I caught a brief headline on the internet newsfeed yesterday about Starmer getting a bit flustered because a mayor somewhere had urged people not to vote for the Labour party but instead vote Green. This was round about the same time when Guardian journalist and author Owen Jones had written in his column that he had resigned from Labour and urged others on the left to take their vote away from them. Instead they should vote for the Greens or independent candidates. This was because Starmer had reneged on all the promises and pledges he’d made when seeking the Labour leadership. Most of you out there no doubt remember how he set himself up as a continuity Corbynism candidate. He’s said all the guff when he was with Corbyn in government how he admired him, and had pledged to support the renationalisation of the utilities and the NHS, restoration of the welfare state, greater rights for workers and so on. And the moment he got his backside on the chair, or possibly throne as he may see it, as head of the party he set about breaking all of them. The last straw, or last straw but one for Jones, was when Starmer declared he was going to follow the Tories self-imposed fiscal limits, and so keep to austerity. I have mixed feelings about Jones and the Guardian. Jones, I think, was one of those who joined in the fake accusations of anti-Semitism directed at Corbyn, as did the paper he worked for. The Guardian is popularly supposed to be far left, but it’s a Liberal paper that has urged its readers to vote Liberal/ Liberal-SDP Alliance/ Lib Dem far more often than it has Labour. What gives the impression that it’s a far left or at least Labour paper is its concentration on minority rights – anti-racism, feminism and gay and trans rights. But it’s economic outlook is firmly Blairite neoliberalism.
Jones has joined Mike, myself and many others in leaving the party and advising others, who really want genuine change, to put their votes to alternative, genuinely left-wing candidates and parties. Mike has been advising people to think very carefully about who they want to vote for after Labour threw him out for refusing to go on a training course about anti-Semitism, run by the people who had falsely accused him of it. This was Labour Friends of Israel or the Jewish Labour Movement, people who falsely conflate Jewishness with Zionism and anti-Semitism with the mildest criticism of Israel. The kind of people who joined Maureen Lipman in accusing Ed Miliband of being a monstrous Jew-hater almost on a par with the Hitler, about to hit British Jews with a hideous wave of persecution comparable to the bastard’s Third Reich or Mussolini’s Italy. This was because Milliband, hardly any kind of firebrand, had made a few mild and reasonable criticisms of Israel’s barbarous treatment of the Palestinians. Oh, yes, and Red Ed was also Jewish, though I think he was largely secular rather than observant. Not that it matters to these fanatics. I forgotten the precise figures, but about three fifth or four-fifths of the people expelled from the Labour party are Jews who dare to criticise Israel. Which should tell you that their claims to stand up for British Jews against anti-Semitism is just so much balderdash and codswallop.
Starmerism is just Blairism reheated. He follows Blair in his frantic enthusiasm for Thatcher, even waving the union flag and proclaiming his patriotism as she did. And he’s followed Blair in thinking that he could move to the right and appeal to Tory voters, press barons and donors and need not worry about the working class vote, as they would just have to put up with it as there was nowhere else for them to go. That’s no longer true. The Green vote has been growing. In Bristol they’re challenging the Labour party for control of the council. There are alternative socialist movements backing Corbyn in his constituency, aspiring Muslims politicians are standing as Independents. I don’t know, but the Trades Union and Socialist Alliance may still be around, as well as the Socialist Party, formerly the Socialist Workers’ Party, and they may be worth voting for. I’ve heard friends say they’d even vote Communist in preference to Labour, not because they’re Commies, but simply because they think they’d be preferable.
To the right of the Tories, meanwhile, are Reform and various other right-wing outfits, like Laurence Fox’s Reclaim and the New Culture Forum. These are also laying claim to the White, working class vote. Reform are especially – and ludicrously – hungry for a piece of the Tories’ action, with Richard Tice claiming that only his band of dements and not Sunak have a chance of defeating Labour. These fringe parties could very well chip away at the votes of the two main parties. For all the assumption that a Labour victory is certain, I think it’s very far from inevitable. This could be a very interesting general election.
Mike Sivier, The Hater’s Guide to New Who: Series 1 Spoiler Alert (Lux Foundation Library 2023)
Here’s something different from Mike of Vox Political notoriety. He’s taken a break from writing about politicians and the destruction of this country through Brexit and Tory policies, and turned his critical eye instead to the first season of the new Dr Who, which starred Christopher Ecclestone as the Doctor and Billie Piper as his companion, Rose.
Dr Who has come in for a lot of real hatred over the past couple of seasons, with right-wing and politically moderate fans complaining that it is too woke, with a shrill, anti-masculine and left-wing bias. This is not for that kind of haters. This is written for those who love the show, but have nevertheless noticed that the writing at times isn’t all it should be, with contradictions, holes in the plots, bad or absent explanations, characters knowing things they couldn’t possibly know in reality, and when all else fails, a resort to deus ex machina and pulling a sudden solution to impending danger to the Dr and his friends out of thin air.
Mike is a long term fan of the show, but states in the introduction that he was inspired to write the book after a friend remarked to him that ‘the plots don’t actually work, you know.’ Another influence has been the Nitpicker’s Guides to Star Trek which came out in the ’90s. These were affectionately critical looks at Classic Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation, which noted every time the writers contradicted themselves, broke canon, produced contrived and nonsensical plots, and so on, including changing the layout of the Enterprise. For example, the location of the ship’s bar, 10 Forward, kept changing according to the whims of the writers and the needs of that week’s particular story. Mike’s book differs, however, from those in that they had separate categories for each type of flaw. This was too much work for Mike. Instead he just summarises each individual episode, itemising the various plot points and noting the bits of bad writing as they come along. It’s more like the various SF fans putting up videos with the title ‘Everything Wrong With’ a particular movie or TV episode.
Reading it I’m reminded of an evening I spent in the 90s with friends watching a Science Fiction movie on TV. They were very knowledgable scientifically, and gleefully pointed out every scientific mistake in the film, including wondering how a time traveller from the future could drive a car from the early part of the 20th century as all the controls had been changed. You would have thought they hated the film, but no! After it ended they got up and said that it was ‘quite good’. Mind you, I’ve met real space scientists who’ve told me that they can’t watch SF movies any more because of the scientific inaccuracies in them. This book is not for them, either.
Mike begins by wondering how the new Dr would appear to someone, who knows nothing about the show. And so the Dr appears less as an alien from technologically advanced supercivilisation, but a magician with a magic box – the TARDIS – and wand, the sonic screwdriver. This is actually quite profound, possibly more than Mike realised when he wrote it. It’s been said that Science Fiction owes more to astrology than astronomy. Psychosocial ufologists, who reject the idea that UFOs, now renamed UAPs, are real, nuts’n’bolts spacecraft, have turned around Arthur C. Clarke’s famous dictum that ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’. In their view, tales of encounters with alien spaceships and their occupants are magic dressed in the guise of space travel and advanced technology. The same can be said of Dr Who.
For example, in the drama documentary broadcast to celebrate 60 or so years of the show, the producers are shown discussing the nature of the TARDIS. They decide it should be bigger on the inside than out based on C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and its successors, in which the Pevensea children gain access to whole magical world through a cupboard. The TARDIS is also like fairyland in that it is outside space and time. In fairyland, humans may spend what they think are only a few hours there, only to find on their return to Earth that years or even centuries have passed. This happens in the episode following the Dr’s and Rose Jaunt to the End of the World five billion years in the future to find that a year has passed. Rose is officially a missing person, and her boyfriend,, Mickey, has been pulled in several times by the cops for questioning, suspected of her murder. Back in the 1920s the Polish linguist, Roman Jakobson, wrote a book analysing the structure of traditional stories, The Structure of the Folktale. This noted the way the heroes set out to find friends, gain magical aids, and overcome enemies in their quests. I think it’s very much a curiosity now, as I don’t think other scholars find it very useful or applicable. Nevertheless, there is a sizable catalogue of folktale motifs, many of which are similar to those of UFO encounters. It’d be interesting if the same could be done for Dr Who and the structure of its stories and the relationship to tradition fairy tales and wonder stories. More prosaically, the Dr can be seen as a version of the stage magician with his magic cabinet and wand.
Mike also notes that at times the Dr and his companions seem unsympathetic, even dangerous. With his penchant for blowing things up, the Dr at times appears more like a terrorist than a hero. And sometimes he and Rose appear callous or just mean, putting down people like Mickey, Rose’s boyfriend, for their stupidity or simply indifferent to how they have suffered through their actions.
The book also notes how the new Who has innovated and moved with the times. For example, he notes that it was more ‘relationshippy’ with domestic scenes between the Dr, Rose, her mother, Jackie and boyfriend Mickey. I noticed this too when the series first appeared. It’s not surprising, as showrunner and writer Russel T. Davies started out as the creator of Channel 4’s groundbreaking gay soap opera, Queer asFolk, in the ’90s. He said in interviews while the show was being launched that they were aiming at a more emotional approach than that of the previous series. It has also changed in sexual morality following contemporary mores. In Boom Town, Rose and Mickey look for a hotel to spend the night together while looking for alien skulduggery in Cardiff. This wouldn’t have happened in the old Who, which was very prim and celibate. I always thought that this was because the Dr acted, at least initially, in loco parentis. The First Dr’s companions included his granddaughter, Susan, and her teachers, following the social norms of the time. Tom Baker’s Doctor in his last season and the first seasons of Peter Davidson’s Doctor also replicated a kind of family structure, with the Doctor and Romana as mother and father, and Adric, Nyssa and Tegan as their adolescent/ young adult children. Another innovation was the introduction of gay elements and characters, such as John Barrowman’s Captain Jack, who was bisexual. This didn’t appear in the original series. When the show debuted in the early 60s, homosexuality was illegal, and even after its partial decriminalisation in 1969 or thereabouts, gays were still intensely hated despite the rise of camp humour and gay characters in comedies. Like sex generally, gayness would have been seen as far too adult and problematic for a family show.
Another innovation, but one that Mike doesn’t remark on, is the greater inclusion of Blacks and other ethnic minorities in the show. Black people did occasionally appear in the original series – one of the pilots of the ill-fated Zeus space mission in the story The Tenth Planet, which introduced the Cybermen, is Black. A Black female general also appears in one of Sylvester McCoy’s stories, but these were rare. I think this was less to do with racism than the fact that the ethnic minority population was much smaller in the 60s and 70s, and so there were consequently less Black actors and faces on screen. This began to change in ’90s, as Black comedians like Lenny Henry appeared on TV, the Beeb’s other cult SF show, Blake’s Seven, included Dayna, a Black weapons specialist. The new Who was set in a multi-ethnic part of London. Blacks weren’t part of the scenery but the established cast. Rose’s boyfriend, Mickey, was Black, as were later companions. One of the companions of David Tennant’s Doctor was a Black medical doctor, and Blacks also appeared as supporting characters. In the story in which the Doctor confronts Old Clootie on a desolate world orbiting a Black Hole, one of the exploration team from Earth is Black. In a later story, the Doctor encounters a team of salvage workers, who are a Black family. This is why I get very annoyed with Lenny Henry and his stupid comment about the show the other year in the Black magazine, Colour. Henry, who clearly hadn’t watched the show in years, ranted that the BBC would rather have a dog than a Black person on the show.
I similarly got annoyed a decade or so ago when Times columnist Caitlin Moran accused the show of sexism with its female companions. They were there to say to the Doctor ‘I don’t understand’. There is some justice to her comments, in that they did appear in previous series more for their glamour and as foil for the Doctor to explain the plot and be rescued rather than as active characters in their own right. But this was changing by the ’90s. Sylvester McCoy’s companion, Ace, was a teenage delinquent who took delight in blowing things up with whatever chemicals she could find and gleefully whacking Daleks, Cybermen and whatever other monsters were threatening the universe that day over the head with a baseball bat. Watch the episode ‘Silver Nemesis’ to see her cheerfully shooting down Cybermen with gold coins fired from her catapult. Going back to the Fourth Doctor, Leela may have run around in a revealing leather bikini, but she was quite capable of looking after herself and the Doctor, despatching threatening villains with the poisonous Janus thorn. The new Who has continued this trend of empowered girls and women.
The book isn’t a deep look at the new Who’s first season. It’s just a fun look at the series where the writing flaws are pointed out for sympathetic amusement, rather than serious condemnation. Mike and his friends aren’t the only one to have noticed the bad writing in the series. A friend of mine told me that he’d been told by someone who taught creative writing that there were gaping holes and glaring errors in the show’s writing. But it’s all done in good humour. The book’s short at 166 pages, the writing clear and concise, and offers the reader a wry look at this long-running and much loved series. Fans of the show can also read it to revisit it without having to watch it again on DVD, just as we had to read the Target novelisations back in the 60s and 70s before the rise of video. The itemisation of particular points in the stories also allow it to be used as a resource for those fans writing their own pieces about it in the online and print fan literature.
Hat tip to Mike and Vox Political for the meme on the cover.
These past few days I’ve been putting up videos of myself reading pamphlets I wrote and self-published a few years ago against the privatisation of the NHS and academy schools, which actually don’t perform better than normal state schools but support the corporate chains and the corporatist politicians who run them with an income stream. And they also support the Thatcherites by appearing to confirm their ideological view that private, as opposed to state, is always better.
Trev, one of the great commenters on this blog, left this comment about the destruction of the welfare state and the treatment of those, who are unfit to work, by the authorities and how this is ignored by Labour and the trade unions.
‘I’ve noticed they’re using the same language as the Tories (going right back to Cameron & Osborne), it’s always “working people” and “working families”, or “hard working people”, etc. Never just ‘we’re going to help people and famies’ , or even Working Class people, no, it’s got to be “working people”. Just another way of further marginalising those who aren’t working for whatever reason, the “economically inactive”, i.e.Retired, Unemployed, sick, disabled, carers, but for some reason this definition never includes the idle rich. There is a worrying agenda not being opposed or mentioned by either Labour or the Unions, and that is to force as many people as possible into work, especially targeting the elderly, sick and disabled (hence the mandatory Work and Health Programme). And either Labour nor the Unions are saying anything about the destruction of the Welfare State, including the NHS but particularly also our Social Security system. It is no longer possible to go “on the sick”. The Tories have abolished Sick notes and scrapped Incapacity Benefit, as well as increasing State Pension age. Anyone and everyone now are expected to work and are deemed fit enough to do so regardless of age and infirmity. You can get a ‘Fit note’ that says what you fit to do, and make a claim for LCWRUC (Low Capability fir Work Related Universal Credit) but which means you are still in the DWP SYSTEM, still answerable to a Jobcentre Work Coach and possibly still expected to engage with the world of work to some degree, to do some limited amount of jobsearch and attend jobcentre appointments/interviews as required, or face a WCA (Work Capability Assessment). The Tories are obsessed with getting even the elderly, early Retirees, sick and disabled people into work or hounded to be constantly seeking/applying for work, even though we have a near full employment and those people are not fit to work. And no one is saying anything about it.’
This is true, and getting worse. I’ve noticed the populist right – GB News and the New Culture Forum, for example, lamenting that there are supposedly so many millions claiming sickness or disability and demanding that they be used to supply the necessary labour they can no longer get from migrant workers after Brexit.
A vital part of this system is the Work Capability Tests, brought in by Blair as part of the welfare to work programme. This is a system of tests designed to ascertain whether the claimant is genuinely ill or disabled, or can do some work and so is ineligible for benefit. It was set up on the advice, and following now discredited scientific research of the American private health insurance company, Unum. Which company saw the increased numbers of people thrown off benefits under its system as a huge opportunity to sell them its wares. Blair’s establishment of the Work Capability Tests followed similar legislation, again introduced on the advice of Unum, by John Major’s Tories under Peter Lilley. The system assumes that a certain percentage of claims are always fraudulent, and so this number must always be found fit for work. Even when they blatantly aren’t. There have been cases where terminally ill people have been declared so, and where stupid assessors have asked amputees when they expect their limbs to grow back. And seriously ill and disabled people have died after being thrown off the benefit they need to live on. There have also been a large number of successful appeals.
I wrote the pamphlet when Mike was struggling to get the stats for the number of people who had thus died after being denied benefit. And it was a struggle – the DWP did everything it could not to give Mike the information, although he succeeded in getting some. And the answer of the Tory government to the very many successful appeals has been to introduce legislation to make challenging DWP decisions very difficult, such as denying claimants legal aid.
It’s a profoundly wicked system, but it appeals to the right-wing, tabloid mentality that everyone on sick pay or welfare generally are evil scroungers, as opposed to the ‘hard-working people’ the Tories laud, but never reward. Unfortunately, I have no illusion that Starmer, if he gets in power, will ever reform it.
Reading through my pamphlet Privatisation: Killing the NHS reminded me just how much Tony Blair to did privatise the health service, and it is making me rethink my membership of the Labour party. To be honest, I’ve been wondering whether I should continue with it for some little while now. Starmer has expelled and purged so many decent people on the pretext of combatting anti-Semitism – a farcical statement when so many of his victims have been proud, self-respecting Jews – and broken so many of his election pledges that I no longer feel that Labour truly represents Britain’s working people and their interests. Angela Rayner, in one of her messages to party members, described Labour as a ‘pro-business, pro-worker party’. Well, Mussolini said the same thing. In his speeches and writings he stated that private enterprise was the economic and social foundation of the state, while at the same boasting about the inclusion of his Fascist trade unions to represent working people in his corporate state. But while I see considerable concern to win over and protect and defend big business by Starmer, I see precious little interest in protecting ordinary working men and women. Starmer is, like Blair, a Thatcherite corporatist. And reading through the pamphlet again brought home to me the similarities between the election of Tony Blair in 1997 and the forecast electoral landslide expected to sweep Starmer to power.
In opposition, Blair claimed to oppose the privatisation of the NHS and posed as its protector against the Tories. Once in power, he continued and advanced the Thatcherite project of its privatisation. Starmer has also posed as the health service’s defender. A month or so ago the Labour shop was selling NHS branded merchandise. Blair closed down so many local hospitals that the Conservatives under Iain Duncan Smith and David Cameron posed as the NHS’ defenders and led protests against the closures. Of course, as soon as Cameron got his Eton-educated and abused hindquarters in Downing Street, the mask came off and it was back to privatising the NHS. But Blairism, as the good lady from Stop Starmer on the Not the Andrew Marr Show pointed out, is at the heart of Starmer’s thinking and ideology. Before they started selling the NHS merchandise, they were also trying to sell Blair and Brown branded tat. And for £125 Labour members in the southwest could go to a fund-raising dinner with Peter Mandelson. Well, colour me unimpressed! And there’s a certainly similarity in Blair’s and Starmer’s relationship with the trade unions. Blair threatened to cut ties with them when he took over the Labour party. Now many unions are thinking of disaffiliating from Labour because of the direction Starmer is taking the party. Starmer, like Blair, is doing his level best to turn Labour into another Tory party. And like Blair, he seems to believe he can still rely on working class support, because the proles don’t have anywhere else to go.
But there are new left-wing alternatives emerging. Mike, who was shamefully forced out of the party by the highly contrived anti-Semitism smears and libels, has advocated voting for independent Labour candidates. Politicos forced out of the party by Starmer, who have decided to stand against the official Starmerite candidate. In Bristol many former Labour supporters may end up voting for the Greens. They’re only just behind Labour on the city council, and their woman, Carol Denyer, is expected to take the new Bristol Central constituency at next year’s elections. If so, she will become the second Green MP. The Trades Union & Socialist Coalition have also stood candidates in Bristol. And I’d be very interested indeed if Transform, ex-Labour activists calling for a new party of the left, form a group in Bristol. I’ve also had some commenters here suggest that I might consider voting SDP, because they’re economically left but right-wing socially. But I don’t think they’re in Bristol, apart from the fact that they split the Labour vote in the 1980s and their then head, David Owen, said he’d bee willing to join Thatcher’s government.
I can also see Starmer’s turn to the right leading many working people to vote for the populist right – Reform and Lozza Fox’s Reclaim. Sociologically, most UKIP supporters were working class Whites in theeir fifties and above, who felt left-behind by the political parties. Brexit is becoming increasingly unpopular, and this has upset the right-wing comedians on GB News, as the dulcet-voiced Irishman Maximilien Robespierre has shown in a video he posted today. But this could be replaced as a rallying point for their disaffection by immigration and the Channel Migrants.
Either way, I’m very conscious of the parallels between Blair and Starmer, and especially Starmer’s questionable stance on the NHS. He claims to defend it, as Blair did, but says he wants to use private healthcare companies to clear the backlog. Which is what the Tories are also saying. And his great, molten hero, Blair, has demanded more private involvement in the NHS.
Blair fooled us the first time. I don’t want to be fooled again by Starmer.
The last few years in Britain have not been easy for most of us, but we’ve learned invaluable lessons that we won’t soon forget. Armed with this knowledge, we can build a brighter future out of this era of perpetual crisis.
The vote last night concluded with Parliament approving the privileges committee report on Johnson’s lies 354-7, and only five Conservatives dared vote against it. Sunak remains in No. 10 for now, but he’ll have a lot to answer for in the coming by elections and the imminent general one.
What comes next, then? It’s hard to say for sure, but there are three important lessons we’ve learned from this chaotic time. If all of us – both in Britain’s political class and the general public – can internalise them, we may be able to start fixing all the damage that’s been done.
1. Leaders should believe in real policies and govern accordingly.
In more than one sense, Johnson never left the campaign trail. From igniting the flames of the culture war to pretending that he had all of the solutions to complex issues (without giving specifics), it’s almost as if he never intended to govern at all.
Put bluntly, politicians should believe in things – and do them. Johnson evidently believed in absolutely nothing, preferring Old Etonian bluster and self-serving corruption to a fleshed out political agenda. The result was a government that served only monied interests, bloated egos, and the traffickers of mistruth that kept the whole charade going.
Instead of striking fear and anger in people’s hearts with divisive rhetoric, leaders should appeal to them with ideas that will make their lives better, and keep their commitments once in office.
2. Politicians must be accountable to the public and in touch with the reality most people face.
Now, more than ever, Westminster is an insulated bubble detached from the realities of most people. Nothing proved that more than Partygate, where Westminster insiders obnoxiously and deliberately subverted the rules the rest of the country was following.
It’s even worse than that though. Boris Johnson’s government (and its successors) continuously subvert the will of the majority. Liz Truss’ absurdly unpopular mini-budget crashed the economy and put people’s real lives in jeopardy. Johnson and his successors have failed to tackle inequality, wage stagnation, child poverty, the cost of living, climate commitments, and more – and no one has accepted any accountability for those monstrous failures in leadership.
In both their personal conduct and their policy objectives, leaders need to be answerable for their actions. Not only should the ministerial code be binding, but the public needs more mechanisms to call out the government when it gets things wrong.
3. Our outdated political system is jeopardising democracy and our rights.
This point likely isn’t a new one to you if you’ve been an Open Britain subscriber for a while. It must be reiterated, however, that failing institutions, crumbling safeguards, and resource-starved watchdogs made the Johnson era worse than it had to be.
If it weren’t for First Past the Post, illicit donations from shady sources, and sophisticated digital campaigning techniques, it’s entirely possible we’d be on a completely different political trajectory. We wouldn’t have factional party divisions, Russian oligarchs buying influence, or Ministers reading out queue cards from Tufton St think-tanks.
Most importantly, there were no barriers to prevent the erosion of our rights and freedoms. Johnson et al were able to hack away at the right to protest, raise barriers to voting, and neuter the Electoral Commission’s ability to call out foul-play.
In the future, we must demand a real democracy. That is one where our rights can’t be toggled on and off, our institutions protect us from harm, and our politicians are elected in a way that proportionally reflects the real will of the people.
These three lessons apply to all political parties. We won’t have a meaningful way forward until we can adequately address what went wrong under Johnson’s premiership. Just as with the Covid Inquiry, which seeks to learn lessons to prevent future pandemics, we too must learn lessons to prevent a future Boris Johnson – or something much worse.
The upcoming by-elections will be a crucial barometer of how hard Sunak’s government is being hit by this round of Johnson-induced chaos. Key Johnson allies in (once) safe Conservative seats will be put to the test. As we gear up for another General Election, we need to put the lessons of the Johnson era front and centre.
It’s not too late to build a political system where we all have a real voice. Unfortunately, nothing like that was ever achieved without a difficult fight. We’re committed to seeing it through – and we’re glad you’re with us.
All the best,
Matt Gallagher
The Open Britain team’
All this is exactly correct, and I believe Mike and others also made the point that, under Johnson, the Tories didn’t govern. They carried on campaigning and making empty promises, but they never actually did anything. Or not anything that would benefit ordinary, working people. The structure of British politics needs reforming so we get proper politicians with beliefs and a commitment to the public weal, not venal grifters, and that our democratic rights and liberties are robustly protected from their depredations.
More satirical art. Mike suggested to me the other day that a good cartoon would be of Keir Starmer coming home and taking off his wig, as the stiffness of his current hairstyle makes it look like it could be artificial. I’m sure it’s all natural up there on the Labour leader’s bonce, but it’s a funny idea. So, I’ve drawn this piccie of Starmer as a baldie relaxing in an armchair, wig on a headstand, between two pictures of his favourite politicos – Tony Blair and Maggie Thatcher. Meanwhile, on the floor a group of mice listen to one of them wearing an identical wig make a speech. Hope you enjoy it!
Oh ho! Here’s another right-wing explicitly demanding a socialist policy. Thatcherite heads will explode! That Preston Journalist is another right-wing journalist, but with a particular hatred against Nicola Sturgeon, whom he calls ‘Jeanette McKrankie’, and the SNP. But yesterday evening I found a post of his where he bitterly criticised the water companies for profiteering while people suffer in the heat and worry about paying for their drinking water. He stated that he was surprised himself by saying, but the water companies should be nationalised. They were mostly foreign owned, they didn’t invest in properly repairing and maintaining the water infrastructure, so that millions of gallons of water were wasted in leaks. He specifically mentioned an old lady who had to wait an extremely long time before someone from the water company fixed her pipes. The profits from the companies were instead given to their foreign bosses and shareholders. In the meantime, not only had the infrastructure not been maintained, but they had even been selling off reservoirs, just as those in use were running dry.
This is exactly what left-wing critics like Mike have been telling everyone for years. This is exactly why Jeremy Corbyn put the nationalisation of the utilities in the Labour manifesto – and why the Tories attacked him as a Commie and Tory infiltrator Starmer broke the pledge as soon as he could.
I am very definitely not a fan of Toby Young. He’s a very right-wing Tory with nasty eugenicist views. I think he’s part of the Spectator crew and something of a sleazeball, as Hill Street Blues’ officer Mick Belcher would describe him. If memory serves me right, he was one of the people behind a proposed free university, which collapsed a few years ago. Tweezer appointed him to the body that’s supposed to represent Britain’s students, despite the fact that it’s been at least a couple of decades since he was one. He got into Private Eye a few years ago for attending a eugenics conference at one of the London universities. Along with him were members of various American far right groups, who believed that race really did define intelligence and Blacks were biologically less bright than the rest of us. They also weren’t in favour of the welfare state, for the old, old reason that it’s a waste a money supporting people who can’t fend for themselves. In other words, some of the people there could be reasonably described as Nazis.
And his attitude to women leaves much to be desired. A few years ago he managed to cause mass disgust on Twitter or one of the social media platforms by describing how he watched female MPs on TV, commenting on their busts. Back in the 90s he wrote a piece for GQ about how he had been a ‘lesbian for a day’. He then revealed in the article that he’d dressed up in drag and then decided to go trolling through New York’s lesbian bars looking for a snog. He had successfully passed himself off as gay woman in two of them, before he was discovered in a third and had to beat a hasty retreat. Or been thrown out. Whatever. This is the kind of antics many lesbians are complaining about from trans-identified men, or possibly straight men claiming to be trans. They object to clearly biological men demanding romance or sex from them because they claim to be trans. There have been transwomen giving presentations on ‘Breaking the cotton ceiling’, which means getting into lesbians’ cotton underwear. Graham Linehan, formerly the writer behind Father Ted and now an anti-Trans activist, has remarked that one of the lesbian dating sites is actually full of bearded men, who are about as feminine as he is, all claiming to be trans. Well, Tobes tried this trick decades ago. But I wouldn’t like to see him as any kind of trans pioneer.
But his Free Speech Union does have a point.
Young and the others set this up to protect people from persecution because of their views. These are mostly individuals, whose views or comments are deemed offensive because of racism, sexism, homophobia or anti-trans. He appeared on a video on GB News talking about the work the Free Speech Union had done defending two such individuals. One was a railway worker, who’d been sacked because of a comment he’d posted on social media. He lived in one of the towns up north with a large Muslim community. After the lockdown was lifted, he posted that it was a relief no longer having to live in an alcohol-free Muslim caliphate. Someone complained to the company, and he was sacked. The Free Speech Union, however, took up his case, and an industrial tribunal declared in his favour that he was a victim of unfair dismissal and awarded him damages. The second case was a Christian woman, who offended woke sensibilities by stating that the Christian ideal of marriage should be the heterosexual one of a man and woman. Now I’d say that this was perfectly correct and normal, and that holding such a view doesn’t mean that you automatically hate gays or people in same-sex marriages. I’m absolutely sure you can hold such a traditional view of marriage, while recognising that gays also have the right to marry and for their marriages to be respected. But this traditional view was too much for someone, and she suffered because of it.
Now I realise that many people do disagree with these views, and particularly with the railway worker’s comments. It is islamophobic. But that’s the point. For free speech to mean anything, it has to include offensive or unpleasant speech. Free speech that only permits approved speech whether by the authorities or the populace, is no such thing. I’m not a free speech absolutist. There have to be limits, which in my opinion includes holocaust denial, the promotion of paedophilia or which urges people to commit other crimes, like incitement to riot. I’d also include real incitement to racial hatred, though my fear is that such reasonable legislation has been broadened too far to include comments which someone simply finds offensive, rather than which genuinely threatens the safety of Blacks and other people of colour. The guy’s remark is offensive and tasteless but not, I think, really worth his job.
Young explained that the Union would like to pass legislation protecting people from being sacked for their views, if they expressed them as private individuals and not as work or representatives of a company or organisation. He also talked about getting the trade unions to back such legislation, considering that the trade unions were founded to protect workers talking about their companies’ pay and conditions. Well, it was a bit more than that. They were founded to fight for workers’ pay and conditions, but yes, opposing victimisation for one’s views is part of that.
He also proposed having a two-year limit on what could be used to attack someone from their web history. Here I definitely agree with him. There have been a number of cases where politicos, celebrities and ordinary mortals have been embroiled in scandals because of something they said online a few years ago, sometimes when they were much younger. Quite often it’s people, who’ve said something unpleasant or bigoted about people from ethnic minorities and gays, sometimes when they were very young. Private Eye has done this several times. Quite often they’ve printed pieces showing that whatever such a politician, industrialist or media figure thinks now, back in the day he or she had very different views. Sometimes very far back, like in the ’80s or ’90s. People change, and don’t necessarily hold the same views they had when they were in their teens or twenties.
But another reason I’m prepared to give such legislation my approval is because it might stop some of the persecution by the witch hunters. The stock in trade of persecutory groups like the woefully misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and David Collier and the GnasherJew troll farm is going through their targets’ internet history looking for anything they can misrepresent as anti-Semitism. They’ve done it to a lot of people, many of them Jews and firm opponents of anti-Semitism. They did it to the great Jackie Walker, a self-respecting Jew by faith and blood and a very committed anti-racist activist. Jackie had been discussing the involvement of Jewish financiers – who she explicitly stated were members of her own people – in the slave trade. This is historic fact, and Jackie, as a proper historian and academic, has produced an enormous amount of mainstream scholarship by respected and respectable historians to support it. She has also made the obvious point that these financiers were working for Christian, European kings and states, with whom the ultimate responsibility lies. Again, perfectly correct. But she left out a word, which allowed the CAAS to misrepresent her grotesquely as an anti-Semite. That, and the Jewish Labour Movement secretly recording some of her perfectly reasonable comments about commemorating other groups’ holocausts, like the slave trade, during a workshop on commemorating the Holocaust, has led to her being expelled from the Labour party and receiving the most horrific abuse.
Another victim of the witch hunters was a perfectly innocent Jewish lady in Devon. She was mentioned in an online film Mike and other Corbyn-supporting peeps appeared on promoting a documentary refuting the accusation that Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-Semite. That film opened with a group of venerable rabbis in long beards, dark coats and broad-brimmed hats stating very clearly that Corbyn was no such thing. Many of the speakers, including Mike himself, were victims of the witch hunt and what looks to yours truly as gross libel. One of these wretched witch hunting groups had posted a map of the locations of anti-Semites, and this lady and her address were on it. As a result, she not only received abuse but her car was firebombed.
This is what is called ‘stochastic terrorism’.
This is the name given to the type of online activism when someone deliberately posts comments that will rile people up against a particular group or individual to the point where they may physically attack them. But the remarks that provoke and encourage the assault are carefully phrased so that the person making them can always disavow responsibility: ‘T’wasn’t anything I said, your honour. It’s nothing to do with me and I didn’t intend anything like it should happen.’ Except, of course, they did. As in my view was the case with this lady.
Toby Young is a Tory with deeply unpleasant views. But I do think the Free Speech Union has a point and deserves support.
Especially if it prevents malign witch hunters doxing innocent people, leading to attacks on them and their property.
The conspiracy and parapolitics magazine :Lobster has a new website with a different format. But fortunately it’s still publishing very informed news and comments about the covert political machinations that are rarely reported in the mainstream press, and which the mainstream media and the political establishment would quite often very much like to hush up. And one of these pieces of news, as discussed in the ‘News from the Bridge’ column in the magazine’s current issue, is that Lord Levy is once again abroad in the Labour party obtaining Israeli money for the Labour party. This was the situation about a quarter of a century ago after Blair bumped into Levy at a social gathering at the Israeli embassy. Levy arranged for Blair to get funding from the Israelis and Zionist Jewish businessmen in Britain. This allowed the future war criminal to stay independent of the union’s funding and pursue his programme of turning Labour into a centre-right party based on Thatcherism.
Rather more interesting, however, is the article’s remarks about the current state of the Labour party’s finances. These have declined drastically from the heady days when Corbyn was its leader. Then the party had a membership so large it dwarfed the Tories, making it the largest socialist party in Europe. Its finances were correspondingly extremely healthy too, as these members supported the party through their subscriptions. The Blairites’ campaign to purge the party of socialists and critics of Israel has resulted in a catastrophic fall in membership through decent people being smeared and thrown out of the party as anti-Semites, and other, left-wing members simply walking away due to the Blairites and Starmer taking the party sharply to the right. And they’ve made it very clear that they don’t want traditional Labour people as supporters and activists, as they regard them as Commies, Trotskyites and worse. No, they want to make the party safe for nice Thatcherite neoliberals, who will make the right noises about combating racism, prejudice and so on without necessarily doing anything about them.
But it seems that the loss of the party’s members isn’t the only the reason Labour’s finances are in trouble. Apparently, much of its finances is going to pay the lawyers for their role in defending the party from legal action brought about by the purges. This is no doubt one of the reasons that I, and doubtless other remaining Labour party members, get emails and letters from the party every so often begging for donations. I haven’t responded to them for a number of reasons, one of which is that the party wouldn’t be in its dire financial situation if it hadn’t treated its mass membership and supporters with such absolute contempt that they were either driven out or simply resigned because its leadership no longer represented them.
And there’s an additional racial factor in all this. Very many of the people smeared as anti-Semites and purged were Jews. There are statistics arguing that Jews formed the majority. These were decent, self-respecting folk, who were targeted simply because they didn’t toe the line on supporting Israel and its persecution of the Palestinians. This is sectarian anti-Semitism. It came from that section of the Jewish community which fancies itself as British Jewry’s ‘establishment’ – the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Chief Rabbinate and such rags as the Jewish Chronicle. In fact, as Jewish bloggers and commenters have made very clear, these organisations represent only a declining fraction of the Jewish community. The Board of Deputies really only represents the United Synagogue, whose members also included some of the journos attacking Corbyn in the lamestream media. The I‘s writer, Simon Kellner, was one such, and there were other writers, who appeared in the papers after whom was the note so-and-so ‘is a member of the United Synagogue’. In the fact the Jewish community is as diverse in its members religious and political views as just about everyone else in British society generally. From what I understand, Judaism never has and isn’t a monolithic community and the only people who’ve ever claimed it is are genuine anti-Semites, like the Nazis.
The definition of anti-Semitism the witch-hunters use conflates anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism. But the best definition of anti-Semitism is simply hatred of Jews simply for being Jews, regardless of politics or race. And I’m dam’ sure that the Jews purged as anti-Semites by David Evans and Starmer are very aware and have more knowledge of real anti-Semitism than they’d like. Many of them are the victims of real anti-Semitic abuse and violence, or they lost family members in the Holocaust. I read somewhere, I’ve forgotten where, that half of British Jews had relatives murdered by the Nazis. This makes a mockery of the party’s policy of demanding those suspended for anti-Semitism to attend retraining on it by groups like the Jewish Labour Movement, formerly Paole Zion.
One of the latest victims of the purges is Jonathan Rosenhead, emeritus professor operations at the London School of Economics. Prof. Rosenhead is Jewish, but that hasn’t stopped the apparatchiks of suspending him for anti-Semitism. They’ve also told him that, despite his lifetime of political activism and his ethnicity/ religion, he has to go for compulsory retraining so he can be told how to think about anti-Semitism. I suspect that Prof Rosenhead could probably give the fanatics running the retraining course lessons on anti-Semitism, what it is, how it arises and how it must be fought, rather than have to listen to their nonsense.
The Lobster article, in fact, gives decent people two reasons not to donate to the Labour party. One is that the money from those donations are going the party’s official, sectarian anti-Semitism in smearing and purging Jewish members, as well as decent gentiles. The other is that the donations are going to the lawyers who fought the party’s victims when they tried to seek justice through the courts. People like Mike, for example, who tried to sue them for breach of contract.
As far as I’m concerned, these are reasons enough to want to tell Starmer or whoever where to stick it the next time they send a message appealing for donations.
They are in this financial mess because of their hostility and persecution of decent people, and I object to being asked to collude in this persecution by funding their legal team. If they need to pay their legal expenses, then they should do what their victims have been forced to do. They should pay it out of their own personal finances, rather than expect the very members they despise to do it for them.
We are pleased to be inviting members in the South West to attend anti-semitism awareness training from the Jewish Labour Movement. It will take place over Zoom on Wednesday 6th July at 7pm.
Please email’ ————–‘to register and the meeting link will be sent closer to the date.
Best wishes,
Labour South West’
I should cocoa! The very cheek! Just in case you need reminding, the Jewish Labour Movement was one of the Jewish organisations deeply involved in the witch-hunt against Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters in the Labour party for alleged ‘anti-Semitism’. I put ‘anti-Semitism’ inverted commas because these organisations, including those outside the party like the Chief Rabbinate and the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism were not, in my opinion, genuinely concerned with anti-Semitism in its true and original sense. This is a hatred of Jews, simply for being Jews, regardless of political or religious opinions on their part. I have made this point again and again on this blog, citing some of the 19th century founders and leaders of modern organised anti-Semitism in Wilhelm Marr’s Bund Antisemiten or League of Anti-Semites. The Jewish Labour Movement used to be Paole Zion, Workers of Zion, and was virtually moribund until a decade or so ago when in received an injection of cash from person or persons unknown. The Labour Party has always had Jewish members and the parliamentary party has, or used to have, slightly more than the Tories. There are a number of other Jewish organisations in the Labour party and on the left, such as Jewish Voice for Labour and the Jewish Socialist Group, not to mention Jewdas, with whom Jeremy Corbyn spent a Passover Seder. Corbyn also received strong backing from the Haredi Jews, who believe it is their duty to stay in galut, exile, until they are called back to Israel by the Messiah. In the meantime, they are to cooperate with the peoples in whose lands they reside to build better societies and to ‘pray for the health of the city’ as commanded by the Prophet in the Hebrew Bible. And I’ve no doubt there are many other Jews in the Labour party, who are not party of any Jewish organisation, because, like Dr. Jonathan Miller, they consider themselves Brits, who happen to be Jewish, and don’t want to be part of a minority.
But these Jews and their organisations are not recognised as properly Jewish and are actively opposed and maligned by the Jewish Labour Movement. The JLM’s focus, like the other organisations behind the witch-hunt, is to combat anti-Zionism and silence any criticism of Israel’s barbarous treatment of the Palestinians. And they do this by smearing their enemies as anti-Semites. And very many of their victims are Jews, which make their claims to be tackling anti-Semitism risible.
Mike was told by the Labour party that he would be allowed to remain in it after he was smeared as an anti-Semite if he attended anti-Semitism training by the JLM. Mike’s only crime was to point out that Ken Livingstone was entirely correct when he said that Adolf Hitler initially supported Zionism. He did. It was the Ha’avara Agreement, a shameful pact with the German Zionists to smuggle German Jews into British mandate Palestine. It was done as a way to cleanse Germany of Jews. The pact was short-lived, but it happened. Mike refused, as he is not and has never been and never will be an anti-Semite and attendance would have been taken as a tacit admission of guilt.
Jackie Walker is another of their victims. They secretly recorded her at workshop to discuss the best ways to commemorate the Holocaust. Holocaust Memorial Day not only commemorates the Jewish Holocaust, but also the many other genocides that have disfigured human history. Walker is a Jew by faith and blood. Her father was a Russian Jews, and so she knows from family experience more than most about real anti-Semitic persecution. Her mother was a Black American civil rights activist, and so was deeply concerned about another form of racial persecution against her people. Walker’s crime was to ask what the event would do about commemorating other holocausts, such as those against Black people. Since the great Black activist and scholar W.E.B. DuBois, many Blacks and White sympathisers have regarded the slave trade and slavery as a Black holocaust. Walker asked a decent question. But for some reason this was regarded as ‘anti-Semitic’ and she was smeared and purged.
I think most severely normal Brits are aware of the dangers of anti-Semitism. The documentaries about the Second World War and the Nazis shown on television necessarily include the Nazi persecution of the Jews and the Shoah. There have been a number of award-winning Hollywood films about the Holocaust and the heroes who rescued Jews, like Schindler’s List, which came out in the ’90s. I also remember the outrage and campaigning on the left in the 70s and 80s against the NF and BNP when they were marching about trying to get votes, and similar fears and disgust when the BNP briefly revived and its noxious leader, Nick Griffin, was invited onto Question Time. There are very many excellent books about the Holocaust, and some of the late Clive James’ best TV criticism is from the 70s when Fascist and Nazi scumbags like Oswald Mosley, Albert Speer and Baldur von Schirach were interviewed on British TV. James expertly took apart their lies and false protestations of innocence to reveal the real malignity underneath.
Part of my undergraduate course in history was on the rise of Fascist and Communist regimes in Europe, and I still have the books I bought during then. I’ve also done some reading on Fascism since then, including on its post-War varieties. I’m also interested in conspiracy theories, the most infamous of which are those about some secret Jewish conspiracy which controls both capitalism, socialism and communism to enslave the White race. These theories became prominent again in the ’90s when they were incorporated into the UFO mythology and the right-wing conspiracy theories about the Illuminati, another group who are supposed to be controlling world events, the economy and politics from behind the scenes. David Icke believed that the world is secretly run by Reptoid aliens. He caused alarm and outrage because he used quotations from the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a Tsarist anti-Semitic forgery, to support his crank ideas. Icke isn’t an anti-Semite, and genuinely seemed to believe that the world was run by extraterrestrials rather than Jews. Other UFO researchers, like the late Bill English, did the same, though when they cited the Protocols they claimed they should be read as talking about the Illuminati, rather than the Jews. Nevertheless these quotations were in danger of making the Protocols seem respectable to the point where a branch of Waterstones in one of the northern towns stocked them.
I totally accept that respectable scholars and lay people have to be very careful when it comes to some of the material on topics like the Nazis and Holocaust. Real anti-Semites and Nazis try to disguise their awful views and attempts to deny or minimise the Holocaust by setting up respectable-sounding magazines. Often they use coded language. For example, a very respectable folklorist wrote a piece in one of the urban folklore magazines back in the ’90s to tell how he’d been taken in by such tactics and to warn other to be on the guard. He had been researching tales of atrocities committed by the Germans during the First World War. He came to the conclusion that one of these, the story that the Kaiser’s troops had crucified a Canadian soldier, was bogus and may have been just allied propaganda. He was then approached by a history magazine with a respectable-sounding title, who asked him if they could reprint his article. He innocently agreed, only to find out later it was a Nazi rag. Its editors were using stories of allied propaganda to suggest that the Holocaust was also nothing but fiction. But as an American judge has ruled, the Holocaust is so well documented that its existence cannot be sanely denied. The scholar was shocked and disgusted, and so wrote the article to let others know about the deception and to be on their guard about similar tactics and approaches.
As for coded language, the believers in a world-wide conspiracy to enslave humanity talk about the globalists, the Illuminati, or the global elite. Sometimes this is innocent of anti-Semitism, and they really are talking about a secretive group of leading politicos, capitalists and so on, which isn’t some Jewish conspiracy. But sometimes it isn’t, and is code for ‘Jews’. I’ve also noticed that while Simon Webb of History Debunked isn’t an anti-Semite or anti-Zionist by any stretch of the imagination, some of his commenters do seem to be. There’s a lot of talk by them about the Great Replacement, the idea that the Jews are trying to destroy the White race with non-White immigrate. There’s also comments about ‘small hatted people’, or ‘people with small hats’, which sounds very much like its about the Jews, referring to the kippa skullcaps many observant Jews wear.
Sometimes you really do need to be careful and be informed so you’re not taken in by such language and deceit. But the Jewish Labour Movement won’t help you.
They’re concerned to discredit criticism of Israel using literary criticism and citing entirely bogus conspiracy theories about the Jews from the past. Remember when Shai Masot was caught plotting with a senior British civil servant to decide who should or shouldn’t be in the cabinet? This could rightly be called a conspiracy. But if you called it that, or described the two as plotting, you were the using an anti-Semitic trope because of all the genuinely stupid, poisonous and entirely mythical anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in the past. The same if you report the atrocities committed by the Israeli state and IDF against Palestinians, especially if they can get in a reference to the Blood Libel, that Jews sacrificed Christian children to use their blood in the matzoh bread at Passover. This vile medieval smear has been responsible for numerous anti-Semitic pogroms. However, the Israeli state now is manipulating its memory to close down reasonable criticism. When the IDF shot a Palestinian woman a few years ago, one of the respectable newspaper cartoonists produced picture of her burning in the fireplace while Netanyahu, the-then president of Israel, hobnobbed with the US president. This was promptly denounced by the Israelis as anti-Semitic, because the fire recalled the gas ovens of the Holocaust. Similarly, when Gerald Scarfe drew a cartoon of the Israelis building their wretched wall to keep the Palestinians out using Arab blood, the Israelis again demanded a retraction and an apology because the blood supposedly referred to the infamous Blood Libel. And so another piece of entirely reasoned, reasonable and absolutely not anti-Semitic criticism and comment was again silenced. And this is what the Jewish Labour Movement also does in its events about anti-Semitism. They have nothing to do with making people genuinely aware of the threat of anti-Semitism and the way it is coded. They are all about discrediting justifiable criticism of Israel through using literary devices to make them apparently connected to past anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and innuendo.
I have absolutely no intention of going to this monstrous charade. If I want information and guidance on genuine anti-Semitism, I’d try to consult the JLM’s Jewish victims – Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, Martin Odoni and others, self-respecting decent people, who have been smeared by the anti-Semitism witch-hunters as self-hating. Even though these people are Jewish and have fought against anti-Semitism and other forms of racism. Or I would contact Marc Wadsworth, the Black anti-racism activist. He was smeared as an anti-Semite, again using literary tropes, because he caught a Jewish Labour MP passing on a party brochure to a Torygraph hack. Oh, it was the trope of the disloyal Jew, they claimed. This was despite the fact that Wadsworth didn’t know the politico was Jewish, and had in the 1980s worked with the Board of Deputies about passing legislation to protect Jews against genuine anti-Semitic violence by the NF or BNP. Or I’d go to someone like Mike, who can tell fact from fiction, well-researches his stories and who was asked by a Jewish friend at College to be one of the readers in her performance commemorating the Holocaust’s victims.
All of the above have a far better understanding of anti-Semitism, or a more honest one than the Jewish Labour Movement and its highly ideological, distorted view of what counts as Jew hatred.
I’ve said it before: Judaism is a religion. The Jews are a people. Zionism is an ideology. Israel is a state. Judaism and its people are not synonymous with the modern state of Israel. Under a free society, all ideologies should be able to be examined and criticised, including Zionism. States can and do commit horrible atrocities, for which they should criticised. Israel should not be an exception merely because its people are Jews. Only hatred of Jews, simply for being Jews, should count as anti-Semitism.
Fight racism! Fight anti-Semitism! And don’t be taken in by bogus propaganda like that of the Jewish Labour Movement.
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