Labour First secretary attended AWL event – and rules written specifically to allow that scenario
Labour’s latest move in Keir Starmer’s cowardly war on democracy – banning three further groups retrospectively, punishing people for associations that were allowed at the time – has been specifically tailored to protect at least one leading right-winger who would otherwise face expulsion under the rule changes he and his Labour First group have championed.
Labour is today proscribing Alliance for Workers’ Liberty (AWL), Labour Left Alliance (LLA) and Socialist Labour Network – and its earlier ban on four other groups has seen Labour members expelled even for talking to, for example, the Socialist Appeal news sheet in an interview about an electoral bid.
But the new proscription rules make a single exception to those contacts in their definition of what constitutes support, as activist Jorge Martin has observed:
And Martin points out that arch right-winger Luke Akehurst has done exactly what that curiously specific exemption describes:
No such exemptions have been made in respect of other now-banned groups.
The shameless hypocrisy of the Labour right knows no bounds. Just as Starmer’s ‘zero tolerance of antisemitism’ turned out to mean ‘a lot of tolerance for antisemitism as long as it’s a right-winger’, it was always clear that expulsion rules were only being applied to left-wingers. But now those rules are being specifically written to ensure that favoured henchmen are explicitly exempt – and only those favoured henchmen.
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