The years during which Mandelson and Blair had such influence over the
party also saw a steady decline both in the number of active Labour party
members and the quality of those rising through its ranks. A cursory assessment
of the calibre of Starmer’s Cabinet – many of them parachuted into safe seats
by factional chicanery – makes that abundantly clear.
Tony Blair
9/11 attracts new mainstream critics
In the face of the dark horrors fed to us daily from the Middle East and Ukraine one risks being deemed Pollyanna-ish to detect any comforting points of light. Who can draw much consolation when a UK Labour Government proscribes a direct-action pro-Palestine group as terrorists in the same week that its staunchly uncritical Parliamentarians celebrate the direct action of the Suffragettes? But...
Diaries and Diarists
“The wretched of the earth are no longer remote, shadowy figures occasionally glimpsed in some TV documentary or in the bottom half of a new bulletin. They are here, in Europe, battering at our gates.”
Words and deeds
Is this a man whose warnings about polarisation, populism and post-truth politics can be taken remotely seriously? A phrase from my youth came back to me on reading But What I Can Do?: “How can we hear what you’re saying when what you have done is deafening me?”
With friends like these?
That the offspring of Holocaust survivors and the Kindertransport should be drummed out of the Labour Party for ‘anti-semitism’ is unconscionable.
Where does the money trail lead?
“If you wanted to be Tony’s Foreign Secretary Michael [Levy] was part of the package… He was an effective fund-raiser for the Labour Party, especially with the UK’s Jewish community. He had a home in Israel, as well as in London. Of Michael’s loyalty to Tony I was never in any doubt. But when Michael was given this position the Israelis must have thought they’d won the lottery.” – Jack Straw
Ten Years Hard Labour
To be smeared and abused with impunity by Israel-supporting figures in politics and the media is part and parcel of the corruption and decadence that increasingly disfigures what is left of our democracy.
Sir Keir and his loyalties
Eagleton presents an account that forestalls any sense of disappointment or betrayal Labour members may feel in years to come: Starmer’s first loyalty was always to himself.