation for newspaper editors has come out against the Lib Dems for trying to disguise their campaign literature as newspapers. The article reads

The Liberal Democrats have been condemned for allegedly disguising their election pamphlets as imitation newspapers.

The Society of Editors said it appeared to be “a concerted effort” to “mislead readers and voters.”

Ian Murray, executive director of the Society for Editors said, “it is ironic how it is often politicians who complain about fake news but then set out to at least blur the lines for readers – and in this case voters – by packaging their partial messages to ape independent newspapers.”

His comments come after it was revealed that the Liberal Democrats produced election newsletters for their candidates in Basingstoke and Leeds, which used titles mimicking local newspapers.

However, Liberal Democrat leader, Jo Swinson, defended the party’s tactics saying the use of such campaign newspapers was “as old as the hills.”

“Doing campaign newspapers is not exactly a new tactic, nor one that is only done by the Liberal Democrats,” she said.

Meanwhile, Ms Swinson has succeeded in stopping the distribution of an SNP leaflet accusing her of accepting a £14,0000 donation from “a fracking company”.

Okay, I think Swinson’s right about parties publishing their own little newspapers during election campaigns. But her party appears to have gone further than that. They seem to have deliberately imitated the style of local newspapers in order to deceive people into believing that these papers endorse them.

Just as they were caught a week or so publishing misleading quotes from various papers that made it appear they praised the party and its leader. In fact, the quotes came from Swinson herself, who was quoted by the newspaper. They weren’t, as the Fib Dems’ literature seemed to be claiming, praise from the newspaper itself.

I know Tories, who hate the Lib Dems more than Labour because of their deceitful antics. Now it appears that under Jo Swinson their deceitfulness and mendacity is becoming notorious to the whole nation, not just Conservatives.

And if they’re prepared to manufacture fake news and fake newspapers, like the press organisations of totalitarian states like the former Soviet Union, then they are a danger to democracy and responsible government.

There was an old joke in the Soviet Union about the two leading newspapers. It was a pun on their names. The Communist party newspaper was Pravda, which means ‘Truth’. The leading non-party newspaper, which still obviously had to follow the Communist line, was Izvestia, which means ‘News’. The joke was that there was no news in the Truth, and no truth in the ‘News’.

Which now describes all Jo Swinson and her party’s election promises and literature.