ForenSix Opposition - Politics in the Soon To Be Former UK in Autumn 2020

I'm going to scroll back up to reply to that Fizzles post as I've read the report and have opinions but just to say this:

The thing is, it isn't Corbyn that's been found to have unlawfully discriminated against Jewish people, nor is it Corbynites, or figures on the right of the party trying to undermine Corbyn, it is the Labour Party as in institution. The whole of it.

...isn't even a finding of the report, after all that.

also this thread is one of the few spaces i can think of where we could have a halfway reasonable conversation about this stuff and the toxicity of the general social/media environment and its ranks of fascists and the centrist stooges who love them is not conducive to moving this issue forward. maybe Starmer should set up an independent taskforce to implement the findings of the report and have the good grace/fucking brains to make it transparently bipartisan as far as Labour politics goes

OK maybe there's a legal distinction I'm not quite appreciating but committing unlawful acts of harrassment including antisemitic tropes. Perhaps that isn't discrimination in the strictly legal sense, idk.

on a lighter note Tommy Robinson has been arrested and thrown in jail just for saying he's English

(FWIW I've read the key sections of the report but not the whole thing as it's 100+ pages).

The report was literally about institutional antisemitism in the Labour party, so there was no need to talk about the media hysteria (which we know exists).

This was the level of the conversation most of the time, not the discussion about the procedures and whether Jewish complainants were disadvantaged and, by this fact, subject to antisemitism by the institution of the party.

I missed this at the time: Simon Heffer saying that Jeremy Corbyn "wants to reopen Auschwitz".

Holy shit.

(42:57 or so) https://t.co/lgRpdtvHrw

— Andrew Bartlett (@AndrewBartletta) November 20, 2019

if they conflate media anti-Corbynism with a genuine need to sort out what looks like pisspoor governance in the party

In any case, Corbyn himself is no position to judge whether it's been exaggerated or not, because a central finding in the report itself was the processes for assessing these were not fit for purpose.

It's absurd to deny there is antisemitism in Labour.

It's also absurd to deny the scale of the issue has been overstated when the public thinks that a third of party members face antisemitism allegations, rather than the actual figure, which is less than 0.3%.

Me on @TimesRadio pic.twitter.com/Vx8fAwjkZ5

— James Schneider (@schneiderhome) October 30, 2020

including with regard to the complaint about Corbyn and the mural, which is just wtf. So there's evident culpability there, which I think was probably to do with internal panic around the media salience of it.

So for the sake of the future of left wing socialism within the left, I really think that people need to work to implement the EHRC recommendations and engage with that process on the left.

OK maybe there's a legal distinction I'm not quite appreciating but committing unlawful acts of harrassment including antisemitic tropes. Perhaps that isn't discrimination in the strictly legal sense, idk.

In this context, harassment means unwanted conduct related to race, which has the purpose or effect of violating a person’s dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment.

This is really missing the point of the reality of the reporting, though. "Institutionally" is not one person, but the whole press for the past two years has been acting as though it was. Starmer's press conference the day of the report was question after question about whether he'd be throwing Corbyn out. It's a fundamental flaw with the unseriousness with which this has been treated from the start.

Agree with this fwiw, it's the same impulse that ends up with Livingstone and Williamson on Times Radio, attempting to stir things up in a way that isn't exactly out of concern for the victims.

There's also a wider question of how you can build a genuine mass movement party without attracting people with reprehensible views and without them making those perfectly clear on social media in away that is ripe for being seized on or ignored according to expediency. Lord knows what an EHRC investigation into racism in the Conservative Party would unearth and in membership terms that's a tiny party relatively speaking.

Not one person has asked how Jewish people are meant to respond to a historian saying that Corbyn wants to reopen Auschwitz. If you’re already worried about Corbyn then that’s really just going to rachet it up even more. Is that a measured interjection into a heated debate or is it pouring petrol on a blaze without regard to the people you’re causing anxiety to?

Definitely been disgusted by the excuses and whataboutery from the another angry voice crowd in my circle so fizzles post seems sound to me - making this all about corbyn is the opposite of the introspection Jewish members deserve & maybe it was always going there but I think jc and starmzy share the blame for making sure it went there immediately.

Suspension still feels like bollocks to me - I get being pissed off that the “overstated” comment is in there but saying it’s minimising the issue really depends on ignoring the previous paras saying it is a real and serious problem no? Many xps at this point

I'm not really deeply engaging with this because I'm done with the Labour Party and am very low energy right now. But will say that gobby left-twitter "personalities" having a go at Jon Lansman for calmly posting about this report is very fucking wrong.

this has all gone exactly to plan

the right: why are you hitting yourself

the left: well, it's beca-

the right: why are you hitting yourself

I'm not sure who the "people" you're referring to here are? This was never left to cool and let everyone take a breath, it's been factional cluster bombs from day one. I'm largely disinterested in the question of engaging in the process as I've already left, but you are affording Starmer far too much credit. He wants a model of the party that's top-down, not member-led, where members fund and leaflet for the party and have absolutely no other input apart from doing as they're told, and the left's whole presence challenges that.
― liberté, égalité, scampé (gyac), Sunday, 1 November 2020 16:54 bookmarkflaglink

sorry, yes, 'people' was totally unclear. by people, i mean people on the left, who want to maintain a left voice within Labour. (I can understand those who do not, though I don't think this particular report and the fallout is the right hill on which to die).

i *think* i subscribe to what you say about starmer there. but it's not totally clear for me. a theory i have in my head is that starmer is trying to grab back the member-led approach unlocked by the registered voters rule change, which effectively saw a lot of new members feel empowered to vote for a different sort of politician and politics. he can't change the rules at the moment, but he can alienate the base. or perhaps more importantly he can marginalise representatives of the left on the front bench.

and i'm just not sure how true that theory is (genuinely not sure, not rhetorically not sure). and even if it is, is this particular process an engine of that? they've still got what i would consider left wing policies like scrapping tuition fees, and nationalisation of certain industries. the marginalisation of MPs on the left genuinely seems a thing, and again, it's clear the power base is being shifted, which is.... shit tbh.

a theory i have in my head is that starmer is trying to grab back the member-led approach unlocked by the registered voters rule change, which effectively saw a lot of new members feel empowered to vote for a different sort of politician and politics.

they've still got what i would consider left wing policies like scrapping tuition fees, and nationalisation of certain industries.

Time will tell whether the figures bear it out but it feels like the demographic base of the party is shifting as well, or at least efforts are being made to explicitly ‘win back the trust of white voters’.

It’s one of the reasons the legacy of Corbyn’s time at the helm, and the claims made about it, have to be analysed appropriately seriously. Even when sincerely held, I don’t think the belief that, if elected, Labour would have been an existential threat to British Jews can be separated from the presumed hostility of the Muslim / Black members and voters who supported him, the Muslim / Black immigrants he’d have supposedly allowed in to the country, the Muslim countries he wouldn’t have used Trident on, etc. I think for a lot of those voters, running a mile from interrogation of whether that threat was exaggerated it itself extremely loaded.

I'm not sure that many people on the left have started to appreciate quite how bad this has made it look to outside observers, including those who would otherwise not be especially hostile to many of its aims - and the left itself barring some major unheavals in society is never going to be big enough to obtain or sustain any real power or influence without functioning alliances with other groups. As it is the chance of it doing so is increasingly remote and Corbyn's statement was fundamentally damaging to its prospects of doing so again and Corbyn doesn't seem to realise the damage he's done to the left's future prospects this week.

This is a bit overdramatic tbh. The left have different sets of views, for one. Was in a call with the left-wing section of my Labour ward (with a few from other wards invited) last night, which was bought on by Corbyn's suspension and basically the goings on in the party since the Left lost its leadership.

There are basically two camps: one of which is broadly in agreement with Fizzles' post, in the sense that the EHRC report is a bit like an ombudsman report which looked at processes, found them to be inadequate, and are now putting forward a set of recommendations. On that basis the thinking is we ought to go along with a lot of it and work so that processes are improved.

The other camp basically want to die on the Corbyn suspension hill. They think the EHRC is a stitch-up and the right are going to use this to put the boot in on the left. For these individual members the right to free speech is also being threatened as they cannot be seen to be publicly questioning it in a loaded way that Corbyn has, as they will be expelled.

(this is broadly what I saw on Left Twitter btw)

(This all flows into what motion is put in at a Local Labour meeting and I won't talk about what was agreed because its a bit boring)

I was pretty much aligned with he first camp. Not least because Starmer might have had a hand on Corbyn's suspension. One of the members on the call was an immmigration lawyer and she said that most of the time she wins appeals against the Home Office is because we use "their own laws against them" so its almost certain that Corbyn will be re-instated because as people have pointed out it looks like Starmer has broken one of the recommendations on the report on the day it was published! Corbyn's statement was a good demonstration of how badly we managed the power we had, when we had it. Now we have lost it we need to think more strategically - so the Left membership shouldn't look to die on this stupid fucking hill, see it out, and go on trying to, for example, get Left-wingers on councils and the like. "Stay and fight" is just a weird phrase to me.

Ultimately, if you are either a socialist or want to see socialist policies implemented I think being branded all sorts of shit by your opponents who -- and this is key -- hold most of the power then what happens in this or that week is neither here nor there. That also goes for what Corbyn does or doesn't do, but I could sense this is a tough issue because afetr all he is literally the reason so many of the younger members are in the party. But letting go off is a thing to be done. Not least because the bigger picture is one of a world that is being run in a way which is unsustainable (as covid has demonstrated).

95% of the comments I’ve seen from the left Twitter accounts I follow start from the position that the report is careful and fair but has been misrepresented in the press, etc. As someone mentioned at the time, it can be used to validate whichever position you held to begin with.

Not much to add but some really good posts in the last couple of hours.

The camp I am with btw was the majority and had a range of ages. The cranky stuff was spouted by some of the older members - no idea if this is matched across the country but I just want to record this observation.

this has all gone exactly to plan

― imago, Sunday, 1 November 2020 bookmarkflaglink

the right: why are you hitting yourself

the left: well, it's beca-

the right: why are you hitting yourself

― imago, Sunday, 1 November 2020 bookmarkflaglink

I know this is dumb fucking crap but its worth just exploring for a sec. This isn't some Tony Montana-esque grab for power at all costs but about building a place -- whether that's the Labour Party or somewhere else -- where, as a body of people wanting to bring about socialism, that its a place that is safe and considerate for all peoples and their needs. As a party we need a place that is far, far better (more humane, smarter) than the society it seeks to represent. So if it takes 'hitting yourself' to achieve then fine, that's hard work, time and effort. But I know Tories don't know what that is.

^ Yeah, that (Matt DC). Thanks for the initial Fizzles post.

Will you just fucking jump off a cliff you smarmy piece of shit

I was obviously talking about the right's knowingly trollish bullying of the left and the fact they know the antisemitism stuff is exaggerated but never let the mask slip as they maintain the racist-Corbyn narrative. Any opportunity to push the left down will be taken. This was always going to happen this way and Corbyn was always going to be too rightfully offended by the shit he's had to put up with to accept that his party were knowingly bigoted (as every single conventional reading of the report had it). The right allow the left to protest, knowing the left are to some extent in the right, but then they hang them with it.

You interpreting my post as being about a left-wing power grab is just worthlessly stupid. Maybe you're pulling the same trolling game on me, or maybe you're genuinely just thick as shit

Anyway you're a worthless poster and everyone hates you, fuck off forever

???

LOL, not you djh.

Poor DJH, truly in the wrong place at the wrong time.

You are fine, djh XP lol

(Ta. Rationally I knew that ... but, um, wine and the internet and not being good at this stuff).

EXCLUSIVE
The Brexit Party is to be relaunched as an anti-lockdown party called Reform UK, in a move which could alarm Conservative MPs jittery about Covid-19 policy.
Plans to change the name of the Brexit Party to Reform UK were submitted to the Electoral Commission last week.

— Christopher Hope📝 (@christopherhope) November 1, 2020

I don't think Farage's new vehicle will benefit from the same rapid rise as his last one, brexit populism was quite the rage - but polling seems to suggest the anti-lockdownists are a minority of cranks, billionaires and Van Morrison!

it will be more influential than Chris Williamson's Resistance Movement "A Socialist Movement for the 21st Century" (Who suffered "Registration issues due to high load" in the week Starmer was elected leader - 1340 subscribers!)

Curious about what the thinktank at http://reform.uk might have to say about this

Speakers at Reform UK events have included:

Rt Hon Andy Burnham MP and Rt Hon Sadiq Khan MP (Labour);

Seems to me that Farage has forgotten all the branding lessons of the Brexit Party vs that other little party that launched in a Nando's last year.

his brand is undoubtedly strong and the BBC will give him plenty of free publicity and a million times more respect than he deserves ..again, but vital momentum could be lost if people are like: what's that anti-lockdown party again? reform, deform, death-cult UK ..fuck knows they keep changing their name every week.

I fear it might be structurally flawed given its stance is likely to kill a sizeable proportion of its own voter base.

I mean the boring answer is that Farage is terrified of looming irrelevance, misses the days when he could spook the Tory party into doing things, and has spotted an opportunity for leverage in disgruntled/panicked Red Wall MPs. Probably why he came out in favour of free school meals for one thing.

anyone read andrew rawnsley on corbyn in the observer yesterday? seldom have i seen anyone have such a normal one

It was horrific and i'd hope that the sheer naked hatred would irk even some of the readers broadly unsympathetic to Corbyn but idk.

COVID aside, Farage might be shrewd in his messaging. Going in to the last election, both sides were talking about fundamental reform required to establishment institutions. The Tories and the press have seeded the belief that academia, the BBC, the courts, the immigration system, the HoL, etc, etc are hopelessly antiquated and corrupt but idk, if i was a Daily Mail / Express, reader whether i'd have any faith in Johnson to hammer those changes through. It'll live or die on the amount of airtime the BBC gives him but it doesn't strike me as an inevitable failure out of the gate.

Not really, Corbyn is just a proxy for the young and/or the left in the view of most of the backslappers, a point going largely unnoticed by most of the “he’s just one man!” crowd.

The Tories and the press have seeded the belief that academia, the BBC, the courts, the immigration system, the HoL, etc, etc are hopelessly antiquated and corrupt but idk, if i was a Daily Mail / Express, reader whether i'd have any faith in Johnson to hammer those changes through

It's all a bit dissipated though, it lacks the totemic, simplistic messaging value of 'LEAVE THE EU NOW' and you have to wonder how many people really care that much beyond a vague sense of a way of life being under threat. But if you wanted a big symbol to latch onto then lockdowns are pretty much perfectly designed for that, but it's an issue (hopefully) with a limited shelf life.

Very sorry to be so late to the party with such a long post on the same subject as last night’s exchanges kicked off by Fizzle’s thoughtful and well expressed post. I was reading last night, kindof wanting to respond but this whole episode is basically defined by floating constellations of conflated meanings, where truth and distortion meet failures to understand and bad faith and so its hard to refute one claim without reference to several other issues that should be outside of the frame but for various reasons, unfortunately, aren’t.

I disagree Fizzle’s with your reading of Corbyn’s statement with recourse to the EHRC ruling. I agree that the report is a fairly sober and sensible set of recommendations (although I still find it to be vague to the point of misleading in key places, something that has clearly aided in distorted reporting on its findings). I don’t agree with the claim that Corbyn’s statement is in breach of the act.

The two key parts of Corbyn’s statement that this focusses on are:

“Anyone claiming there is no antisemitism in the Labour Party is wrong. Of course there is, as there is throughout society, and sometimes it is voiced by people who think of themselves as on the left.
“Jewish members of our party and the wider community were right to expect us to deal with it, and I regret that it took longer to deliver that change than it should.”
and

“One antisemite is one too many, but the scale of the problem was also dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media. That combination hurt Jewish people and must never be repeated.”

The line I think you’re referring to is in a section of the report that details antisemitic abuse on social media including comments that

“ described a ‘witch hunt’ in the Labour Party, or said that complaints had been manufactured by the ‘Israel lobby’” or further blamed jews for creating or stoking the crisis. One must be careful to distinguish between claims that accounts of abuse have been fabricated by jews to further political ends and the distinct claim, made by Corbyn that this issue has been inflated in the media and by other political actors, including distorted or inaccurate statements. The commission is grounded in the HRA and its rulings are shaped by article 10 and consequently is quite explicit in making this distinction:

“Article 10 will protect Labour Party members who, for example, make legitimate criticisms of the Israeli government, or express their opinions on internal Party matters, such as the scale of antisemitism within the Party, based on their own experience and within the law. It does not protect criticism of Israel that is antisemitic.”

It seems obvious to me that it is the latter article that is relevant to Corbyn’s statement and not the former.

So it would appear to me that Starmer is, with this action, guilty of breaching two of the reports recommendations: breaching article 10 as discussed above, and political interference in the process as has been discussed at length.

Furthermore, the report seems to corroborate many of the claims made in the leaked report (and in Gabriel Pogrund’s book, where the sources are largely hostile Labour right people bragging!) that McNicol’s HQ staff did much to impede complaints investigation. If this is true, and I believe it is very credible, then Starmer is also guilty of condoning these efforts and intervening to exonerate rather than discipline those responsible.

I’m largely in agreement with Matt DC’s comments above that the report criticises the party and that the actions taken by McNicol’s staff during Corbyn’s reign are ultimately Corbyn’s responsibility, whether that feels fair to him or not. But the same is true of Starmer, and his actions have been far more weaselly in this respect over the last few days where it is obvious that he is attempting to pass off all responsibility to Corbyn while simultaneously guilty of the same breaches.

However, I think what should be obvious is that acting correctly or incorrectly is pretty much irrelevant to the overall narrative. For a long time he was excoriated publicly for not doing the thing (intervening politically) that the report finds him most in breach of (and those headlines had their effect at the time). So I’m pretty reserved in my criticisms of Corbyn in light of this. Not least because of how personally malicious so much coverage has been of him and how it has floated the suggestions of extreme, but unvoiced, allegations as the basis of an ongoing character assassination. The observer piece from yesterday (linked in the guardian thread) was an amazing illustration of just how easily tarred he is after two solid years of this. Starmer will not be made accountable for this, and Corbyn is being made an example of for anyone on the left who would dare to make as convincing a case for real social change in this country as Corbyn managed around 2017.

in South Korea the right-wing parties change their names so often that "how am I meant to know which box to tick" jokes are part of the canon of folk humor. or so I am given to understand

i don't think farage is even trying to be shrewd tbh

xpost

^gigantic truthbomb xp to plaxico

I just also want to say that this

”One antisemite is one too many, but the scale of the problem was also dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media. That combination hurt Jewish people and must never be repeated.”

-- a majority of britons and a plurality of labour '19 voters think suspending corbyn the right decision
-- arguably, on a realpolitik level, that makes it the right decision
-- tho the messaging around it bad; rather than relitigating whether corbyn's speech out of line starmer should be saying 'the important thing is we are going to make good on his failure to deal with the structural problem'
-- why hasn't corbyn been blaming the proddies??
-- was corbyn 'stupid' to make this statement? it really depends on whatever communication he had with starmer, or his team had with starmer's, beforehand
-- seems clear that at least one of them is trying to stitch the other up, if it wasn't mutual
-- still tho i am not sure about the claim that corbyn was out of place mentioning it now -- if not now when?
-- or, kindly provide me directions to the right hill to die on

this is my new posting style, it's like vintage mark s only really dumb

Expresamos nuestra solidaridad con @jeremycorbyn en momentos en que es injustamente suspendido de su partido. Jeremy es un líder político y luchador social que defiende las causa justas en el mundo. #WeStandWithJeremy

— Evo Morales Ayma (@evoespueblo) November 1, 2020

I read it and thought Rawnsley was definitely having a normal one. But a lot of very online centrist dads were LOVING it, because they think Corbyn is arrogant/pass-ag/thick/an antisemite in some combination, if not all four. The propulsive language around Corbyn by liberals who have him down as ‘arrogant’ because he is ignoring their abuse or refused to capitulate during coup time tells me a lot more about them than it does Jeremby Crumlin. One of the people doing it in my TL is the son of the man who brought Tony Blair into the party, so this is the level of privileged person that Corbyn is offending. This person dislikes the idea of Labour led from the left, no matter the personalities involved, so intense dislike of the ex-leader is a big bonus. So much of Rawnsley’s howling is about the left finding him and his type irrelevant.

As to Corbyn’s statement, I see very little to disagree with in its entirety, so it is disheartening to see the stramash around a single sentence that while correct, was impolitic to issue on the day knowing your political enemies are circling and might include the new leader. Although the slant of the coverage would have you think so, the EHRC report was not critical of Corbyn as an individual, but the party as a whole, left AND right, for not dealing with antisemitism cases properly.

-- a majority of britons and a plurality of labour '19 voters think suspending corbyn the right decision
-- arguably, on a realpolitik level, that makes it the right decision