This fortnight’s Private Eye for 8th -21st March 2019 has an article on the connections between Chuka Umunna’s Independent Group, the Blairite think tank Progress Centre and Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson. It suggests that Paul Myners, who sits on the think tank’s advisory board, could be funding it. The article on page 7 runs
MYNERS STRIKE
AS WELL as launching “The Independent Group” (TIG) of MPs, Chuka Umunna also chairs a think-tank called Progressive Centre UK. Last August this “next generation ideas lab” gave him a £65,000-a-year (for 12 hours a month) chairing its advisory board.
As TIG launched, the Progressive Centre paid for polling that “shows real appetite for new party” – which was handy for TIG, as its PR people admitted it did not yet have the cash to fund its own polling. The Progressive Centre also published work by academic Steven Fielding arguing that “despite what many believe, the future of the Independent Group might be very bright indeed”.
The most heavyweight member of the Progressive Centre’s advisory board is Lord (Paul) Myners, Gordon Brown’s City minister from 2008 to 2010, and deeply involved in the bank bailouts during the financial crisis. Indeed, the Commons treasury committee criticised Myners over his “City background and naivety” for allowing the disgraced Fred Goodwin to escape from the bailed-out RBS with an £8m pension top-up.
Myners, who also chairs PR firm Edelman and is vice-chair of Peter Mandelson’s lobbying firm Global Counsel, gave Umunna £9,000 for office costs in 2016-17. This was when Umunna was believed to be raising funds for a leadership bid, which was called off when Jeremy Corbyn failed to crash adn burn in the 2017 election.
Could Myers be funding the Progressive Centre itself? The think-tank doesn’t say who funds it – but if he is backing it, it could at least get his name right. On its “People” page its website lists him as “Peter Myners”.
The Progress Centre sounds like a standard Blairite political faction. Myners is a banker and the head of a PR firm, and New Labour was notorious for its insistence on a light regulatory touch for the financial sector, as well as its connections to industry and banking. It was also notorious for PR and spin, instead of real policies. And like the Blairite faction in the Labour party, it’s trying to sound progressive and forward-thinking while in fact it’s just more of the same, shop-worn Thatcherism.
And the Progress Centre and the Independent Group also have another feature in common: they’re heading their financial backers.
As for the Independent Group’s prospects for the future, I think Fielding and his pollsters are being wildly optimistic. The mood of the public is moving left. Labour’s policies are massively popular with the public, unlike those of the Tories and Blairites, who aren’t offering anything except more privatisation and austerity.
As they are now, both the Progress Centre and the Independent Group are also a positive threat to democracy. They won’t reveal who their backers are, but following standard Blairite practice, it’s more than likely that they represent those backers’ interests, rather than that of the British public. They represent more Blairite and Conservative corporatism. And as six out of the eight Labour founders were members of Labour Friends of Israel, including Joan Ryan and her connections with Masot and the Israeli embassy, it’s likely that they’re also receiving money from them. And so they’ll also represent Israeli interests, rather than those of the constituents, who elected them.
This is a very interesting video of just under five minutes long, posted by the Last American Vagabond yesterday, 4th March 2019. It’s an excerpt from a much longer piece, but it reports that Jeremy Corbyn has called for Britain to condemn and stop arms sales to Israel after the publication a few days ago of a UN Report describing Israeli war crimes against Palestinian civilians.
The Vagabond was obviously talking in his longer broadcast about American intervention in Syria, as he begins this segment by saying that America is in Syria to protect Israel. And the double-standards in this is shown by a story in Anti-Media reporting that Corbyn called for the UK to condemn Israel’s killing of Palestinians. The Vagabond states that they all know the stories of Corbyn being called an anti-Semite because he calls out Israel’s crimes. This is breaking through, but he’ll still be called an anti-Semite. That’s their plan to diminish the efforts of people, who point out the crimes they’re committing. You’re and anti-Semite if you point out the crimes of Israel, just as if you call out America in Syria, you’re anti-Christian. This doesn’t work.
But this is important. This has been growing. And he’s using the recent UN report to say that we all can see what’s happening, they need to be condemned for their actions. Corbyn is calling for the British government to condemn Israel’s killing of Palestinians, and freeze arms sales to the occupation state. Nothing about Jewish people, nothing about anti-Semitism, just saying that the Israeli government is killing these people, which is very easy to see. The UN report said the Israelis are intentionally killing children and journalists. And because of this we need to freeze arms sales. But people don’t want this to be the case, as Israel is very powerful and has influence in all of these government.
Corbyn’s remarks came in the wake of the UN Report, the funny thing of which was, and they did this more than once, says that Israel might have committed war crimes, while presenting the evidence of all the children, women and doctors they’ve killed. Which shows the absurd nature of the United Nations and its ruling factions. But it’s another opportunity to get this out to people, who’ve never seen it before, who don’t realise that the Israelis are killing children and journalists. Corbyn is now jumping on this to make what should happen, happen, that the international community should have the courage to say ‘You guys are a criminal organisation, your government organisation, not the entirety of Israel but what this government is doing, is very bad.’ And when you realise that they are allowed to get away with this stuff to a certain degree, it gives smaller nations, that really do want to carry this out, not necessarily the power, the drive to do so. Because Israel can get away with it, and shows them the line they can use to get away with it, say Iran’s there, say they’re all terrorists, same with what the US is doing.
He then quotes a tweet from Corbyn, which said
Israel’s killing of demonstrators in Gaza, including children, paramedics and journalists, may constitute war crimes against humanity. The UK government must unequivocally condemn the killing and freeze arms sales to Israel.
The UN report published earlier this week said
The Israeli security forces killed and maimed Palestinian demonstrators who did not pose an eminent threat of death or serious injury to others when they were shot. Nor were they directly participating in hostilities. And the protest had been predominantly civilian in nature.
He says it’s on record that thousands and thousands of people have been shot in the nine months, unarmed, verified – that’s a crime. And it’s time they paid for it and were held accountable.
This is why the Blairites, the Israel lobby and the British establishment are so determined to destroy Corbyn and have him and his supporters purged from the Labour party. Why they smear decent, anti-racist people like Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Ken Livingstone, Marc Wadsworth, Mike, Martin Odoni and so many, many others as anti-Semites. It’s because Corbyn stands up for the Palestinians against Israeli racism and colonialism. Because Corbyn’s supporters call out the neo-Conservative lies, distortions and the selective editing of history to try to justify the Israeli state’s crimes against humanity. Just like they call out racism and injustice at home, like the Tories’ targeting of immigrants and folk of colour for vilification and deportation.
Now the departure of the eight quitters from the Labour party last week, and the manufactured outrage against Chris Williamson for daring to book a room to show the film Witchhunt, about the anti-Semitism smear campaign in the Labour party, makes me wonder if the Israelis knew the report was coming out, and so mobilised their puppets in readiness. Because of the eight splitters, six were members of Labour Friends of Israel. Joan Ryan was its chair, and as she was filmed saying by al-Jazeera, she obtained a million pounds worth of funding from the Israelis and most days met Shai Masot, the Israeli embassy official, who conspired to have Alan Duncan removed from the cabinet. And the Independent group is a private corporation, precisely so they don’t have to disclose their funding. Which seems to me will almost certainly include money from the Israelis.
The Independent Group’s Joan Ryan is also in the pages of the I today, making the claim that there was no anti-Semitism in the Labour party until Jeremy Corbyn took over. This, as you would expect from Ryan, is simply a flat-out lie. Not only is Corbyn not an anti-Semite and the Labour party actually less anti-Semitic than the Tories, but the complaints and allegations of anti-Semitism began long before Corbyn took over. The whining started when Ed Miliband, who’s Jewish, was leader of the party, as CremantCommunarde has shown with his timeline of these lies and smears. And what provoked all these allegations against Miliband? He dared not to give his automatic backing to Israel. And cautious or qualified support is intolerable to the fanatics and totalitarians of Likud and the Israel lobby, who, like Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini and every other wretched dictator and despot, demand absolute and unquestioning support and obedience.
There’s also another, personal dimension here as well. Ryan herself has shown that she can’t be trusted. She was shown manufacturing a fake allegation of anti-Semitism against another member of the Labour party, Jean Fitzpatrick, in the al-Jazeera documentary, The Lobby. But she’s completely unrepentant about the incident. Moreover, this is the woman, who was chair of Labour Friends of Israel, got hold of £1 million of funding from the Israelis, and who claimed to meet and talk to Shai Masot at the embassy most days. Masot was the Israeli official, who was sent home in disgrace after plotting to have Alan Duncan removed from the Tory cabinet.
Well, Ryan’s no longer a member of the Labour party, but her new group is also thoroughly democrapic. They talk a lot about democracy and but really absolutely despise it. They don’t want to hold bye-election, and are an incorporated company so they don’t have to reveal who their donors are.
Ryan is therefore a liar, whose word cannot be trusted, and there are questions to be asked about who is paying her to repeat these lies. Is she still receiving money from the Israelis? Does she still meet and talk with somebody from the Israeli embassy ‘most days’, as she did with Masot? These are reasonable questions, and we have a right to see them asked and answered. No matter what she might squeal about anti-Semitism, or how she and her equally duplicitous friends might try to hide their funding.
Haim Bresheeth is another Jewish critic of Israel. He’s put up a number of videos on YouTube covering the Jewish supporters of Jeremy Corbyn and their demonstrations of solidarity with him and against the anti-Semitism smears. In this video, posted on 20th February 2019, the academic and film-maker talks to the Iranian news service, Press TV about the Independents and particularly Joan Ryan.
The video begins with him telling the host that the only thing the Independents have in common is support for Israeli apartheid and the attacks on Gaza, and for wars everywhere. It that’s going to be their platform, and the founding eleven may be joined by one or two more, then Bresheeth states that he thinks they have no future. They are supporting another government, which is legally an apartheid government, is not going to bring voters to that movement.
The host asks Bresheeth for his response to her claim that she left Labour because of its anti-Semitism. Bresheeth states that he has been a member of the Labour party has been living in Britain for 45 years, and he has not met an anti-Semite, either in the Labour party or anywhere else in Britain. So they must be hiding so well it’s unbelievable. He’s not saying there are no anti-Semites in Britain, but they’re not in the Labour party. They’re more likely to be in UKIP. Joan Ryan was not only shown to be a friend of Israel, and is definitely not a friend of Labour, but she was working with Mossad people, Shai Masot, as shown in al-Jazeera’s documentary, ‘The Lobby’. They were plotting to bring down a British minister tells you just what Joan Ryan is about. She’s not the MP for North Enfield, she’s the MP for Mossad.
Readers of this blog will know the absolute contempt I have for the Iranian regime, its human rights abuses, corruption and oppression of that ancient nation’s working people. But, like RT, which is owned by Russia, it’s one of the few news broadcasters that’s actually telling the truth about the anti-Semitism smears.
Haim Bresheeth is not along when he states that he’s lived in this country without meeting an anti-Semite. Corbyn’s Jewish supporters in organisations like Jewish Voice for Labour, who are resolutely ignored by the media, have also said that, like him, they’re sure it exists, but they’ve never encountered it personally. Statistics show that only 3.6 per cent of the Labour have anti-Semitic views. In the Tories, it’s 3.9 per cent. And in UKIP it’s something like 4.2. per cent. I don’t know whether Masot really was part of Mossad, but it is certainly true he was conspiring to remove a Tory member of cabinet, Alan Duncan. Just as Ryan was shown manufacturing a fake anti-Semitism accusation against another Labour supporter, Jean Fitzpatrick. Ryan’s notorious advocacy of Israel at the expense of her own constituents is notorious in the Labour party, and earned her the soubriquet ‘the MP for Tel Aviv North’.
And I’ve no doubt that Bresheeth is also right when he says they stand for more wars everywhere. They all supported the Iraq invasion, and they are all desperate for there not to be a public enquiry, as this would no doubt expose their illegality, acquiescence and promotion of Blair’s lies. And as supporters of Israel, an apartheid state, they are definitely not anti-racists, no matter what they scream about anti-Semitism.
Domestically the Independents, or at least Chris Leslie, stand for supporting the Tory party against Jeremy Corbyn, privatisation, including that of the NHS, tuition fees, keeping the water companies private, destroying the welfare state, and more tax cuts for the rich at the expense of the poor. They are warmongering Tories, who have nothing to offer Britain’s working people, except possibly membership of the EU. There is absolutely no doubt that we should have bye-elections now, so that they can be voted out, and replaced with those, who really do respect the wishes of their constituents.
Here’s another reason why no-one should give their trust or their votes to the Independent Grouping. Apart from the fact that they’re deadbeat Blairites and Tories, who stand for privatisation, including that of the NHS, the destruction of the welfare state, tuition fees, shifting the tax burden to the poor away from the rich, and supporting Theresa May with a confidence and supply motion in order to stop Labour gaining power. Margaret Hodge, one of the most vociferous of the Blairites smearing her Corbyn supporters as anti-Semites has shown that she will try and ignore and play down accusations of child abuse in areas under her authority.
In 2003 a scandal broke out about Hodge’s suitability to sit in Blair’s cabinet. Liz Davies, a social worker, had uncovered incidents of child abuse in Islington council’s care homes, when she was leader of the council. Hodge had first tried to cover it up, claiming that children in care homes were ‘disruptive’. She had also insulted one of the former inmates who had come forward to tell of his experience of abuse, Demetrios Panton. Panton was now an adult, and Hodge apologised to him for her abuse. Nevertheless, in the Davies’ eyes, this still meant that she was totally unsuited for serving as Children’s Minister in Blair’s government.
I found this recording of an interview Davies gave on The World Tonight in 2003, posted up by Desiring Progress on YouTube in 2013. I haven’t heard all of it, but in what I have heard, Davies makes her views of this whole sordid business and Hodge’s attempts to stop news of the abuse coming out very clear, and she demands Hodge’s resignation.
Hodge is a massive liar when it comes to accusations of anti-Semitism. The programme’s host states that she was supposed to be a good children’s minister under Blair. However, from this it’s clear that Hodge’s first response to accusations and reports of child abuse in organisations for which she is responsible has not been to believe and protect the children, but to try to protect herself and cover it up. No doubt if something like that happened again now, she accused the whistleblower of anti-Semitism to try to make them look guilty, rather than herself.
She is a liar, a slanderer, and an opponent of those genuinely concerned with the protection and welfare of vulnerable children, an attitude made worse by her group’s absolute contempt for democracy. We need to have bye-elections now, and get her out of parliament.
Here’s another excellent piece from Labour Against the Witchhunt, where the respected left-wing film-maker, Ken Loach, talks about the case of Kevin Higgins. Higgins is a writer and poet, an overseas member of the party, living in Ireland. He was suspended in June 2016 for daring to write a poem satirising Tony Blair and the bloody carnage he had caused in Iraq. Loach only reads a part of a poem, as it’s rather too long to repeat in full. Before he does he jokes that as this is what got Higgins suspended, then everyone present is also going to be suspended simply for being there. So anyone who doesn’t want to be suspended should leave.
The poem is a reworking of a piece by Brecht, about a soldier, who gets shot, and his needy widow receives only something insignificant. In the part Loach reads, which I’m paraphrasing, not quoting, Blair’s ‘no longer new’ wife wonders about what she will receive from all the depleted uranium shells he had dropped during the battle of Basra, all the soldiers he had sent to meet Improvised Explosive Devices in far Mesopotamia? She got for all that white night terrors of him on trial for his crimes and the desire never again to look out the window of their fine Connaught Square House at the tree, which people said was once used to hang traitors.
Loach says of Higgins that he guesses Higgins isn’t the only one who’s disgusted with Blair, with his illegality, the hundreds of thousands he caused to die and the millions he’s made since he left office. ‘If anyone brings the party into disrepute, it’s that mass murderer.’
He goes on then to reveal what happened to Higgins himself. He didn’t hear anything, so in May 2017 he wrote to the Governance and Legal Unit requesting all the documents relating to him to be sent to him within forty according to his right in the laws about data protection. Nine months later, no reply. The video was uploaded on YouTube on 7th February 2018. He was still suspended, as far as Loach knew.
The cineaste concludes
It is incompetent. It is inefficient. It is unprincipled. And those people should not be in charge of that disclipinary procedure.
Loach is absolutely correct. And Higgins’ suspension, simply for satirising Blair, isn’t the mark of a democratic socialist party. It’s the action of a rigidly centralised dictatorship, where the leader was, like Mussolini, always right. It’s like nothing so much as Stalin’s ‘cult of personality’ in the USSR, with the exception that Higgins only got suspended. In Stalin’s USSR, he’d have been tortured and shot, or at the very least sent to a gulag.
And Loach is definitely correct when he says that he probably isn’t the only one disgusted with Blair. Millions of us are. Over a million people marched against the Iraq invasion, including the priests at my local church. It was one of the biggest popular demonstrations in British history, but Blair and his vile cronies ignored it. And people certainly left the party and refused to vote for the grotty profiteer because of his greed, his illegality, his warmongering, his privatisation, his insistence on absolute obedience and micromanagement of party affairs. Private Eye called him the ‘Dear Leader’, satirising the smaltzy, sentimental image he tried to project, as well as his demand to be loved. The Tory party at the time stood in opposition to the War, which got a left-wing friend of mine to buy the Spectator for a time. I think that this was mostly opportunism on the Tories’ party, as there is nothing they love better than a good war. But to be fair to them, Peter Hitchens, the brother of the late atheist polemicist Christopher, genuinely despised him for Iraq and continues to loathe him, describing him as ‘the Blair creature’.
And this monster seems intent on coming back into politics. He has praised the Independent Group, which led Mike, Martin Odoni and others to ask why he should still be allowed to remain in the Labour party. It is against the rules to be a member or support a rival organisation. This was the rule the Blairites used to throw out Moshe Machover, the Israeli academic and anti-Zionist. His crime was that he had a piece published in the Morning Star, as have very many leaders and MPs over the years. Professor Machover was grudgingly readmitted to the party after a massive outcry. But Blair gives them his support, and no-one important seems to raise any objections whatsoever. The left-wing vlogger, Gordon Dimmack, says he has heard speculation that if the wretched group survives, then before long Blair will return to active politics. It’s an idea that he says gave him nightmares.
Unfortunately, I think it’s a distinct possibility. Despite the fact that his time as this country’s leader has been and gone, he was on Andrew Marr’s wretched propaganda show today. I’m glad I missed it, as it would only have infuriated me. But it does seem to bear out these rumours.
One million men, women and children killed. Seven million displaced all across the Middle East. A secular state with free healthcare and education destroyed and looted. A state where women were free to have their own careers and run businesses. Where there were no ‘peace barriers’ between Shi’a and Sunni quarters in cities to stop them murdering each other. A country whose oil reserves have been looted by the American and Saudi oil companies, and whose state industries were plundered by American multinationals.
And this creature appears on TV again, to grin his sickly smile and utter neoliberal platitudes and smooth words. But hey, you can’t criticise him, because he stands for inclusion and diversity. While parents starve themselves to feed their children, students are faced with unaffordable tuition fees and the disabled are thrown off benefits thanks to the wretched assessments and work capable tests he, Mandelson and the others in his coterie introduced.
Higgins’ poem reminds me about one of the great protest poems written back in the ’60s about another unjust war, Vietnam. This was To Whom It May Concern (Tell Me Lies About Vietnam) by Adrian Mitchell, where every stanza ended ‘Tell me lies about Vietnam’. The note about it in Colin Firth’s and Anthony Arnove’s The People Speak: Democracy Is Not A Spectator Sport states that he added stanzas later to include more leaders and more wars.
So perhaps if Blair comes back to politics we should write another: ‘Tell Me Lies About Iraq’.
This is another great video from the Baltimore-based The Real News, posted on YouTube four days ago on the 25th February 2019. The news service’s host, Greg Wilpert, talks to Asa Winstanley of the Electronic Intifada about Israeli meddling in British politics to smear and discredit Jeremy Corbyn.
The Campaign against Ilhan Omar and Leah Whitson
Wilpert reports that the same day that Ilhan Omar in the US was attacked for anti-Semitism for comments she made about her country’s Israel lobby, an orchestrated campaign was launched in Britain to smear Leah Whitson of the Middle East section of Human Rights Watch. She had tweeted ‘Why is Israel interference in British politics acceptable? Is it only a problem when Russia does this?’ She was talking about the al-Jazeera documentary about how Israeli politicians tried to delegitimise left-wing politicians, particularly in the Labour party. Then the eight Labour MPs split, accusing Corbyn of bad leadership on Brexit and anti-Semitism. The deputy leader, John McDonnell, said they were making a mistake and should hold bye-election. This is followed by a clip of McDonnell saying that they should remain in the party to fight their corner. But if they don’t, they lose Labour party support, and should hold an election.
Wilpert then introduces Winstanley, mentioning his recent article for the Electronic Intifada, ‘Yes, Of Course Israel Is Interfering in British Politics’. Wilpert states that Israel has allocated considerable funding for Hasbara -propaganda-operations through various channels. Hasbara groups are very media savvy and have coordinated attacks in America and Britain. He then asks Winstanley what they are trying to do. What would they gain by the sacking of Leah Whitson.
Winstanley replies that they have been doing a huge number of things over the years with various degrees of success and failure. Human rights watch has been a thorn in their sides for many years because Israel is a state that abuses human rights, and this is impossible for Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International to ignore. Human Rights Watch puts out detailed information about human rights abuses in Israel, war crimes against Palestinians and injustices that Israel has always perpetuated against them.
Corbyn and the Labour Party
Wilpert then asks about what Israel is trying to achieve by smearing the Labour party with anti-Semitism. Winstanley replies that the anti-Semitism crisis in the Labour party is a campaign by racists to smear anti-racists. It’s a complete inversion of reality. Which is not to say that there is no such thing as anti-Semitism in the Party, it’s a mass movement of half a million people according to the latest figures, so statistically there are going to be some anti-Semites. In the main all the headlines about anti-Semitism in the Labour party have been at best an exaggeration and in many cases outright fabrications. A narrative that pro-Israel groups in the UK have been pushing for the last 3 1/2 years in order to sabotage the Labour Party. There’s footage at this point of pro-Israel demonstrators, wrapped in the Israeli flag, standing around with megaphones. Winstanley states that the party’s left-wing leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has for many decades been a Palestine solidarity activist. It fits in with the Israel lobby’s decades-long strategy of accusing anyone who is involved in Palestine solidarity of being an anti-Semite.
Wilpert remarks that Corbyn seems to be taking a passive approach to these attacks and is not going on the offensive against pro-Israeli groups. that are trying to undermine him and his party’s electoral chances. He asks Winstanley why he thinks Corbyn’s taking this approach. Winstanley replies that he doesn’t know the answer, and believes that there are several different reasons. But Winstanley feels that essentially he feels boxed in and limited it what he can do. Corbyn’s support from the party’s grassroots always comes most strongly when he fights his corner, as he had done on so many issues. Unfortunately the issue of anti-Semitism goes straight to the heart of what it means to be an anti-racist popular movement. Jeremy Corbyn has a strong record in this regard for decades, and the accusations of racism really hurt and are having an effect. Anyone on the left, who doesn’t realise this is deluded, and there are too many people in denial about it. Smears and allegations of anti-Semitism are the main weapon of the anti-solidarity movement, and this needs to be faced up to before it can be combated.
Why No Official Investigations of Israeli Propaganda Groups?
Wilpert goes on to say that it isn’t just Corbyn, but the Israel/Palestine debate as been a major issue in British politics although Britain has not occupied Palestine for 71 years. Why doesn’t Britain investigate accusations of espionage by Israeli hasbara groups? And what do the eight former Labour MPs hope to achieve by going against the dominant political views of their own constituents? Winstanley replies that it’s an excellent question, and that when the al-Jazeera documentary ‘The Lobby’ first came out, showing Israeli interference primarily here in the UK, mainly in Labour but also in the Conservatives and others, the Labour Party’s initial response, even from people like Emily Thornberry, Corbyn’s shadow foreign secretary, who was one of the Israelis’ supporters in parliament, a supporter of Labour Friends of Israel, called for an investigation into ‘improper interference in British politics’. But this was not followed up and nothing came of it. And this week, with the defection of the eight, now nine, Labour MPs away from the party, all but one of whom joined this new group, called the Independent Group, a political party in all but name, the vast majority of whom were pro-Israel. Of the initial eight, six were listed as supporters of Labour Friends of Israel, and Ian Austin, who also resigned today [25th] is also a member of Labour Friends of Israel. This calls into question Labour Friends of Israel. If a number of its MPs are not in the Labour party, then what is it doing in the Labour party. In Winstanley’s opinion the NEC should proscribe this organisation. After all, it’s a front group for the Israeli embassy in the UK, and its activities really need to be investigated.
Ryan and the Theft of Labour Membership Details
We have also seen this week Joan Ryan, one of the MPs, who’s joined this Independent Group, she’s being accused of improper access to Labour Party members’ data. Winstanley doesn’t know the full details about this yet. It looks like she accessed Labour members private electoral data. With her known links to Israeli embassy agents, including the embassy spy, Shai Masot, who was expelled from our country in 2017 after being exposed by the al-Jazeera documentary, questions have to be asked. There should be an investigation by the British authorities into this. What is she doing with that data? and it is a completely fair question to ask if she’s sending it back to Israel. In the al-Jazeera documentary on America, one of the LFI’s members, Jon Rubin, said in his own words ‘Joan will talk to Shai most days.’ She was in close association with someone who was effectively an Israeli spy. Is she still talking to the Israeli embassy most days? This is a real question to ask, but the mainstream media aren’t going there.
Here’s another glaring injustice in the Labour party. Yesterday Mike put up on his blog a piece about Tony Blair, who appeared in the Independent giving his support to the wretched Independent grouping. The war criminal, whose decision to invade Iraq with George ‘Dubya’ Bush and a coterie of allies, has killed a million people and displaced a further 7 million in the Middle East, said
“Last week several MPs defected to form a new political grouping.
“These are new times. We need, despite our moderation, to embrace the spirit of insurgency.
“We need new ideas and thinking on policy. Above all, we need to wake up, gird up, stand up and summon up the strength and intelligence to prevail.”
Now it’s probably no surprise that Blair supports the Independent Grouping. Like him, they’re neoliberals, who stand for privatisation, including that of the NHS, destroying more of the welfare state, and are desperate to avoid a public inquiry into the invasion of Iraq. Oh yes, and they’re pro-EU. There were rumours a little while ago that Blair himself was going to launch a centrist party, and then that his son, Euan, was going to be its leader. And it’s been suggested that if the Independent group persists, then Blair will return to politics, a prospect that gave left-wing vlogger Gordon Dimmack nightmares.
It’s also fascinating seeing Blair try to present the Independents as something new and ‘insurgent’, when they’re the absolute opposite. They’re just the same shop-worn, deadbeat Thatcherism with a new, but very corporate and anti-democratic package. But remember this comes from Blair, who tried to market his style of politics as ‘the radical centre’. Which is a contradiction in terms, except when applied to the Nazis in the 1980s, who infiltrated the German liberal party, the Freie Demokraten.
But apart from attempting to present the Independents’ zombie policies as something living and dynamic, Blair’s speech is remarkable for something else: it breaks Labour party regulations. These explicitly state that no Labour party member may support or promote a rival party. By these terms, Blair should be thrown out. One Tweeter, Socialist Bangers, has already sent a message to the Compliance Unit in the Party suggesting that they should get rid of Blair. Martin Odoni, a great friend of Mike’s blog, was so incensed that he has also put up a specimen letter for others to use demanding Blair’s expulsion. See: https://thegreatcritique.wordpress.com/2019/02/26/suspend-tony-blair-from-the-labour-party-with-immediate-effect-template/
Unfortunately Mike considers it doubtful that they will, because at the moment the Compliance Unit seems determined to preserve the privileges of MPs and the party elite. Which contrasts strongly with its determination to persecute the innocent with fake accusations of anti-Semitism. As Blair seems to. The murderer of millions stated that anti-Semitism in the Labour party was a running sore, but gave no examples. Well, obviously, he couldn’t, because some of the cases are so flimsy that they should be greeted with gales of laughter rather than indulged and prosecuted.
Mike concludes his article
While innocent party members continue to be cast out under false claims of anti-Semitism that will trouble them for the rest of their lives, this elitist will be able to carry on preaching falsehoods to eager ears – because it’s what his fellow elites in the Labour leadership want. They are very much like the Conservatives in that respect. Wait a couple of weeks and then tell me if I’m wrong.
And it’s a scandal that he’s going to be exactly right.
I found this short video by Mark Braithwaite on his channel over on YouTube. It’s just under two minutes long, and is of Ann Soubry being told by her constituents exactly what they think of her for leaving the Tories and not holding a bye-election. They ask her why, if she believes in democracy so much, she doesn’t hold a bye-election. One tells her that he thinks she only left because she wasn’t in the cabinet. Another tells her that while she thinks she’s a rebel, she isn’t. She is also told that she is showing disrespect to her constituents for not holding a bye-election, because they didn’t vote for her as an Independent, they voted for her as a Tory. And she’s also disrespecting the 17.5 million people, who voted to Leave by demanding a second referendum on Brexit.
It’s all rather amusing. And I can quite believe that her motivation for leaving the Tories is frustrated ambition. A Labour MP yesterday said he believed that Chuka Umunna hadn’t left Labour for any better or nobler reason than that. He departed because he knew he would never be the party’s leader.
But Soubry doesn’t seem to have left the Tories at all. Not in her heart. According to a recent post by the Angry Yorkshireman over at Another Angry Voice, she’s said that she still intends to campaign for the Tories. And she and Umunna also believe she should be allowed to go back to the Tory party when she wishes, and that it’s terrible that the Tories won’t have her. Which shows how utterly inept Umunna would have been as a Labour leader, if he believes it’s acceptable for a member of his political grouping to campaign for a rival party. See https://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.com/2019/02/chuka-umunna-thinks-ex-tory-members-of.html
The Independents are quickly showing themselves to be an absolute farce. And I don’t doubt that they’ll be gone at the next election. And good riddance!
Yesterday’s I also carried another interesting piece on page 9 by Adam Forrest, which reported claims that Chuka Umunna split off from Labour for no better reason than frustrated personal ambition. The piece ran
The shadow International Trade Secretary, Barry Gardiner, has claimed that Chuka Umunna only helped to form The Independent Group because “he knew he could never be the leader of the Labour Party”.
Mr Gardiner accused Mr Umunna of being motivated by frustrated personal ambitions. “It was fairly clear to me that the reason he wanted to leave the Labour Party was he knew hye could never by the leader of the Labour Party,” he told Sky News.
Mr Gardiner also cast doubt on anti-Semitic abuse as a primary motivation for leaving the party. Several of the nine Labour MPs who quit last week cited the party’s failure to tackle the abuse as a reason for leaving.
Mr Gardiner said he was “deeply saddened” that one of the MPs, Luciana Berger, felt she had to leave over the harassment she suffered in her Liverpool Wavertree constituency.
“I have no time for the others at all, because actually their reasons are varied by different,” he said. “What I’m clear about is that I don’t believe that [anti-Semitism] is the sole focus of why they’ve left the Labour party.”
No, I don’t believe that they left solely because of anti-Semitism either. It’s more likely because, like Umunna, all of them are Blairite mediocrities. Umunna was asked by Sky News to name a Labour policy he disagreed with. He couldn’t. Or, as has been remarked, he daren’t because they’re all popular. As for Leslie, as I’ve said, in his interview with New Scientist he was against a 50 per cent tax rate, renationalisation of the utilities, and ending tuition fees. Angela Smith’s also for keeping the water industry private. And all of them don’t want to hold an inquiry into the Iraq invasion. And they were all, or nearly all, the subject of ‘no confidence’ votes or threatened with deselection. They were jumping before they were pushed. Six of the original eight were also members of Labour Friends of Israel. And by anti-Semitism, they almost certainly anti-Zionism, or simply criticism of Israel. They’re thus standard Blairite neoliberals and warmongers.
And I don’t doubt, that as Blairites, they’re getting money from Israel. Joan Ryan was caught by the undercover journo for al-Jazeera’s documentary, The Lobby, saying that she met Shai Masot, the disgraced official at the Israeli embassy, most days for discussions. And Blair himself was financed by the Israelis and the Israel lobby through Lord Levy, whom he met at a gathering at the Israeli embassy.
These are almost certainly the real reasons they left: an attempt to preserve Thatcherite capitalism, western, corporate driven imperialism, and the preservation of Israel from justifiable criticism. Everything else is simply lies and propaganda.
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