UK General Discussion: 2017 and onwards, Mayhem

[GoTfan]

So how much of this is due to anti-semitism in Labour

I'd be genuinely suprised if any of it was.

It seems to be a combination of brexit and people wanting attention.

Yeah, can't imagine why a female Jewish MP who has been mercilessly racially abused by Corbynites would want to leave the party.

Don't kid yourself. This is no principled stand. It's a publicity grab, pure and simple.

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

So how much of this is due to anti-semitism in Labour

I'd be genuinely suprised if any of it was.

It seems to be a combination of brexit and people wanting attention.

Yeah, can't imagine why a female Jewish MP who has been mercilessly racially abused by Corbynites would want to leave the party.

Don't kid yourself. This is no principled stand. It's a publicity grab, pure and simple.

Getting global publicity for why they're leaving an institutionally antisemitic party is exactly what they should be doing.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Don't kid yourself. This is no principled stand. It's a publicity grab, pure and simple.

Mike Gapes, a career backbencher well into his sixties, was on the verge of tears at the press conference. The tendency to assume that the motivations of people who do something you oppose can only ever be base is dismal in the extreme. This mass-resignation might well turn out be a very bad idea, but it is clearly not a light thing for (at least most) of the people involved.

[Beezer]

The neoliberal establishment will never accept the people's prime minister, Jeremy Corbyn.

[PSOL]

The neoliberal establishment will never accept the people's prime minister, Jeremy Corbyn.

On that note, can someone give a rundown on the high profile defections? Are they all Blairites, or are at least some regular Labour MPs opposed to Brexit.

[The Free North]

Don't kid yourself. This is no principled stand. It's a publicity grab, pure and simple.

Mike Gapes, a career backbencher well into his sixties, was on the verge of tears at the press conference. The tendency to assume that the motivations of people who do something you oppose can only ever be base is dismal in the extreme. This mass-resignation might well turn out be a very bad idea, but it is clearly not a light thing for (at least most) of the people involved.

Strongly agree.

Suggesting that the MPs motives are personal not substantive is just a defense mechanism for some.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

On that note, can someone give a rundown on the high profile defections? Are they all Blairites, or are at least some regular Labour MPs opposed to Brexit.

Umunna - was associated with the soft-Left socially liberal 'Compass' tendency (which has long since imploded) when he was first elected, but swung sharply to the right (in a vaguely neo-Blairite direction) as the 2010 Parliament wore on. The policy statement put out by the group looks very similar to that which he wrote for his abortive leadership campaign in 2015.

Berger - a slightly confusing case, because although she has always been associated with the Blairite end of the Labour Right, her personal views and enthusiasms are quite left-wing. She's also a friend of Umunna. But the critical thing here is that for more than a year she has been subjected to serious antisemitic abuse, and the response of the leadership and party apparatus to this has been... dire. The latter actually concealed a credible threat of violence from both her and the police. Given this, the only surprise about Berger leaving is that she's taken so long to do so.

Leslie - it would be wrong to describe him as a Blairite, but only because his associations were with the other side of New Labour; famously at the 1997 election he was the 'boy who does Gordon Brown's photocopying' who defeated veteran Tory MP Marcus Fox at Shipley. He was Labour's interim Shadow Chancellor in the summer of 2015, and in that role took stances that were very unpopular with Labour's members and which contributed to Corbyn's victory in the leadership poll.

Smith - this one really is/was a fairly boring Blairite factional hack.

Gapes - not really even on the Labour Right, let alone a Blairite. In most respects he's classic soft Left, and that's why he's a career backbencher (first elected in 1992). But he's a foreign policy specialist whose views are not remotely compatible with Corbyn's, who he thus loathes.

Shuker - a committed Evangelical Christian whose views have not always been all that easy to pin down, but he's been associated with Blairite/Progress types for a while and that's often what matters. I suppose he's politically quite similar to Atlas Forum Legend BRTD.

Coffey - an ordinary constituency-focused backbencher of the Labour Right, associated with Blair and all that, but not usually thought of as being much of a factional hack.

[Joe Republic]

So, all eyes on Anna Soubry now?  Any other Tories likely to follow?

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

Newspaper reports have correctly predicted about thirty of the past zero Labour splits. Doesn't mean that nothing will happen - there's a huge amount of strain at present for various reasons - but people need to avoid being credulous.

Anyway, the irony of the present situation is this: if a genuine equivalent of the original SDP were to be formed - a more moderate and small 'l' liberal version of the Labour Party headed by three and a half popular former cabinet ministers formed at a moment of apparent national crisis - it would almost certainly sweep all before it in the current climate; the various structural factors that doomed the SDP are no longer relevant. Trade Unions no longer have any hold over the political imagination or voting habits of the historic Labour electorate, the remarkable grassroots political organisation still possessed by the Conservative Party in the 1980s is long gone, the postwar generation - with its deep sense of loyalty towards Labour and the Tories and its propensity to turn out at extremely high rates - is dead, and the LibDems do not have the cross-class credibility as a protest option that the old Liberals had. The critical part, however, is 'three and a half popular former cabinet ministers' - a couple of callow randoms who are not even household names in their own houses would (probably) not cut through, no matter how widely reviled May and Corbyn are these days.

Three and a half former ministers? Which one was the half?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Three and a half former ministers? Which one was the half?

Bill Rodgers of course!

[ViaActiva]

Every MP who states "Never Corbyn" is a hero. It might not help their reelection chances, but it decreases the chance of a Corbyn regime and ensures they'll be on the right side of history.

[Antonio the Sixth]

True Labour will crush these traitors easily. This ain't 1983, and Ummuna ain't Jenkins.

[Silent Hunter]

Anyway, Derek Hatton has been readmitted into Labour.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Anyway, Derek Hatton has been readmitted into Labour.

Does he still consider homosexuality to be a bourgeois deviation, do you think? Although, given his career over the past few decades, perhaps he still does think that, but now views it as a positive?

[Blair]

So how much of this is due to anti-semitism in Labour

I'd be genuinely suprised if any of it was.

It seems to be a combination of brexit and people wanting attention.

Yeah, can't imagine why a female Jewish MP who has been mercilessly racially abused by Corbynites would want to leave the party.

Don't kid yourself. This is no principled stand. It's a publicity grab, pure and simple.

It's worth pointing just how sustained, and hideous the antisemitism that Burger (and others have faced).

I think 5 people have been convicted for making death threats against her, she's been forced to attend her own party conference with a bodyguard!. I've sat in meetings where female Jewish MPs have read out sheets of abuse they've been faced, most of it by Labour members.

If I was an MP, and saw myself subject to homophobic abuse from party members for months, and the party failed to act, it would be a principled stance to resign. The same if it was for a BAME member- almost everything possible that Luciana could have done would be dismissed as a publicity grab, and at the end of the day it really doesn't matter what motives some people ascribe to it. It's this sort of casual dismissal which is part of the problem.

Besides, lets review the action of the party. They refused to kick out Ken Livingstone, who compared Zionism to Nazism, they spend months trying to refuse to accept the institutional, and international definition of antisemitism, and they've kept a whole host of disgusting characters like Pete Willsman, and Jim Sheridan. Let's look at just one of the comments they made....

''For almost all my adult life I have had the utmost respect and empathy for the Jewish community and their historic suffering. No longer due to what they and their Blairite plotters are doing to my party and the long suffering people of Britain who need a radical Labour government.''

How can you say that and not be suspended?

Of course there's been a problem with this before Corbyn was leader, but the crucial questions seem to be A.) Why have Labour been so slow to react? B.) Why are antisemites attracted to Labour?

I've never met Adam, but I know lots of colleagues in the party respect him- as a Jewish Cllr in a strongly Jewish community, look, and read his article

https://medium.com/@adamlangleben/my-resignation-from-the-labour-party-fa330afacb86

[Silent Hunter]

Corbyn may not be an anti-Semite, but he is so anti-Israel he would never be considered an honest broker by them.

[DaWN]

It's worth pointing just how sustained, and hideous the antisemitism that Burger (and others have faced).

I think 5 people have been convicted for making death threats against her, she's been forced to attend her own party conference with a bodyguard!. I've sat in meetings where female Jewish MPs have read out sheets of abuse they've been faced, most of it by Labour members.

If I was an MP, and saw myself subject to homophobic abuse from party members for months, and the party failed to act, it would be a principled stance to resign. The same if it was for a BAME member- almost everything possible that Luciana could have done would be dismissed as a publicity grab, and at the end of the day it really doesn't matter what motives some people ascribe to it. It's this sort of casual dismissal which is part of the problem.

Besides, lets review the action of the party. They refused to kick out Ken Livingstone, who compared Zionism to Nazism, they spend months trying to refuse to accept the institutional, and international definition of antisemitism, and they've kept a whole host of disgusting characters like Pete Willsman, and Jim Sheridan. Let's look at just one of the comments they made....

''For almost all my adult life I have had the utmost respect and empathy for the Jewish community and their historic suffering. No longer due to what they and their Blairite plotters are doing to my party and the long suffering people of Britain who need a radical Labour government.''

How can you say that and not be suspended?

Of course there's been a problem with this before Corbyn was leader, but the crucial questions seem to be A.) Why have Labour been so slow to react? B.) Why are antisemites attracted to Labour?

I've never met Adam, but I know lots of colleagues in the party respect him- as a Jewish Cllr in a strongly Jewish community, look, and read his article

https://medium.com/@adamlangleben/my-resignation-from-the-labour-party-fa330afacb86

This is an excellent post, but unfortunately you're wasting your time. Corbyn is infallible to these people. It's all just a fake news Blairite witch hunt to them.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

A particular low point was that time when the Party apparatus actually hid an apparently credible threat of violence against Berger from her and also decided not to report it to the police. Your Brain On Factionalism right there.

[ViaActiva]

True Labour will crush these traitors easily. This ain't 1983, and Ummuna ain't Jenkins.

"crush", "traitors" - the language of an authoritarian zealot.

A particular low point was that time when the Party apparatus actually hid an apparently credible threat of violence against Berger from her and also decided not to report it to the police. Your Brain On Factionalism right there.

Christ, when did that happen?

[Silent Hunter]

Joan Ryan (Enfield North) has quit Labour.

She is joining TIG.

[Horus]

Good to see the "friends of Israel" purging themselves out. Will help labour get a clearer message and win even more decisively next election.

[Silent Hunter]

Good to see the "friends of Israel" purging themselves out. Will help labour get a clearer message and win even more decisively next election.

Like they did this time? There's more chance of me dating Jennifer Lawrence, who has just gotten engaged.

[Horus]

Good to see the "friends of Israel" purging themselves out. Will help labour get a clearer message and win even more decisively next election.

Like they did this time? There's more chance of me dating Jennifer Lawrence, who has just gotten engaged.

I have no doubt next election will be wave, but with these stragglers out of the way it will now be a tsunami. Can't wait for you guys to get British Bernie! You're lucky to have such a decent, humble man leading your party.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Good to see the "friends of Israel" purging themselves out. Will help labour get a clearer message and win even more decisively next election.

Not that I'm without sympathy for a more genuinely socialist direction for Labour--I want to like and support Corbyn, I really do--but holy sh**t, dude, did you read anything Justice Blair posted above?!

[Horus]

Good to see the "friends of Israel" purging themselves out. Will help labour get a clearer message and win even more decisively next election.

Not that I'm without sympathy for a more genuinely socialist direction for Labour--I want to like and support Corbyn, I really do--but holy sh**t, dude, did you read anything Justice Blair posted above?!

Ken Livingstone made a solid point and they were right not to kick him out. As for Berger she's been an attention queen for years. If Milliband or a reliable Jewish labour source were saying this, I might feel differently. And Umunna, the leader of this "Bloc" said himself he'd never seen any Anti-semitism in Labour. Some of my fellow Jews are so used to being unsafe that they do not realize how good things are now.