Councillors in Pendle, Brierfield and Nelson – including Borough Council leader – say Labour no longer reflects their views and is bullying and threatening dissenters
“THE LABOUR PARTY LEADERSHIP NO LONGER REFLECTS OUR VIEWS; IT’S TIME FOR A CHANGE.”
That is the statement from twenty Labour councillors who resigned last night citing a draconian shift in the national party, which is targeting local councillors, preventing them from standing for elections and using aggressive bullying tactics to suppress fairness and free speech.
The resignations represent the biggest mass departure from Labour in local government since Keir Starmer became leader. The group, from Pendle Borough Council, Brierfield Town Council, and Nelson Town Council – including borough council leader Asjad Mahmood – has decided against joining any other political party and will form independent groups on their respective councils.
Cllr Asjad Mahmood, who leads the newly formed independent group, said:
I, along with my colleagues, were elected by local residents to represent them in the council chamber. As a Labour Councillor, I have always felt that the party’s policies were aligned with my own beliefs and those of the constituents who have honoured me with their votes. Sadly, over a recent period, senior party officials have attempted to impose their ideas at a local level. I was elected to serve the public, not party officials.
Cllr Yvonne Tennant added:
At a time when 14 years of Tory cuts are affecting local people across Pendle, the Labour Party leadership should be allowing local hard-working councillors the opportunity to challenge the Tories. Instead, colleagues are being hindered from fulfilling their roles.
Cllr Mohammed Iqbal MBE said:
I was suspended from the party for 18 months before it was lifted in December 2023 for advocating on behalf of my constituents. I joined the Labour Party over 30 years ago and have always been encouraged to speak out on issues. However, senior figures within the party are attempting to stifle free speech and threaten dedicated councillors with removal as candidates. I, for one, cannot stand by and allow this to happen. The bullying needs to stop.
Last week, Keir Starmer promised voters to push out power to regions if he gets into Downing Street. He made a similar promise to Labour members during the party leadership campaign, pledging to empower and foster local democracy, especially in candidate selections.
Since getting the job, he was waged war on members, imposing candidates in many areas. In many others, members and incumbents have complained about widespread vote-rigging to ensure selections supportive of Starmer’s red-Toryism, often candidates with serious questions to answer about their own conduct. Police are currently investigating one such incident of apparent voter fraud.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
Precisely what are the policies that these councillors disagree with the Labour Party on.
Herr Flick
Red Tories have as many policies as the Fuhrer has Principles
Might have to change your moniker to ‘Bubble boy’
Doug – Thanks for letting me know that you can’t answer what I thought were very basic questions
According to Bloomberg, the Tory government may soon have to restrict arms sales to Israel.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-21/uk-mulls-restricting-arms-sales-to-israel-if-it-goes-into-rafah
According to The National, Starmer’s “LABOUR has backed selling arms to Israel”. So, it would seem yet again Starmer is to the right of the Tories.
“Labour back selling arms to Israel in shocking Sky News interview”
https://www.thenational.scot/news/24225801.we-dont-boycott-labour-backs-selling-arms-israel/
Skwawkbox has also noted that Labour intend to continue arms sales to Israel come what may.
“Labour frontbencher McFadden: Israel is an ally and Labour will continue arms sales”.
https://skwawkbox.org/2024/04/02/labour-frontbencher-mcfadden-israel-is-an-ally-and-labour-will-continue-arms-sales/
None. Because labour has no policies.
It has however been noted by the gruniad of all places that labour are “The unacceptable replaced by the unpalatable.”
NVLA – Oh for goodness sake, don’t be silly. There are non so blind as those that refuse to see
Doug – See my response above https://skwawkbox.org/2024/04/01/20-councillors-quit-labour-in-nw-over-regimes-bullying-and-attack-on-free-speech/#comment-253934
That’s not hard.
On every key policy issue from the unworkable and nonsensicle ‘economic’ policies of the neo liberal Chicago school – with it’s anti- industrial focus on unproductive rentierism driving not just the UK but the entire Collective West towards a dystopian techno- feudalism – to the atomised disorganised contract operating model; from NHS and education privatisation to draconian support for every single Tory based anti-civil liberty legislation; and from unstinting support for the nazi based ideology of Zionism * to an exceptionalist and pathological pursuit of a foreign policy seeking to impose a single unworkable model of development on the rest of the world via unceasing terrorism you are spoilt for choice when it comes to fundemental policies indistinguishable in philosophy, design and intent from those of the Tories. All of which are as far away from the founding principles and values – along with the operating criteria – of what created the Labour Party as it’s possible to get.
Just how downright obtuse does anyone have to be to not comprehend the glaring reality that across the entire Collective West – particularly the Anglo Saxon parts such as the UK and US – all political party’s approved by the oligarchs running this malice in blunderland shit show are two cheeks of the same arse? How many examples are required to be repeated and nauseum before the penny drops for denizens of the fantasy based community like Billy no mates here for whom facts** which contradict that fantasy are irrelevant?
The point of politics is to change things that are not only not working but are intrinsically – as in built in features and the entire point – unworkable for the vast majority. In this regard whoever is nominally ‘elected’ at any level from the choices allowed in the collapsing singularity of the Overton Window is meaningless because nothing will change until the inevitable system collapse which (and for the same reasons), as Professor Michael Hudson lays out in the ‘Collapse of Antiquity’, occurred in the Greek and Roman civilisations two and two and a half millennium ago.
But, be our guest Billy. Continue maintaining that metaphorical neon ‘I am a maroon’ sign above your head as everyone with a working brain cell laughs themselves hoarse at the current iteration of the fabled and ridiculous ‘dog that returns to its own vomit’ that you have become. A court jester expelling an expanding vacuum into fresh air for no other reason than to wallow in its own ignorant and arrogant self-defined but totally irrelevant importance. Slowly sinking even in the entertainment value of the fool.
* see, for example, Larry Johnson here:
https://sonar21.com/israel-itching-to-ignite-world-war-iii/
To continue, for the sake of completion the missing footnote from above.
** This recent article from Asia Times….
https://asiatimes.com/2024/03/america-has-no-ukraine-plan-b-except-more-war/
…starkly lays out the fundamental problem.
It’s author, David Paul Goldman, is an American economic strategist and author [who] writes from a Judeo-Christian perspective and often focuses on demographic and economic factors in his analyses … Goldman was global head of credit strategy at Credit Suisse 1999-2002, Global Head of Fixed Income Research for Bank of America 2002-2005, and Global Head of Fixed Income Research at Cantor Fitzgerald 2005-2008. He subsequently was a partner at Yunfeng Financial in Hong Kong, an investment bank later acquired by Jack Ma. He continues to advise CEOs and institutional investors. He is a regular contributor to Claremont Review of Books, Law and Liberty, Tablet Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and First Things (where he was senior editor during 2009-2011).
In the article he recalls attending a recent Bilderberg style meeting of the Collective Western foreign policy community in which he writes the following:
” No one disputed the data I presented. And no one believed that Russia is taking 25,000 casualties a month. Facts weren’t the issue: The assembled dignitaries, a representative sampling of the foreign policy establishment’s intellectual and executive leadership, simply couldn’t imagine a world in which America no longer gave the orders.
They are accustomed to running things and they will gamble the world away to keep their position.
In short, there is no Plan B, nor real strategic plan to defeat Russia at all. It’s merely a bricolaged scramble to make sure the West stays in power by any assortment of haphazard, and at times mutually antithetical, means.”
—————————
Thee features and characteristics Goldman describes in terms of conflict/warfare here are systemically applicable accross the entire Western paradigm. Every facet at every level of the Western model – from economics downwards along all axis – operates on a model which has negative efficacy built in as standard operating procedure. Its not just warfare; it’s policy making, logistics, education, etc ts also communication, language, thought patterns, organising principles and everything else in between and what that generates.
Demonstraing the depths in which the Collective West and it’s culture is irrevocably trapped in a doom spiral – pace Hudson’s synthesis – of The Fantasy Based Community where facts and reality don’t matter only power for power’s sake based on an internally generated exceptionalsm where double standards are the norm. A dead civilization walking.
Which, holistically, raises all sorts of relevant questions. Not least of which, in a clash of civilization’s context, is that of what would an actual workable Western culture look like strpped of it’s current nonsensical malice in blunderland operating model? Is such a scenario even possible – whether generated internally (which I see no feasible evidence to support), or externally imposed? Is it desirable? Is it an oxymoron?
If people like Billy no mates on this site think they are the answer they are asking the wrong questions.
Nice to see Cllrs from my home town leading the fight against NunuLabour led by the Establishment careerist shyster who’s tricked his way to the top of Labour, stabbing Corbyn in the back along the way.
I wonder where some people have been while the Labour leadership has been ignoring and thus condoning and therefore being complicit in such things as genocide and crimes against humanity?
I suppose in the eyes of Labour national officials the East Lancashire councilors should have shown more concern for bus services in Tel Aviv than on their own patch.
I am sure I am not the only voter concerned that our major national parties are more concerned with aiding a foreign state than sorting out our own dire domestic situation.
Luus57 – So you don’t know either.
Does anyone have a link to their full resignation letters,maybe they will provide some precise answers?
” Police are currently investigating one such incident of apparent voter fraud.”
Surely the current Police investigation in Croydon is the logical progression from the findings of the Labour Party’s thorough investigation which established that there had been wrongdoing.
Given the findings of the Labour Party’s internal investigation I welcome the Police’s involvement and if the Police find that the law has been broken I will welcome the prosecution of those suspected of being culpable.
You’re puddled! This Labour Party has – never – had a ‘thorough investigation’ of anything, in it’s – now – four years of life.
It’s a sham political party, led by a sham politician.
I welcome the Police’s involvement and if the Police find that the law has been broken I will welcome the prosecution of those suspected of being culpable.
Dafuq’s it to do with you, nondom noncecase?
“I welcome….” Just fuck RIGHT off with your delusions that you actually matter.
Toffee – Oh dear, I see that you are desperate for attention again.
I’ve simply made my position clear, do you disagree with what I’ve said in your quote?
Well said Toffee. Straight to the point as usual.
baz2001 – You’re very easily impressed.
Perhaps the numbers of Labour MPs and Labour members of the House of Lords who are “Labour Friends of Israel” may explain some of the current disconnect between the Labour leadership and many of the party members.
See here for the list (as currently published on the LFI website)
https://www.lfi.org.uk/lfi-parliamentary-supporters/
……and here’s a list of the parliamentary members of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East (LFPME)
https://www.lfpme.co.uk/parliamentary-supporters
A list of people on the side of the oppressed – many of them siding with the oppressors, to cover all the bases.
I am caused to wonder why my own Labour MP and the Labour MPs of at least two neighbouring constituencies feel the need to be members of LFI ????
Could it be something to do with the expenses-paid “fact-finding missions” of which they can avail themselves in respect of the trips to Israel and the Middle East ????
Some might call them “jollies” !
Surely not Labour MPs.
I don’t have a list, as they don’t publish one …
BUT
Conservative Friends of Israel claim 80 per cent membership among conservative parliamentarians.
Maybe – – – – Just Maybe – – – – This explains a lot.
Why do so many MPs sign up to be “friends” of an Apartheid pariah state ?
Fact finding banquets, sorry missions.
BBC northwest news saying these latest resignations aren’t owt to do with those in Burnley who jibbed the party over Palestine.
And the councillor they interviewed said he/they are all pissed off with keef’s total control freakery. And he’s not wrong.
Toffee – So like those who have commented to date on this page he couldn’t manage to come up with anything specific then. Oh dear 😔
It’d take a bastard week to specify everything that pisses people off about the greasy, slimy, muculent nasal, twunt.
And how do YOU know what was spoken about in the interview? Watched it, have ya?
No? Then shut your cave, gobshite.
Toffee – “And how do YOU know what was spoken about in the interview? Watched it, have ya?”
Was I wrong to rely on your report of the interview, do you have some vital piece of info that you neglected to mention earlier?
If you can provide a link to the interview then I will be quite happy to watch it and give you a more detailed response.
Doug – You do know that Labour are not in government YET?
I have no idea but I’m guessing that he probably took advice when he formulated Labour’s motion calling for a ceasefire that was passed by parliament recently. (see below)
“That this House believes that an Israeli ground offensive in Rafah risks catastrophic humanitarian consequences and therefore must not take place; notes the intolerable loss of Palestinian life, the majority being women and children; condemns the terrorism of Hamas who continue to hold hostages; supports Australia, Canada and New Zealand’s calls for Hamas to release and return all hostages and for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, which means an immediate stop to the fighting and a ceasefire that lasts and is observed by all sides, noting that Israel cannot be expected to cease fighting if Hamas continues with violence and that Israelis have the right to the assurance that the horror of 7th October cannot happen again; therefore supports diplomatic mediation efforts to achieve a lasting ceasefire; demands that rapid and unimpeded humanitarian relief is provided in Gaza; demands an end to settlement expansion and violence; urges Israel to comply with the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures; calls for the UN Security Council to be meet urgently; and urges all international partners to work together to establish a diplomatic process to deliver the peace of a two-state solution, with a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable Palestinian state, including working with international partners to recognise a Palestinian state as a contribution to rather than outcome of that process, because statehood is the inalienable right of the Palestinian people and not in the gift of any neighbour.
Herr Flick
Try the Fuhrers policy of expelling Jewish members accused of AS
Or his unequivocal support for ‘Jews committing Genocide ‘
Or his support for those who shit in our rivers and on our beaches
Or his support for the two child rule, bedroom tax and end to the cap on Bankers bonuses
he couldn’t manage to come up with anything specific then
He. HE.HE.
Not you as in ME.
You didn’t watch the interview. You have no fucking idea of what HE (The resigning councillor) actually said. So you surmised in order to suit your crass gobshitery.
FYI HE mentioned keef’s constant interference on local government matters AND selection.
That do ya, prick?
Now fuck off and die. .
Toffee – Do you feel better now? 😉
How many of these councillors are up for election on May 2nd and [if so] will they appear on the ballot paper as Labour candidates?
(what are the cut-off dates for candidate registrations and/or alterations to the ballot paper)
I’ll feel better when you either stop posting, or better still, stop drawing breath.
Herr Flick
Has your favourite Human Rights Lawyer the Fuhrer given himself Legal advice on the Genocide in Gaza
Does this make him complicit in crimes against humanity
Some ‘Labour’ MPs seem to have been very busy ‘making the right connections’ and having themselves a nice jolly time in the process …
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/mps-register-financial-interests-donations-gifts-declarations-labour-conservative-2024/
I agree with Toffee here – the Councillors are fed up
with the control freak- ery .. some of which is to do
with the attitude to Palestine but not all.
What is strange is that I have just watched the Al Jazeera
film about October 7th and there is much more discussion and
questioning in Israel than there is here – or maybe it is not so
strange?
There is a difference too between the attitude to Israel
during the Thatcher era and the attitude now. The Tory Govt then had
no compunction in stopping arms sales after the invasion of Lebanon.
They told Israel that they could not effectively pick and chose which
rules they could break and which obey.”
PS Doug – Yes indeed, Jewish Labour Party members have been expelled
from the LP in a greater proportion than would be expected from their numbers.
This has NEVER been exposed by the MSM.
Note how the wee gobshite revels in the smarmerist ceasefire motion as if it was some sort of monumental victory – and then remember that it went through ONLY because keef browbeat the shithouse of a speaker and shit all over parliamentary procedure.
A prelude, should people be taken by anything the gobshite advocates on behalf of the object of his unhealthy obsession.
Also note how he hasn’t had anything to say about the shite that’s been stirred up (as a direct result) by those very same parliamentarians – against muslims in particular.
Fortunately, the posters here are all too wise to the caprine corruptor. However, if there is just one casual visitor/ browser of the comments section is even remotely swayed (unlikely) with anything that prick spouts, then it’s one too many.
Toffee – Would you have preferred it if the motion hadn’t been passed? 😕
Firstly, I’d have preferred procedure and protocol to have been followed.
That means the SNP motion was voted on….The one which wasn’t allowing israel off the hook, like smarmer’s one does
You call yourself a Democrat. Yet you’ve allowed keef to repeatedly shit all over democracy and democratic processes; not only within that party but also with parliamentary procedures, AND – worse still – stated your approval of it by your outright refusal to condemn it.
But then again, your defence consists of you ONLY voting for him because he was (in your own words) best of a bad bunch.
So, when people are inquiring as to who and/or what’s caused the subsequent racial discrimination and division, I know exactly where my finger’s pointing.
And if I knew exactly where you were, I’d direct the people seeking justice straight to your door.
I’ve been reading the SB forever but some of you guys are coming unglued. This performative ranting is what gives the left a bad name.
Bottom line: one can be either part of the solution or part of the problem. Redefining anything which does not suit ones sensibilities as “performative” – which is clearly the only approach comic publications like Unheard are capable of -is itself performative and adds nothing of value.
Bottom line
If you are not actively working to stop the Genocide then your potentially complicit and could end up in the William Hague
The May 5th council elections will be a test for New New Labour, vote against faux Labour.
Ooops May
5th2ndI understand that 8 out of the 20 councillors who have resigned from the Labour Party are up for re-election in May’s election. Given that the deadline for the delivery of nomination papers is 4pm on Friday 5 April. I wonder if Labour will have time to select and register new candidates.
There is also the example of the Jewish Labour Staffer sacked after
helping organise pro Gaza protest: See previous Skwawkie post
https://skwawkbox.org/2023/11/09/starmer-sacks-jewish-staffer-for-helping-organise-pro-gaza-protests/
(Sorry if this has already appeared in comments!)