The Guardian’s betrayal of Corbyn – and of British democracy
Published
by
Richard Kuper
JVL Introduction
Jonathan Cook writes:
“If you are a Labour party member, the Guardian is the only ‘serious’, big-circulation paper claiming to represent your values and concerns.
“One might therefore have assumed that anything that touches deeply on Labour party affairs – on issues of transparency and probity, on the subversion of the party’s democratic structures, on abuses or fraud by its officials – would be of endless interest to the paper.”
Well it hasn’t been! Now read on…
This article was originally published by Jonathan Cook Blog on Mon 10 Aug 2020. Read the original here.
How the Guardian betrayed not only Corbyn but the last vestiges of British democracy
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Jonathan Cook is too kind to Jonathan Freedland.
A good article, as you’d expect from Jonathan Cook. Coincidentally, I’ve recently emailed the Guardian Editor on the same issue, suggesting that in the interests of objectivity, she gives a voice to those Jews who oppose the mainstream/Zionist view – but I’m not holding my breath for a positive response!
It may be worth JVL officially approaching her for a meeting to discuss our concerns. Again, I’d be a bit surprised to hear her agree, but worth keeping the pressure on and reminding her that we’re still here.
Excellent article,it says it all, so important to highlight the truth as Jonathan Cook does.An exemplary journalist.
Wrongs need to be highlighted so justice,truth and democracy can live on and Corbyn is right to fight for the truth.
This articulates what I’m sure many true Labour supporters have felt. An establishment coup to conserve the status quo etc. Prevent any equaling-up at all costs and sod society.
I’ve similarly been drawn to the Guardian, more due to the lack of alternatives, but been constantly deflated by the anti-Labour stance, dressed up as Corbyn/anti-semitism virtue-signalling, with no real evidence or it mostly being dredged from pre Corbyn etc.
Toynbee, Freedland, Harris, Crace etc., do not appear unintelligent. They were obviously aware of the ultimate result of a) not accepting Corbyn and trying to influence him, b) actively participating in making him unelectable.
They would not have predicted COVID-19, or the incompetent and harmful (herd immunity) response of the Tories, but we’re fully aware of the incessant carpet-bagging of UK assets, erosion of the NHS, march to Brexit under false pretences etc. They are therefore implicated in the further collapse of the UK as a progressive, green, fair, multicultural, internationalist society. They know this when they look in the mirror.
In my mind, the Guardian is similar to The Taxpayers Alliance; a facade of being for citizen’s benefit, so occasionally showboats by criticising some insignificant policy or action of the Tories, to keep up the pretence it is not an affiliate.
The anti-Semitism slur has been mentioned and promoted by Bannon, as a possible tactic to use on Democrats etc. The Guardian has not merely been duped, en masse. It was a cheer leader.
Disappointed, but not longer surprised.
This post makes depressing reading because every word is true. Thankfully there are still people out there like Jonathan who are fighting to get the truth out.
Another anti-Corbyn rant by the Guardian was Helen Pidd’s claim that Leigh “working class voters” don’t regret voting for Corbyn. Tyskysour on YouTube has a hilarious takedown of the article, as 2 of the 3 people she quotes are a property developer and the owner of a pizzeria she frequents:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLujzf-ISxY
Another incident that I know about is them interviewing people who write for them as examples of “Joanna and Joe public”, in this case an article on how individual people are responding to the lockdown. This is easy to do if you just use first names and if I know about one instance I suspect there are dozens of them every year.
Laziness seems to be another of the characteristics of the Guardian’s journalism.
I doubt that any perceptive reader goes to the Guardian these days for a radical and insightful take on the news, and Jonathan Cook has been excellent at documenting the reasons why.
One illustration lies in a simple story. Back in (I think) 2007, Alan Rusbridger went on film to describe how he was leaned on by the pro-Israel establishment. His successor has only made extraordinary efforts to exclude related insights and perspectives from the paper, whilst echoing the propaganda of the Jewish Chronicle.
‘Nuff said.
Thank you Jonathan!
Too often I found myself spitting feathers at the shallow opinion pieces the likes of Freedland would write. Not once was he able to support his overt bias with anything of substance.
I took the trouble to write to Toynbee and Gary Younge, about the Guardian’s woeful move away from their more substantive investigative writing and into tabloidesque personality assassination. I wondered why such evidence as ‘The Lobby’ was able to evade the paper’s greater scrutiny.
Toynbee replied with an angry postcard, dismissing my concerns as misinformed. Gary Younge did not bother to reply.
An excellent, well balanced account. Jonathan really is good.
Complaints (genuine or otherwise) relating to anti-Semitism were not the only complaints which were gerrymandered for sectarian political purposes by those such as Hogan, Robinson, Matthews at al.
Of three related non AS complaints I was involved with one was fast tracked within hours whilst two others took two months to get to national level. Hogan, dealing with all three managed to “lose” the two submitted in my name before his departure but not the fast tracked one, possibly involving a GDPR breach via an illegal recording, which concluded fourteen months after it was submitted.
My resubmission went to Robinson and disappeared into a black hole for a further two months requiring a third submission. The total focus of limited staff numbers and time on AS issues resulted in these two complaints taking a further thirteen months to be processed.
Despite detailed Subject Access Requests no data has been supplied providing evidence of any kind of proper investigation or due diligence ten months after being submitted.
These people have further breached the GDPR rights of Party members in using that data in the Panorama programme. Aided and abetted in that criminal act against Party members by Ware.
However, what is worse – and which is only superficially dealt with in this article by Cook – is the clear breach of PPERA 2000 in undermining not just the 2017 election but also the 2019 election and any alternative choice to the current set in aspic status quo.
The franchise of not only Party members but also millions of voters has been deliberately and systematically undermined. In a previous era all those responsible would have been taken through a gate on the Thames.
Such a brilliant and accurate article. It was initially hard to believe the Guardian had sold out to the Establishment and had completely ceased efforts to report truths. It’s not that you want to read news and articles that only reflect your own beliefs. You want news to actually delve deep to draw out the unbiased truth of any situation. The Guardian’s anti Corbyn stance has been stark… Am I naive to ask why they have taken this stance ? Because for many, as a result, it has become a newspaper that has totally lost its appeal.
Although Freedland was undoubtedly the worst, Toynbee and others also quickly fell into line. I think a few of the paper’s journalists have done damage to their reputations. I almost cannot bring myself to read Freedland’s pieces- I find myself thinking, “yes, but,” or ” if only you’d… ” He writes as if he is incapable of honestly addressing his skewed perspective.
It has been the almost total reversion to character assassination opinion pieces I have found most frustrating. The Guardian was once far better than this!
In May of this year I wrote an eight page letter to Kath Viner spelling out why as a loyal reader of 40 plus years I was now cancelling my subscription. Much of what I wrote in the letter alleging their “barrage of vitriol and a campaign of vilification” against Corbyn and alleged antisemitism in the Labour party was based on evidence and information I garnered from Jonathan Cook and many other articles on the JVL site. So thank you Jonathan, thank you JVL and all those that make this a must read site. I’d also like to thank Ghislane Peart and Dr. Felicity Laurence whose letters cancelling their subscriptions were published here and inspired me to finally sever my almost umbilical ties with the paper.
This is a good account which is unfortunately marred in one place by the repetition of the self-serving false narrative of some of Corbyn’s entourage.
Jonathan Cook writes that “the handling of antisemitism complaints dramatically improved once these rightwing officials were removed from their positions.”
This is simply false, unless by “dramatic improvement” you mean nothing more than the number of cases processed and the speed with which cases were handled, and totally ignore the integrity of the process. This is a bit like claiming that the handling of illegal immigrants in the US dramatically improved under President Trump.
As Jamie Stern-Weiner points out in his just published JVL article:
“It was not Starmer, but Corbyn, who accepted as the litmus test for opposition to antisemitism the readiness to suspend or expel members alleged to have expressed anti-Jewish stereotypes. It was not Starmer, but Corbyn, who instituted a “fast track” for expulsions notwithstanding the risks this posed to due process.”
And it was Jenny Formby who implemented the “fast track” process with such enthusiasm that the author of the leaked report boasted that by the end of July last year, her new regime was totally in control of the process.
Coincidentally it was on July 31 2019 that I was first issued with a characteristically Kafkaesque “notice of investigation” which has since been published on this website, together with my reply. If anyone thinks that the handling of my case was an example of a “dramatic improvement”, please let me know. Socialists must be prepared to face the truth even when the truth causes acute discomfort.
I have read Jonathan’s article and also the comments made in response to the article. I cannot disagree with any of the above, and they simply and clearly reflect and mirror my own feelings and thoughts on these issues. I have just finished reading Herman and Chomsky’s seminal work” Manufacturing Consent”, which is both a deeply depressing read, but also relevant to the subject at hand. The core message of the book is that we are consistently lied to, with the mission of the media being the unwavering support of the powers that be, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that these governments and institutions are distorting the facts and peddling false information. At the beginning of the book there is a powerful quote from Milton — “They have put out the people’s eyes and and then reproach them for their blindness”.
I detest Freedland and cannot tolerate his presence in the media, trying to avoid his articles and voice on radio 4. And the slant adopted to the recent revelations is , as proposed by others, is deeply hypocritical, with a pretence of objectivity, whilst subliminally projecting their agenda.
Re. Martin Read’s comment :
“The Guardian was once far better than this!”
The Guardian was once a different paper – before the Scott Trust became a limited company, and a clutch of good journalists were dispensed with.
There are fuller histories to refer to – but I’m short on actual references at this point. Jonathan Cook’s Blog may be the place to start.
Excellent article by an excellent journalist.So good to read the truth being told.
Thank you, very good article.
Jonathan Cook bang on about the Guardian. Correct me if I am wrong. Notices of investigation are still being issued on the basis of trumped up charges of anti semitism against opponents of JLM and Israel. George Wilmers post confirms this as does the case of the Wavetree 4.Why is this still happening and who is actually responsible for this nonsense?
Thank you RH, I had charted the Guardian’s ignoble demise. My wording was, perhaps, a bit vague or clumsy?
I note, more recently, that the ‘i’ newspaper has also fallen under the disingenuous stewardship of the Daily Mail group. Dangerous times!
Alas, Jeremy Corbyn has ridden off into the sunset. You have a new leader now and you must support him or else you risk destabilising your party.
Jeremy’s main fault was that he couldn’t own up to his mistakes especially over his handling of alleged antisemitism in the Labour Party. As the Duc de la Rochefoucauld once said ” No people are more often wrong than those who will not allow themselves to be wrong.”
Jock, given that Jeremy didn’t make any mistakes in relation to the A/S smear campaign, how then could it be possible for him to own up to them. But – just out of curiousity – precisely WHERE would you have him own up to them even if he had?
Would I be right in thinking that you are alluding to what some claim was his appeasement of the Smearers, the saboteurs? I can’t think what else you would be alluding to (although I TOTALLY disagree if THAT is what you DO mean), and if THAT is the case, where would you envisage him making this apology. Perhaps it would go something like THIS: Jeremy contacts the Daily Mail and says I’d like to apologise for not calling out the people AND the MSM who smeared ME and the left-wing membership as anti-semites…. Yes, no problem Jeremy, you put an article together to that effect, and we’ll give the article a prominent position AND give it a big mention on the front page.
I can’t for the life of me understand why Jeremy hasn’t done precisely THAT already! And I’m sure the Sun and Express and the Times and the Telegraph and the Guardian et al would ALL happily cover such an article/apology!
Afterthought: Yes, Jeremy could begin his article something like this…… ‘ I would like to apologise for not sticking up for Ken and Jackie and Chris and Marc and everyone else who was falsely accused of anti-semitism by the Blairites and the MSM and the Jewish newspapers and the CAA and LAA and the JLM and the BoD and LFI and the CST etc. And the reason I didn’t do so before is because they would all have just doubled down and vilified and condemned me as being in denial………’. And he would of course ALSO point out that it was all manufactured and contrived so as to sabotage his leadership of the Labour Party.
Send him an email Jock and suggest the idea to him.
As has been pointed out elsewhere, the Guardian now dodges factual news.
I stopped buying the Guardian many years ago. Its cost is poor value. Its entrenched bias is actually bonkers. The Guardian’s hypocrisy is sickening.
The Guardian was at ease with the concept of New Labour. I guess that the Guardian longs for the glory days of New Labour, though they cannot be repeated. The Guardian drifts pointlessly but now rather nastily. When I was a Guardian reader, in the last century, I felt irriated by this self-proclaimed progressive title employing the same boring, self-opiniated writers.
The Guardian is now down to guarding the high-up’s establishment.
The Guardian has joined in with the ultra-biased ‘mainstream’ media clique.
The Guardian observably does not care about genuine democracy.
The established media voice has lost all credibility, sadly. Hard to understand but they represent a public school, middle class sector of society who think they know what’s right for this country and refuse to consider a deeper narrative based on social justice. It’s an equivalent out of touchness to the Tory version, based on hardened attitudes. No telling them. So I have cancelled my subscription to the Guardian too. Who holds them to account? Corbyn never stood a chance. Out of the wrong drawer…. Hard to fight such lethally entrenched self belief. Except by winning hearts and minds which he did.
Good day Allan ,
It’s amazing how you just keep looking back.I know you are hurting because you believe your former leader was betrayed by the Guardian and pressure from the pro Israel lobby.Jeremy Corbyn was the author of his own demise.If he would have taken prompt and strong action against the antisemitism that sadly exists in some branches of your party he could have saved himself a lot of grief .Your pretence that there is no antisemitism in the party is what we in Australia call a furphy ( an absurd statement ) .To confirm this have a glance at the anti Jewish rhetoric posted on the Twittersphere by many Labour
supporters.
To quote another Australianism.When our great spin bowler Shane Warne was caught taking an illegal substance , he owned up and said “I will cop it on the chin .”Jeremy Corbyn should have done likewise.