Faiza Shaheen – keeping hope alive
JVL Introduction
Faiza Shaheen is one of the few left-wing parliamentary candidates to survive Labour’s purge on dissenters.
Her new book Know Your Place, reviewed here by Mike Phipps, is in essence a primer on inequality in Britain and the world today.
She talks about family background and the sheer improbability that anyone like her should have enjoyed the success she has to date.
And she chronicles the vast differences in Britian today, perpetuated by a class system and by race discrimination, and underpinned by a rotten educational system which perpetuates privilege.
Shaheen offers practical solutions: a maximum wage; universal free child care; largescale investment in the green economy; public and shared ownership of assets to redistribute wealth; limits on the ability of non-UK residents to buy property here, a solidarity tax on excessive wealth, for starters.
But Starmer’s Labour seems unable to hear, let alone being willing to grasp the nettle.
RK
This article was originally published by Labour Hub on Wed 12 Jul 2023. Read the original here.
Keeping hope alive
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I don’t think Faiza Shaheen is especially impressive from a left solidarity point of view (maybe because she’s had to tow the Starmer line) but her focus on class politics is good.
Sure, JVL must justify itself as the Jewish voice for, rather than against Labour.
It often, though, recalls a restaurant diner who cites ‘terrible food and small portions.”
Shaheen’s place on this website?
Cue her New Statesman take on Corbyn’s remark that antisemitism in Labour was “dramatically overstated for political reasons”.
Does she believe he should be allowed to stand as a candidate for the party?
“I think his statement was really stupid,” she responded.
“…Keir Starmer set it up to be a zero tolerance thing [on antisemitism] and once you’ve done that it becomes impossible for that statement to sit alongside it.”
The piece continued:
Some on the left now feel betrayed by Starmer, who has discarded leadership campaign pledges such as abolishing tuition fees and taking private utilities into public ownership.
Does Shaheen?
“Umm, are you trying to get me kicked out of the party?!” she replied (only half-joking).
“Maybe ‘I don’t want to get kicked out of the party’ is the answer, I don’t know what to tell you.”
She eventually gave a careful answer: “I’ve heard a lot said about how circumstances have changed. What I’m trying to do locally with my members is to be clear about where I stand. You’re not going to hear me taking lines from the Tories on immigration or talking about tagging refugees. I don’t believe in that. I still think public ownership is a good idea. I’m trying to be clear with people about what I stand for and be the type of person that is held to account.”
Keeping hope alive?
The loudest sound?
Clutching at straws.