Next to nobody still votes for the Israeli Labor Party, but it has managed to wangle its three remaining MKs into coalition with the one man whom its remaining voters despise above all others, Benjamin Netanyahu. Labor will now support, among other things, the annexation of the Jordan Valley.
Its British namesake ought to cut all ties. But it cannot do so, since, unlike the Conservative Party, it has adopted the IHRA Definition. Merely to suggest such a severance would now be expulsionable. So the British Labour Party faces reduction to the remnant, Rightist presence of its namesakes in Israel and Ireland.
How many votes did each individual member of the Board of Deputies receive? How many votes did all of them put together receive? Yet Keir Starmer, who was already guaranteed to put Labour in a bad second place everywhere outside London (and to keep it in a bad third place in Scotland), chose yesterday to lose it BAME London as well, by bowing down to this strange little body of the self-appointed.
On the same day, he also chose to lose British Pakistanis, and many other people besides, by prostrating himself to an organisation with "Labour" in its name but with no affiliation to the party, in order to disregard last year's unanimous Labour Party Conference resolution on self-determination for Kashmir.
Like the economic Left, like the anti-war movement, and like the traditional working class, the anti-racist movement has given up on the Labour Party. It has only ever regarded Labour as the best of a very bad lot, and it has never regarded any Leader apart from Jeremy Corbyn as a bona fide anti-racist, although it was under him that several stalwarts were expelled from the party.
So far as I am aware, however, nobody has ever been expelled from the Labour Party for anti-Semitism. Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein certainly were not, and they look set to sue Lee Harpin and The Jewish Chronicle, which have lost this kind of thing in the recent past. This time, the JC could go out of business permanently.
Harpin has today been trying to claim the mantle of Denis Goldberg, of all people. This is part of a depoliticisation of the anti-apartheid struggle in the generation since it was won. But some of the people who called for Nelson Mandela to be hanged are still in the House of Commons, while quite a few of them are still in the House of Lords. The Labour Governments of the apartheid period also supported the regime in various ways. They were no Diane Abbott.
Somehow, I think that Abbott will survive a talking to from Starmer or from one of his minions. I hope that, as any of us would have done, she burst out laughing in his face and then walked out, still laughing all the way back to the company of serious people. Continuing to extend the whip to her is now what keeps Labour on the brink of mere catastrophe rather than that of oblivion. Just imagine the reaction of black London if Labour were to kick out Diane Abbott. Or if she were to announce that it had forced her out.
Its British namesake ought to cut all ties. But it cannot do so, since, unlike the Conservative Party, it has adopted the IHRA Definition. Merely to suggest such a severance would now be expulsionable. So the British Labour Party faces reduction to the remnant, Rightist presence of its namesakes in Israel and Ireland.
How many votes did each individual member of the Board of Deputies receive? How many votes did all of them put together receive? Yet Keir Starmer, who was already guaranteed to put Labour in a bad second place everywhere outside London (and to keep it in a bad third place in Scotland), chose yesterday to lose it BAME London as well, by bowing down to this strange little body of the self-appointed.
On the same day, he also chose to lose British Pakistanis, and many other people besides, by prostrating himself to an organisation with "Labour" in its name but with no affiliation to the party, in order to disregard last year's unanimous Labour Party Conference resolution on self-determination for Kashmir.
Like the economic Left, like the anti-war movement, and like the traditional working class, the anti-racist movement has given up on the Labour Party. It has only ever regarded Labour as the best of a very bad lot, and it has never regarded any Leader apart from Jeremy Corbyn as a bona fide anti-racist, although it was under him that several stalwarts were expelled from the party.
So far as I am aware, however, nobody has ever been expelled from the Labour Party for anti-Semitism. Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein certainly were not, and they look set to sue Lee Harpin and The Jewish Chronicle, which have lost this kind of thing in the recent past. This time, the JC could go out of business permanently.
Harpin has today been trying to claim the mantle of Denis Goldberg, of all people. This is part of a depoliticisation of the anti-apartheid struggle in the generation since it was won. But some of the people who called for Nelson Mandela to be hanged are still in the House of Commons, while quite a few of them are still in the House of Lords. The Labour Governments of the apartheid period also supported the regime in various ways. They were no Diane Abbott.
Somehow, I think that Abbott will survive a talking to from Starmer or from one of his minions. I hope that, as any of us would have done, she burst out laughing in his face and then walked out, still laughing all the way back to the company of serious people. Continuing to extend the whip to her is now what keeps Labour on the brink of mere catastrophe rather than that of oblivion. Just imagine the reaction of black London if Labour were to kick out Diane Abbott. Or if she were to announce that it had forced her out.
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