Comment
New Shadow DWP Secretary Jonathan Reynolds was criticised last week for his new ‘get out what you put in’ article on benefits, which angry left-wing Labour MPs not only condemned as a breach of the ‘universality’ principle that benefits should be according to need, not ability to ‘put in’, but also said was chillingly close to the ‘deserving poor’ principle used by rich Victorians to deny help to many in desperate need.
But Reynolds was also challenged in March for praising the dire Matt Hancock and Hancock’s daily press briefings – events that have been widely condemned as not only staggeringly misleading but often also outrageously arrogant and insulting to NHS workers who died helping coronavirus victims and to victims of the care-home carnage caused by Tory policies, which Hancock astonishingly described as a ‘protective ring’.
Reynolds lauded Hancock’s ‘very good job keeping Parliament and the country up to date’ – and was politely taken to task by a Twitter user who felt a Labour MP should be doing more to challenge the Tories. And his response was not what might be expected of a Shadow Cabinet Minister:
Mr Reynolds’s support for ‘get out what you pay in’ is not unique among Labour MPs. In fact he used to work as a political assistant for James Purnell, his predecessor as Stalybridge and Hyde MP, whom many consider to be Labour’s architect of the ‘contributory principle’.
Some other Reynolds tweets are worth noting, including earlier indications of a liking for the contributory principle, other comments that will not sit well with the left of the party and a bad misreading of voter sentiment:
Jonathan Reynolds was contacted for comment about his response to the challenge over his praise for Tory Health Secretary Matt Hancock, but did not respond.
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These are the fucking class enemy; a revolutionary spirit is abroad on the streets and these fuckers have gone back to class collaboration. I have a feeling history is about to sweep them away. Couldn’t happen soon enough.
“Couldn’t happen soon enough.”
Or to a more deserving bunch of Quisling collaborators..
You have summed it up brilliantly. So glad I left.
Starmer promised to maintain an anti-austerity agenda and no going back to the days of Tory light. So anytime now he is going to sack Jonathan Reynolds and withdraw the labour whip from him. Even Esther McVey didn’t go as far.
Unfortunately, I believe Starmer most probably agreed with Reynolds in this. We are back to triangulation galore in which politicians tell us what they need to be elected and them do what they want to do.
Yeah, anytime now… 🙂
Labour should reject contributory benefits.
Moreover, Labour members should despair at the sheer lack of ideas that the Labour right is proposing.
These brain dead centrists just keep returning to the same old tory-lite centrists ideas that cost Labour over 5m votes until the marvellous Jeremy Corbyn revitalised left wing thinking and reversed the shrinking vote.
Next up, a We Control Immigration mug a la Ed Miliband. The more things change, the more they stay the same…
Reynolds represents Right Wing Labour mediocrity!
Good old Bristol, showing the way re fighting racism but ‘Lard Arse’ not happy but then again as The Divine Comedy sang “And she walks down the aisle with an arse the size of whole country!”
And Johnson’s latest tweet: “Anti-racist protests taken over by thuggery.”
Is this an admission re Tory Babarisnism in your treatment of the Windrush Generation Mr Johnson?
Some would suggest:
Tory B’stards! B’stards! B’stards!
What Starmer promised, Maria Vazquez, had nothing to do with what he intended to do. He lied a bit, he obfuscated a bit, he selectively released/concealed information; in short he behaved exactly like the worst archetype of a corrupt politician, keeping most of his faces hidden whilst seeming to be all things to all people. He had/has advisers that make Cummings look like an amateur and he didn’t start his leadership bid with the chicken coup treachery, the second referendum revolt or doubtless other things we don’t know about that took place in the last two years. His role in keeping Britain safe for imperialism and capital and his path to the Labour Party leadership was determined long before he even became an MP.
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/06/05/five-questions-for-new-labour-leader-sir-keir-starmer-about-his-uk-and-us-national-security-establishment-links/
Whether he ever becomes PM or has to make way for another we will have to see. What is sure is that in any race, the CIA will be backing at least half the horses, including all the favourites.
Fantastic post. The CIA Endorsement of Sir Erik Armrest was as good as certain when they got David Rockefeller to invite him into/onto the Trilateral Commission.
This is what the Knight of the realm did prior to being a puppet to the oligarchs in the US.
Once appointed, this millionaire “radical lawyer” fitted seamlessly into the state apparatus and the defence of its crimes. Three years earlier, on 22 July 2005, the Metropolitan Police had killed electrician Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent man, with seven shots to the head in an underground train carriage. He had been misidentified as a terrorist in the aftermath of the July 7 London bombings. In 2006, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), under the leadership of DPP Sir Ken MacDonald, refused to prosecute any officer involved.
After the police’s account of what happened on the day was comprehensively demolished, a 2008 inquest jury into Menezes’s killing returned an open verdict, refusing to rule that the police acted lawfully. They had been barred by the coroner from reaching a verdict of unlawful killing. Starmer, as the new DPP, nonetheless approved the decision not to prosecute any of the police officers involved.
He tried to do the same in 2011 in the case of Ian Tomlinson, a father of nine who was brutally attacked by police officer Simon Harwood in 2009. Harwood hit Tomlinson, who was walking with his hands in his pockets in the other direction, across the back of the legs with a baton. Tomlinson was unable to break his fall, causing fatal internal bleeding to his liver shortly afterwards.
Fifteen months later, Starmer announced that Harwood would not be prosecuted. The CPS was forced to proceed a few months later when an inquest jury found that Tomlinson had been unlawfully killed.
In 2011, Starmer was in court to witness the collapse of a trial of environmental activists after the involvement of undercover police officer Mark Kennedy was revealed. The case began the “Spycops” scandal, which has since exposed the extensive, long-term infiltration of left-wing and environmentalist groups by police agents, who grossly abused the rights of campaigners and perverted the course of justice in countless court cases. The CPS is suspected of having been closely involved.
As DPP, Starmer refused to pursue the matter. Referring to an in-house CPS investigation, he accepted the manifestly untrue:
“If Sir Christopher Rose had found systemic problems, then I would quite accept perhaps a retrospective look at all the cases. But he didn’t, he found individual failings.”
Starmer was no less reliable on the crimes of British imperialism. Under his direction, the CPS refused to prosecute MI5 and MI6 personnel in 2010, 2011 and 2012. The agents were suspected of participating in CIA extraordinary rendition programmes and the torture of detainees in Guantanamo Bay and Afghanistan.
Most infamously, in 2013 the CPS pressured Swedish prosecutors into maintaining a fraudulent investigation into WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, as a pretext for securing his arbitrary detention in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Uncovered emails show Starmer’s department writing to their Swedish counterparts, “Don’t you dare get cold feet!”
And they still voted this charlatan as leader!!
You guys know all about the British American Project I take it?
I was sure I’d read that Blair was a BAP alumnus but he’s not listed. Mandelson and Powell are though.
Mostly politicians and journalists, plus a few from “Arts, Media and Others” to muddy the waters.
A bit more about it here: http://www.bilderberg.org/bap.htm#Tom
David McNiven. Thank you very much for the lobster article by Tom Easton. I have saved it to my reading list and will rread it when I have the time and attention to give it the concentration it deserves. Thanks again.
Steve (Richards), this is just to let you know – if you’re still up and about – that I just responded to your Reply (albeit rather belatedly) on the other thread in relation to BLM, the protests, and the MSM:
https://skwawkbox.org/2020/06/06/video-mounted-police-charge-into-black-lives-matter-protesters/#comment-148671
Just on BBC News that Brazil is about to replace UK as second-highest Covid deaths total behind US.
I think Bolsonaro must be cheating to beat Johnson into second place in the stupidity stakes behind Trunt.
Just on the news, Britain’s place no longer in danger: Brazil to stop releasing figures!
Ever cloud David. It is edifying that our silver medal for Most UNnecessay CV Deaths at least goes to another right wing dystopia where if the market doesn’t do it, it doesn’t get done (or considered to be important).
However the ‘leaders table’ for this wretched subject ends, the ONE THING that will be common to all competitors will be an ideological commitment to free-market ideology (and, in the case of the UK, a ferocious hatred of the public sector for its encroachment onto the activities that should be serving the transcendent and eternal
Profit Motive).
So now we are fighting on two fronts for democracy and freedom and now we are fighting our own Labour party for the same.ITs only been a few weeks and we are already in the grip of a right wing enabler the knight,still we can still pay our subscriptions to prop up the PLP for the next few years.and plead for socialism unless we are witchunted out the door and out of the democratic socialist labour party….dont laugh the jokes on us and the vulnerable.!God save the Queen…..Err?
And the difference between the likes of reynolds and the toerags, is?
”Many tenets of the 1945 govt were originally from liberals e.g. full employment (Keynes), welfare state (Beveridge) etc.”
‘Ere, steve h, why don’t you ask if reynolds will back your claim up that they were all pro-EU? I mean, like you, they were liberals after all.
I couldn’t name the year or what was going on at the time or even who their leader was but I remember for a while in the Bliar years thinking the LibDems looked less neoliberal than New Labour.