Have Starmer’s enforcers over-reached themselves in vetoing Jamie Driscoll
JVL Introduction
Unbelievably, the Labour Party has refused to allow the highly popular Jamie Driscoll mayor for North of Tyne, often called “the last Corbynista in power”, to be on the longlist for the new north-east region mayoralty.
No reason given of course as Labour’s bureaucracy continues to axe candidates with a smidgeon of socialism with gay abandon.
It seems that sharing a platform with Ken Loach is enough justification for this purge!
The fixers may have met their match. Fellow mayors for Manchester and Liverpool, Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram, have protested and Unite has called the decision a “major blunder”.
There must be real fears that if Driscoll decides to stand as an independent he could humiliate Labour, as Ken Livingstone did in 2000 when he won the London mayoralty against Labours’ official candidate. Some even relish the thought…
RK
This article was originally published by the Guardian on Sun 4 Jun 2023. Read the original here.
Labour mayors say party undemocratic for blocking Jamie Driscoll’s candidacy
Burnham and Rotheram write to NEC after Driscoll is kept off longlist to be candidate for north-east mayor
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Jamie Driscoll is a highly competent and effective administrator, a principled socialist, a committed trade unionist and an anti-fascist and anti-racist with an excellent record of standing up physically to nazis on the streets.
There is no way that Jamie could remotely regarded as antisemitic and to suggest otherwise is a calumny on a good man, a man who is a credit to the working class movement.
The campaign against Jamie by the Starmtroopers is nothing short of laughable.
It may be that this vile crowd of right-wing factionalists have bitten off more than they can chew this time.
Solidarity with Jamie Driscoll !
And meanwhile, today we have “Labour rising star threatens to evict families if children do not inform on knife crime”.
I know there are many fine and honourable people still in the Labour Party fighting against these despicable people, but surely listening to the vile rhetoric being spouted by Starmer and his cronies trying to ‘out Tory’ the Tories, their hopes are in vain?
Sorry I can’t credit who first said it, but I didn’t leave the Labour Party, the Labour Party left me.
The stated reason is because Jamie Driscoll shared a stage with Ken Loach.
The circumstances of that are so innocent that the “reasoning” behind the ban is so ridiculous as to be beyond parody. It’s taking guilt by association to Kafkaesque levels.
Driscoll, as North of Tyne Mayor, was invited to a theatre used as a location in Loach’s most recent film, The Old Oak.
He was invited to talk about film with Loach, because Loach seems to be the only filmmaker at the moment who makes films in the North East of England.
Loach was apparently expelled from “Labour” because he supported people expelled after being accused (not necessarily found guilty) of antisemitism.
So, talking to someone, someone who has defended other people accused of antisemitism, about their films, is cause for disqualification now?
Seems like “Labour” selection policy is starting to resemble the pub game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”!
Every potential candidate is going to become agoraphobic- they won’t dare go out in case they inadvertently speak to someone who knows someone who once met Chris Williamson.
The way they’re going, nobody is going to be eligible except Luke Akehurst’s cronies. Maybe that’s the plan.
I, MIKE KATZ
Not the American bodybuilder
Or the bagpiper, multi-instrumentalist
But the one from JLM
The Jewish Labour Movement
Who is close to Keir Starmer (and)
Believes it’s enough to disqualify you
As a candidate if you don’t apologise
For sharing a platform, discussing Art
With Ken Loach, the film director
Comfortably negating most
Of modern cinema, audiences, and actors
The jurists at Cannes and Venice
Berlin. Sundance
Even those who watched his adverts
Without realising he made
Kes, and Cathy, how the Wind might
Shake the Barley, Land and Freedom
Riff Raff, Raining Stones
That one about the bus driver
Carla’s Song
Hidden Agenda (murders in Ireland)
Nothing to do with Israel
Gaza, Palestine
The Intifada
Only candidates who support Starmer can now be selected as Labour representatives, regardless of what the membership wants. No socialism, no democracy, despite the description of the Labour Party on my membership card as “a democratic socialist party.”
There was an interview with Jamie Driscoll on the World at One today (Monday) which is worth listening to. Apart from anything else, there’s no way he could be antisemitic! After all, his region has adopted the IHRA Definition and Driscoll has been on the JLM training! What more do they want? That he not be a socialist, that he not be a former Tory MP, that he not associate with Loach, that he not demonstrate how radical policies can be successful?
A Conservative-look Labour Party under Starmer again displays dim thinking and repressiveness. I observe a worse than useless establishment witlessly repeating discredited dissemblance about antisemitism which never was.
I hope so . But Starmer is continuing to create what he calls his party. It does not look anything like what Labour party should be. Ken Loach is called anti semtic what utter nonsense.This kind of nonsense needs to called out for what it is, a scam.
According to Luke (who is he?) Akehurst this is to do with Ken Loach and antisemitism.
If so, this right-wing NEC, with an aversion to Party democracy, is continuing to do exactly what Forde reported, namely up to weaponise antisemitism for factional motivations. Little wonder they prefer to deny the existence of the leaked Labour report that Forde scrutinised, and Starmer prefers to hide.
We now know from Forde and the LabourFiles documentary that there was indeed a selective left-wing targeting of members , a ‘witch-hunt’ and a political purge. This obviously vindicates those very proscribed groups which were fighting for justice, and that Ken Loach to his credit refused to denounce.
With this dishonest, manipulative , anti-democratic NEC condoned smear campaign the Labour Party will be both weakened by a ridiculously narrow monoculture and morally compromised.
If PLP members, or other Labour officers or members, are too afraid to challenge this outrageous behaviour in large numbers then the Tories and resulting Independents will do so come the next General Election.
Claiming Jamie Driscoll is antisemitic just because he spoke to the anti-zionist Ken Loach about some of his films is just a smokescreen. His real crime is to support the policies that Starmer pledged allegiance to when standing to be leader of the Labour Party. It would be great if a group like Momentum or Led by Donkeys crowd funded a campaign to put Starmer’s original pledges on billboards around the country so the public could see what a hypocrite he has become.
Solidarity, Jamie. A step too far by the Starmtroopers and a ridiculous statement by ‘a Party source’. Thanks to Andy and Steve for solidly supporting Jamie. Starmer needs to beware of ‘lions shaking off chains’.
Loach was not, as party spokesman states, “kicked out for antisemitism” these people are vindictive cretins who cannot even get their own mendacious script right.
I’d say they over-reached themselves when they started to purge Corbyn supporters and then, again, when they started to disproportionately purge Jews from the party. I don’t think we should see the treatment of Jamie Driscoll as the line in the sand. It just makes it sound like everything that came before that was tolerable.. even understandable. It was not tolerable, understandable and certainly not acceptable by any stretch!
Solidarity with Jamie Driscoll and all others wrongly accused of being antisemitic simply because they want justice for Palestine. I see all this as the slow death of the Labour Party. It doesn’t speak for me anymore. Where is the Democracy? Where is the Socialism? Ken Loach is definitely NOT an antisemite. It’s ludicrous.
Starmer was never a man to be trusted! Having read several articles about his past DPP work it makes grim reading as does his attack on Julian Assange and that young autistic man, Starmer was extremely keen to extradite both to the US, even went to the US to show his loyalty to America! That loyalty is firmly confirmed from his own mouth as Zionist, & anyone who sides with the oppressed like the Palestinians becomes oppressed & gagged & removed by Starmer !
Dreadful man corrupted the real meaning of a Labour Party!
We’re getting to the stage where A is expelled or vetoed for sharing a platform with B who shared a platform with C who was seen in the same pub as D who uses the same barber as E who lives next-door-but-one to F whose brother said that the antisemitism ‘crisis’ is a complete sham and scam.
Joking aside (well, HALF joking) this is fascism at work, and needless to say, just about all of the oppresive legislation enacted by the Tories (and supported by their Red counterparts) in the past year or two are aimed at the left – ie the groups and organisations and individuals who – one way or another – are trying to change the world for the better and stop all the destruction and pollution etc, etc of our planet. And it’s for those reasons that ‘THEY’ regard *US* as the enemy.