Should Corbyn remain as Labour leader?

[Strontium]

So under investigation then?

Insofar as anyone would be under investigation if someone complained about coverage.

[Numero Veinticinco]

So under investigation then?

No, they've acknowledged it and they're considering taking it further. Presumably to an investigation.

[Anubis]

Isn't the editor of The Sun also the Chair?

[Denny Crane]

I'm going with under investigation and a potential serious crisis for the media. When was the last time so many outlets had issues raised about their coverage of such a senior politician?

[Numero Veinticinco]

I’m going with what is real.

[The Guest]

The reason the press, the Tories and his own side all have a go at him is not because he is a Socialist it is because he is weak.

John Smith would have wiped the floor with them and they would have shut the fuck up. He was equally as principaled

Even Blair, although barely a socialist, spent massive amounts on public services and held the whip hand over everyone.

 

Projecting strength deters attacks. Appear weak you will be bullied.

Sorry Anny but that’s nonsense. They are having a pop at him and trying to get him out because they don’t agree with his politics. Blair kept the same tax rates as Thatcher and flooded the PLP with right wing yes men. They’re absolutely terrified of paying more tax. They made a catastrophic error allowing someone who would raise taxes on the rich and big business to be elected leader and they’re doing everything they can to get him out.

 

To call him weak after the 2 years he’s endured with all these cunts around him and the press at him is frankly laughable.

[Denny Crane]

Corbyn Has Answered Concerns On Anti-Semitism, But Jewish Community Leaders Are Refusing To Take 'Yes' For An Answer

What is the response from the leading Jewish community organisations to Corbyn's record of reaching out, of understanding, and of action? Intransigent hostility and an utter refusal to engage

 

 

 

Two things have now become clear regarding Labour’s anti-Semitism controversy. First, it is being used to provide rocket fuel for a split in the party and, second, it is being prolonged and intensified when it might otherwise be resolved.

 

Neither of these developments are necessary or desirable. Both risk polluting our politics to the detriment of all those involved and to our wider national life. And both compromise our ability to handle an important issue – eradicating anti-Semitism – by subordinating it to other agendas.

 

Chuka Umunna’s article this week was an exercise in Blairite triangulation – and cynicism. He equates Tory anti-Muslim racism with alleged “institutional anti-Semitism” in Labour, despite providing no serious evidence that the latter exists.

 

He alleges that the party is taking no action against members accused of anti-Semitism when he knows that is not the case, and contrasts this with the examples of Margaret Hodge and Ian Austin, asserting that disciplinary proceedings were taken against them because they “complained” about anti-Semitism, when he knows that in fact the issue was the alleged shouting of abuse. He does not mention that the investigation into Ms Hodge has been ended.

 

Umunna attacks the Shadow Cabinet for not having “got a grip” when he knows perfectly well that these are matters for the National Executive of the party, which has repeatedly addressed them, and without specifying what getting a grip might amount to.

 

Still more cynically, he then aligns anti-Semitism with opposition to the USA, capitalism and the “so-called business-owning class”, as if the latter was a figment of people’s imagination. To suggest that opposition to Trump‘s America, or to capitalism in the tenth year of a global slump is anti-Semitic is, to coin a phrase, a smear unworthy of any serious politician.

 

And the point of all this nonsense? People are being “pushed to breaking point”, neither major party has “the authority to lead the country” and “we cannot go on like this”. Instead “we have to build in every community a different kind of politics that can unite the nation.” There is little doubt who Chuka Umunna sees leading this initiative, but he clearly does not see a Labour government as its expression.

 

Given the paucity of evidence that he actually produces to sustain his charge that he is a member of an “institutionally anti-Semitic” party, it is fair to ask whether Umunna is merely exploiting the latest episode to justify his moves to breakaway from Labour, the plotting for which has been widely reported elsewhere.

 

If this is his motive for inflating and maintaining this row – which is not manufactured but has certainly been wildly exaggerated by now, I am at a loss to understand the motives of the leadership of the Jewish community – the Board of Deputies, the Jewish Leadership Council and the Jewish Labour Movement.

 

They raised entirely proper concerns, but have simply refused to take “yes” for an answer. Let’s look at the record:

 

- The Jewish community demanded, rightly, that Corbyn apologise for the undeniable fact that some Party members have expressed blatantly anti-Semitic views. He has done.

 

- It demanded, rightly, that he apologise for those of his own actions, like appearing to endorse an anti-Semitic mural, which has caused inadvertent hurt to the community. He has done.

 

- It demanded that he commit to the security of the Jewish community and its life in Britain. He has done, in the most emphatic terms.

 

It demanded that he acknowledge the roots of contemporary anti-Semitism on the left. He has done, in his Evening Standard article back in April.

 

- It demanded that Labour’s rules be changed to explicitly outlaw anti-Semitism. This was done, under Corbyn’s leadership, last year.

 

- It demanded action in a number of high-profile cases allegedly connected to anti-Semitism. Three have been resolved, only one remains outstanding.

 

- It demanded faster handling of complaints against Party members accused of anti-Semitism. Many more have now been processed, and more staff have been engaged to clear the backlog.

 

It demanded that Jeremy Corbyn make it clear in his own voice that any of his supporters engaging in such abuse did not do so in his name. He has done.

 

- It demanded that he defend those MPs and others raising the issue from the charge that they were engaging in “smears”. He has done.

 

And he has done more. Corbyn has explicitly recognised the connection most British Jews feel to Israel, and he has urged all Labour supporters to show greater empathy towards a community which has suffered so extraordinarily so relatively recently.

 

What is the response from the leading Jewish community organisations to this record of reaching out, of understanding, and of action? Intransigent hostility and an utter refusal to engage in dialogue about building on what has been done and resolving outstanding difficulties.

 

Indeed, the more Labour has addressed legitimate worries, the more Corbyn has personally sought to build bridges, the worse the rhetoric has become. Three Jewish newspapers have accused him of representing “an existential threat to Jewish life” in Britain, a thoroughly irresponsible act of fear-mongering which has provoked dissent from a senior editor at one of the papers concerned. And the president of the Board of Deputies has engaged in petulant trolling of Corbyn, accusing him of going “into hiding” because he took a four-day holiday in Somerset in August!

 

I am a leader and I answer to those I represent. I also have a responsibility for the standing of my organisation in the wider national community. I know that I don’t always get it right, and also that prolonging a wrong course only deepens the damage.

 

I therefore appeal to the leadership of the Jewish community to abandon their truculent hostility, engage in dialogue and dial down the rhetoric, before the political estrangement between them and the Labour Party becomes entrenched. Surely a community leadership which had time to publicly challenge the BBC over a news headline critical of the Israeli Defence Forces in Gaza has the time to meet the Leader of the Opposition?

 

And let’s look at the one genuine question still unresolved - the definition Labour should use of anti-Semitism, a sensitive issue not just for the Jewish community but for all those concerned about Palestinian rights too.

 

Clearly, it would have been far better for the party to have adopted at least ten of the eleven IHRA examples in their original wording. Not doing so - and particularly without adequate consultation - was insensitive and bound to lead to misunderstanding, and also served to distract attention from the real issues at stake. It would be for the best if all eleven were now agreed, so the party can move on.

 

However, we should not deceive ourselves that there are no free-speech problems with the eleventh example, concerning “Israel as a racist endeavour”. That very example has been explicitly cited by pro-Israel campaigners, including Labour MPs, in urging the government to ban “Israeli apartheid” events at colleges. The House of Commons Home Affairs Committee expressed free speech concerns about it too.

 

There are many Jewish people who are deeply hostile to the Israeli government’s continued policy of expansionism and its denial of equal rights to Israeli Arabs and other minorities. The recent nation state law in Israel is an outrage that has gone without comment from so many who engage in criticism of Corbyn. These concerns must be heard without fear of being branded.

 

It is also a fact that one of the authors of the IHRA examples, Kenneth Stern, gave chapter and verse to the US Congress last year as to how they were being used to intimidate legitimate pro-Palestine campaigners. He also warned that the examples were only ever intended to assist in data-gathering, and were not suitable for the legal or disciplinary purposes for which some now try to use it. In that context, it is notable that there has been silence from the communal leadership over Jeremy Corbyn’s statement that while it is wrong to say “Zionism is racism” - it is also wrong to brand anti-Zionists as racist on that basis alone. Do the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Labour Movement agree? I am none the wiser for reading their responses to Jeremy.

 

The three Jewish newspapers, in their provocative editorial, warn that full adoption of the IHRA examples would lead to possibly thousands of expulsions from the Labour Party, a prospect they appeared to welcome. Labour needs to take all that into account when it adopts the final version of its Code. While rooting out the anti-Semites, we cannot descend into a vortex of McCarthyism, however much Labour’s opponents might enjoy the spectacle.

 

Given good will and a willingness to listen, could a way through be found that respects different views on Israel’s foundation and history and allows it to be debated without every expression of opinion leaving people open to disciplinary action? Of course. But it takes two sides for that dialogue to continue.

 

So let us now move to put this row behind us. Let Labour complete the measures it has pledged to meet the concerns of the Jewish community as rapidly as possible. Let the leadership of the Jewish community grasp the hand stretched out towards them.

 

And let those few Labour MPs looking to break away from the party do so on an honest basis, embracing capitalism, the free market and the alliance with Trump’s America, and not pretend that Labour is something it is not, an institutionally racist party.

 

Len McCluskey is the general secretary of Unite

 

https://m.huffingtonpost.co.uk/amp/entry/anti-semitism-labour_uk_5b7573dee4b0df9b093ccbc6/?utm_hp_ref=uk-politics&__twitter_impression=true

[Gym Beglin]

If I was having a drink with Corbyn and said something anti-Semitic he’d finish his drink and tell me to fuck off. If I said something around Israel’s domestic and foreign policy he’d engage.

 

They are not the same thing, and I have zero time for anyone trying to trick me into thinking they are. Save your breath, wanker.

[Boss]

Seriously who gives a fuck really, you dont need a button to ignore someone. You see a name you dont want to read just. you know. ignore it  

 

All i'm saying is give us the option of ignoring quoted posts as well. If you don't want to ignore anyone or ignore quoted posts, you don't have to, but the option should be there for users who do.

[A Red]

Serious question, what is his position over mansion/property/garden tax? 

[Denny Crane]

Serious question, what is his position over mansion/property/garden tax?

 

No such thing as mansion/garden tax in the 2017 manifesto. Here is what was in the manifesto

 

"We will initiate a review into reforming council tax and business rates and consider new options such as a land value tax"

 

My understanding is an option to scrap council tax and business rates and replacing it with lvt following a review. So not an extra tax and this would obviously be based on the actual land value not the size. So it was misleading reports in the last election.

[moof]

[Numero Veinticinco]

How is that acceptable?

[Gnasher]

They are sounding silly now.

[Gnasher]

I feel sorry for Jewish kids who suffer genuine hatred.

[Anny Road]

Sorry Anny but that’s nonsense. They are having a pop at him and trying to get him out because they don’t agree with his politics. Blair kept the same tax rates as Thatcher and flooded the PLP with right wing yes men. They’re absolutely terrified of paying more tax. They made a catastrophic error allowing someone who would raise taxes on the rich and big business to be elected leader and they’re doing everything they can to get him out.

 

To call him weak after the 2 years he’s endured with all these cunts around him and the press at him is frankly laughable.

The media and establishment don't like any strand of Labour politics. Even Blair. Raising public spending on frivolous things like schools and hospitals. Difference is Blair had power. He even took on the entire party over clause 4. Side against him and he wins you are done.

Corbyn does not have that strength. His only strength is in the public so that is were his is attacked.

[Anubis]

Margaret not just jumping the shark, but strapping on a high-powered jet pack...

[Gym Beglin]

How can any sane person defend Hodge now?

 

This bullshit just jumped the shark, backwards, in slo-mo.

 

I feel sorry for those who have nailed their colours to this mast, there’s a lot of very embarrassed people out there now, I hope they’re with people they love right now.

[moof]

She also said there was a fine line between pro palestinianism and anti semitism and that Corbyn is crossing that line. What a cunt

[Gym Beglin]

I’m sick of the whole semitism circus. Baddiel has made a cottage industry out of it in recent years, and yet you listen to him with Gervais and he’s having a laugh at the same things he had previously thrown people in front of the bus for on Twitter.

 

Can we stop wasting our finite time on this planet talking about this senile bollocks, and maybe we can stop Trump destroying the world instead.

[sir roger]

Please tell me that Margaret Hodge thing is a fake twitter account or some such

 

Mark Steel's latest piece in the Independent

 

It gets worse and worse for Jeremy Corbyn and Labour. There’s a rumour that photos have emerged of a courgette grown on his allotment which is a similar shape to a rocket propeller used by al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

 

This comes on top of revelations that he has a beard, much like Palestinian terrorists, and his constituency is Islington, which starts with IS, or Islamic State. As a vegetarian he doesn’t eat pork, his friend John McDonnell’s initials are JM – that stands for Jihadist Muslim – and he travels on underground trains, that are under the ground, just like the basements in which Isis make their little films.  

The Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail and various others have also published a photo of him folding his thumb while holding up his fingers, in a way they describe as a salute to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. That settles it. If you don’t constantly check the shape of your thumb to make sure it’s not folded in a way similar to the way it’s folded by Muslim groups in Egypt, you might as well strap Semtex to your chest and get a bus to Syria.

 

Thankfully there are some brave journalists who discovered the truth: that Corbyn laid a wreath in Tunisia at a memorial for civilians who were bombed, but also buried in that cemetery are the “Munich terrorists”. It turned out that the terrorists are not buried there at all, as they’re buried in Libya, but you can’t expect those journalists to get bogged down in insignificant details like that.

We’ve all turned up for a funeral to be told we’re in the wrong country. “I’m afraid the service for your Uncle Derek is in Eltham Crematorium,” we’re told, “and you’ve come to Argentina.” It doesn’t make any difference to the overall story.

 

Because there are Palestinian leaders who may have been terrorists in that cemetery. And when you attend a memorial service, you are clearly commemorating everyone in the cemetery, and the fact that you’ve probably never heard of most of them is no excuse.

 

If it’s possible to bring comfort to all those shocked by this outrage, it may be worth recalling that one of the first scandals about Corbyn after he became leader was that he wasn’t dressed smartly enough when he laid a wreath at the Cenotaph, which was an insult to our war dead.  He’s just as scruffy in the pictures from Tunisia, so perhaps what he’s actually doing is insulting the terrorists, by laying a wreath near them while his coat is rumpled.

 

 I suppose it may just be possible that the wreath he laid at an event organised to mark the bombing of civilians in 1985 was actually put there to mark the bombing of civilians in 1985.

 

But it’s much more likely that secretly, Jeremy Corbyn supports Palestinian terrorists who murder athletes. You may think that if you hold such an unusual point of view, it might have slipped out in conversation here and there. But the fact he’s never said or done anything to suggest he backs the brutal murder of civilians only shows how clever he is at hiding his true thoughts.

 

This must be why he’s always been a keen supporter of causes beloved by Islamic jihadists, such as gay rights. For example, Jeremy Corbyn was a passionate opponent of Margaret Thatcher’s Section 28 law that banned the mention of homosexuality in schools. He supported every gay rights campaign at a time when it was considered extremist to do so. And the way he managed to be an extremist Islamic fundamentalist and an extremist gay rights fanatic at the same time only shows how dangerous he is.

 

One person who appears especially upset by all this is Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and it’s always distressing when someone that sensitive gets dragged into an issue.

 

Sadly he’s going to be even more aghast when he reads about another event in which wreaths were laid for terrorists. Because a plaque was unveiled to commemorate the 60^th anniversary of the bombing of the King David Hotel, in which 91 people died, mostly civilians and 28 of them British. This was carried out by the Irgun, an Israeli terror gang, and one man, who by coincidence was also called Benjamin Netanyahu, declared the bombing was “a legitimate act with a military target”.

 

When Benjamin Netanyahu hears about this other Benjamin Netanyahu he’ll be furious.

 

The Labour MPs who pine for Tony Blair are even more enraged, and you have to sympathise. Because when Blair supported murderers, such as Gaddafi and Assad, he did it while they were still alive, which is much more acceptable.

 

So you can see why Conservative politicians and newspapers are so disgusted. If you subjected the Conservative Party to a similar level of scrutiny, you’d find nothing comparable. There might be the odd link to torturers, such as their ex-leader Margaret Thatcher describing General Pinochet, who herded opponents into a football stadium and had them shot, as a close and dear friend. Or supporting apartheid because “Nelson Mandela is a terrorist”. But she was only being polite.

 

We can only guess what the next revelation will be. My guess is “Corbyn supported snakes against iguanas in Attenborough’s film. Footage has emerged of the Labour leader speaking alongside a snake, and praising his efforts to catch the iguana and poison and swallow him. One iguana said he was ‘shocked and horrified’ at the story, told in this 340-page special edition, and one anti-Corbyn Labour MP said, ‘I don’t know anything about this whatsoever, which is why I call on Mr Corbyn to do the decent thing and kill himself.’”

[Numero Veinticinco]

She also said there was a fine line between pro palestinianism and anti semitism and that Corbyn is crossing that line. What a cunt

Yeah, if you really, reallllly, REALLY hate dead kids, then you’re anti Semitic.

[Strontium]

Can you back this up, please. I've looked at his website, which people can click and see for themselves just how chock full of Israel content it is. I searched for 'Israel' which returns four mentioned of Israel (all in links to speeches, one about climate change, one about the Chakraborti report, another about the European Council, and another about the Netanyahu visit). I also searched for 'Islington' and got 11 results. Now, I'm open to the possibility that there's another website somewhere, but I sure as fuck can't find it. If not, I'll read into it that it's a load of bollocks.

It was reportedly the case in 2015 when he was running for the leadership, it's entirely possible (EDIT: absolutely clear) that his website has been revamped in the interim.

 

Support for the benefits freeze? From what I can remember, this is quite up in the air but nothing is confirmed. Feel free to offer some more information on that, I'd be interested. I don't like the approach from Labour, and this would be a fairly big stick to hit with. I remember that one think tank did a review of the manifesto and made some claims that we're a bit daft, and I think Emily Thornberry said something that was walked back, but I can't remember 'support' for it.

Their fully costed manifesto did not commit to ending the benefit freeze, and Thornberry admitted it would continue.

 

I'm fairly sure you know that's not how it works. If you make a claim, it's up to you to provide evidence to back it up, or have it justly dismissed.

To be clear, the only claim I have made is that he met the guy, which is a fact. It's the simple fact of appearing alongside the guy, in conjunction with the dozens of other unsavoury characters he's appeared alongside, which I am bemoaning.

[The Guest]

The media and establishment don't like any strand of Labour politics. Even Blair. Raising public spending on frivolous things like schools and hospitals. Difference is Blair had power. He even took on the entire party over clause 4. Side against him and he wins you are done.

Corbyn does not have that strength. His only strength is in the public so that is were his is attacked.

The sun literally backed Blair into number 10 and then rolled in the filth of his right wing politics hidden as “the third way.” He kept the same tax rates that the tories introduced and lowered corporation tax. They boosted the economy and kept unemployment down by pushing the young into university and financed it by getting them to take out loans. They’ve brought private companies into most walks of the the public service.

 

Murdoch and the right wing media played the long game. They happily backed a right wing labour because they knew it would mean that an even further right wing Tory party would become mainstream as the opposition. Someone like Corbyn is now described as hard right whereas Johnson and Rees Mogg are more palatable to these cunts.

 

Whether people like him as a person or not shouldn’t really matter anyway. He’s realistically the only genuine opposition to right wing politics the country has seen in decades. People are kidding themselves if they think a liberal “centrist” opposition stands a chance against the tories in the long run. The general public are absolutely sick to fucking death of it because it’s not even centrist it’s just Tory politics hidden behind pretending to give a shit about people who aren’t rich and privileged. It’s why Labour couldn’t get back in in 2015 under a Blairite regime abstaining on austerity.

[A Red]

No such thing as mansion/garden tax in the 2017 manifesto. Here is what was in the manifesto

 

"We will initiate a review into reforming council tax and business rates and consider new options such as a land value tax"

 

My understanding is an option to scrap council tax and business rates and replacing it with lvt following a review. So not an extra tax and this would obviously be based on the actual land value not the size. So it was misleading reports in the last election.

Thanks

 

I would hope that the next manifesto or policy statements are a lot clearer as to how it would work and what the costs would be. Its a big issue that if left unexplained will scare many people, including me, to not vote Labour