The Political Betting Blog may in itself be itself being mischievous \with this comment but it does raise a number of questions.
Interesting angle from the Indy’s John Rentoul on the sacking of Shadow Education Secretary and former unsuccessful leadership challenger, Rebecca Long-Bailey.
Rentoul is a long-standing Blairite and has never apologised for that. The tone of this evening’s column is set out in its opening:
It would be wrong to gloat. Mustn’t do it. And generally I don’t. But just for a moment, let’s celebrate the end of the paranoid, reactionary, self-righteous politics of the people who ran the Labour Party for the past five years. It was all over the moment Jeremy Corbyn announced he was standing down, but this was the week they knew it. I don’t want to rub salt into the wound, because that would sterilise it and help it heal, but the sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey was one of those rare moments of shocking leadership. For those of us who think a broad-based egalitarian government would be a good idea, it has been a long time since a Labour leader has surprised us with such moral clarity.
In November 2015, Rentoul issued a public apology for tweeting that "Jeremy Corbyn might say that France had brought the Paris attacks on itself". The journalist acknowledged it was a "stupid and offensive" thing to say Rentoul did not deny that he used his position in the Independent to actively undermine Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour party through the persistent suggestion that Corbyn was an anti-semite- in a Twitter conversation when asked to provide any evidence of Corbyn's anti-semitism, he did not do so, but instead said "So glad you lot failed". Mike Smithon of Political Betting makes it clear his opinion
I just wonder whether associating Starmer with Blair, probably the most hated man in large parts of the Labour movement is doing the new leader any favours but there is no doubt that this is a major political event which could be looked back on in the same way Blair’s decision to axe Clause 4 was,
What those Labour figures who still revile Blair ignore is that in its entire history the party has only ever won five sustainable working majorities – three of them – GE1997, GE2001 and GE2005 – when the party was led by Blair. Somehow to many winning elections is not a good thing but a bad one.
The huge gap in the polling between the record breaking leadership ratings that Starmer has been enjoying and Labour’s failure to break through on voting intention shows the huge challenge the new man has – far greater than when Blair became leader in 1994.
I just wonder whether this was in fact all planned. Starmer kept Long-Bailey in his Shadow Cabinet for the purpose of a huge public sacking when she stepped over a line.
The harsh fact for Corbynistas is that their man was the reason why the party dropped to its worse General Election result since 1935. All the post election polling found Corbyn as a the main reason why former LAB voters had switched.
Indeed although I regard Corbyn as a Unionist. The fact that Labour after years of Blue-Toryism (and not just under Blair) the way that he was vilified in the media under a carefully constructed campaign of both real and completely false charges of anti-semitism whilst not even examining the same degree of it in other parties was one of the worst examples of a biased media ( including the BBC) for years.
The sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey suggest that Starmer was itching for an excuse to purge his Shadow Cabinet of Corbynists and used what may have ben an error of judgement against her .
She was sacked byStammer on 25 June 2020, after using Twitter to share an interview with British actress Maxine Peake in which Peake said that the practice of police officers in the United States kneeling on someone's neck was "learnt from seminars with Israeli secret services". Peake and The Independent, the outlet the interview had come from, both retracted the claim, which had been linked to a report by Amnesty International. Amnesty said that they had never reported that Israeli security forces had taught the technique Long-Bailey described Peake as an "absolute diamond", before using a second tweet to say that she did not endorse "all aspects" of the interview.
Even so it was not what I believe what many reasonable people would regard as Anti-Semetic..
Does criticism of Saudia Arabia constitute Islamophobia ?
Does Criticism of President Trump constitute anti-Americans.
If I am truthful on some cases it does , but we must look at criticism of the Israeli goverment , police and defence forces with regard Palestine in context and whilst false accusations though whether the " seminars with Israeli secret services" is completely false is debatable.
The problem is that there will be some who believe that Israeli interests in promoting the Anti-Semitic accusation , which plays into the hands of conspiracy theorists and actually create antisemitism in some quarters where it did not exists.
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