Starmer’s Labour ‘institutionally racist,’ say quitting councillors
JVL Introduction
Perspectives on the General Election (8)
Labour’s failure to deal with the evidence of institutional racism in the Party as revealed especially in the Forde Report is coming back to haunt it.
It simply seems to have no idea how to treat people of colour (particularly women) with respect, as shown most recently in its shabby dealings with Faiza Shaheen and Diane Abbott. But the problem has long roots and is deeply embedded in the party’s structures.
The pro-Israel position adopted by the party leadership over the war on Gaza, and the associated Islamophobia, is taking its toll too, as evidenced in the resignation of seven councillors in Slough.
Faiza Shaheen has, not surprisingly resigned: “I cannot continue to contribute to a party that seems to think so little of people like me and has moved so far away from my values.”
RK
This article was originally published by the Morning Star on Wed 5 Jun 2024. Read the original here.
Starmer's Labour ‘institutionally racist,’ say quitting councillors
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No doubt we shall see more resignations from the Labour party before the election, but are the reasons people are resigning things that will have any resonance with the mass of potential Labour voters who will be asked to put their cross in the right place on election day? This election, like the last, isn’t going to be about a collection of policies in a Manifesto , but about just one.
It has suited some people in the Labour party and beyond to declare that Corbyn’s defeat should be seen as a sign that the ‘left wing’ policies he espoused were roundly rejected by the electorate. But the last election wasn’t about policies, right, left or centre; the Tories under Boris Johnson made sure it was about just one thing, ‘Getting Brexit done’. Faced with that I doubt that even a resurrected Keir Hardy would have gone down to a defeat just like Corbyn’s.
Sunak’s Tories look like pulling the same trick on Starmer by making sure that this election is all about ‘Immigration’. If Sunak’s ruse goes according to plan there will be planes flying asylum seekers to Rwanda just in time for the election. At this point Starmer will face a dilemma: try to out Tory the Tory’s by taking an even harder line and face a string of resignations from Labour member who cannot stomach it, or saying nothing and being accused of being ‘soft on immigration’.
Spot on about Brexit – and I suggest also the championing of
a second Referendum by Starmer in spite of their opposition resulted
in the loss of many traditional Labour “Red Wall” seats. The insistence
that the UK struggle to implement yet another Referendum and
its aftermath outraged these voters who thought they had already
indicated their decision.
Indeed Len McCluskey identified the “Ref2” policy as the big
difference between GE2017 and GE2019 and the main
reason why there was a Tory landslide.
The problem was not only the policy “per se” but the confusion
it introduced as to its implementation after a Labour win.
Contrary to what the ERG minority insisted on – there was no
requirement for a hard Brexit among the majority of those who voted
“Leave”: in fact those I spoke to about it were insistent they wanted a
continued relationship with EU countries..
The outcome of the Tory landslide was a “hard” Brexit and subsequent
struggle to implement it resulting in a smaller UK Economy and loss of jobs:
https://www.london.gov.uk/new-report-reveals-uk-economy-almost-ps140billion-smaller-because-brexit#:~:text=The%20average%20Briton%20was%20nearly,jobs%20in%20the%20capital%20alone.
The changed for the worse Labour Party is indeed institutionally racist. There is a mass of evidence about this. The Labour Party is now unfit to govern.
The establishment mass media would also have us forget that the appalling racist and misogynistic comments about Labour MP Diane Abbott originated within the Labour Party. The right wing perpetrators were suspended for a short while and then reinstated as if they had done nothing wrong.
NEC member Luke Akehurst [I love Israel] parachuted into North Durham and had a hot reception from protestors on arrival. In the past two days he has deleted 2,179 tweets, in one he encouraged and supported colonization and Palestinian land theft.
“I’m in favour of the major West Bank settlement blocks becoming part of Israel, and for the Golan Heights to remain part of Israel”.
Whereas Faiza Shaheen was deselected by Labour because after trawling through her last 10 years communications they found 2 anodyne tweets which they did not like, and out she goes.
Akehurst can trash International Law on the West Bank and Golan Heights, which call annexing Occupied Territory grave war crimes [1949 Geneva Conventions [article 49 para 6] and now he is flavour of the month with Starmer. Disgusting.