Letter to Keir Starmer re treatment of Diane Abbott and Bell Ribeiro-Addy

This letter expresses the dismay felt by its authors, active Labour Party members, at the admonition and warning delivered to two black women Labour MPs, Bell Ribeiro-Addy and Diane Abbott, in response to representations from the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

MPs Bell Ribeiro-Addy & Diane Abbott. Images: Wikipedia

Dear Keir Starmer

Diane Abbott MP & Bell Riberio-Addy MP

We are shocked and disappointed to learn of your admonition and warning to two black women Labour MPs in response to representations from the Board of Deputies of British Jews concerning the MPs participation in a Zoom meeting arranged by “Don’t Leave, Organise”. The Board’s spokesperson, Marie Van der Zyl, alleged that:

“It is completely unacceptable that Labour MPs, and even ordinary members should be sharing platforms with those that have been expelled from the Party for antisemitism. Indeed, this breaches the Board of Deputies’ Ten Pledges that Keir and other Labour leadership contenders signed up to. We would urge Labour to take swift and decisive action …”

Speaking on the Today programme, shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds said:

“… they’ve been spoken to, I understand, very firmly about this… I think that the leader of the party was right to do that and to remind both the MPs of their responsibilities, and clearly no Labour MP should be sharing any platform with people who have been expelled from the party.”

As citizens and members of the Labour Party with nearly sixty years membership between us, we object strongly to the erroneous, oppressive and inequitable action Mr Thomas-Symonds reports you to have taken, and ask for your assurance that it will not be repeated in the future.

Erroneous because the two MPs did not share a platform with those expelled from the Party for antisemitism. They participated in a Zoom meeting arranged by Don’t Leave, Organise which Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein joined as individuals – there was no question of sharing a platform. Also, neither Jackie Walker nor Tony Greenstein was expelled from the Party for antisemitism.

Oppressive because the fifth Board of Deputies’ pledge to which this relates amounts to guilt by association and is McCarthy-like in its effect. Please refer to pledge 5 in the attached statement prepared during the leadership and deputy leadership elections, which outlines why the Party should not support the pledges which are deeply oppressive in their effect and in conflict with provisions of the Human Rights Act 1998 and subsequent Acts

Inequitable because two well-respected and much racially abused black women MPs were treated by you in a patronising manner like little girls, and not given the respect they deserve as a former shadow home secretary and her chief of staff. In addition, they were treated disproportionately harshly in comparison most notably with Dame Margaret Hodge MP who called our former leader “a f……g anti-Semite” and received no more than a slap on the wrist for an act of gross misconduct warranting withdrawal of the Whip.

In addition, to asking for your assurance that an action of this egregious nature will not be repeated, we also ask that you reconsider and withdraw from your ill-judged and precipitate action in signing up to the Board of Deputies’ Pledges for the detailed reasons given in the attached schedule. Their effect if carried through into the Party, would be highly divisive and discriminatory against those of us who are committed advocates of the Palestinian cause. This in a futile attempt to appease the Board whose support for the deeply discriminatory conduct of the State of Israel is unquestioning and incompatible with Labour’s stated values; conduct described by successive United Nations Human Rights Special Rapporteurs as “appear(ing) to constitute apartheid and segregation”.

Yours sincerely

David Plank & Jennifer Runham

Copies to: Diane Abbott MP & Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP


Board of Deputies Ten Pledges – why the Labour Party should not support them

Pledge 5 and the comment on it:

5. Any MPs, Peers, councillors or CLPs who support, campaign or provide a platform for people who have been suspended or expelled in the wake of antisemitic incidents should themselves be suspended from membership.

Comment: This is unacceptable, as it seeks to establish “guilt by association”, a notorious feature of the McCarthy “trials” in the USA. Any member of the Party has the right – and duty – to speak up for others, such as Chris Williamson, who they believe stands wrongly accused and/or poorly treated. It would be unconscionable and oppressive for such righteous conduct to be punished in this way.

Comments (34)

  • Jan Marsden says:

    Totally agree, great letter, we have stand up against this McCarthyite witch hunting.

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  • Jan Brooker says:

    A similar letter [from members] ~ with additions, is gaining signatures at the moment:
    For the attention of Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner, Jennie Formby and all members of the Labour Party National Executive Committee on behalf of the undersigned members of The Labour Party.
    We, the undersigned are shocked and saddened by the revelations found in the report titled ‘The work of the Labour Party’s Governance and Legal Unit in relation to antisemitism, 2014-2019’.
    We believe that racism, sexism and all forms of discrimination that unfairly block members from playing a full role and fulfilling their potential within the party are wrong and need to be challenged equally across all parts of the Party. This includes issues of equality that lack legal protection and draw less concern and attention, but still unfairly hold members back, including classism. We also believe that as socialists, the vast majority of our members also naturally share this view and as a result, we are proud to be part of this party – a community of activists and professionals working together for a fairer society and more sustainable, caring way of living.
    As committed socialists, we believe that the vast majority of members of this party expect to see just disciplinary action taken when required. For us, this means the disciplinary rules being applied fairly, consistently and reasonably, based on the principles of natural justice, with a view to wherever possible facilitating positive change yet with a zero tolerance attitude toward genuine hate speech or any attempt to thwart the success of the party that we love and have dedicated hours of our time to.
    Many of us have invested many hours of family time and many paid work hours towards achieving a Corbyn-led Labour Government. We need to have full confidence in this party’s disciplinary system. We need to have full confidence that the process will from this point on be even-handed and fair towards members and sufficiently robust toward those who publicly represent us, because unfortunately, that has not always seemed to be the case and that has been incredibly demoralising, prompting many good members to leave.
    We acknowledge that the leaked document contains issues that may be disputed (and possibly disputed in legal terms) but that it highlights potential issues of abuse, misogyny, racism and unprofessional behaviour unacceptable in any organisation let alone a progressive organisation like the Labour Party that members and staff alike should find unacceptable.
    We acknowledge that the veracity of claims in the document must be verified and that the leaking of said document and the personal details contained must be investigated but that the PRIMARY focus of any investigation must be the actions of the people involved.

    We note that:
    – The report contains compelling evidence that very senior Labour Party staff deliberately sought to obstruct the party from resolving complaints.
    – The report appears to contain evidence of senior staff members using language, and showing behaviours, with regard to race, gender and mental illness that are unacceptable within our Party.
    – The report appears to contain strong evidence that said staff exhibited contempt to members of the PLP and the membership and, in some cases, actively and knowingly sabotaged the substantial efforts being put in by members from all parts of our Party. If true, this would be a gross misuse of privileged positions of power and trust with obvious potential implications for the party’s electoral performance.
    – The report appears to contain strong evidence of Party staff acting in a way non-compliant with Clause 1 of the Labour Party Rule Book
    We demand that:
    – An appropriately redacted version of the report should be published by the Labour Party and said report should be submitted in full to the EHRC for investigation.
    – All staff implicated in allegations that include obstruction of democracy, racist or sexist abuse or misuse of party funds should be suspended immediately.
    – The announced independent investigation be transparent, rapid, conducted by NON-PARTISAN INVESTIGATORS and suggest resolutions that are released in full to the membership.
    – This should include acknowledgment and full assessment of all of the implications eg to electoral and polling outcomes, in adverse publicity as a result of alleged actions, damage to party and collective member reputation plus any implications for the reliability of the disciplinary system whilst the named alleged perpetrators were in positions of influence and power
    – The investigation give due consideration towards whether the subsequent electoral defeat and loss of Jeremy Corbyn as Leader have in any way resulted from an accumulation of the effects of any of the findings of the investigation
    – The leadership of our Party release a statement to acknowledge the feelings of many within and beyond our BAME community that certain abuses – including Islamophobia – have been underrepresented and to reassure members that this will also be taken seriously and be explored as part of the whole investigation process
    – The report must also investigate the issue of knighthoods – what qualifies someone to be recommended for one and what role the wider membership might play in helping to decide that in the future
    – After the results of the investigation are published, should those findings indicate that the evidence stands up, urgent introduction of a clearer Code of Conduct be introduced, reinforced by training for staff and PLP members and enforced to explicitly ban sectarian behaviours and to ensure staff act in accordance with the wishes of conference, the NEC, Regional Boards and elected politicians and officers over and above any personal opinions.
    Whilst acknowledging that there needs to be a proper investigation, in signing this letter we are expressing not only our grave concern about the contents of this leaked report but also are expressing in advance our demand as members that the investigation be thorough with reference to the above points.

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  • Ann Lewis says:

    I have always supported Chris Williamson and continue to do so. Am I anti -semitic? Will I be expelled from the Labour Party?

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  • dave says:

    What’s rather chilling about this is that there seems to be a notion that the Labour Party is isolated from the wider labour and socialist movement such that MPs dare not participate in anything beyond approved events. The point of the current debate is whether the party can remain as the main political instrument of the labour movement and I would have thought Starmer and co would want its advocates out far and wide saying that it must stay so.

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  • RC says:

    “in the wake of antisemitic incidents” is itself a further piece of McCarthyism. The BoD does not even restrict its (in any case grotesquely overbearing) remit to those who have allegedly committed antisemitic acts. They thus extend guilt by association by a further degree. Acceptance of this diktat by Starmer, and application of it by Symonds Thomas, render them unsuitable for the posts they seek to occupy. They are proof of cowardice, weakness and injustice – and at that, in face of avowed reaction and racism on the part of a clique which represents less than half of its alleged constituency..

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  • John Bowley says:

    To publicly tell off prominent black women who did nothing actually wrong seems imperious, misogynist, racist and ultimately thoroughly incompetent.

    Keir might have first examined whether the BoD and fellow complainers were correct in what they publicly claimed and also whether they had gone beyond their own previous hostile unfair demands on the Labour Party.

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  • Mike Cohen says:

    The BoD’s increasingly absurd attempts to uncover antisemitism would be merely ludicrous were they not, for anyone who knows anything about the genuine article, disgusting. And Starmer is deluded if he thinks that he can appease them. But the rot of appeasement set in under Corbyn as some of us – like Chris Williamson – saw at the time.

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  • Peter Cave says:

    I can but agree with the comments above. Being a defender of free speech, I don’t mind the Board of Deputies announcing that they demand this or that – but I do object to the current leadership of Labour kowtowing to the Board, and bowing before their demands. Their demands are unreasonable, unjustified – and their implied claims of representing all Jewry is false – and ‘alternative fact’ the should be challenged in every news report about the Board. I comment as someone who have written two books with a rabbi theologian – and I have given the evidence that, were the Board’s approach to be followed, then many eminent Jews both in and outside Israel would be deemed antisemitic. A bizarre position

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  • Alan says:

    I wholeheartedly concur with the letter, and also -with deep sadness – with the comment made by Mike Cohen.

    The rot did indeed begin under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. Perhaps I’m a simple old fellow, but I do wonder why nobody made the rather obvious point that it is a strange form of antisemitism which allowed the proportion of Jews among Labour MPs in the last parliament to be eight times that of Jews in the general population.

    I also wonder why, when Jonathans Arkush and Goldstein started “shouting the odds” and arrogantly laying down conditions upon which they would meet Comrade Corbyn, nobody took the elementary step of reading the potted bios of these individuals on entirely supportive websites like that of the Jewish Leadership Council. Those bios show a pattern of behaviour in their day jobs which should be anathema to any socialist. Much the same is true of Marie van der Zyl.

    I regret that it also appears that Comrades Abbott and Ribeiro-Addy have issued some form of “apology” while solidarity was being mustered. They have nothing to apologise for, and neither do former (and I hope soon future) Comrades Walker and Greenstein.

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  • Allan Howard says:

    As I have said before, there are shills all over the internet dissembling disinformation or negative comments/platitudes about Jeremy Corbyn and the left, on both social media and sites such as skwawkbox, and THAT is precisely what someone did yesterday in respect of Jackie Walker. Here is what they said in relation to Jackie:

    ‘I don’t think is helpful or does very much for the Palestinian cause to try to move the Labour Party into an open fight with the Zionist by going out of their way with memes like the MP for South Tel Aviv, children murderer etc. Or saying that Jews were responsible for the slave trade. It could be possible that a few individual Jews could have been involved in the slave trade. It could be possible that my next door neighbour is a paedophile and I don’t know, it doesn’t make me or the rest of the street are paedophiles too. To say that Jewish money financed the slave trade, amounts, in my opinion, to St Luke blaming the Jews for the death of Jesus to exonerate the Romans.’

    The writer is giving a totally false account and impression of what Jackie said (although he doesn’t mention her by name), and I have little doubt that they did so deliberately, and NOT out of ignorance. She did NOT say that Jews were responsible for the slave trade; what she said (in a private discussion with a facebook friend) is:

    ‘…. and many Jews (my ancestors too) were the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade which is of course why there were so many early synagogues in the Caribbean.’

    I didn’t see the post until more than eight hours after it was posted, and responded to it immediately (at 1.00am), by which time I expect hundreds – and quite possibly thousands – of people will have read it. The odd thing is that none of the regular posters on there who post comments all day long practically every single day – and who undoubtedly know that what the poster said was false – pulled him up about it, and not only THAT, but at the point where I admonished the poster, they had zero ‘Likes’, but then two were added in the hours after I posted my ‘Reply’!

    Needless to say, the shills pretend that they are on the left of the party whilst spreading their disinformation and, in this case, a totally false representation of what Jackie said.

    https://skwawkbox.org/2020/05/02/starmers-next-favourite-for-general-secretary-named-in-gmb-metoo-report/#comment-144491

    And the following voxpolitical article reproduces what Jackie said in full:

    https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/07/02/bbc-admits-anti-semitism-claim-against-jackie-walker-was-false-wheres-labours-apology/

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  • Max Cook says:

    Mr Starmer,
    As a longtime member of the labour party and a trade unionist I cannot condone your actions in respect of the two amazing black PLP MP’s, I have absolutely NOTHING against Jews in our community or movement but I DO take exception to Israel’s disgusting murderous actions against the Palestinians.
    To sign up to the BoD’s demands gives them the ability to expel and sanction ANY one that doesn’t agree with their very Draconian demands, and allow JLM free reign with the education of we the membership on Jewish matter’s is like allowing the Israeli government to begin “with hunting” and in complete agreement with the BoD’s, who may I add do NOT represent anymore than a third of Jews in our communities.
    Please Mr Starmer DON’T sell our movement and we it’s member’s down the river, because NOTHING you do in respect of the ten demands will EVER be enough….. Jeremy Corbyn found that out and he was the best leader our movement has had in generation’s.

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  • Stephen Williams says:

    Two black, female MPs abused, one of them only recently elected. I suggest that it’s no coincidence that she had replaced a notorious anti-Corbyn ex-MP; that in itself was enough to put her in the firing-line.
    Nevertheless, and I say this with diffidence since I’m not under the pressure that they are, I note that once again, appeasement seems to be the usual response to these attacks. Where are the senior MPs, the anti-racist MPs, the left-wing MPs who should have stood shoulder-to shoulder with them and told the feeble leadership that any attack and Dianne and Bell is an attack on them all?
    It appears that nothing has been learnt from Jeremy’s four years of appeasement of these dangerous forces in our movement….and outside it.
    Don’t bleed when swimming with sharks.

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  • Daniel Sevitt says:

    I agree that neither MP should be held accountable for participating in a Zoom call with expelled former members of the party.

    Instead I would hold the organizers of the meeting accountable. By allowing Tony Greenstein,who was expelled from the party for abuse, and Jackie Walker, who was expelled from the Party after writing that “many Jews” were the “chief financiers” of the slave trade and then accusing the people she offended of trying to “lynch” her, to attend, Don’t Leave, Organize revealed itself as a seditious group with no respect for the Labour Party or the people that voted for it.

    I would immediately sever all ties with Don’t Leave, Organize and any of the groups involved in setting it up.

    I’m guessing you won’t agree to that either despite failing to acknowledge anywhere in this daft letter to the Leader of the Opposition that JVL is one of the founding groups that caused this whole mess in the first place.

    And, yes, I know you never publish any comments that even slightly disagree with you. JVL only works if the echo chamber is sealed tight. It’s a bit like North Korea that way.

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  • Julie Hope says:

    Absolutely agree with you.

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  • JanP says:

    Thank you Jan Brooker.
    This is outrageous. Apart from anything else, this censureship and accompanying shenanigans represents everything that puts people off joining Labour and puts voters off voting at all.
    Jeremy Corbyn had got most things right – for members and the public. Though cowards flinch and traitors smear comes to mind as new wording for the anthem.
    I completely agree with both letters and agree to my name being added to the members letter.

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  • Barbara Simpson says:

    Keir Starmer May have signed the pledge but members did not and many of us will not. He was not even leader when he signed it.

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  • Dianne O Neill says:

    Deeply saddened that we have become the party of appeasement and not a true opposition. Both the nec, leadership and mps should take their lead from the membership not a lobbyist group

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  • Dido Walker says:

    The attacks on Jeremy Corbyn for Labour Party were disproportionate and undue and I think the lack of respect shown these wen is off the scale of what would be acceptable is similar. Since the Labour Party has cleaned up its act and promises to be vigilant the Labour Party should be a better and nicer place to be but it isn’t. There is no question thst anti-semitism is wrong religious racial or moral bigotry is wrong but tell me is this the way to deal with it. Is the tack being taken perhaps over-zealous?

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  • john burns says:

    If there was an honest argument with substance within the B.o.D’s claim then the Leader of our Party would be right to reproach any individual on such matters regardless of their status within the Party. However, it is quite easily shown that the B.o.D’s claim is disingenuous: moreover, these people are well known Tory supporters, hence once again we see the Party apparatus blundering into a political spat, loaded only to denigrate us all. If these stunts are continued to be satiated we will continue to be a whipped dog in front of the electorate. The Party will be split as it is now, never to heal unless decency and plain good sense come back into our being. At the moment we are pawns in the P.R. game of our political enemies with the alarming repetition of some in the Party to aide and abet that.

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  • mark still says:

    They were only trying to get people to stay in the party. This is racist and McCarthyism its dam right disgusting.

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  • Anthony a le says:

    I feel that these two MPs have been treated disgracefully and the abuse they have suffered and their abusers have been validated by having been admonished on this way

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  • With Starmer in charge, Labour will never win a general election… Especially with his support of the zionists, and the two faced, backstabbing, deplorable traitors supporting him…. Or is that their plan? Just stay in Parliament, and rake in the money without, doing anything to earn it.

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  • Helen Richards says:

    I am hoping that Keir Starmer reads and responds to this letter and does not continue to be dismissive about the concerns continuously being raised by members of the party.

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  • Jean Braidwood says:

    I am a lifelong socialist but not a Labour Party member. I am not Jewish. I think the letter is excellent and agree with it wholeheartedly. I
    agree with almost all the comments.
    I think, as a friend, that the La our Party can be advised by Jewish members on antisemitism, but not dictated to by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which appears to be a Tory group not at all representing British Jews.
    I also think you should investigate the shocking report on the behaviour of some Labour Party officials who should be suspended until the investigation is complete and expelled if it is found to be true.
    I think you need a new broom who will sweep clean. Root out the corruption now and apologise to and reinstate the highly respected and hard-working people you have treated so badly.

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  • I am against McCarthyism appearing outside and within the Labour Party and for this reason I am fully in support of this letter.

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  • Katie McLean says:

    History will judge you for presiding over this circus Keir Starmer. You are either a Tory in your heart, or you know this is absolutely rotten to the core. You want socialists to leave the party, don’t you? If it’s not your absolute intention to break the party, then find your balls, get out of bed with the Board of Deputies, sack Oldknow and sort out it out. The treatment of Diane Abbott, in particular, and also Bell Ribeiro-Addy, is indefensible. Also, what everyone else said!

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  • Allan Howard says:

    John Burns: The vast majority of people – if they saw someone whipping a dog – would feel anger and disgust towards the person doing so, and needless to say, the majority of the electorate do NOT see it that way regards Labour – ie the LP being ‘whipped’ by the BoD et al. But if they DID, they would hardly think to themselves: “Oh, the BoD are whipping the Labour Party and so I have no respect for the Labour Party”.

    It’s one thing some on the left seeing it like that – ie that the LP leadership is letting the BoD et al dictate to them – but the majority of the electorate don’t see it that way. Of course they don’t. If the majority of the electorate could see that the anti-semitism thing is a black op smear campaign concocted and contrived to bury Jeremy and the left in general and, as such, knew that the BoD and the JLM and CAA and LAA and the MSM and the Jewish newspapers and the ‘moderates’ and the Tories and the LibDem leadership were all conspiring in a smear campaign, then I have no doubt that in their disgust at THAT happening, they would have voted for Jeremy and the LP en masse, and the Labout Party would have been in Government since 2017 with a large majority.

    Another example of your ‘faulty’ thinking (for want of a better way of describing it) is what you say in relation to the BoD – ie ‘…. moreover, these people are well known Tory supporters’. Yes, well known by the vast majority of us on the left, but NOT by the electorate in general. The electorate in general don’t give any thought as to what political persuasion the BoD may or may not be, they just see them as being a leading Jewish organisation representing British Jews.

    And it’s more than a little interesting – as far as I can ascertain anyway – that most of the MSM didn’t cover the story, and if that IS the case, then I can only assume that the reason they didn’t is because they figured that many people might very well think that the BoD is being dictatorial and has gone too far. I did a general search, and the only MSM that came up in the list of results was the Telegraph and BBC News (on their website) and The Scotsman. But needless to say, all the Jewish newspapers ‘covered’ it of course, along with CAA and the JLM and LAA et al!

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  • Allan Howard says:

    About five minutes after I posted my previous comment I was in the kitchen making a coffee when something suddenly dawned on me. We don’t always notice something by the fact that it’s absent…….. Anyway, having thought of it, I checked the Telegraph and The Scotsman and the BBC News articles to check if what had occurred to me was correct (along with the Jewish Chronicle article again which I read at the time the ‘story’ broke), and it turns out I was basically right.

    So what did just about ALL of the thousands of newspaper articles about cases of (alleged) anti-semitism in the LP during the past four years or more have in common…… Yes, they ALL contained quotes/comments made by two or three or more of the so-called LP moderates – John Mann, Ian Austin and Margaret Hodge, for example, and yet in THIS instance they are missing in action AND uncharacteristically absent from the coverage (in so far as I can ascertain). The Scotsman article is in fact an opinion piece – and totally abhorrent at that – and doesn’t directly quote anyone, and there are no quotes/comments by LP ‘moderates’ in the BBC News article, and the only thing there IS, is a quote (allegedly) in the Telegraph article by ‘a former Labour minister’, and it’s more than likely the Telegraph made it up, what with the Telegraph being the Telegraph!

    Anyhow, I just this minute thought to go on to the Mail’s website and do a search on there (despite the Mail not coming up in the list of results when I did a general – duckduckgo – search earlier) and they DID cover it! But when I just now did the same on the websites of the Sun, Express, Guardian and Indy, there was nothing. Anyway, in the Mail article they quote Tory MP Andrew Percy, but I’m pretty sure the quote was in relation to something else that happened in the past, BUT the Mail dug it out and included it so as to make it look to their readers like he’d said it in relation to this present episode, but they ALSO includes the quote/comment by a ‘former Labour minister’!

    Anyway, the point is that there are no quotes by any of the usual ‘moderate’ suspects, which is more than a little interesting, but then I suppose it puts them in an awkward position, as they are obviously going to be reluctant to criticise one of their own – ie Keir Starmer – for not suspending Diane Abbott and Bell Ribeiro-Addy.

    NB I have little doubt that the BoD knows that Starmer knows that IF he were to suspend Diane and Bell there would be a mass exodus of left members immediately – and I’m talking TENS of thousands of members – along with £millions in subscriptions, and THAT’s on top of the thousands – and quite possibly TENS of thousands – who have left the LP during the past month since Starmer was elected leader.

    PS And for your information, I signed up to the Telegraph about a year or so ago for a couple of free articles a week so as to keep an eye on them, but which I rarely use (and ditto The Times…… just this second checked, and Yes, the Times covered the story, and with the headline: ‘Jewish groups say Sir Keir Starmer too soft on MPs, including Diane Abbott, who met expelled activists.’

    Met!!!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8276125/Diane-Abbott-Bell-Ribeiro-Addy-disciplined-Sir-Keir-Starmer-Zoom-call-anti-semitism.html

    https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/heres-what-keir-starmer-must-do-live-expectations-euan-mccolm-2788453

    And the BBC article (absent the ‘former Labour minister’ quote!):

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52487758

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  • Terry O'Brien says:

    Shame on you

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  • LINDA RUHEMANN says:

    Excellent letter; thank you.

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  • Cecilia Penn says:

    Totally agree with this letter.

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  • Mac Wood says:

    The I concur with most of the comments above and in particular Allan Howard; members and supporters could see exactly what was going on in the Brutus camp within the party, and they were screaming from the rooftops: obviously the vicious and diabolical slaughtering of Jeremy Corbyn was so unprecedented by the media with their lies, bias reporting and fake news everyone was at a loss as to how we should fight back, but it was a david and Goliath situation but with no sling to fight.
    The one thing we did NOT know ( other than the Labour Brutus camp group), was the sabotage was coming from the top officials, so our enemies was actually threefold. Incredibly treacherous and fraudulent in many respects. You helped vilify a man of peace, integrity, humanitarian, and above all a man of honour The supporters were left in a whirlwind of questions, heartbreak, a huge feeling of being at a loss; the poison that followed was all directed at Jeremy Corbyn The Brutus Camp would need to suck a lemon to take the smirks off their faces. I don’t think I have ever witnessed such contemptible behaviour, (even comparison to Trumps Campaign), by a political party. Even Boris Johnson courteously did not smirk when JC entered the house after the GE and gave him a look of respect. Doesn’t that speak volumes about the dirty Machiavellian behaviour of the Labour Party.
    I remember being very disappointed by the control BoD and the immediately signing up to the pledge; the moves or should I say the fence Starmer is famous for, I mean by that sitting on it as much as possible, and being underground more times than Boris. I actually wondered if he was still in the race for leadership. One in a hundred said they would vote for him ; So imagine my surprise when he won. I became very suspect about the voting because it did not make sense whatsoever! Then all he spoke about was the Antisemitism, nothing about the crisis of the pandemic; the only voice that perpetually pop’s up and challenging the government was JC. Once again all Starmer repeated was this cleansing of antisemitism: I will let you to fill in the blanks as to what we were all saying about him. And the big question of, how he had nailed the one foot to the floor for the humanitarian MPs being gagged and under threat should they speak up for the Palestinians, then we have turning his back on Kashmir again in great need of humanitarian help! Once again all that shouted , was the guy wants his revolving door of power- self – serving; now the big one
    The disciplining of Diana Abbott and Bell Riberie-Addy to me was the last straw; I truly question this man’s decision making It seems like a bad dream as it does not make sense in any form. Every decision he is making is racist in itself! Either these people have something on him or he is incapable of the work or fails to have the intelligence for the job of Leader of the Labour Party. As no socialist or humanitarian would EVER agree to any of the above.

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  • Kuhnberg says:

    ‘Don’t Leave — Organize’ is all very well as a slogan, but the reality is that under Starmer the Labour Party is now moving so far to the right that it can no longer serve as a vehicle for economic reform and international justice. Starmer’s total capitulation to the Tory supporting BoD is only one of many signs of his abandonment of the principles reasserted by Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. The acid test for me will be how Starmer deals with the leaked Labour report. If he fails to expel those who have shown themselves to be enemies of the left and saboteurs of a left-wing leadership — and even worse, promotes those individuals to senior positions within the party — there will no longer be any point in remaining a member, and I and many thousands like me will resign.

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