Businesses before hungry children – Starmer would be proud
Right-wing Scottish Labour activist Duncan Hothersall has launched an attack on the Scottish National Party (SNP). Not so surprising in the run-up to Scotland’s elections in May, you might think.
Except the attack was on the SNP for using funds to feed hungry children:
Footballer Marcus Rashford last year forced the Westminster government into a humiliating u-turn when his campaign for poor kids on free school meals to still receive food when schools were (partially) closed by lockdown embarrassed Boris Johnson into at least temporarily making (grossly inadequate) arrangements to feed them.
Starmer’s Labour shamefully tried to take credit for Rashford’s success. But Mr Hothersall – who runs the ‘Labour Hame’ website – decided to attack the SNP’s Holyrood government for ‘us[ing] pandemic funding to pay for holiday-time school meals’. In Hothersall’s opinion, the money should have gone into business bank accounts.
This position so appalled even a Financial Times journalist that Stephen Smith tweeted it as encapsulating the reasons Labour lost its former stronghold in Scotland:
Tragically, Keir Starmer and new Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, who are desperately trying to sell themselves to business, would probably be proud.
Last weekend Starmer, who deposed Sarwar’s predecessor to appease rich donors and apparently wanted to appease the S*n ‘newspaper’ too, forced a Labour MP to apologise for calling big business ‘the enemy’ of the climate after the Murdoch rag took offence – even though in fact Leeds MP Alex Sobel had said no such thing and the S*n had misrepresented him.
Sobel had in fact said that while he used to think of big business as the enemy on climate, businesses had performed better than the government in terms of responding to the climate crisis.
Such is the state of Labour under Keir Starmer: money to business before feeding hungry children – and grovelling apologies to right-wing gutter press over things that weren’t even said.
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Money to business before feeding hungry children – Duncan Hothersall and Keir Starmer are out of step with most Labour members and supporters.
May 6 election results will probably show that Starmer & Co are out of step with the electorate too.
Regretable
Stephen Smith took the words right out of my mouth – is it any wonder we have been wiped in Scotland when we have the likes of Hothersall representing us.
Regarding Alex Sobel being forced to apologise for something he didn’t say in order to appease the S*n, nobody with one ounce of integrity would know what Murdock and his gutter tabloid thinks or says because no decent person would read the S*n or talk to its owner or contribute to it for payment either. The fact that Starmer is willing to stoop so low as to engage on any level with this garbage says it all – he is totally unprincipled and like Blair before him is willing to associate with the scum of the earth in order to lead our party( probably to oblivion) at the next General Election.
Who forced Sobel to apologise? Nothing wrong in what he said. If Hothersall was trying to say food funding should come out of a different pot than the one keeping jobs alive you could understand him. Just shows the ineptitude of today’s Labour MPs.
Red Tory in race to the bottom shocker
This is the mentality of the pro business faction within Labour, lacking in empathy but overzealous in fighting for business interests, just like the Tories, and they wonder why they are labelled Red Tories.
It’s the party that the precious 70% wanted.
Under the previous cronyist, corrupt, reign of the Murphy/Blairites in Scottish Labour the constant attempt to outflank the Tories with anti benefit claimer rhetoric worked sooooooo well ! Much to the Left-faking SNP’s benefit ! As every day passes , and the vicious attacks on its Left members , and chicanery with basic Party rules, accelerates – and the obvious determination of the restored to power, neo Blairites , to outflank the Tories ON THE RIGHT , and replace trades union and member money with Big Business money , reaches gob-smacking levels – at what point will the Left Labour membership finally give up on the delusion that this utterly corrupt neoliberal Party can now ever be a vehicle for Left advance ?
The coming total Scottish Parliament electoral disaster in Scotland and the matching one in the English local council elections should be ‘ the straw that broke the camel of credibility’s back’ . But the capacity for wishful thinking on the Labour Left seems to be boundless . Labour now is as kaput electorally FOREVER as the once hegemonic Greek PASOK, or the French Socialist Party . And the Starmerite/Blairite return to ‘ Third Way , flag-waving, neo Toryism’ only appears to appeal to sundry Lib Dem voters – in what for Labour are electorally irrelevant constituencies. Time for even the radical Left Liberals , never mind socialist, members to bale out of this utterly corrupt Party , and try, no matter how difficult, to form something better OUTSIDE the swamp of Labourism. And for key Left-led trades unions to do likewise- or its not a goer. The collapse of Labour opens a political space which invalidates the old certainties about the barrier of FPTP to new radical party formation and electoral success. But as the brief but meteoric triumph (in the EU MEP elections) of the Brexit Party around the Brexit issue showed, that space can be filled by radical Left OR Right.
Bad Penny
Everything you say is correct in about 7 months
‘But as the brief but meteoric triumph (in the EU MEP elections) of the Brexit Party around the Brexit issue showed, that space can be filled by radical Left OR Right.’
Yeah, sure jpenny, and no doubt the MSM would give this new socialist party you keep on about an easy ride (and help promote it as such), just like they did with Jeremy’s Labour Party!
So what’s stopping you from getting together with all the other posters on here who are forever saying the same thing and establishing such a party?!
He is trying, but some people simply refuse to wake up to the scale of problems with the LP, isn’t that right “comrade”.
Utterly defeatist, wedded forever to the utterly bankrupt Labour Party, Allan Howard. I, and many other ancient old socialists , have had a number of goes at creating a radical (non revolutionary) Party beyond Labourism, over the last thirty years or so . The fate of the likes of Socialist Alliance, Respect, and Left Unity, were not encouraging ! Though the UK political terrain wasn’t so febrile as it is today – with the NuLabour2 Party now very clearly heading down the electoral plughole like PASOK and most other old European social democratic parties. So the old , ‘what about the barrier of FPTP to new party success ?” argument no longer stands as it undoubtedly previously did . There IS now a real electoral gap for a new mass radical party – but that can be either of the radical Left or radical populist Right.
As to your usual , “oh dear, the MSM would be so cruel to a socialist party ” defeatist whine – FFS Howard , of course it would . But it was the utter craven cowardice, and unwillingness to hit back confidently with sound socialist rebuttals by the pathetic Corbyn/Momentum circle that made the MSM smears so effective. And the other HUGE problem is the role of the tiny, but hyperactive, often simply crazy, ultraleft grouplets, who enter ever attempted radical, (but non revolutionary) Left grouping, and destroy them with their posturing, ultraleft wrecking antics. Any new Left Party that allowed the poisonous ultraleft to organise within its ranks is doomed from day one. THAT has to be a real lesson from all postwar attempts to build new radical Party. And of course , without some trades union participation a new Left Party on a mass scale is impossible.
PS. I’m surprised you haven’t denounced me as a ‘fascist, Tory, shill’ as usual in your post, Allan. Have you upped your anti-paranoia meds recently ?
jpenney,
Hiya. I hope this finds you well.
If you think things are bad for Labour up here in the ‘Branch Office’ well, as they say, ‘you aint seen nothing yet’.
The voting system in Scotland is complicated. You get two votes. The first is a ‘constituency’ vote which is exactly the same as in a GE. But the second vote is called the ‘regional’ vote or ‘list’ vote (as its more commonly known), where you vote for a party not a candidate. All parties submit a list of four candidates before polling day.
So for example at the last Scottish elections, the Glasgow region which is made up of 5 constituencies, they were all won by the SNP. So what the vote counters do thereafter is work out what the percentage of the overall vote the other parties got and then apportion the 12 list MSPs to the fringe parties.
At the last elections in 2016 Labour returned 3 constituency MSPs across the whole of Scotland (that stat is worth a moment) and were then allocated 21 ‘list’ MSPs. 24 in total down from 38 in 2011. (total number of MSPs 129)
2021 is going to be different. There is a new party in the race. The Alba Party. And they have a plan. They are going to stand candidates on the regional lists only. They are not going to put up constituency candidates. They advocate voting SNP first (constituency) vote and Alba second (regional) vote.
There is powerful logic to this plan. In the past people that voted SNP 1 and 2 wasted their second vote if the SNP did well in the constituency vote.
If Alba convince a chunk of SNP voters to give them their second vote the make up of the Scottish parliament will be unrecognisable after May 6. Amongst the grown ups talk is of a supermajority of MSPs for independence as in an overall majority for independence of +25.
As my old friend Angus likes to remind me, we live in interesting times.
The Scots nats have only been in business a very short time in political terms,but already signs are of the Westminster cancer has already started to spread amongst them with power grabs and rigging becoming increasingly the norm like the British parliament.The Scots Nats have little clear ideology and because of that they will fail much like the Labour party,but will acheive a independent Scotland unlike the Labour party who have played second fiddle to the Conservative ideology of me first and bugger the working-class .!
I have long thought that the SNP will split soon after achieving Scottish independence. They are necessarily a coalition of Left and Right to get independence, but that will be redundant after.
Their ideology is Identity politics.
I wish everyone a happy and peaceful Easter,a celebration of a little known Carpenters son,who was crucified by the Roman invaders in Palestine over two thousand years ago,and his still acknowledged by the majority of the planet Jesus Christ.Happy Easter
Sir, or is it Saint Marcus Rashford was given a platform by Gary Linekar & his pals @ BBC & SkyTV as the celebrity multi- millionaire’s name is short-hand for child poverty, despite being a major contributor to the problem. BBC & Sky are only interested in elite football as ‘the beautiful game’ is taken away from its working class fans. How much does it cost for a family to physically be there @ ‘the match’? How much is replica kit that changes every year? A working class game that families can only afford to watch down the pub.
I spent many years in the late seventies/early eighties running multi racial football teams. Most of the black lads knew they had no chance of ever playing for Everton Or Liverpool, maybe Tranmere or Marine? Working class kids still had the dream of maybe playing for their team, but local kids were usually ignored even then. Glasgow Celtic showed the way when they won the european cup in 1968 with the entire team born within 40 miles of Glasgow,, but football teams & managers were British.
Times they are-a-changin’ as football has become global & driven by international markets to exploit its audience. Who cares about local kids as 75% of Premier League footballers are ‘from overseas’, instant ready-mades from another country to be bought & sold. We no longer have to train our own footballers, much like the NHS. Sir Marcus Rashford needs to put his hand in his pocket. No-one will ever be given a platform on MSM to say such things. .
Channel 5 does the real divisions highlights Saturday days 7ish.