The Observer, like most of the rest of the ‘MSM’ on Sunday, has joined in the mass delirium – or April Fool’s jape – of further attacks on Labour and its leader Jeremy Corbyn over, well, over almost anything you could think of.
The idea of a ‘Labour antisemitism problem’ has, of course, featured prominently – in spite of the revelation of the Campaign against Antisemitism’s own YouGov data showing that antisemitism among Labour supporters has fallen dramatically since Corbyn became leader.
The Observer’s article, whose headline is shown above, claims that ‘leading Jewish donor’ David Garrard – “who has donated about £1.5m since 2003” – has left the party in disgust over “the most blatant acts of antisemitism“.
But those descriptions are not quite exhaustively representative of Mr Garrard’s history with the Labour Party and its leader, as he has been a consistent opponent of Corbyn dating back to before even the Islington man’s first leadership victory – and even offered to fund a breakaway ‘centrist’ party.
2015
Mr Garrard had been a significant donor to the Labour Party under Ed Miliband, but in the leadership contest following Miliband’s resignation in 2015, he backed Andy Burnham – to the tune of £25,000: – Burnham’s biggest donor of his campaign.
Almost as soon as Corbyn won the 2015 leadership election – and before Corbyn had a chance to have an impact on anything, including antisemitism – Garrard ‘called in‘ a two million pound loan he had made to the Labour Party years earlier:
2016
In 2016, even before the ‘chicken coup’ MPs had announced that Owen Smith would be their candidate to challenge Corbyn for the Labour leadership, the Huffington Post reported that Mr Garrard was
currently giving large sums of money to any Labour MP willing to criticise Corbyn. Presumably, with his foe ousted and the party shifted back towards the right, he would recommence pouring the contents of his voluminous pockets into the party.
When the leadership contest began, Garrard gave centrist challenger Owen Smith the same donation he had given to Burnham in 2015 – another £25,000:
2017
Unsuccessful in his support for Smith, when the new year turned Garrard looked for other MPs to benefit from his largess. In March 2017, the S*n announced that Garrard had given £25,000 to former leadership challenger Yvette Cooper – who at the time was widely rumoured to be preparing another leadership challenge but was reported to have sacked campaign staff when Corbyn destroyed Theresa May’s majority.
But the same article also reported that Garrard had not given a penny to central Labour funds since Corbyn became leader:
Mr Garrard’s plans had also begun to move to other pastures. In May last year – as Labour started to devour the Tories’ electoral lead – Mr Garrard floated the idea of a breakaway party, stating that he would ‘willingly support’ a new party if a majority of ‘centrist’ Labour MPs would join it:
After the election, as the UK Establishment reeled in the wake of the ‘Corbyn surge’, Mr Garrard then repeated his offer:
While the desire for centrism features prominently in Mr Garrard’s announcements, at no point on previous occasions does he appear, at least publicly, to have mentioned antisemitism as a reason for his wish to stop funding Labour or to set up a new party.
This does not mean, of course, that Mr Garrard’s announced motives now are anything other than sincere.
However, it can safely be said that the the media’s portrayal of his decision to leave the Labour Party has failed to include the background of an opposition to Corbyn as party leader that began even before Corbyn was the leader.
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Ohhh please , pleeease go and fuck off and start a nue party call it what U like , perhaps Chukka ( away your vote ) United?
and take all those Tory lite MPs with you , it will be a pleasure to run our genuine Labour candidates against them in the elections .
We really don’t want the arseholes money!!! The Labour party should only be funded by the people who want a Socialist government!!! Maybe it should be called Chukka him outa the party united!!!
BYEEEEEEE!
Great research, thanks
We can do without them. At least that way we get candidates who have integrity and who are really for the many not the few.
Just sent £10 to Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour for local elections.
Volunteered to do a second round of leafleting in my area.
Looks like I may be out in the snow, but have steel capped boots so should be fine Ha! Ha! Solidarity!
Isn’t this all far too reminiscent of the departure of Michael Foster, another donor / outspoken critic of Jeremy Corbyn?
History repeats itself, especially when poorly scripted.
The Labour Party’s takeover by media savvy creeps has been largely undone by Jeremy and his supporters, though not to universal acclaim, it would seem =)
That Guardian sub-heading should have read:
‘Sir David Garrard voices faux dismay at party leadership’s conduct….’.
I think we can take it as a given that Mr Garrard was only ever backing a Labour Party which was working for the interests of ‘the few’, and NOT one working for the interests of ‘the many’.
Funny, isn’t it, how he waited until over a week after the ‘mural’ story broke before announcing this. Couldn’t be anything to do with the anti-Corbynistas wanting to stretch it out and keep it all going for as long as possible – ie it all being premeditated and pre-planned? No, no, no, surely not! Perish the thought!!!
Just this moment came across the following in the Comments section of an anti-Corbyn article in The Times:
Ken P 13 hours ago
@Skwawk Box The Labour Party is unlikely to miss you.
“and we know where you live!”
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
It’s been reported to the paper with a demand to provide the subscriber’s full details to the police
Regards my post above, I was just browsing through an article on The Times website with the headline ‘Labour has been lost to fools and crackpots’, and with the sub-headline ‘My party is led by a man who prefers to entrench division on every occasion instead of searching for common ground’, and after reading a few paragraphs (of glaringly obvious black propaganda), I wondered who the author of the article – Janice Turner – was, having never come across her before. And because of the sub-heading – ie the ‘My party’ bit, I was wondering if she was a Labour MP (that I’d never heard of before). So I was scrolling quickly down to the end of the article to see if it said anything more about her there, and inadvertently went past the end, and just happened to come to rest where the above comment was, and my initial thought was that someone is making out that it was a comment left by someone on skwawkbox, but having gone back and looked again, I see it was in response to a comment that ‘Skwawk Box’ posted.
Phew!
And I should just point out that a few months ago – whilst doing some research and attempting to check out a Times related article and coming up against their paywall – there was an offer to sign up for two free articles a week, so that’s what I did.
Anyway, it appears that Janice Turner is a Times journalist, at least that’s what she’s described as officially, but if it is actually *her* that’s writing this stuff, then she is no journalist……… she is a black propagandist. And very, very good at it too. The again, it’s so glaringly obvious that it IS, that you’d have to be pretty naive to be taken in by any of it. And I’ve come to realise since I signed up, that just like the Mail and the Express, the Times has it’s shills posting comments in the Comments section to reinforce their propaganda AND attack and undermine and dismiss and ridicule comments – and the person making them – that are contrary to their agenda.
NB Propagandists love to turn things on their head and present them as the very opposite of what they are. A perfect example is her sub-heading: ‘My party is led by a man who prefers to entrench division on every occasion instead of searching for common ground’’, when in reality he – and the situation he finds himself in – is exactly the opposite. The reality being that:
My party is led by a man who prefers to find common ground on every occasion but is thwarted by his political enemies who entrench division at every turn.
That’s the trouble with a lot of black propagandists……. they think THEY are so clever, and all us plebs are so dumb and stupid.
Thanks for your observations and analysis, Allan, very interesting, especially the kaleidoscopic auto-reinforcement of MSM sock puppets that are little more than unacknowledged members of staff.
If nothing else, it raises interesting labour-relations questions, such as whether corporate/establishment cyber-scabs get minimum wage and paid holidays?
I guess they probably outsource the work of comment section scabbing to the sort of ‘media consultancy’ that even Cambridge Analytica would regard as a bunch of scuzzy, bottom-feading lowlives.
The MSM is dying, perhaps this and related phenomena are the metaphorical stench of its decay?
He seems to have lost a lot of money in the last ten years supporting people who keep losing!! No wonder he’s angry.
Anti-union laws,privatisation and low taxes stayed untouched under Blair despite the huge majorities which meant there was no political nor ideological challenge to the Tories,which is now what Jeremy and a few others in the Parliamentary Party are offering and the right cannot abide it.
Richard Dennis