Deep fried Mars Bar? Oh wait, that’s the SNP.
Perhaps it is Schroedinger’s cake. One that is both eaten and uneaten at the same time.
Just as Corbyn is simultaneously both the next Prime Minister and someone who will never, ever hold that office?
We can but hope.
The current state of UK Politics is maddening. I think Labour did about as well as they possible could under Corbyn at the last general election. Exceeding expecations (and a horrible Tory campaign with magic money trees) is nice, but it doesn’t get you into power. Labour needs to take to more seats in Scotland, and unless the SNP implodes, I don’t see that happening. Meanwhile, the divisions in Labour continue to get worse as it is almost impossible to remove Corbyn, maybe it really is time for a party split even if it ends up just like the SDP did.
I don’t quite get this.
It’s a typo. Labour needs to win more seats in Scotland to have any chance of winning a general election.
Actually, no they don’t. Blair won without Scotland, for instance. Seats in Scotland help, of course, but the SNP has co-opted the socialist Left and the Tories up here are to the left of Westminster and are explicitly the Unionist party so Labour need to give some really good reasons for people to vote for them.
Totally agree with what you say about Labour, but quoting this bit in the hope of enlightenment!
As far as I can see, some Tories want something like no deal/hard Brexit/“the EU can go whistle” while others are rebelling to vote for EEA membership and/or the chance to force the government to abandon no-deal at the last minute. In between is May, who tacks to one side or the other dependent on who’s threatened to resign most recently. I’ve got no idea what “the Tories” as a single entity want.* What do you see their end goal as?
*(The question of whether they can get is a whole other can of worms, of course.)
As I think Theresa may said in March, out of the single market, out of the customs union, new trade deals with the rest of the world and a new agreement to engage with Europe. Free movement and immigration comes under full UK control.
That’s my understanding of it anyway. There are some in the party that are wanting it to be a bit softer, some that are holding her to those promises and that’s where the friction is currently playing out.
Labour? those frictions seem to be as deep if not deeper and I can’t easily decode exactly what the party line is in practical terms.
Ye-es - but with all the recent talk about “a” customs “partnership” which would have the same practical effect as being in the customs union, vs a “max fac” technology option which would mean actually having different customs rules, it’s not clear what the actual aim is - maximum alignment with EU, at the cost of rule-taking, or more friction at the borders but greater freedom to make customs policy. Until we know which way they’re going to jump on that, “out of the customs union” is a fudge. Which is fine, up to a point, but that point is fast approaching.
(You can say the same about “out the single market” - there has been talk of aligning standards to meet e.g. Rules of Origin requirements, but I’ve no idea if anyone’s actually decided on that.)
Labour, AFAIK, are officially saying that they want “a” customs union, but out the single market and no FoM. Plus it’ll be “jobs-first”, whatever that means. But where they or the Tories actually plan to end up is anyone’s guess.
It looks like Labour is trying to prove they can match the Tories for each step into dysfunction.
John Woodcock resigns from Labour and says the party has been taken over by the hard left. He’s correct, but it’s always nice to see someone calling Corbyn out
Labour MP Margaret Hodge calls Corbyn an anti-Semitic racist to his face.
There has been coverage of the anti-Semitism row in the Labour Party twice this week in major USA media.
It is pretty rare for an opposition UK party to get any coverage in the USA unless there is a major scandal.
Of course, Corbyn being Corbyn and completely inflexible will not change. And, he’ll continue his coup to remake the Labour Party in a 1970’s image that Tony Benn would be proud of.
I gave up on that New Yorker piece with the line, “But there are things you do not need to look at to see.” Yes, just close your eyes and “see” that the anti-racist left are really Nazis! Of course! :rolleyes:
Did the fact that Hodge is a Zionist and a major apologist of Israeli occupation get reporters?
All of the people trying to label Corbyn as an anti-semite have a pretty obvious bias (Tom Watson - funded by Trevor Chinn (Labour Friends of Israel), Margaret Hodge - member of Labour Friends of Israel, etc)
Al Jazeera did a good documentary on just how pervasive the Israel lobby are in British politics ( The Lobby Part 1: Young Friends of Israel | Investigation | Al Jazeera ), and it gives a good explanation on why there’s so much eagerness to ruin a potential PM who’s known to support a Palestinian state.
Oh, come on.
Given Corbyn has:
[ul]
[li]appeared at conferences alongside anti-semites;[/li][li]hosted conferences featuring anti-semites;[/li][li]invited anti-semites to the Houses of Parliament;[/li][li]claimed he saw “the hand of Israel” in an Islamist terror attack in Egypt;[/li][li]fucked up the launch of his own party’s report into anti-semitism so badly that not only did a Jewish MP get harassed at the event to the point where she left in tears but he himself was photographed laughing and joking afterwards with the guy who harassed her;[/li][li]been patron of not one but two organisations (STWC and PSC) which have been shown to have their own massive and obvious anti-semitism problems.[/li][li]laid wreaths at the graves of the Munich terrorists;[/li][li]presided over a Labour Party that is increasingly hostile to Jews;[/li][li]fought bitterly to avoid adopting the full IHRA definition plus examples when there were considerable benefits to doing so without ever explaining why exactly…[/li][/ul]
we really, really, don’t need to conjure up conspiracies to explain why people might consider him to be an anti-semite. I mean, maybe they’re wrong! He might just be really, really unlucky. But the suggestion that anyone who’s drawing inferences from the above must have their judgement clouded by Israeli money or that this is all just conjured up in a desperate attempt to silence his views on Palestine doesn’t really hold water.
With no insult aimed at you, lists like the above are to me indicative of the ongoing smear campaign that’s being orchestrated. The above claims are all heavily contentious, and often based on some very hypocritical logic. Let me outline where I have issues:
For starters, let’s start with the hypocritical logic. IHRA defines as anti-semitical blaming Jews for the actions of Israel, which is obviously reasonable. However, here one of the examples of Corbyn being anti-semitical is he’s heavily critical of Israel’s policies, for example his comment that Israel may have attempted to destabilise Egypt. I find it concerning that people are trying to play both sides of the argument here. You’re anti-semitical if you criticise Jews for what Israel does, but if you criticise Israel you’re also anti-semitical.
Then we have the circular logic that groups who are opposed to Israel’s policies in Palestine often have links to people who are anti-semites, so therefor supporting them means you must be anti semitical. By my reckoning, that’s 5 out of your 9 points. Often this is just outrageously wrong - for example, the conference I think you’re referring to where Hajo Meye compared Israel’s Palestinian policies to the Nazis. I really do not accept that a Jewish holocaust survivor is an anti-semite, and associating with him indicates Corbyn must also be an anti-semite. On other occasions, the logic is that Corbyn has had several meetings with known enemies of Israel, such as Hamas and Hezbollah. By this logic Clinton was clearly an enemy of the UK when he invited Sin Fein to the White House in 92. I do not understand how anyone can see a way forward in the Palestine that does not involve meeting with the major political parties of the Palestinians?
Then you have seriously dubious events, such as Ruth Smeeth’s tears at the anti-semitism event. Ruth Smeeth, former director of PR for the Israeli lobbying organisation Bicom. A woman renowned to be tough as hell, and a hard operator who gets what she wants. Driven to public tears by Marc Wadsworth’s comments that he’d seen the Telegraph and Smeeth sharing a press release, and had made an anti-semitical slur that no-one else witnessed. You’ll excuse me if I find that really, really convenient for people who are trying to argue that Corbyn encourages anti-semitism.
The munich wreath incident I’m still reading about, but as far as I’ve seen so far the logic is that he was at a wreath laying ceremony for victims of the 1985 Israeli airstrike on the PLO’s office in Tunis, but this is a terrible thing because some of the members of Black September are buried at the same cemetery. Guilt by association really does seem to be a common theme here.
The final point is the one that concerns me most. He’s anti-semitical because he does not agree with the IHRA’s definition of anti-semitism. Well I guess I’m guilty too because I really would not agree that “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” means you’re an anti-semite. I can entirely see why Hajo Meye made the comparison, because when you’re talking about sustained campaigns aimed to wipe out an entire group there’s usually one obvious benchmark to apply. And again, it’s the whole double standard. You mustn’t judge Jews by the actions of the nation…but if you make a comparison of the nation that’s too close to the bone, you’re also judging Jews.
So like I say, I go through lists like the above and I can’t help but notice just how well orchestrated the campaign is to attack Corbyn, and then wonder just how much of that is linked to the possibility of the UK getting a PM who is heavily critical of Israel’s Palestinian policies.
“I think I see the hand of Israel” isn’t criticising Israel for it’s actions though, is it? It’s inventing Israeli actions with **no **evidence in order to paint it as a shadowy and malevolent power that must, must, surely be behind every bad thing that happens in the Middle East. It’s witless conspiracism that just so happens to absolve other actors in the region of any moral responsibility for atrocities and throw it all at the door of Israel. He has no inkling of any evidence of Israeli involvement, but he’s ready to suspect it because he knows, deep down, that the Israelis are the bad guys.
A record of continually associating with people who are anti-semites and never, ever speaking up against their slurs when you encounter them doesn’t necessarily mean you are anti-semitic - it could just mean that you either can’t recognise anti-semitism when you see it or that you don’t think it worth speaking up against. None of these reflect well on Corbyn, that principled champion of the downtrodden. It’s quite possible - and even principled - to call out your allies when you think they’ve crossed a line. Corbyn never has. Why not?
The conference, which, again, he was hosting, was subtitled “From Auschwitz to Gaza” which might be considered problematic regardless of who was speaking. Corbyn may have felt he couldn’t contradict Hajo Meyer but he didn’t have any problems stopping Rubin Katz (also a Holocaust survivor) from speaking from the floor at the same event, having apparently assured him he’d get a chance to speak. He didn’t make any comments when another speaker who was not a Holocaust survivor likened the Jews to Nazis later at the same event. He has a well established pattern of keeping schtum when people he otherwise agrees with come out with material he later claims to have found objectionable and this event bears that out.
One - Clinton was President and actually in a position to move the peace process forward. When Corbyn met terrorists, he was an insignificant backbencher with no ability to influence the peace process in any way. Two - Clinton also met with people from NI and the UK. Corbyn has never invited representatives of Israel to HoC, never spoken alongside supporters of Israel at rallies, but has turned down invitations (plural) to Yad Vashem, and also to meet with Israeli politicians. Talking to Palestinian political parties (which is a hell of euphemism for Hamas, by the way, and doesn’t cover Iran-backed Hezbollah at all) may be part of a peace process, but clearly so is talking to Israel and Corbyn, pursuer of dialogue that he is, refuses to do so. Three - Clinton was - quite rightly - severely criticised for his invite to Adams at the time and it did damage his perception in the UK as an honest broker. And that was just one incident! Imagine if he’d had a long history of issuing invites to IRA members, calling them “brother” and attending memorials to terrorists. How would that have affected the peace process?
Well, that’s one way to look at it. Another is that’s its possible that a Jewish MP really did care about the issue of anti-semitism in her party; isn’t the unfeeling battleaxe she’s painted as; and was shocked and distressed when an event that should have been about laying these concerns to rest turned out to be mobbed by uninvited activists, one of whom made a point of singling her out and accusing her of being in collusion with a media conspiracy because she was handed the activist’s press release by a Telegraph journalist; and further upset when her party leader failed to do anything about it. “Even apparently tough people can have emotions” is a much, much easier notion for me to believe than “Ruth Smeeth, having been accused of colluding with the media, was unmoved by this but immediately realised it formed a pretext for her to pretend to be upset so that she could support Israel by undermining Jeremy Corbyn, who she quite rightly feared would save the Palestinians which she, for some reason or other, doesn’t want to see happen.”
He wrote an account of the event shortly after. In it he states that they laid wreaths for those who died in the 1985 attack “and on the graves of others killed by Mossad agents in Paris in 1991”. That’s *him *saying that the wreaths were for Black September members involved in Munich. Guilt by association doesn’t come into it. He knew exactly who the wreaths were being laid for and said so quite happily in print. Now, it may be that it never occured to him to consider whether it was appropriate to lay wreaths at the graves of people behind the murder and castration of civilians for political ends. I think it quite likely that the question never crossed his mind. But he did it. Because they had been killed by Mossad, therefore they were noble victims of the oppressor and it was as simple as that.
The victims of the 1985 airstrike who had wreaths laid at their graves were also terrorists.
Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip, and the settlements, are frequently appalling, with systematic human rights violations and probable war crimes. But you’ve smuggled an assumption in there that Israel is in the middle of a “sustained campaign to wipe out an entire group”. If that were true, there wouldn’t be any Palestinians left by now. If you had to choose between being a Jew in Poland in 1938, or a Palestinian at any point since 1948, you’d pick option B out of pure survival instinct. Israel is not conducting genocide and it’s actions - though often abhorrent - are not equivalent to the Nazi’s. In the light of that, likening the victims of the Holocaust to the oppressors is not just unfair but twisted and cruel and - because that cruelty depends on its targets’ Jewishness to gain its power - anti-semitic.
That’s where we differ. Because I go through lists like the above and I can’t help but notice just how easy it is to find Corbyn being at best weak on anti-semitism and at worst supporting terrorists who really would happily finish what the Nazis started, and then wonder how much of that is linked to the possibility that he is incapable of conceiving of Israel and/or the Jews as anything other than the imperialist oppressors.
There are a lot of people opposed to Corbyn’s policies, and I’m quite sure that a lot of them are (using the ammunition he’s spent his life stockpiling for them) attacking him for reasons that aren’t, primarily, about their personal horror at racism in the UK’s institutions (because if not, boy do they have a lot to talk about). But the ammunition is there for them to use. And I have got past the point, personally, of putting it down to his little peccadilloes, or trying to discount criticism because it comes from the wrong people. He fights every kind of racism except anti-semitism, he pals around with terrorists without ever advancing the cause of peace so much as an inch, and when he’s confronted with it he either lies or falls back on pathetic disingenuities like “I was present but I wasn’t involved”. Enough.
I’m going to partially retract this bit. I’d originally thought wreaths were laid at the specific graves of Force 17 commanders , not at a general memorial which includes civilians.
So some of those victims were also terrorists, and Corbyn didn’t or couldn’t work out if it was worth differentiating.