🧵 My objection to @keir_starmer getting any applause is endless, but let’s just talk about today: once again, he used the whip to openly bully MPs. Not to hold them to collective responsibility as Shadow Cabinet members, note, but as *backbenchers*. This is unprecedented. (1/4) Starmer & his team are using the Parliamentary whip in a way that it hasn’t been before - even under Blair. Parliamentary democracy is hardly perfect but one of the things that is sacrosanct is that backbench MPs should be able to vote as their conscience dictates. (2/4)

🧵 Just to recap, because events move so fast, it’s hard to make sense of them: firstly, a group of far right politicians, social media ‘names’ & organised fascists jumped on a tragedy to claim that the person responsible for the carnage in Southport was a Muslim / refugee. 1/13 The exploitation of the tragedy by the right began the moment people like Farage, Grimes & Robinson started to ‘cast doubt’, talking about a cover up & how the country had had enough. The logic being, if it was a Muslim, that crime would justify the tarring of all Muslims. 2/13

🧵 Clearly, one of the reasons there is such a vicious backlash against Muslims in Britain right now is the fact that they have been more visibly active in politics over the last year or two, especially within the protest movement over the genocide in #Gaza. (1/10) This, after a long period of being ignored & excluded from any voice in British politics. The reasons for that marginalisation are complex but real. They include the stigmatisation of Muslims, but also the wider British Asian population, over the ‘war on terror’ & Prevent. (2/10)

🧵 I don’t think many of the media or people on platforms like this understand quite what @Keir_Starmer has done. Parliamentary democracy is designed to have a number of safeguards to stop party leaders behaving as despots: one of those is limits of the use of the whip. (1/9) Of course, Parliament is not perfect & in some ways very undemocratic in the way it works, but there are some elements that are important in terms of preserving the independence of constituency MPs, who are not just a tool of a party leadership. (2/9)

🧵 The victory in Islington North wasn’t just down to the popularity of @jeremycorbyn (though that was a factor). It was driven by a group of people who have been derided, smeared & patronised - and yet, have continued to turn up (in person & online) to do battle. (1/8) They don’t have a name or an organisation. It’s impossible to even say how many there are - only that you can feel the power whenever we get a win. Their collective actions (supporting candidates, holding the right to account, pushing alternatives) are pivotal however. (2/8)

🧵 Like much of Labour manifesto, the New Deal for Working People has been heavily caveated. The most obvious example is the slippage from banning zero hours contracts to banning “exploitative” zero hours contracts. That one word creates a loophole to be exploited. (1/8) To the general public, it may sound the same - and the Labour Party insist that it is - but that ‘get out clause’ is vital to businesses that use zero hours contracts to casualise its work force & reduce costs. And the business case for continuing ZHC’s will be based on it. (2/8)

🧵 Just a little reminder of the workers’ rights policies contained in the 2019 @UKLabour manifesto under @LauraPidcock, then Shadow Secretary of State for Employment Rights (many of these made it into @AndyMcDonaldMP’s rewriting, named ‘New Deal for Working People) 1/15 Ministry for employment rights (2019)

👉 Establish a Ministry of Employment Rights.
👉 Roll out sectoral collective bargaining across the economy.
👉 Give everyone full rights from day one on the job. 2/15

🧵 To me, it’s pretty obvious why the right of the Labour Party are such a nasty bunch - so vicious & intolerant of alternative views. It’s because these bastard children of Blair were brought up with an entitlement so profound they thought they owned the party. (1/7) Then along came @jeremycorbyn & his supporters & took away that privilege almost overnight. At one point, I believe they thought that @UKLabour was lost to them (hence the fraying at the edges with Change UK etc) but then something snapped & a perfect storm brought it back. (2/7)

One of the biggest mistakes we keep making on the left is to underestimate the sheer cynicism of so-called ‘centrists’ in the Labour Party, particularly those in positions of power. I hope the idea that they are good faith actors is being put to bed by #Gaza. It should be. (1/6) As someone who has observed these people for decades, I can tell you that they will do absolutely anything for power. Doing good for working people or society as a whole is just a very distant backdrop to that pursuit. We should ‘negotiate’ with them as we would bad bosses. (2/6)

🧵 I don’t think many people protesting about the slaughter in #Gaza would have a problem with criticisms of Hamas. Few pro-Palestinian protestors would have any serious political allegiance to them & the vast majority deplore the targeting of civilians in any situation. 1/13 It’s just the idea that they are the origin point of the violence we are now seeing in #Gaza (and the West Bank) that people have an issue with. That is a complete inversion of both the current situation & a long history of oppression, occupation & displacement. 2/13

🧵Obviously it’s difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t followed these things, that CAA (Campaign Against Antisemitism) isn’t what it seems. There’s a load of documentation around this, but not much of it has penetrated the public consciousness - because why would it? (1/6) It’s the hardest thing to ask people to accept that an organisation that has billboards over the UK asking for you to be concerned about the safety of Jewish children (and students) is not doing it for anti-racist objectives, but quite the opposite. (2/6)

🧵 Every time anyone posts about the extraordinary #Gaza demos, there’s always a group of people who pipe up, ‘and what does it achieve?’, often followed by ‘why don’t you go to Gaza to demonstrate if you feel so strongly about it?’, then ‘we don’t want you on our streets’. 1/12 They give themselves away by the end of their response, of course. Because I think most of them are not interested in the answer & much more interested in silencing us. It annoys them to see & hear us. But let’s take it at face value, because it is a good question. 2/12

🧵Genuinely infuriating to listen to a certain “common sense” that’s emerged over the bombing in #Gaza. It goes like this: Hamas started a “war” 8 weeks ago (inexplicably, people even talk about a ceasefire being broken then). Israel’s attack is therefore merely a response. 1/16 That’s deluded. Firstly, there’s the long history: which includes the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the Nakba (forcible eviction & displacement of 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland), followed by decades of occupation, indiscriminate violence & settler colonialism. 2/16

[thread 🧵] We have a poisonous habit in this country of blaming or sanctioning people who speak up. Activists are often punished for pointing out the immorality of politicians or other ‘leaders’ for their appalling lack of principles or silence in the face of injustice. (1/9) Because let’s just be honest, so many public figures have had very little to say about the killing of civilians in #Gaza. And when they’ve said something, it’s often been ahistorical, weak or just too late. I’m not just talking about MPs, but right across civil society. (2/9)

🧵 Just to recap what happened over the weaponisation of antisemitism in @UKLabour, because highly relevant now.

So, there were, indeed, a very small number of cases of antisemitism in Labour between 2015-19, estimated at 0.3%* in one study. * not all these were proven. (1/12) The exact figures isn’t what this post is about (I have spoken about them elsewhere), but suffice to say that it has been agreed by most respected academics that the instances were not just small, but lower than in other parties & in wider society. (2/12)

🧵 We’ve seen an ‘authoritarian turn’ in British politics far exceeding that of Thatcher, partly because it encompasses the whole of the political class. There’s now little space in mainstream politics for anyone who speaks up for international law, peace or human rights. (1/13) Yesterday the Tories sacked Paul Bristow from his PPS role for calling for a ceasefire, hardly raising an eyebrow. Because this Govt have spent the last two years legislating to increase police powers, to stop legitimate protest, to outlaw strikes & proscribe boycotts. (2/13)

🧵 It’s good to see a handful of Labour MPs calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. I won’t be celebrating that, however. Why? Because: (1/12) (a) they should have been doing that from the start. Israel’s response to Hamas was never proportionate or justified & always likely to punish people who had nothing to do with the attacks. It was, like Israel’s violence over decades, a collective punishment & a war crime. (2/12)

🧵 At school, most of us will have been taught about something called the Arab-Israeli conflict. We might have learned that the main protagonists were Israel & the Palestinians, but we wouldn’t have learned any detail about the Nakba, or the occupation, or the Intifada. (1/9) On the news & in school, it was presented as a conflict between irreconcilables & that there were “bad things” that happened on both sides. The peace negotiations came & went & again the “conflict” became a confusing mass of claim & counter-claim, terrorism & response. (2/9)

[thread 🧵] It’s a remarkable mess that @Keir_Starmer has got himself into, along with his front bench. Here we have an ostensibly “democratic socialist” party now condoning actual war crimes. As the public are witnessing them in real time, the penny is dropping for many. (1/4) Of course, Starmer’s stance on Israel & it’s ethnic cleansing doesn’t stand in isolation - it’s part of the same mindless politics that wraps itself in the flag, purges socialists & smears anti-racists - cheered on my some of the most spiteful, petty people in politics. (2/4)

[🧵thread] I think quite a few left people are struggling with the situation in #Gaza, especially with the fact that the violent response from Israel - bombing that will soon be followed by a ground offensive - appeared to be triggered by a Hamas attack on Israeli civilians (1/9) There is a long tradition of non-violence amongst much of the global left. Acts of violence that target civilians is something most people within that coalition feel a revulsion at. Even where socialists attempt to understand that violence, it’s different from condoning it (2/9)

Thinking again about @KenLoachSixteen’s ‘The Old Oak’, I can now understand why it got a 15 minute standing ovation at Cannes. I don’t say this lightly, but I think is one of the greatest anti-racist films of the last couple of decades. (1/5) I’d call it that because it captures the true essence of racism as it exists in our communities now & treats it in an adult way, in the context of deprivation & poverty without the lazy cliches that we often see in the media & amongst the political class. (2/5)