Unpopular parachuted right-winger’s sparse ‘supporters’ are mostly councillors – and even those are not all from Durham
Luke Akehurst, the right-wing Israel fanatic and genocide-denier imposed by Labour on party members in North Durham as their general election candidate, has posted photos of his supporters and himself out on the streets of Durham. He described them as ‘canvassing sessions’, but none of the photos show anyone speaking to the public.
Instead, the post consisted of two images of Akehurst, with a handful of people holding campaign placards, on empty Durham streets. But the people around him do not appear to be grassroots supporters, but instead a few councillors, including one from London, hundreds of miles away from Durham:
Lewis is resigned from a whips’ role on the council last November after she posted (and subsequently deleted) comments saying that Israel’s mass murder of civilians and children in Gaza is ‘bad… but not evil’:
Hamas is no good for Palestinians and no good for Jews. It wants a fundamentalist Muslim dictatorship on the land from the river to the sea, devoid of all Jews. And Christians. And LGBTQ folk.
It is no good for anyone who believes in democracy. It is simply no good for humanity. What Israel faces now in Gaza is a moral dilemma. Hamas wanted the IDF to retaliate so it could make Israel look bad. It worked. What Israel is doing is bad – killing thousands of innocent people, including children. But not evil. Hamas is evil.
And while so many across the globe who promote Palestinian rights don’t want to see the difference, I do.
Lewis also works for BICOM, the hardline pro-Israel group that operates We Believe in Israel, the advocacy organisation that Akehurst runs, or ran until he was imposed as North Durham candidate – and before she worked for BICOM, Lewis was ‘national organiser’ for Akehurst’s Labour First right-wing pressure group:
The second image also features Lewis, along with more councillors:
Of the two so far unidentified people in the second photo-opp, the woman in glasses appears in local campaign photos otherwise featuring mainly councillors going back as far as at least 2015 and may be a party staffer.
It appears Akehurst is receiving little to no support even from ordinary local party members – so little that he can only get even enough councillors for a meagre photo by drafting them a fellow genocide-denier from north London.
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