This Once Great Movement Of Ours

[CumbrianLefty]

It's been as good as confirmed that Beckett was behind this. Such an impressively stupid man.

McCluskey has a few things wrong with him, but has both charm and some political nous.

Beckett seems to have Len's vices without his virtues.

[CumbrianLefty]

And at the end of the day its a union reducing the money it gives to the party by 10%. An important development, certainly - but some of the commentary on it from both sides is just a tad overblown.

[CumbrianLefty]

So how does Dodds get more visibility, then?

[CumbrianLefty]

As one left winger (who is good at chess) likes to say on Twitter "never trust a chessplayer"

[CumbrianLefty]

A few things going on recently - Dan Carden quits the front bench over the "spycops" bill (or more precisely, Starmer not wanting the party to vote against it on third reading even if unamended) which means the economic team is in danger of becoming even more unbalanced in favour of Treasury View "sound money" fetishism (not Dodds herself tbf, but most of her underlings are suspect to this)

Meanwhile the MP for Canterbury digs herself ever deeper into her own self made transphobic hole - a few hours ago her Twitter account went private, not tenable long term for a sitting parliamentarian.

And it does appear that our leader did not do his supposedly customary "forensic" due diligence into handing Labour peer Nita Clarke a brief to look into the party's "internal culture" - almost immediately a slew of her past Tweets were unearthed showing her fundamental unsuitability for such a role, most damning of all a succession of demands (in the months before Change UK were launched) for "A NEW PARTY NOW". That happened last night, just this morning the "offer" was withdrawn.

[CumbrianLefty]

There is a chance at least some of the MPs who resigned this week might return to the front bench in due course, I would have thought. Tbh this appears more like Starmer approaching the issue with the mindset of a lawyer rather than a politician, as opposed to a gratuitous bid to "hammer the left".

[CumbrianLefty]

Streeting has mostly kept his nose clean since getting a shadow post, to give him his due.

[CumbrianLefty]

Diane Abbott seemingly not happy that Starmer had some ambitions to be leader before he was actually leader. I mean, we are saying that this is actually.......bad, now?

[CumbrianLefty]

Certain people now on Twitter bemoaning "why didn't we vote for Burnham as leader in 2015?"

Well, there were reasons of course. And the *present day* Burnham might have won.

[CumbrianLefty]

Let's not forget that Michael Dugher was his 2015 campaign manager - that explains *a lot*.

(and almost none of it is good)

[CumbrianLefty]

Oh this is a sore spot for me; Andy ran a very poor campaign in 2015 after Corbyn got in the race but the Brownite & Blairite ultras owe as much responsibility as anyone. They accused him of being a homophobic bigot & I believe that it was Yvette Coopers team who made an effort to put Corbyn on the ballot.

It was also Cooper's team who bigged her up as a married woman in a barely hidden "dog whistle" aimed at Liz Kendall. Such lovely people, who very much got the result they deserved.

[CumbrianLefty]

Let's not forget that Michael Dugher was his 2015 campaign manager - that explains *a lot*.

(and almost none of it is good)

Dugher is a good example of a very specific kind of fool, a type well represented in the Labour Movement (all parts and shades and factions of it) but quite rare elsewhere.

Oh yeah, there are people like him on the left of the party beyond doubt.

[CumbrianLefty]

Looking like THAT REPORT is (finally) on the brink of being made public.

The entirely predictable s***show on social media is already ensuing.

[CumbrianLefty]

Blast from the past Ed Balls being harangued by some clueless BBC "journalist" this morning about whether Corbyn should be chucked out of the party after the report is published (which does appear to be rather presuming what will actually be in it, no?)

Not a great fan of his, but to his credit he simply said "I think Starmer will want to move on".

Sensible man.

[CumbrianLefty]

A lot that is not good in the report, but not much that wasn't already at least suspected.

Agree that Starmer has acquitted himself well.

[CumbrianLefty]

Well, the ultra-factionalists on *both* sides are behaving about as well as might be expected.

Which was entirely and depressingly predictable.

[CumbrianLefty]

The point is even if Corbyn was right to say that bit, *it wasn't the time to say it*.

(as already said, tone deaf)

It just took attention away from the rest of his statement, which as noted is pretty reasonable.

[CumbrianLefty]

Corbyn has the whip removed

What reason(s) have been given?

[CumbrianLefty]

It's a shock, but in retrospect it probably shouldn't have been.

I'm reasonably sure Starmer's team will have asked Corbyn what response he was planning to make to the EHRC report and will not have been pleased with a couple of lines in there (and if they didn't ask, Corbyn's team should have assumed it was a case of giving him enough rope anyway.) We know that if Starmer tells you to apologise and you argue, he will take action.

We haven't learned very much new, except that you really shouldn't try to out-bluff Starmer.

Redux of the RLB stuff really. Left only has themselves to blame.

People already saying "Barry Sheerman and Steve Reed got away with it", but is that actually true? They were both forced to retract and apologise??

[CumbrianLefty]

IMO, the right decision morally and politically. Corbyn’s position, already precarious after the report was released, became untenable after his statement. This appears to voter, among whom Corbyn is very unpopular, to be a decisive and bold break with not just anti-Semitism but Corbynism more generally. As others have said, an actual successful breakaway is unlikely, but there is still the danger that the appearance of infighting weakens the party’s image. Anyway, Starmer is really putting his money where his mouth is, so to speak, which does no harm to his public perception.

Its a high risk move nonetheless.

Not least, in fact, because suspension isn't actually expulsion and in due course Corbyn might have to be let back into the fold - how exactly would that be spun?

[CumbrianLefty]

This seems like a massive overreaction, though I'll admit I'm not an expert on antisemitism in the UK or the UK in general. With that being said, can someone explain to me why the EHRC has elected not to investigate Islamophobia within the Conservatives? It seems to me that that's objectively at least a large problem, if not larger than the antisemitism within Labour, and it seems that there's a vastly different standard being applied to the parties here.

Between Jewish and Mulisms, only one of the two have an influence over institutions.
Between Corbyn and Johnson, only one of the two doesn't adhere to the "liberal" "consensus".

The insinuation here leads you down a very dark path....

And what does the second claim mean - our soft-Orbanist PM is actually a "liberal"??

[CumbrianLefty]

It appears there have been "contacts" about how JC might be returned to the fold.

Be in no doubt though, if he just gets handed the whip back the optics will be just slightly sub-optimal - he surely has to show some genuine contrition.

[CumbrianLefty]

Corbyn is 71 and will probably be 75 when the next election takes place. Why doesn't he simply retire?

Quite conceivable that he will in 2024, especially if boundary changes radically alter his seat.

[CumbrianLefty]

Kinnock's recent dressing down is symptomatic of the wider issue; the party has been purging critics of Israel all year.

Winstanley is a Grade A crank, just saying.

[CumbrianLefty]

There are critics of Israel and then there are anti-Semites. The division is fairly thin at times.

And at times its not thin at all, and attempts by some pro-Israel bods to pretend otherwise don't help.