Mentions Labour Party UK

Won't somebody think about the children? Well, in the face of certain poverty, at least all these kids won't be exposed to the vanishingly small risk of eventually regretting trans health care. F***ing hypocrites.

The Labour leadership has told you who it is, over and over again: it is time to believe it. Keir Starmer has suspended seven Labour MPs because they voted to overturn a Tory policy which imposes poverty on children. Sure, another tale will be spun: that by voting for the Scottish National party’s amendment to abolish the two-child benefit cap, the seven undermined the unity of the parliamentary Labour party and were duly disciplined. But that is nonsense.

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It is hard to imagine Starmer is unaware of the fact that Osborne devised the policy to stoke public hostility towards and create a Victorian caricature of the undeserving, overbreeding poor. No decent society punishes children for choices they have not made and parents should not be punished for having more children. In Britain in 2024, kids turn up to schools with bowed legs and heart murmurs because of malnourishment, but a vast cost is also imposed on society as the scarring effect of poverty produces lasting lower productivity and employment levels.

Starmer knew this when he told the BBC almost exactly a year ago that he would retain this wicked Tory policy. He made the commitment to sound tough. Contrast with how he genuflects before powerful interests such as the Murdoch empire. By endorsing the two-child benefit cap, Starmer decided to gain partisan advantage, rather than fix an injustice afflicting his country. Party first, country second. Or rather, to be specific: playing politics with the lives of our most vulnerable children.

A reminder to self that the difference between Corbyn and Starmer was, in this respect at least, not as great as I may have wanted.

The Office for Budget Responsibility - the government's economic watchdog - will be given new powers to "whistle blow" when it believes that the "credibility rule" has been breached.

And under the Labour plans it will also report to Parliament rather than the Treasury.

"We know now from the world's central banks that the world economy is looking at stagnation, and there needs to be a new rule," Mr McDonnell told me.

"And we want people to have confidence in a Labour government. That means we are introducing a new fiscal credibility rule.

"First, that a Labour government will always balance day to day expenditure.

"Second, that we will only borrow for the long term, and that means for investment - investment in our infrastructure, in the homes that we need, the railways, the roads, the renewable energy.

"And in new technology to grow our economy.

"Third, debt will fall under a Labour government over a five year period.

Gaza’s destruction – in which more than 100,000 Palestinians have so far been either killed or seriously wounded, and two-thirds of the enclave’s homes pounded into ruins – appears to be integral to that strategy.

And yet, extraordinarily, Keir Starmer, Britain’s opposition leader, has chosen this moment to declare that, from now on, the Labour Party’s policy on Palestinian statehood will be dictated to it by the pariah state of Israel.

Reversing Labour’s stance under his two predecessors, Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn, who promised to immediately recognise a Palestinian state on winning power, Starmer told a meeting last week that such recognition would occur only as “part of a process” of peace talks involving Israel and other states.

Some 139 nations have recognised Palestine as a state at the United Nations, but Britain – as well as the United States – is not among them.

Labour’s shadow Middle East minister, Wayne David, expanded on Starmer’s remarks to explain that Israel would have a veto. A two-state solution would only ever come to “fruition in a way which is acceptable to the state of Israel. That is the way to bring about peace.”

As the Labour leader faces a backlash for his praise of the former Tory prime minister, a leaked email shows he stopped Sam Tarry, then the party’s shadow minister for transport, from attacking her failed policies in 2021.

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Left-winger Mr Tarry had wanted to criticise her 1985 Transport Act, saying it “failed to deliver lower fares and better services across Greater Manchester”.

But when the comments were sent to Sir Keir’s office for approval, one of his top aides insisted the reference to Thatcher be taken out.

The leaked email said: “Can we take out the Thatcher stuff and instead criticise the current government?” 

An adviser to Mr Tarry pushed back on the suggested edit and replied: “Mr Burnham’s happy with it and she’s despised in the north, so it will play well with voters.”

But Sir Keir’s aide insisted the reference be removed to “focus on the current set of elections and criticise the current set of Tories”.

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A source familiar with the exchange said it was indicative of Labour’s refusal to criticise Ms Thatcher under Sir Keir’s leadership, adding that recent praise for her was “less of a surprise and more of a confirmation of the Labour leader’s admiration for the former prime minister”.

Every moment of meaningful change in modern British politics begins with the realisation that politics must act in service of the British people, rather than dictating to them. Margaret Thatcher sought to drag Britain out of its stupor by setting loose our natural entrepreneurialism. Tony Blair reimagined a stale, outdated Labour Party into one that could seize the optimism of the late 90s. A century ago, Clement Attlee wrote that Labour must be a party of duty and patriotism, not abstract theory. To build a “New Jerusalem” meant first casting off the mind-forged manacles. That lesson is as true today as it was then.

It is in this sense of public service that Labour has changed dramatically in the last three years. The course of shock therapy we gave our party had one purpose: to ensure that we were once again rooted in the priorities, the concerns and the dreams of ordinary British people. To put country before party.

None of that was easy but it was necessary. Often, it meant taking the path of most resistance. It meant not just listening to those who felt unable to vote for us but understanding them and acting. The public do not have outlandish or unreasonable expectations. They expect taxpayer money to be spent wisely, our security and our borders to be prioritised and a politics that serves them rather than itself. On each of these, we are now ready to deliver.

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, the Labour leader said Thatcher had “set loose our natural entrepreneurialism” during her time as prime minister.

“Across Britain, there are people who feel disillusioned, frustrated, angry, worried. Many of them have always voted Conservative but feel that their party has left them,” he said. “I understand that. I saw that with my own party and acted to fix it. But I also understand that many will still be uncertain about Labour. I ask them to take a look at us again.”

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Starmer said it was “in this sense of public service” that he had overseen a dramatic change in the Labour party – cutting its ties with former leader Jeremy Corbyn and removing the whip.

“The course of shock therapy we gave our party had one purpose: to ensure that we were once again rooted in the priorities, the concerns and the dreams of ordinary British people. To put country before party,” he said.

I must admit I got a bit teary watching this. There's more with Jeremy on the creators' YouTube channel.

The response to our letters also states that Labour’s position must be “in line with Britain’s global allies, namely the United States of America and the European Union”. In this regard, it behooves us to remind you that it is the job of His Majesty’s Opposition to hold the government of the United Kingdom to account, not to follow policy lines of foreign governments.

The legal obligations of the UK government should not be in doubt. Common articIe 1 of the four Geneva Conventions requires states parties “to respect and to ensure respect” for the conventions. We would also like to remind you that the United Kingdom has ratified the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. As confirmed by the International Council of Justice in 2020, all states have an obligation to prevent acts of genocide, irrespective of where they occur. In light of the mounting and compelling evidence of genocide, as affirmed by UN experts and scholars of genocide, the United Kingdom can adhere to its obligations under the Genocide Convention by calling for an immediate ceasefire, an end to the siege and an end to the forced displacement of Palestinians.

Britain's two main political parties each made an example this week of an MP brave enough to break ranks and call for an end to the mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.

The ruling Conservative party sacked Paul Bristow MP from his government post after he wrote to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak: "A permanent ceasefire would save lives and allow for a continued column of humanitarian aid [to] reach the people who need it the most."

Labour withdrew the whip from Andy McDonald MP, effectively kicking him out of the parliamentary party. McDonald had said at a rally against the killing in Gaza: "We won’t rest until we have justice, until all people, Israelis and Palestinians, between the river and the sea can live in peaceful liberty.”

This should be a moment of great moral clarity for all of us. 

Starmer, like Biden, insists that “Israel has the right to defend itself”. On the specific matter of international law, this is not a legal right. Israel, an aggressor because of its two-decade-long siege/blockade of Gaza, cannot claim “self-defense” to justify its violence against armed resistance to this illegal siege/blockade. When a Nazi claimed that Germany attacked Russia in “self-defense” during WW2, a judge at the Nuremberg Tribunal said:

“One of the most amazing phenomena of this case which does not lack in startling features is the manner in which the aggressive war conducted by Germany against Russia has been treated by the defense as if it were the other way around. …If it is assumed that some of the resistance units in Russia or members of the population did commit acts that were in themselves unlawful under the rules of war, it would still have to be shown that these acts were not in legitimate defense against wrongs perpetrated upon them by the invader. Under International Law, as in Domestic Law, there can be no reprisal against reprisal. The assassin who is being repulsed by his intended victim may not slay him and then, in turn, plead self-defense”. (Trial of Otto Ohlendorf and others, Military Tribunal II-A, April 8, 1948)