There were a number of comments on this blog yesterday from those of left wing persuasion that appeared to share much in common.
All sought to excuse the attack on Keir Starmer by a small group of protestors outside parliamentary buildings earlier this week.
Most said they had not seen the footage, which is very odd when it is readily available.
Despite that they were quite sure there was no physical violence. There very clearly was physical intimidation during the protest, and it was very clearly deliberate.
They claimed they did not hear mention of Jimmy Savile or any reference to it. This is absurd. The very clearly heard claims that he had protected a paedophile clearly relate to the accusations Boris Johnson made about him. Denying this is to lie about the obvious reason for the aggression on display.
Instead these commentators had only apparently heard reports referring to complaints about Starmer's supposed treatment of Julian Assange, and about his links to freemasonry. Try as I might I have not heard the latter, or of them. Of the former, the suggestion would seem to be that the CPS should not do its job with regard to extradition requests.
Thereafter the suggestion was that I was opposing the right to demonstrate by blocking those making comment. I was cast in poor light when compared with Craig Murray, who I have long considered a person of remarkably poor judgement.
So why did I react as I did?
There are several reasons. First, all those commenting in this way where in my opinion disingenuous, at best. This protest was violent. Those protesting clearly intended to, and did, harass Keir Starmer, who did require police protection as a result. I am all in favour of the right to protest but am never in favour of violent protest. This was violent protest. That is unacceptable in a democracy. Those supporting it, as those banned did, have no place here, and I will continue to say so.
Second, claiming that this was not about Savile is just wrong. At the point where the left make that claim they are acting in union with the fascists. I always condemn those on the left who happily do that, and too many do.
Third, they were simply fabricating their evidence, and that is utterly unacceptable.
Fourth, they are happy to support any protest against Starmer, who is the democratically elected leader of a political party. As such they oppose democracy itself. I am a democrat and this is not a site willing to promote anything else. It is apparent that I do not agree with Keir Starmer in all his policies. But I absolutely respect his right to hold them. Those who think otherwise are the enemies of democratic politics and are utterly unacceptable to me. And this, I might remind those claiming I censor them, is my site and it is my right to exercise my editorial freedom.
So please feel free to submit such comments, but you will go straight on the banned list, whoever you might be. The cause of democratic politics is bigger than any one commentator.
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An old interview by Nazir Afzal, perhaps still relevant
https://www.mauldineconomics.com/smart-money-monday/profitable-small-caps-are-dirt-cheap
“Afzal’s focus on the need to improve the way victims are listened to chimes with the work being done by his former boss, the ex-head of the Crown Prosecution Service, Keir Starmer, who is working on how to reform a criminal justice system he describes as “barely fit for purpose”. Starmer is drafting a proposed victims’ law, that Labour has promised to pass if elected.”
“The legal system is itself guilty of wrongly classifying the victims of abuse as criminals. Even as recently as 2008, legal documents referred to children who were the victims of this kind of abuse as “child prostitutes”, he points out, “as if somehow what the children were doing was a lifestyle choice”.”
Also his Twitter thread on his experience resulting from a lie by the far right, following his successful prosecution of the Rochdale child abuse case
https://twitter.com/nazirafzal/status/1491021395249500161
Jonathan Swift: “Besides, as the vilest Writer has his Readers, so the greatest Liar has his Believers; and it often happens, that if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect…”
The problem with double standards in the Left is something that even Orwell had observed:
“So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.”
― George Orwell, Inside the Whale and Other Essays
I’ve interpreted this over the years as the Left unselfconsciously using fascist tactics like culture wars and class divides under the total misunderstanding that what they are doing is no different to their avowed enemy. Added to this is this weird self-justification they give themselves under the banner of inequality – that inequality justifies such tactics.
The Right justifies inequality as the strong over the weak – the natural order; the Left reject this and point to the abuses of the Right. That is where the real difference of Left v Right lies and I align with that. But that is as far as I go.
So the Left always focus on the struggle but are unable to actually think about how to deal with inequality further up stream which probably explains why they don’t get money and MMT and tax.
That’s also what makes Clem Attlee’s premiership all the more remarkable and why we need to return to it in my view (and the Liberals too from that period who deserve an honourable mention). They realised that you had to print money to win a war abroad and that if you wanted to win the war against fascism at home you also had to print money. Because otherwise you get division and a society ripe for fascism (except that after the war, the threat moved from fascism to communism didn’t it with the advent of the cold war – but as I said, Left and Right both use divisive tactics to fight each other).
Both the Left and Right of the Labour party are a long way a way from the realisation of one of their greatest leaders.
But that does not mean that justifies a Tory Prime Minister lying in Parliament about Keir Starmer. And it proves once again something us students of the Right have always known: when it comes to playing dirty you can rely on the Right in this country every time to deliver the goods.
A good summary thanks PSR. I’d add that saying about the left being keen on hunting down traitors whilst the right are looking for converts. However, the far Left and far Right are as bad as each other .
Also good to be reminded that there is so much to learn from Attlee and Beveridge who showed how an economy could be rebuilt, whilst rebuilding public services to tackle Beveridge’s ‘6 Evils’. Those evils are with us again today and there is no reason to believe that tackling them somehow conflicts with rebuilding the economy, as those on the Right and indeed some on the Centre and Centre-Left would have us believe.
The Neo-liberals and market fundamentalists seem to have turned the evils into ‘opportunities’ to make money or use those who cannot deliver profit to divide society for political ends – use them as pawns to undermine a mass movement getting behind more progressive thinking.
That is where we seem to be at the moment.
Before 2008, I could not imagine a world like this as it is today.
Thats about it. If you can’t make money out of it, why are you doing it. The only measure of success that matters and all that most of the City and their fellow travellers understand. Americanisation of society if you like. And the only form of reward that they understand.
A glimmer of hope might be in the idea of social impact which I think might just be emerging in parts of the fund management, investment and business worlds. People looking for more than just financial returns, maybe as part of ESG strategies or sometimes just a shift in values. (Don’t get too excited…) As one area of work, I’m with a group focused on high street and town centre regeneration. In a flash of the blindingly obvious, it struck me that local government have been doing social impact for decades. Having to reconcile, social, economic and increasingly environmental goals.
The point at which ‘left’ and ‘right’ can be discerned, is the precise point of the fuclrum that judgement flies from the scene.
Right with you here PSR (Atlee etc). It is indeed a curious phenomenon that the locus of political ideology often seems more akin to a circle than a straight line.
I’d long thought that politics was a circle, meeting up round the back of the authoritarian ‘bike-sheds.
However, Ive moved on to thinking that 1-dimensional, left-right thinking does not remotely describe the complexities of real people and their mix of beliefs. 2 dimensions, with social and economic beliefs are a start. I’d go to 3 and add in environment. And of course it all changes over time.
🙂
Richard,
not a comment for here, but I came across this article on stock market prices, which I thought you might find interesting.
https://www.mauldineconomics.com/smart-money-monday/profitable-small-caps-are-dirt-cheap
It chimes with my view that even though indices, performance metrics and tipsheets are totally biased towards “Greater Fool” investment, the best and most reliable income still comes from smaller companies doing real business.
My research shows they are where the value is
Richard. my comment simply asked why exactly you named John McDonnell in your piece, while pointing out that your warnings about the rise of fascism were important. It doesn’t seem very reasonable to be banned for rhis
You weren’t
The strong left seems to have lost its way since about 1979. I read with trepidation the comments you refer to I know which side of the fence Mr Starmer is on, I argued against comrades voting for Mrs Thatcher in ’79. The divisions will always exist and need to be worked on and tested in praxis and power is required. I do not agree with Mr Starmer on much but I agree with the ‘protestors’ on nothing. We face the most concerted attack on material gains for a generation, Mr Starmer would defend those gains unlike any Conservative their leader is a pit of moral depravity. I do want the public schools to be abolished, a million council homes, trade union rights restored and much else Mr Starmer understands these goals Conservatives despise them.
This blog has introduced new ideas concerning the role of money and MMT is a lens that has altered much discussion, to the better. If we did not have this lens the squeals of ‘how will we afford’, ‘the nation is insolvent ‘, we must trust the markets’ etc would be a cacophany but it is not.
I have no worries with allowing debate I reserve the right to ‘respect’ it because frankly I don’t respect the hideous views of the protesters described.
Well said Richard. Those attacks on Starmer were a direct consequence of Johnson’s latest desperate ‘dead cat’ tactics aimed purely at stoking hate and saving his own skin. This event represent a further dangerous tilt against democracy and is symbolic of a continuing, Hard Right fueled campaign of destabilisation. How anyone who purports to be on the Left can fall in behind these tactics quite astounds me. This is the new Right at work in al its infamy.
If society allows violent protest then the most violent start to set the agenda and politics becomes polarised at these extremes and controlled by small minorities that are willing to carry out these acts. Many think they are being revolutionary and that the rest of society is unable to think and act for themselves and that the extremes must act on their behalf because the rest lack the political will or knowledge. Both the left and the right know this technique and use it to promote minority views and to suppress the views of others who shy away from violent confrontation. This leads to actions like the Capitol riot in the US and to a lesser extent the anti-vax and Insulate Britain campaigns in the UK. The big problem with revolutionaries of all types is that because their agenda is the only acceptable one there can be no views that can be held that disagree with the revolutionary viewpoint and the agenda of a revolutionary is to freeze the political process in time to their view and theirs alone. The only way to change a revolution is by another revolution and society gets sucked into a cycle of dictatorship and state violence as the revolution tries to force acceptance and ensure that a population is held in stasis by violent means. The only response then becomes further violence. Democracy’s greatest value is that those in power can be replaced without the need for violent revolution and to give a voice to those who wish to speak without fear of being attacked. Their views may not necessarily prevail but they are allowed to voice them without fear of being arrested by the state or violently attacked by others but there does need to be rules to which citizens need to comply so that the largest number of people can raise their voices. Currently this ability to speak is under threat from Government who feel free to disobey the rules, lie and change the rules to suit their own agenda and by those wishing to indulge in violent conduct against their fellow citizens who may disagree with them.
I wholeheartedly agree with this blog with one small exception which doesn’t relate to the main thrust of your blog but is vital to consider nonetheless.
I’m going off at a bit of a tangent here but are any political party leaders in the UK really democratically elected? From what I can see, each party has an electoral system where the party hierarchy preselects those candidates that rank and file members are allowed to choose from. Members are typically left with Hobson’s choice. Add in stage managed party conferences, where the agendas, attendees and votes are tightly controlled by the party’s inner circle, and the reality is that rank and file members actually have very little influence over candidate selection, policies or leadership. Labour, for example, consistently and repeatedly refused to allow Scottish members to debate whether or not the party should support or oppose Scottish independence, resulting in a mass exodus of members over the past thirty years. The SNP has become equally anti-democratic and has disempowered members as a result of changes to its constitution and rules enacted a few years ago. The Conservatives and Lib Dems are no better.
Are any of the main political parties in the UK truly democratic and fully accountable to their members? I think not. As I see it, the UK is a sham of a democracy on so many levels. If you want to know where true power resides in the UK, follow the money. Fascism has its tentacles controlling all the main UK political parties and it has achieved this via the rules and constitutions of these parties and via very narrow ownership of our mainstream media.
In my opinion, the UK needs a democratic revolution. I can’t see this happening any time soon however as far too many of the electorate seem happy with the current first past the post electoral system and the duopoly politics and elected dictatorships that result from this.
I only saw one video of the protestors – a short one in the Guardian, in which the Saville accusations can’t be heard, and it’s the voice of a man (since identified as William Coleshill, an ex Tory councillor expelled for racism, who runs the Resistance GB group) that’s audible – but I’m perfectly willing to accept that the Saville accusations happened.
An analysis in the Telegraph reported that “A fifth of the slurs were about Jimmy Savile, but more called him a traitor”.
So people who say they hadn’t heard Saville mentioned are not necessarily lying – videos exist where it’s not apparent – but perhaps they could have looked for more evidence.
So should you
Could you share a link please?
Many videos are available all over Twitter and other social media
I don’t need to see the video, as I accept the written reports. I raised the issue because I think it’s preferable to make debate evidence based rather than instantly calling people liars and fascists because they haven’t seen particular videos. many people are currently prone to conspiracy theories, and some people’s experience leads them to distrust the media. If you shared a link, then people could easily watch, hear and review their opinions.
With respect, your denial of reality, the demand you make and the framing you use are all clear indication of extremist thinking.
Politely, you’re not welcome here.
Richard.
Not sure about your fourth point
“they are happy to support any protest against Starmer, who is the democratically elected leader of a political party. As such they oppose democracy itself.”
Whilst I agree that threats of violence are crossing a line, voicing ones disapproval of political leaders is the bedrock of a democracy, not the other way round.
You can’t pick and choose what is a legitimate crtisism and what is not.
(Well, you can, it’s your blog, of course)
Criticism of Starmer goes with the territory.
There was intimidation involved here
Get real…..
JOHNSON’S PHILOSOPHY
False
Accusations
Smearing,
Corrupting
Information,
Spreading
Malevolence.
Is there an acronym here?
I am appalled that the moronic mobbing of the appalling Starmer is labelled totally unthinkingly as in some way representing “the left”. Don’t be ridiculous, please. I revile Starmer and all he represents. I have described him as an MI5 approved Leader of HM Opposition. Nonetheless, the attacks are insane expressions of Trumpist politics as awful and threatening as Johnson’s initial attack. Richard, please do not permit this insanity as representative of “the left”. Do not allow this site to spiral down to this level. Please, my fellow bloggers, let us avoid this apology for analysis. It is Daily Mail.
I will have more to say on this
Some are dragging it down and are from what they call the left
But frankly, I question what they know of politics at all
I doubt those denying Starmer was attacked because of Johnsons Savile comment were “of a left wing persuasion”. Thats a term I usually hear from snearing Tories who barely know their own left from right let alone the political differences.
The demonstrators were that strange group of covid deniers and conspiracy theorists who see conspiracies in everything from Covid to a plot against Assange and a cover up of an establishment paedophile ring. They see everything in conspiracy terms and Starmer as part of that conspiracy. They were there with Piers Corbyn for gods sake
They are not left by any definition and nor are their defenders They do not see society in class terms but as a conspiracy of a ruling class to take away the liberties of the ordinary citizen. They are right wing libertarians, opposed to the state and socialism and for extreme individualism. Those supporting the attack on Starmer by Piers Corbyns group have more in common with the Canadian far right truckers demonstrating against covid regulations than anyone remotely socialist. Socialists have nothing to do with them
I can assure you that those here attacking me for suggesting it wrong to harass and intimidate Starmer did all claim to be socialists