Breaking: Woodcock out of job as Tory/Red-Tory ‘extremism tsar’

Alleged sex-pest and friend of apartheid still claiming it on his Twitter bio, though…

Jonathan Woodcock, the ardently pro-Israel former Labour MP who quit the party rather than face investigation over sex-pest allegations, is out of the job he was appointed to by the Tories (blue team) after helping Boris Johnson campaign against Jeremy Corbyn.

Woodcock, who – like his fellow pro-Israel saboteurs John Mann and Ian Austin – goes by his peerage title on his Twitter/X bio, used his position as ‘extremism tsar’ to target Palestine Action and environmental protest group Just Stop Oil, recommending in a report that the two groups should be considered criminal and that protests against arms and energy companies should be banned. He wrote the report while working as a lobbyist for the arms and fossil fuel industries.

He also used his position to call on Keir Starmer’s new Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to outlaw the independent MPs who stood for election on an anti-genocide platform and ousted right-wing Labour incumbents.

Supposedly an ‘independent’ government advisor, Woodcock is deeply connected to the Israel lobby and the arms industry. He is the chair of the so-called ‘Defence Purpose Coalition’ of senior weapons industry figures and worked for other groups representing oil and gas interests. Since 2011, has travelled to Israel on multiple occasions on ‘all expenses paid’ trips funded by the Israeli government and pro-Israel lobby groups.

In 2018, at the time a right-wing Labour MP, Woodcock quit the party to escape an investigation into complaints from an female aide alleging that he had sexually harassed her. He was also accused by local Labour members of bullying staff.

The Home Office has confirmed that Woodcock is no longer in the job and he appears also to be out of his role as a government ‘trade envoy’ to Tanzania. At the time of writing, his Twitter bio still describes him as the government’s ‘adviser on political violence and disruption’:

His departure was discovered by Byline Times after the London Assembly billed him, in its advertising for an event at which he is scheduled to speak tomorrow, as a “former” government adviser

Tim Crosland, founder of the campaign group Defend Our Juries, which had called for Woodcock to be sacked, told Byline Times:

Everyone in the media and Parliament knew Lord Walney was a lobbyist for the oil and arms industry. Yet he was consistently presented to the public as ‘Independent Adviser’… It tells us everything you need to know about the importance of direct action to democracy that it took 320 people sitting in the rain on 27th September outside Southwark Crown Court to put an end to appalling deception of the public.

Since the publication of Lord Walney’s report in May, calling for Just Stop Oil and Palestine Action to be treated as organised criminals, nearly 50 people have been jailed for holding the oil and arms industries to account.

If the Government’s serious about confronting corporate corruption of democracy and the rule of law, it doesn’t end with the sacking of Lord Walney. They must order the release of all political prisoners now.”

Israel’s genocide in Gaza has killed as many as 200,000 Palestinian civilians and maimed many more, and it is now waging war on Lebanon and the West Bank, after an initial terror campaign using booby-trapped pagers, killing and maiming thousands more civilians.

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