IMPRESS has decided that four aspects of this article were inaccurate, in a ruling the SKWAWKBOX considers bizarre. As required, that finding is published below:
Notice of Adjudication for an article first published on THE SKWAWKBOX, 13 September 2020 under the headline “Keir Starmer’s record so far in a nutshell makes the bleakest reading”. An IMPRESS ruling has determined that this article fails to distinguish clearly between matters of fact, conjecture, and opinion and that it contains several assertions of fact that are inaccurate. Click here to read the full adjudication by IMPRESS.
The SKWAWKBOX’s comment on the adjudication can be found here.
Keir Starmer’s record so far makes grim reading. So far, the Labour leader has:
• broken Labour rules to withdraw the whip from his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn
• freely discussed Corbyn’s original suspension all over the media while the party tries to ban Labour members from discussing and voting among themselves, on the basis that disciplinary matters are supposedly confidential
• opposed Black Lives Matter protests by condemning the toppling of a slaver’s statue, dismissing out of hand BLM’s ‘defund the police’ campaign and dismissing the entire movement as a mere ‘moment‘, while publishing a token ‘taking the knee’ photo from his LOTO office – a token gesture dismissed by many black activists as meaningless (see video at the end of this article). BLM UK described Starmer as a ‘cop in an expensive suit‘
• opposed wealth taxes, describing them as ‘the wrong thing to do’
• sacked Rebecca Long-Bailey on a pretext
• sent a letter ‘in confidence and in private‘ promising to support Boris Johnson on schools
• opposed teaching unions trying to protect children and their members
• supported tougher treatment of benefit claimants
• rebuked two black women MPs for being on a zoom call and not spotting that another black person on a call of hundreds of people was considered undesirable by the Labour right, but:
• defended a right-wing MP who called for a statue for a notorious antisemite by preventing discussion of her conduct at an NEC meeting because she wasn’t present to defend herself – moments after holding a lengthy discussion, in her absence, about Rebecca Long-Bailey
• spent a six-figure sum on forensic computer specialists to hunt the leakers of a Labour report on racism and sabotage
• set up a ‘diversity’ review panel consisting entirely of white staff
• appointed the least diverse LOTO team in a decade
• sidelined Labour’s most senior ethnic-minority staff member
• three times failed to discipline right-wing MPs for actual antisemitic tweets shortly after sacking Long-Bailey for sharing an accurate article
• refused to defend asylum seekers
• supported Johnson’s haste to lift lockdown that has driven an early second wave
• forced general secretary Jennie Formby out after she kept working for the party while battling cancer
• sacked left-wingers from the Shadow Cabinet after campaigning for election on a promise of unity
• promoted racists and bullies:
– an MP who ‘screamed in the face’ of Labour’s first black woman MP in what witnesses described as ‘disgusting’ and ‘disgraceful’ and which left the victim ‘shell-shocked’
– a front-bencher who had to apologise for discriminatory comments about Gypsy-Roma travellers
– another who boasted of swearing at a black colleague and joined with TV presenters and guests in mocking and laughing at the same colleague’s manner of speech. The same MP was also accused of Islamophobia after comments about disabled Pakistani men and their families
– one who publicly bullied a colleague by instigating a pile-on for not answering a media question about antisemitism and then, when it became clear that the colleague had answered the question, failed to apologise publicly
• run ‘entirely factional‘ meetings of Labour’s National Executive
All these are on top of a general failure to oppose Boris Johnson, instead resorting to telling him to do what he’s doing but more efficiently, while Johnson condemns tens of thousands to death and tanks the UK economy.
Kerry-Ann Mendoza of the Canary has published video analysis of Keir Starmer’s attitude to the Black Lives Matter movement, concluding that ‘Black Lives don’t matter to Keir Starmer’:
There must be change.
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