On another shameful day in the Labour Party’s history, supposedly forensic Keir Starmer was silent as Tory MPs voted through a bill to allow security services and their informants to steal, snoop, harm and even kill with impunity.
The party’s ‘leader’ did not speak once during the debate to use his legal skills to try to persuade Tory MPs to back amendments Labour had tabled to the ‘Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct)’ Bill – and had ordered Labour MPs to abstain (yet again), even if none of the amendments succeeded, a move that cost him eight front bench resignations.
Of 201 Labour MPs, thirty-four stood up for the human, legal and civil rights of the people of this country.
Thirty-four.
Here they are:
To Starmer’s even greater disgrace, the SNP en masse and most LibDem MPs (including the two tellers for the ‘noes’) voted against the bill, alongside Green MP Caroline Lucas and a single Tory MP.
Not all of the Labour MPs who stood up to be counted today are on the left of the party and not all of them have covered themselves with glory in the past – yet today they all remembered which party they belong to and which people they’re supposed to represent.
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Shame on him. Shame on Labour. Credit to those who stood up. But sadly they’re the exceptions that prove the rule. And the rule is a broken, cowed, collusive PLP. Worthless. Pointless.
Shit, I hope Starmer withdraws the whip from all the rebels to teach them a lesson.
Then they can form REAL Labour and all of us who quit Labour can join up, pay up and get cracking.
There’s plenty to campaign on to differentiate the new party favourably from both the Tories AND Labour
Now would be perfect.
Better still, the 26 what haven’t resigned the whip do so, and openly criticise the policy as well as the so-called leadership.
Thirty four to rebuild a Socialist Labour party?.Awful Awful day and shocking in what the future holds for a country that produced this Evil parliament.
Joseph – 34? – to quote SB above “Not all of the Labour MPs who stood up to be counted today are on the left of the party and not all of them have covered themselves with glory in the past”
SO WHAT if the new party were only 34-strong?
They’d have the high ground from the off – arguing for the many against the new austerity that the Tories and Starmer will soon be claiming is unavoidable and telling us it benefits us more than their donors.
However slim the chance might be, the left are worth nothing if we don’t fight.
“They’re all the same” has been true for too long – Labour IS just like the Tories.
The only honest way to change public perception is by not being the same as them and making opportunities to explain the differences between them and us to the public.
Dead right, just keep Jock the Hat, away or else it would be doomed. Cheers.
Off topic but 6:34am GMB, Dr Hilary: “I support a national lockdown…all or nothing you can’t have people travelling from one tier into another”
6:35am, Dr Leonard, BBC breakfast: “I’m not in favour of a national lockdown”…
And they wonder why there’s general confusion.
Experts are people first. I don’t know why they were bestowed with God-like infallibility. Well, i do, it’s called behavioral psychology.
Also, there is a negative impact whatever we do. While lockdown will save lives, it also takes lives. A government report from July predicted that 200,000 lives could be lost as a result of lockdown.
https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/coronavirus-lockdown-costs-and-benefits/
I’m conflicted on this, but the critical requirements for a new party to cycled are two:
1 Trade Union support; and
2. End of FPTP, which produces the 2 party system (think USA) and favours “establishment thinking”.
Toffee, those two doctors may have been in agreement but the TV news culture works in short segments with no chance of subtlety – and terms like “national lockdown” are open to interpretation.
For example an exhaustive, well-planned, well-executed total lockdown of a month would be massively effective but a lazy, slapdash Tory lockdown of half a year would be a complete waste of time, resources, people and treasure and would leave us worse off than before.
AGAIN.
David – At last, something we can agree on.
Normal service will be resumed the next time you suggest Starmer would be any better than the Tories.
At anything.
Meanwhile, Kinnock the elder has nominated Luke Akehurst for the NEC.
…….along with Smeeth.
So, just like facist dictatorships everywhere, the Labour Party is quite happy to see me raped, tortured and murdered in the interests of “national security”.
And they want my vote… Do I look like a turkey?
PS Reminds me why I used to vote Lib Dem and not Labour in the past. Many times they have been to the left of (New) Labour. Just as well nobody canvasses door to door any more. Love to give them a piece of my mind.
MPs get paid too much, they are allowed to hold second/third jobs and there are too many revolving doors. That is why the chicken coup failed against Corbyn and Starmer is now secure. MPs (mostly) place their careers above their ethics. And that is why I’ll never vote again.
lundiel – “I’ll never vote again”
So you are going to abstain.
Doesn’t that make you part of the problem and not part of the solution.
lundiel – Here’s some bedtime reading for you.
Political disengagement in the UK: who is disengaged?
http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-7501/CBP-7501.pdf
Don’t be stupid. It delegitimises them. The more people who do it the less they can fall back on claiming to be the democratic voice of the people. The only thing they can do I make it illegal not to vote. In this country, politicians only have the support of about 40% of the electorate, not many more needed to make them an unpopular minority and force change.
lundiel – The views you have expressed above are politically naïve, illogical and self contradicting.
A quick look at the pdf shows just how worried they are about it. They don’t represent the people.
lundiel – …and the evidence that you and your ilk do is?
Political disengagement in parliamentary terms is not something we on the left should decry when the whole capitalist system is weighted against the economically oppressed who tend to be least engaged.
There’s nothing wrong with living an alternative existence outside as far as possible of a society one despises when the power structure is invincible.
Parliament’s only interest in increasing political engagement is to justify its own existence and blame its systemic failings on a lack of political engagement rather than on a system the purpose of which is to maintain the established order – ie itself.
Disengagement from the yoke of middle class mediocrity could be considered the intelligent response until the time is right for revolution.
David – Do you have some working examples of successful revolutions.
France, Russia, Cuba, Iran, Tunisia all successfully overthrew their rulers. I’m sure there are many other historical events that would count as revolutions and there are certain to be others in the future.
Honestly, why do you bother? You are so predictable.
Do fuck off – you’re not influencing anyone in the way you’d wish.
Your feeble attempts to ‘play Socrates’ are pretentious, obvious and irritating to those of us who recognise the technique for what it most often is – a way to hide a mediocre intellect from lesser mortals.
You mistake your audience.
David – Who are these people that you so casually categorise and dismiss as “lesser mortals”.
That reply was to SteveH.
lundiel 3:15 PM
In terms of scale two of the times Rome was sacked would be near the top of my list too, given that they overthrew a global empire.
SteveH’s idea of ‘success’ includes maintaining the unbroken profitability of a capitalist economy.
David – Oh dear, your desperation is showing.
“David – Oh dear, your desperation is showing” he said in a faint croak from the blood-soaked canvas.
That’s a good name. Well done. Conversation starter when on the knock. ☮️
New Shadow Cabinet Appointments
Wes Streeting has been moved from Shadow Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury to replace Margaret Greenwood as Shadow Schools Minister
Abena Oppong-Asare has been appointed to WS’s vacated treasury post.
James Murray leaves the Labour Whips’ Office to replace Dan Carden as Shadow Financial Secretary to the Treasury.
Wes Streeting as shadow schools secretary – Even YOU must feel disgust and shame at that SteveH
….destroying Labour and collapsing the membership. He’s looking less forensic and managerial by the day.
Where is our Jucinda Ardern?
I think she fucked off to New Zealand and changed her name to Jacinda.
😀
Bolton South East MP Yasmin Qureshi has been admitted to hospital with pneumonia after testing positive for Covid-19.
The Labour MP said she started to feel unwell about two weeks ago and immediately self-isolated at home.
Ms Qureshi said she was admitted to Royal Bolton Hospital on Saturday after beginning to feel “much worse”.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-54598378