This article is all spot-on as far as Starmer is concerned. But the reluctance of journalists to interrogate the standard, grossly misleading narrative about how Corbyn "disastrously dealt with Jewish claims about antisemitism" helped bring us to this point.
In reality, Corbyn removed officials who were provably incompetent in handling antisemitism complaints and brought in people who dealt with them properly. His reward was to have the ex-officials lionized as "whistleblowers" by the national broadcaster.

buzzfeed.com/alexwickham/le…
There's a mountain of evidence to show what these "whistleblowers" were actually doing when they worked for Labour. But the idea that they were making heroic efforts to root out antisemitism has been given canonical status by the British media.

novaramedia.com/2020/05/19/did…
To compound the insult, the EHRC tacitly rejected the entire Panorama narrative, then scolded Corbyn for

A) the incompetence of the "whistleblowers" he replaced

B) pressing those "whistleblowers" to stop dragging out complaints for no good reason

middleeasteye.net/opinion/ehrc-l…
The Panorama/EHRC double-whammy has gone completely unquestioned in the British media, despite the fact that one plainly contradicts the other. The whole protracted farce helped empower the unreconstructed bigots who now dominate the Labour Party.

newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/…
*"complaints" not "claims" in the quote from AC above

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More from @DanFinn95

6 Jul
This decision is obviously a disgrace, but so is the Guardian's absurd description of Phillips as an "anti-racism campaigner." This isn't journalism: it's ideological warfare against the concepts people need in order to talk about and understand politics.

theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/j…
This is what Phillips does for a living: he writes articles for the Tory press, denouncing anyone who questions a whitewash of racism in Britain by another Tory stooge (complete with ridiculous lies about "Mandingo fighting" being a widely used term).

thetimes.co.uk/article/silenc…
A much better Guardian article, which correctly notes that the far right popularized a false narrative about grooming gangs. But the far right also had respectable mainstream figures on its side, including "anti-racism campaigner" Trevor Phillips.

theguardian.com/politics/2020/…
Read 4 tweets
21 Jun
I guess we all have our threshold for cringe. Being a Lib Dem means you can stomach this kind of thing; being a socialist means you're comfortable with the word "comrade." Each to their own.

tribunemag.co.uk/2019/11/debunk…
The Lib Dems ran a deliberate wrecking campaign in the constituency where Grenfell happened, lying about Grenfell, lying about their own chances, to ensure it would have a Tory MP who could vote against implementing the Grenfell report's recommendations.

mirror.co.uk/news/politics/…
Sam Gyimah lied about Grenfell for the same reason Jo Swinson lied about this: their entire campaign was a deliberate kamikaze mission against the left. As their election report said: "We chose to claim to believe we could win outright ourselves."

theguardian.com/politics/2019/…
Read 4 tweets
8 Jun
Four years to the day since Jeremy Corbyn & his allies obliged columnists such as Jonathan Freedland to write columns like this. The ferocity of the backlash that followed—and is still following—surely owes a great deal to feelings of wounded pride.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
No guff here about May being a uniquely awful campaigner (although he did squeeze in a line about the "weakest Tory campaign in at least 40 years" towards the end—a taste of the narrative to come). Corbyn "deserves credit for this astonishing performance", said Freedland. Image
Freedland also acknowledged that Labour under Corbyn won a lot of ex-UKIP votes instead of forfeiting them to the Tories—a trick that seems to be eluding Keir Starmer today. Another point that was scrubbed from the media narrative as soon as possible. Image
Read 6 tweets
4 Jun
I see Margaret Hodge is hamming it up for the cameras like the world's worst soap actress, and journalists are pretending to believe a word she says. It's like the summer of 2018 all over again, albeit without the sunny weather.

jacobinmag.com/2018/09/labour…
Frankly, anyone who believed that Hodge was sincere in any of her claims that summer should atone for their gullibility by wearing clown make-up in public for a full year. Every part of her protracted temper tantrum was planned out on a grid with her factional allies.
You can be quite certain that no British journalists actually took her ravings seriously, although they found it expedient to pretend otherwise. It was a display of cynicism and bad faith with few parallels in modern times—a stomach-churning performance.
Read 7 tweets
17 May
Latest Long Reads podcast is up now, with Paul Buhle talking about the life and work of C. L. R. James (and a few clips from James himself talking about cricket, Haiti, Marxism and more):

blubrry.com/jacobin/772553…
Great interview with James by Studs Terkel from 1970 here:

And another between James and Edward Thompson here:

Read 4 tweets
12 May
This article is worth reading, not because it has any positive merits, but because it condenses the sheer malevolence of Blair’s role in public life. No constructive ideas, just a remorseless drive to smash and wreck any progressive political force on behalf of his paymasters. 1/
Labour under Corbyn bucked this trend, increasing its vote share by 10% in 2017. Its 2019 performance was still vastly better than recent elections for the SPD, which averaged nearly 41% of the vote from 1994 to 2005, or the PS, which won the presidency as recently as 2012. 2/ Image
Blair can acknowledge the difficulties now Corbyn has been ousted. But he implies the SPD lost support for being too radical after serving in government with the main conservative party for 12 of the last 16 years. He won’t even mention the name “Renzi” when it comes to Italy. 3/ Image
Read 20 tweets

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