Removal of general secretary was yet another interference by London Labour in Scottish party business
Yesterday, the SKWAWKBOX reported and MSP Neil Findlay confirmed that Labour’s UK leadership had forced out Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard, whose resignation was announced yesterday – a move by the English party that will hugely damage Labour in the eyes of Scottish voters. Leonard’s resignation came after Starmer, his deputy Angela Rayner and acting general secretary David Evans were told by wealthy potential donors that they would only contribute if Leonard was removed.
But the SKWAWKBOX can reveal that, according to senior sources in both the English and Scottish parties, Leonard was not the first senior Scottish Labour figure deposed by those at the top of the English hierarchy.
Those sources say that the departure of Michael Sharpe, who announced in December that he was stepping down as Scottish general secretary, was likewise engineered by Starmer’s ‘gang’ so that he could be replaced by someone more acceptable to them.
English interference in Scottish politics is likely to be as toxic to Labour’s electability in Scotland as Labour figures standing with Tories during the independence referendum proved to be – or for that matter Starmer’s insistence that Scots should not have another opportunity to vote to leave the UK.
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Starmeroid never fail to annoy with their anti- democratic shenanigans. Realisation of today: rightwing “Labour” bods are copying too much of tory nastiness and seem to outrun them in that. Das ätzt total!
The nominations deadline closed at noon yesterday (19/01/21).
Anas Sarwar and Monica Lennon are the only candidates to have put themselves forward in the Scottish Labour leadership race, both of them have won the nominations required to secure their places on the ballot.
The Scottish Labour hustings period is now open along with supporting nominations by affiliated and local parties.
Sarwar, MSP for Glasgow, gained the support of 16 MSPs, Usdaw and the only Labour MP in Scotland, Ian Murray. He was also endorsed by more than a quarter of Labour councillors in Scotland, who signed a letter saying the candidate has “the positive ambition for an alternative vision”,
Lennon, MSP for Central Scotland, was nominated by five MSPs.
While prepared to give Starmer a chance, (I was one of the ‘new boys’ that joined the Labour Party because of Corbyn, his politics appealed to me,and 12 months on you can see how his policies were correct for the country!) but no longer. I will be resigning from Labour because of his interference in Scottish Labour and because he apparently is going to write for the right wing rag that Boris writes for! A disgrace. Labour, because of these actions, will never get back power in Scotland. A very sad day indeed for Labour
Mike I sympathise with your sentiments but imo Starmer couldn’t give a fuck about Scotland and neither does his backers
How does Starmer imagine Labour could form government if it wins no seats in Scotland at the next GE? He knows full well there’s no policies Labour could win an England-only on- or is that the point…to simply make sure Labour never wins another GE?
I don’t think he or “his backers” give a fuck whether he wins or the Tories win – all any of them care about is that those bloody stroppy socialists don’t win.
“How dare they try to force us into paying taxes – as if we were the kind of idiots who’d give those greedy Marxists handouts every time the lazy plebs say their kids are hungry.”
Interesting manoeuvring by Starmer. To gain power he must have Scottish seats either from Scottish Labour or SNP. For Scottish Labour to gain power (or recover from their recent poor showing) they must have nothing to do with English Labour! If Starmer does a deal with Nicola and shits all over Scottish Labour it can only be to give Nicola independence or she won’t have anything to do with him in which case after 1 term he is back at square 1 because the Tory’s will generally have an inbuilt majority in England under the current electoral arrangements. If we believe Richard Leonard (or similar) and his supporters had a genuine chance of gradually regaining seats in Scotland, Starmer has made a dumb move as he is surely seen north of the border as wearing a suit cut from Boris’s cloth and not particularly attractive in it.
My understanding of Craig Murray is that Wee Jimmy Krankie wants power over independence and would be a good match with Starmer, they could both kick independence into the long grass.
It sounds as if Starmer has written off 2024 and possibly 2028. Like 2019 he doesn’t want to win but only the chance to cut lumps out of the LP so it looks like him; pro Tory, pro Israel
Pro loosing
The second the 70% gave the rat’s bastard the green light for the second referendum shithousery, 2024 & ’28 were scuppered.
Not that you’d know the difference if there miraculously** were to be a stammerite government in that timespan.
**”Miraculously” in the sense that he actually won an election, not that anyone I know would be grateful for such an unappealing aberration.
Actually Paul, I think the Right in the LP actually think this will set them on a course for victory, they really are that deluded.
In other words, he’s written off the very idea of actually doing his job.
Headroom is playing a blinder. I suspect shifts towards an evermore right-wing pressure group. Early retirement and ermine. He can hold hands with Ms Pottymouth.
Good reading of the situation and the inevitable destruction of the Labour party and its not only the Scots border that this cancer stops. .How much longer will it take for the right wing self obsessed PLP to realise that the establishment Labour party are in “Free fall” and their own necks are on the choping blocks..Too late for many of them in supporting a leader of destruction,they have ensured their own fate of oblivion.A leader bought and paid to lead the Labour party over the cliff..
I have stated it here, and elsewhere, before …. Starmer is the most dangerous politician in the UK today.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Nahhh according to all MSM thats still Corbyn !
Dear The Skwawkbox,
Once again you finish an informative article waiving a tattered national banner.
Your insistence on this track has a negative baring on what socialism is.
It also reminds me of a comment a long term SNP campaigner made following the 3014 (woops, I mean 2014) referendum result and almost instant claim for another neverendum…we’re going to keep having them until you get it right 🤫🤔
It’s also a reminder of the claim for another EU referendum by Starmer & co.
I really don’t like seeing Starmer compared to Stalin. Dreadful though his crimes were, it was under Stalin’s leadership that the Red Army defeated fascism. I can find nothing good to say about Starmer.
The similarity, if there is one, is in the use of the party bureaucracy to attack opponents.
And an obsession with his own position within the Party, no doubt aware of how wobbly it is? (It’s a bit weird comparing Starmer to Stalin; one totally ineffectual and the other only too effectual).
Attacking the Hero of the Russian revolution,and the saviour of many millions of people in the western fascist wars of aggression,does nothing to achieve the removal of the establishment Labour party leader and self proclaiming Zionist fascist Sir Keir Starmer.Self mockery of communism and Socialism does not help.or achieve anything other than self mutalation..Strange way to inspire a fightback.?
Attacking the Hero of the Russian revolution,and the saviour of many millions of people in the western fascist wars of aggression…
While undoubtedly, without the Russians, WW2 would almost certainly have ended very differently, it still seems a bit of an odd view considering he also had many millions of his own people put to death in numerous purges.
Moreover, by the start of the war, he’d gotten rid of so many of the upper echelons in the Soviet forces it was touch and go whether the Russians would even survive themselves. Indeed, he was forced to bring back many of the best officers that hadn’t been shot by then.
Rokossovsky, for example, having been tortured mercilessly by Beria’s henchmen in the 1937 purges, was brought back from a Siberian Gulag in 1941 to become one of the foremost commanders at the battle of Kursk, which virtually sealed the Nazi’s fate.
P W “IT seems a odd veiw…although undoubtedly without the Russians the war would have ended very differently.” See you answered your own Question PW.and hundreds of millions would agree with you ,without the Russians we and the sacrifice of over twenty million comrades in the USSR we would have been defeated and there would be even more fascists around than even now…And the Labour party would not be taking the “pist” out of the Socialists.But you have a veiw and I respect that,but can only judge on who the main warmongers are in this modern freedom loving world and its definitely not Russia or China comrade.
PW, when I’m elected Dictator For Life by universal acclaim I’m going to get rid of the whole officer class, not just the Generals. It’d be stupid not to.
They’d always be plotting to bring back “sensible” government – ie government by their Tory fathers, brothers, cousins, uncles and Eton-mates.
Well, excuse me if I don’t think that Stalin was some kind of hero or saviour, as Joseph put it. He was perfectly happy to come to an accommodation with Hitler over Poland and occupy the other half that the Nazis said they didn’t want at the time thinking that, like Chamberlain, he could trust the man until he too was attacked.
There can be no argument that pre-WW2 Stalin didn’t bring Russia into the 20th Century but it was done at a terrible cost to so many millions of its citizens. Then after the war, whether they liked it or not, there was no hesitation in his subjugating the very same countries that the Nazis had occupied in their ultimate quest for so-called lebensraum — to the victor the spoils, as they say.
And before you might try putting words into my mouth, I’ve no more love for Churchill either, who was an outright imperialist not to mention his atrocious attempts to subdue the Irish with the murderous Black & Tans. Furthermore, while I’ve no time for the public school elitism here, neither have I time for a system that sends people to Gulags, or worse, when you happen to disagree with its diktats from above.
Revolutions are all well and good but all too often you still end up with an elite that lives off the fat of the land while the peasants remain just that — peasants that merely live and work to serve new masters instead of the old. You always need to be careful what you might wish for as it doesn’t always end up how you might have expected.
Unfortunately, human beings haven’t got to the point yet, if they ever will, where they can come together in a system of equality for all. Maybe they did way back in the mists of time but certainly not in recorded history as we know it. Perhaps climate change might start to bring about a more thoughtful approach to humanity but I’m not going to hold my breath.
Stalin came to the agreement with Hitler after 10 years of a Soviet Pact signed by France and Britain seemed the obvious way to out balance the Germans. Except the Imperialists didn’t want to know, Facist sentiment was powerful in the UK especially within the Royal Family and aristocracy. It was Poland that repeatedly refused to allow Russian troops to cross their border, most damning during the Munich talks. For all his many outrageous ideas Churchill had one redeeming feature – Anti-Facist instincts. Thus when he learnt of Hess landing on the Duke of Hamilton’s Estate Churchill immediately ordered he be arrested and brought in custody to London. Other British politicians would have had him to dine. And when Hitler did invade Russia, Churchill rushed to the BBC to declare Russia our brothers in arms, our new brave ally. Better late than never, it seems as if the official British line on these events hasn’t changed much! Nor does it’s deep fascist underbelly.
Bugger that, don’t forget the fags.
PW, none of us are all bad or all good, and nobody can say with certainty that things would have been better or worse with or without “X” happening.
One could theorise that fewer people would have died if Hitler hadn’t been opposed but had been allowed to expand as far as he wanted – that Nazism would have died a natural death – that in peacetime the Holocaust couldn’t have been carried out in secrecy – that world condemnation of Germany could have caused Hitler to be overthrown.
Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not arguing for appeasement – I’m saying nobody then had the benefit of hindsight, and that even with hindsight we still can’t say how anything would have turned out if different decisions had been taken.
In no way was Stalin “the hero of the Russian Revolution”. His tenure as Party leader was defined by the destruction of anything remotely democratic OR socialist-a system can only truly be called socialist or communist if it is run democratically from below- in the Soviet system. Stalin destroyed most of the support the Communist movement had in Europe, the UK, and North America to start with- his tactics during the Spanish Revolution/Civil War can only be interpreted as an all-out campaign to destroy the independent non-Stalinist Left and force the world to see his decayed notion of a Party as the only alternative to Naziism- he staged the epic purges to destroy any democratic life within the CPSU- and after the Great Patriotic War, he then destroyed any backing for socialism or communism in Poland, Czechoslovakia and what became the DDR by using the word “socialism” as a euphemism for collective punishment- for some bizarre reason, the bastard blamed everyone in those countries for Hitler’s invasion.
The heroism of the Red Army in defeating Hitler is immeasurable and the world must always salute it- but there’s a good chance that heroism would not have been necessary had Stalin not sabotaged the antifascists in Spain and then followed that betrayal by signing the Pact.
The Left is still recovering from the wounds Stalin inflicted on us, and may not recover from them at all.
Recent events remind me of the old CPGB. Starmer wants to destroy the party and the movement. He cares nothing for the historic contributions to the class struggle given over decades by our Scots comrades. He doesn’t have the wit to see the irony of his first name. There will never be real change without ‘The ladies from hell’. The Labour Party dream has died. Regards
Jesus H Corbett…
WARNING!! If you get past the first sentence – nevermind to the end of the first paragraph, then you may well need anger therapy, or a rapid decrease in blood pressure.
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/politicians-mps-have-difficult-job-tory-gyles-brandreth-830004
Always was a smarmy prick, him.
Somebody better inform Russia that joe Stalin is not a hero anymore in Russia and the former Soviet republic s were he is still honoured outside of “western” rewriting of history of the peoples revolution that actually worked.The Labour broad church gets bigger everyday when we ridicule the successes of ordinary people ,the Russian revolution.
Joseph – You have a rather disturbing penchant for authoritarian dictators.