Labour then briefs hard-right rag Fawkes about sacking before MPs were informed
The SKWAWKBOX earlier published news that 3 MPs had resigned because Labour leader Keir Starmer would not allow them to vote against a Tory bill to legalise torture and other war crimes against international law – as long as they’re committed overseas against foreigners. That article noted that it was unclear whether they had been sacked.
It is no longer unclear – and Starmer’s team told far-right rag Guido Fawkes about the sacking before Whittome (and presumably the others) knew they were out of their roles as Parliamentary Private Secretaries.
Starmer whipped Labour MPs to abstain on the bill, in a move reminiscent of Harriet Harman’s cowardly abstention order on the 2015 Tory welfare bill – an act that helped sweep Jeremy Corbyn to the party’s leadership. Only 19 Labour MPs defied Starmer’s spineless instruction.
This is another abject, shameful and utterly craven episode in the history of so-called ‘centrism’ – and to brief it to Labour-hating media before even informing the MPs only makes the scandal even bigger.
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I have changed my mind. Starmer is not a clampit he is a c@#t.
May he die screaming.
And take his time about it.
What a repulsive wretch Starmer is. And the gutless Labour MPs who abstained in this shameful vote.
Politics has failed the common people and is beyond repair by any civilised means – it’s been sewn up tight by the rich and I see only one way out of their grip now.
I’m too old to run fast or far but I can stand.
Have I got that right: Starmer was a solicitor/lawyer who should uphold the law. And he is prepared to enable others to break the law by abstaining in the vote. He does not seem to have much of a conscience. Do people still think he is electable?
He will be electable alright. He is setting up his camp among those who do not mind atrocities being committed, as long as it is brown people abroad who cop it. The LP is becoming a cess pit.
A cess-pit of flag-waving patriot “scoundrels” (thank you, Dr Samuel Johnson), racists and crypto-Tories. Why would we lose a second’s sleep over “losing” their vote?
Marie, well put. What sort of party is this? Torquemada rules o.K. Peace.
Actions speak louder than words, Starmer with his cowardly speech yesterday and today’s even meeker and cowardly behaviour demonstrate clearly which direction he is taking Labour.
Like many other socialists, I left, I can see there being many, many more soon.
Starmer wants the Gammon vote, it’s time for a new Democratic Socialist Party, Labour has a abandoned Socialism once and for all.
Why do you confuse the PLP with the party, members and supporters
Running away solves nothing
Original thought
How about we clear out the PLP and those behind them
Starting with the War Criminal snd Thatchers greatest creation
So Doug paid shill from New Labour 2.0 Bot of course shows up if Starmer and New Labour story shows up to shill for the masters. Anyhow so explain how your going to change all the PLP get rid of all the party machinery, Half the CLP branch machery? That’s right you can’t the cancer has spread the shell is rot there is nothing left to save but shills have to shill and convince people to stay to prop up these scum.
That then point to the numbers of members that cling on the illusion of change! We tried that and the whole party machine swung into action with mass briefings and lies amd made sure to lose election after election. This is the real Labour party time to start again with proper socialist party NO right wing scum allowed any found instant removal is the only way forwards… New Labour 2.0 is dead the quicker we admit this and jeterson this stinking carcass. Just wearing the skin of the old Labour movement as a disguise!
disabled
So you can do it in the new party but you cannot do what Blair did in the Labour party
Proves my point the left coudnt run a bath, prefer to entertain themselves from the sidelines
I wonder if any Tories abstained or voted against it. I very much doubt it somehow!
Apologies for going off topic, but……
When I happened, by chance, to come across the following article (from August last year), I just knew that some of the comments would bring up Jeremy Corbyn, despite the fact that the young guy in question had no connection to the Labour Party whatsoever. Anyway, here’s the headline, followed by a batch of said comments, and in brackets the number of up-votes and down-votes each one received. Click on Best Rated option to see them:
Revealed: Yob who called man a ‘dirty Jew’ in vile, antisemitic attack is plumber who was kicked out of home by his aunt for bad behaviour
Hmm corbyn supporter I think (1987 & 232)
One of Corbyn’s finest not. (884 & 113)
These are the people the vile Corbyn and co are trying to appeal to. (508 & 31)
These Labour MP’s get younger and younger (347 & 22)
I did not realise that Jeremy Corbyn was a hair dresser [many of the posts are taking the P out of the young guys hair], as well as a antisemitic, terrorist supporting Marxist. His behaviour is straight out of the Momentum policy hand book. (342 & 31)
Perfectly qualified to run the Labour Party then! (323 & 29)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7327523/Thug-called-man-dirty-Jew-plumber-Egypt-kicked-home-mother.html
I’ve come across more than a few such articles in the Mail (and the Sun and Express) where the person concerned had absolutely nothing to do with the LP, but the Tory shills always post such comments.
So THATS where hignfy got their anti-Corbyn antisemitic ‘quips’ from, then?
I stopped watching hignfy years ago when Merton lost the plot and it turned to shite – has it really gone that far down?
The following Mirror article has a few more details about the Bill and the vote etc:
Labour MPs quit Keir Starmer’s team to vote against bill condemned by Jeremy Corbyn
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/labour-mps-quit-keir-starmers-22732524
I give this lot £2 a month it’s an immoral small fortune.
Or
It only costs £2 a month to join and get rid of these toerags
Like stammer said in those two interviews with kuenssberg & peston: ‘I’m not going into policies when we’re four year away from a general election’
Well, your membership certainly made sure it’s be four years until the opportunity arises to get shut of the bastard by electing him in the first fucking place If you want to pay the same £96 as those who voted for him (And will still want him there whatever – little steven) you’re more than welcome to hand over £48m minimum for him to spunk on his cronies and still lose the next election, because there’s no bleedin’ way he’s gonna turn over an eighty seat majority, no matter how utterly shite the toerags are now, or will be in four years time. He’s not even streaks ahead, as he really ought to be now
(And that’s with a sympathetic mainstream media, a luxury never given to Corbyn – who, despite that, actually maintained a poll lead over a generally more competent toerag party – until stammer connived and conspired with the fat bespectacled west midland wanker.)
Add that to the fact you’d be electing another toerag into #10 by voting stammerite labour; so it’s heads you lose…tails you lose
I’ve got far better, more useful, and more necessary things to spend that money on; and so will hundreds of thousands of others.
Ahh yes good spin I was happy as a £4 a month back in the Corbyn days
Having wrestled with my conscience as to staying or going.
I changed my membership to joining through my affiliated union
Rotten compromise maybe..
I wonder about Doug as much as about SteveH – they both harp on about keeping up the membership in their different ways.
Supporting Blue Labour will never change anything because Starmer doesn’t even believe in nationalisation or redistribution, much less making dogfood out of neoliberals.
Leaving is the only way Labour will take notice – stay and you’ll be taken for granted like Scotland.
We could rebuild the party in a week after the bailiffs have gone.
How the frock, when they have a huge majority in the PLP, the elected positions and the staff, are YOU going to get rid of THEM?
Between GE’s the membership gets to vote for what – half a dozen elected positions?
A dozen? When there are hundreds of right wingers dug in deep?
Get real.
David
Even a broken clock is right twice a day,
Class action could well bankrupt party, what price will those guys demand from Cockwombles
NEC will facilitate challenge to Temporary Embarrassment
Well done you
@David McNiven. Not only leaving but refusing to vote Labour in coming elections.
lundiel – For the first time ever more of the ‘working class’ voted Tory (43%) than voted Labour (33%). If this was ever an old fashioned class war then it looks like Corbyn’s Labour lost the battle at the 2019 GE
https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/tories-now-more-popular-with-working-class-voters-than-middle-class-ones-reveals-election-poll
I may still vote Labour.
My point to Doug was that the opportunities to VOTE the party to the left via internal elections are virtually nonexistent.
Did lundiel inadvertently or intentionally ‘misconstrue’ what I wrote I wonder?
Well stammers royally fooked if he thinks he can hoodwink me into voting for that steaming pile o’ shite.
I did meself a mischief from violently retching after coming out the polling booth when I’d shamefully voted bliarite labour…c/o angela rat bastard (ill)eagle.
NEVER AGAIN.
NEVER.
Where’s the resident stammer apologist rodent, with his: “But he only wanted them to abstain or other such weasel-like shithousery, then?
The country is headed to a very bad place under Johnson …. aided and abetted by Starmer and his gang.
It must surely be obvious to anyone not currently blinded by a ‘hope before experience wishful thinking’ about the now fully restored Starmer/Blairite neoliberal pro NATO, pro Trident, pro status quo, deeply jingoistic, Labour Party, that the game is up for it as any sort of potential vehicle for even mildly progressive, never mind socialist, politics in the UK. This whipped abstention on this pernicious Bill neatly sums up where Labour is headed under the Trilateral Commission’s chosen man, Starmer and his poisonous bunch of corrupt , careerist, PLP majority cronies. That olnly 19 Labour MPs voted against the Bill demonstrates how powerless and weak the PLP Left actually is – after four years of the now defunct ‘Corbyn Left Surge’.
As others have rightly said – IF the tiny, and actually currently politically irrelevant, group of Left Labour MP’s had the guts (and politics) to split from Starmer’s now utterly neoliberal, pro Nato, pro US Imperialism, pro nukes, new NuLabour Party to form a new radical Left Party it could well have a hundred thousand members drawn from Labour and the wider Left, within weeks . But they never will, will they ? Let’s be honest. The PLP Left are all far too personally comfortable continuing to draw down their huge MP salaries plus expenses (to send their kids to posh private schools, like Diane Abbott) – and winning easy cred points from the gullible wider Left by doing the , what is for them , completely risk-free posturing – by voting against this pernicious Bill. They should of course vote against the Bill, and well done to the 19 who did, – but by staying comfortably inside the NuLabour Party they show that, sadly they are all just really Left poseurs, not serious radical Left socialists. Resigning from the Party and forcing a by-election , and re-standing for a new radical Left Party in their constituencies (and facing a huge poisonous all MSM campaign to unseat them) , is far to risky (of their potentially lifelong continued MP salaries as Labour MPs), for these people to jump ship – after, in some cases, 40 years of comfortable Left MP posturing. Anyone expecting, Jeremy, McDonnell, Abbott, Lavery, Trickett, et al to help form a new Left Party now that Labour is returned permanently to being Her Majesty’s very, very, very, loyal, deeply jingoistic, Reserve Party of UK capitalism and the privatising , Austerity-driven neoliberal status quo, will be waiting a long time.
A new Left Party needs to be built, but sadly, it wont be kick-started by any defection from Labour by any ‘Left’ MPs.
Blimey not sure about all of that they use some of their salary for left causes I don’t think they’re lining their pockets
But yeah morally fucking hard work being in, you have to be to be against though
So let’s stick it to the shits
Yes, an overzealous, totalitarian crackdown on dissent on a mere single-line whip demonstrates conclusively that Korea stammer will not tolerate any other suggestion than those of his paymasters, in or out of government.
And he won’t have the bollocks to do it face-to-face, but rather leak to the right-wing press first – as has just happened.
His most recent shithousery is yet a another herald of what will be if elected to office.
Once again, the correct course is to starve him of the funding to continue, and of your vote. Remaining in the party while continuing to fund him and his entrenched cronies is utterly counterproductive and defeats the object entirely.
It’s like fighting for peace, or f***ing for virginity.
Entirely understandable and in character from a man who thinks an American asset represents his Labour party.
The worm even had Smeeth introduce him when he made his conference speech!
As a ‘Friend Of Israel’ Starmer’s credentials as a supporter of international law must from the outset be suspect to say the very least.However, this tawdry move sinks him to new lows. He really is quite despicable. But worse still than being Israel’s pal, Starmer is also a friend of the Tory Party. For anyone interested I wrote a short post about our friend Keir (Hammer of the Left) Starmer on my blog yesterday:
https://lovesexwomenmenpoliticspoetrylifedeath.wordpress.com/2020/09/23/starmer-lapdog/
This man, Keir Rodney Starmer, is not a man I want to lead my beloved Labour Party.
Sir Keir will destroy the Party and collapse the membership.
Bad news.
Hi, qwertboi(good to connect, again). I had a short discussion, earlier, today about ‘to stay, or, to go’.
I stayed, after December’s disaster, up until Sir K appointed Streeting and Phillips to his Shadow Cabinet. I resigned, in high dudgeon. The Leaked Labour Report and his spurious sacking of RLB, only confirmed I’d made the right decision.
However, I’ve, recently, been persuaded to renew my Membership. The looming NEC Elections, next month, were what, finally, swung it. At least I get a vote, now. After that, I’ll reassess.
These Elections are the only lifeline we’re likely to have, for the foreseeable future. I can only hope that enough people have stayed, to make a difference.
Also, at the back of my mind, there’s a small, hope that, because of Starmer’s less than stellar first six months, there, just, may be a leadership challenge, in the not too distant future. Where that challenge would come from, is anyone’s guess. If only JC was younger – but I do wonder.
NEC Elections, first. Then we’ll see.
Stay well.
This can only send the wrong message to young people serving in the UK armed forces.They will no longer be used as cannon fodder by the officer class by taking the blame for killing off the Natives.Just look what they’ve done in Ocuppied Ireland.in murdering innocent civilians.,and still only the ordinary squady gets fingered for the attrocities,,and even then not one single conviction.ITs looks like it’s going to be a recipe for a free for all with the message the government and Starmer are sending to British forces.So I wonder how its going to go down when the dogs are let out on the British people….will that also be buried?
Nadir Whitome
Our AOC
David McNiven
Don’t worry, Be Happy you f7cker
The other key element of this Bill – which won’t achieve anything in the way of votes for Starmer and his Continuity Conservatives – is that service personnel suffering from Post Traumatic Stress or hearing loss will have a six year time limit to claim compensation.
Any sane rational observation would conclude that Starmer and his team are totally incompetent and out of their depth in supporting a Bill which dumps on service personnel in such a manner. Although it also seems reasonable to consider the possibility that those pursuing this criminally negligent line are practicing some sort of perverse concept of equality by not giving a shit about both civilians and rank and file service personnel?
Moving on to the point made by some posters on this thread about staying and removing these people: someone recently contacted me following a discussion on values and their corruption in a communication which included the call to “fight the Tories.” The question arises as to which Tories are we talking about here? Because if that’s the objective the starting point has to be what passes for the Labour Party.
On which note the further thought occurs that rather than talking about it and admonishing others it would be far more productive to see some actual action on that front. After all, those pontificating on that point had five years to get rid of these people and you just sat on your arses with your thumbs up your bums and brains in neutral whilst those who are really working for corporate lobbyists undermined elections and demonstrated that the purpose of the Labour Party is to under no circumstances get elected as its role as Loyal Opposition within the British State is to act as second eleven on the odd occassion that the first eleven run out of steam. Holding the ball for them until they get their act back together.
Good points, Dave Hansell. On the disgraceful Bill itself – it is deeply ironic that Big law expert Lawyer, ex DPP, Starmer has ordered his PLP minions to abstain on a Bill which undoubtedly has no standing in post 1945 International Law. The 1945 Nuremburg Trials of Nazi war criminals firmly established in international law that no country can indemnify its armed forces personnel from being dragged to the Hague to be prosecuted for war crimes, merely because what they did might have been ‘legal’ by the parochial laws of their own nation state. Because of course . by the then ‘laws’ of Nazi Germany , mass murdering Jews, the disabled , Gypsies, Slavs, Gay people, etc, was not ‘illegal’, and the German soldiers and SS and police, involved were indeed ‘only following orders’. So even if the Bill is enshrined in UK law it will always be open to states whose citizens have been killed or tortured by UK soldiers (eg Iraq, or Ireland) to issue an International Arrest Warrant for crimes against humanity, and when such an indicted soldier or ex soldier ventures abroad, they can be arrested and sent for trial at The Hague.
Interesting that the avowedly super-Liberal, supposedly universal human rights hyper-sensitive Guardian newspaper has NOT issued a resounding condemnation editorial of the Tory Bill today, or Labour’s abstention – because their Hero, Starmer, has abstained on it ! Starmer comes across ever clearer every day, as a soul-less , amoral, creature of US/globalised neoliberal Big Business interests (the US has passed similar legislation attempting to exempt US soldiers from prosecution for war crimes). That hundreds of thousands of former Corbyn supporters VOTED for this creature so recently on the basis of his laughably bogus ’10 Pledges’, says something about the crap politics and gullibility of so many, largely middle class, merely, at best, Left Liberal, Labour Party members . Sad also to see that , lawyer, Barry Gardiner didn’t vote against . Barry was always a Right Winger in overall politics, but I thought he had proven to be a guy with some principle, in his time in Jeremy’s Shadow Cabinets. Obviously not so when it comes to winning back favour from the new Party Leader !
jpenny: The three candidates between them received approximately 490,000 votes, and altogether there were 784,000 people eligible to vote. In other words, almost 300,000 DIDN’T vote. Starmer received 275,000 votes OR – to put it another way – over 500,000 people DIDN’T vote for him. In the leadership election in 2016 – which Jeremy won of course – he received 313,000 votes. So HOW do you know that ‘hundreds of thousands’ of members who voted for Jeremy then voted for Starmer. You don’t of course, and you are just being your usual TOTALLY negative self (have you EVER said anything positive in yur life… I very much doubt it somehow!).
I could just as easily say that only 38,000 people who voted for Jeremy then went on to vote for Starmer (and at least I’d have the stats kinda backing that possibility up), but the reality is that I don’t know. And neither do you! I could ALSO say that after Jeremy announced he was standing down (on December 13th) that thousands upon thousands of left-wing members either cancelled their membership in the following weeks or didn’t renew it when due AND that tens of thousands of Blairights then joined or re-joined the party AND that – given all that – it’s perfectly feasible that no more than a few thousand people who voted for Jeremy then went on to vote for Starmer.
Jeeze Man, stop being so fucking negative in just about every single post you write!
https://labour.org.uk/people/leadership-elections-hub-2020/leadership-elections-2020-results/
PS You are obviously a very intelligent guy jpenny, but your negativity and your cynicism is just astounding! It really REALLY is!
It’s called ‘facing up to the reality of a politically and electorally bust Labour Party’, Allan Howard – rather than, like yourself, falling for the perennial Labour left delusional fantasy after every one of the constant defeats of the Left over the ENTIRE life of the Party, that – ‘it’ll somehow all turn out OK next time ‘ . You can wish to believe that most of Jeremy’s previous voters abstained from voting for any candidate in the 2020 Leadership contest – or even left the Party to be replaced by a hundred thousand Right Wingers – but given that pretty much the entire ‘Corbynite’ supporting membership, including the supposedly ‘radical Left’ Momentumites actively supported the suicidal Remain and 2nd Referendum’ policy which Jeremy was forced to adopt for the 2019 General Election (with the treacherous active, even going on Mandelson’s Peoples Vote marches, support for this daft policy by McDonnell and Abbott, being the last straw) , how can you really seriously challenge my statement about the crap politics of the Labour ‘Left’ in both membership and PLP , or that a huge number of them were fooled by his transparently bogus ’10 Pledges’, and voted for him, rather than the pathetically useless Long-Bailey ( the best candidate the PLP Left could apparently field !!!) ?
Time to wake up and ‘smell the political coffee’, Allan – Labour is finished as a vehicle for Left advance – forever – just as with the defunct Greek PASOK , or French Socialist Party, or German SPD – and massively hard as it will be , only a new radical UK Left Party has any chance of building mass resistance to the ever more vicious Austerity- offensive-on steroids to come. NuLabour under Starmer and his corrupt cronies now will totally SUPPORT this coming hyper Austerity offensive, not oppose it !
So spare me your whining bollocks about my ‘pessimism’ – its time for facing up to the grim current realities, and the entire failed history of the Labour Left, and for radical thinking outside the old, bankrupt, Labour Party, box .
Better still, you could spare us your whining, pessimistic bollocks and tell us where this “radical thinking outside the old, bankrupt, Labour Party, box” exists?
C’mon, tell us, who are YOU shilling for?…
…(tumbleweed)…
So, as we can see, Tony Blair is back in charge of the Labour Party. Glad I let my membership lapse, although I’m still getting emails and letters saying it will end soon if I don’t pay; annual membership lapsed 6 months ago in March !
Keep seeing ‘stay and fight’ pleading comments. The only fight I’m seeing here is the left getting absolutely walloped, the latest for standing up against torture !! C’mon true left Labour; Lavery, McDonnell etc, show us some Nye and Skinner spirit, come out swinging and bloody fight back for gods sake.
Does picking Miss PiggyWiggum to introduce him indicate that Kermit will find her a nice safe seat for 2024 do we think?
labour mirroring US democrats – rather than motivating the millions who don’t vote think they can win tory’s over. too lazy and too stupid but somehow clinging to a corpse
This may interest other readers – compare and contrast.
24th September, 2020, 6:15 pm
The first Labour party political broadcasts of Starmer’s predecessors
Keir Starmer aired his first party political broadcast (PPB) as Labour leader on Wednesday, which readers can watch here. Titled ‘A New Leadership’, the video features Starmer outside his childhood home in Surrey describing why he is proud of Britain and how his values match up with those of voters.
To mark the occasion, LabourList has delved into the archives to find the first PPB from each of the new Labour leader’s predecessors – from Jeremy Corbyn through to John Smith…
https://labourlist.org/2020/09/the-first-labour-party-political-broadcasts-of-starmers-predecessors/
Oh! I see you’ve finally turned up (after the lord mayor’s parade), then?!
How his values match up with voters’
*Facepalms*
Do you get your delusions of grandeur and hubris from the slimeball, or is it t’other way about?
Anyway, to get back to the topic of the article – what was done to Nadia Whittome, in particular, was shameful.
I have my doubts that the way it was carried out came, directly, from Keir Starmer. I suspect it was more likely to have been the adolescent, action of someone in Labour HQ – flexing their muscle, marking their territory – call it what you will.
The communication with ‘Guido Fawkes’ would, I hope, exclude Starmer. In any case, whoever it was, they showed a marked lack of comradeship and integrity.
They should be sacked. I doubt if they will be.
I wonder if we’ll ever know?
Looks like we will be joining USA and Israel , at the Hague, fighting against the War Crimes Commission.