Yesterday was not a good day.
It is true that hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated, peacefully, for peace in Gaza. That this happened in that way was a cause of massive relief, but not much surprise.
There were anti-Semitic and pro-Hamas sentiments expressed. Both were wrong. There is very little that can be added to that statement: these are unacceptable sentiments.
But, as we all know the day was dominated by far-right sentiment, dog-whistled into action by a far-right Home Secretary who put the police at considerable risk as a result, and excused by a Prime Minister who claimed there was pro-Hamas violence of similar sort when that was simply not true.
It was the actions of these two far-right politicians that made yesterday a bad day. They chose to undermine law and order. They ignored, or sort to justify, the thuggery used against those who upheld it. I can recall no such other occasion in my life.
We totter on a precipice around such issues, and whether the rule of law can be maintained, or whether politicians even have the will to do so.
There is nothing good about being where we are this morning.
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The PM and Home Secretary have to go, which suggests that the Government must go too.
But the PM won’t call a General Election.
So do we think the unthinkable, and wish that King Charles forces a General Election, it is after all, his government?
That is not going to happen
Yes, you are right, but what constitutional safeguards do we have?
Charles is useless and just takes. Hence why he didn’t ask ‘his government’ to do anything.
What does he really do for the nation? I say this as a republican.
I agree. It seems to me (apart from the madness of having a HoS an inherited position) having a HoS who actually, by convention, actually cannot say anything on behalf of the state is simply absurd. Several European countries have elected HoS which I find the much prefered model. In the recent past Germany even kicked one out.
The king or queen has no power to dissolve the government, despite it being labelled as “their government”, the only role the monarch has is ceremonial
If the Monarch has no power has was it that in the Queen’s name a properly elected government in Australia was cancelled about 30 years ago?
Unable to damn the protestors , the Tory papers are trying equate them to the Far Right thugs.
The Mail headline is about Gove being abused by a “pro-Palestine hate mob’.
The Telegraph has an article where the journalist wrotes how she met ‘decent people’ who intuited that a mob chanting genocidal slogans , driving away poppy sellers form their usual perches, posed an existential threat to their country.’
The Express “extremists from left and right”. No comment on the peaceful majority.
The question is why does the Establishment seek to promote one side?
The same papers never say a strike is justified, or report a demonstration as anything other than a nuisance unless it is pro-Brexit ( not many of those now) or anti-migrant when the protestors tend to be ‘the voice of the people’.
IMHO the reason is they want to de-legitimise any opinion which challenges the authority of the Establishment and discourage any provides a different view of how we should rule ourselves.
Power to the Oligarchs as it were.
I did see some comments on “X” suggesting a similarity with the Jan 6th insurrection, and actually the only way that yesterday resembled that sad event was that those in power were encouraging their followers to attack the police.
However the political content of yesterday was more like a football match than an attempted insurrection.
It occurs to me that we may not be so lucky if the Conservatives lose a general election.
As BBC news was running one of its all too frequent filler items I tried Sky news.
The newsreader was interviewing a female right-wing talking head who was given unchallenged time to put forward her view that it was all the fault of violent pro-Palestinian protestors.
As she was saying this Sky chose to run in the background, without any explanatory text, a video of right wing football hooligan lookalikes attacking the police.
Anybody who didn’t already know what had actually happened would have been highly likely to have thought that these were the imaginary violent pro-Palestinian protestors about which the right-wingnut was lying.
It may have been a very unfortunate cock-up, but with the Right in this country now seemingly fully committed to the Fascist playbook I doubt it.
Trumpian tactics. Not good but even Trump didn’t turn against the police, like this I don’t think.
Maria
Err…………..You might want to ask the Police who were protecting Capitol Hill on 6th January 2021 about that?
Trump’s mob did his dirty work for him really. For anyone to say he had no influence on that is stretching credibility. To me at least what I saw was the typical espionage at work that you have seen at work in South America and Africa and any number of places in Europe since World War II.
I’ll be more optimistic.
100s of thousands marched overwhelmingly peacefully, seeking peace in Palestine- Israel. Meanwhile a far smaller group, drunken and violent, had to be stopped from disrupting the Armistice day events. Events which recall peace replacing war.
Braverman and by association her government sought to prevent the first march whilst those far right thugs echoed the expressed views of Braverman and co. Brownshirts without the uniforms or discipline.
I like to think the stark contrast will not have been lost on people.
Agreed
Agreed, absolutely. I think there is actually something to be thankful for – the Fascist Home Secretary and Prime Minister were publically proved wrong – even if some of the media lie about it – Sunak has suggested that pro-Hamas violence was the same as that of the despicable EDL.
Yes there was some shameful behaviour on the peace march that should not have happened, but very little, and the police are shouting that the vast majority of arrests were ‘counter protestors’.
The march took place, it wasn’t banned or disrupted, the police did the job they are there to do, the Tory politicians were shown up as the hypocritical fascists that some of them are.
I think I would call that a result, for now.
The orange sash worn by some could be interpreted as a uniform or symbolic of a uniform.
I was on the march calling for a ceasefire on Saturday. It was a remarkable experience. All faiths and none. It was good humoured, with everone chatting to each other. I have never been with so many muslims before, and it was a very positivecexperience. It was the biggest march I have been on since the Iraq march, stretching 2.5 miles from one end to the other. I heard no anti – semitic chants and saw no AS placards, though many were anti Netanyahu and his hard right government. My favourite placard said ‘ I can’t believe I’m having to protest against a genocide’.
The agitators were attacking a national monument shouting slogans like “you’re not English any more”. If the current incumbent politicians had not riled them up, they likely would not have been out at all. I find it reminiscent of what happened in the US on January 6th. An election is to happen in the next year or so, and I have heard it said that we are forever a few years behind American politics. I hope that should the current incumbents, if removed at the next election, do not try to repeat history.
This is where I get so angry with Labour and its knight of the realm leader.
There was a time when the Left fought Fascism and called it out as such.
Not any more. Firstly there is no Left – just a bunch of Giddens/ Glasman / Paul Embury (read ‘Despised ‘ 2021) ‘Blue Labourites’ whose take on populism is to ape the Right and not tap into issues like global warming and privatisation etc.
As a result, the Right wing agenda is still rampant even as the government who fostered it looks to be going down the toilet. That is some feat, let me tell you.
The law is in disarray because it has been undermined by rule breakers who do not see themselves as ‘rule takers’. The same people who brought us BREXIT.
It is Carl Schmitt’s maxim ‘Sovereign is he who makes the exception’ in action. It’s time progressives were just as assertive and confident or all may be lost.
You can only meet such extremism with resolution. Instead we have political capitulation.
Our politicians are playing with matches near gunpowder. We need to take the matches away and let real adults look after them.
Hundreds of thousands of protesters called for peace in Gaza in an overwhelmingly peaceful manner.
A few hundred angry right wing counter protesters were incited to violence by the tacit support of the Home Secretary.
And the police were caught in the middle, risking life and limb to keep the peace on a weekend when we remember the horrific violence of war.
I just want to push back a little on the idea that calling for peace this weekend is somehow “disrespectful” to our armed forces. Very few on either side of the debate have actually served in the forces, and fewer in conflict.
Armistice Day is very specifically about remembering the end of the First World War. No one who was there is alive now, and the commemoration of 11am on the 11th of November was revived in the 1990s after decades of neglect. Calling for peace on the day of the armistice seems entirely appropriate to me.
And for me, Remembrance Sunday not about glorifying war, but about remembering its impacts on all people, men women and children, military and civilian. Lest we forget.
Something appropriate for the day:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ftx1o45igjk
Agreed
The problem with Remembrance Day is that too many seem to associate it with more jingoistic sentiments and it becomes a symbol of enmity and revenge.
To me, the whole thing is just hollow, we say we remember but we still put our finest in the way of danger and for what – escapades like Afghanistan, Iraq?
And when they come back as broken human beings, we just dump them in the already busy NHS and can’t be bothered to look after them properly.
We celebrate the dead but can’t look after the living survivors!!! What sort of society does that? It’s a disgrace. I’ve worked with Help For Heroes in housing and the way our ex-soldiers are just discarded is truly shocking.
The whole thing to me is disgusting and calculated to keep us angry and resentful even in victory.
Well said
Well written. My (middle) brother fought in the Falklands and came out only with mild PTSD that resolved after a few years. My eldest son did 18 months in Afghanistan as Camp Bastion perimeter i/c officer. Sadly both were influenced by far right ‘patriotic’ political action while in the forces, as are many it seems. Many of their colleagues suffered injury or mental problems, and received zero help after demob, simply discarded.
Nothing good indeed Richard – but we sort of knew that an essentially peaceful hundreds of thousands would be blamed for whatever violence and ‘hate’ Braverman’s stormtroopers would create.
BBC still trying to ‘both sides’ it but not very successfully…even Starmer was moved to finger Braverman and the far right.
But until he follows Macron, all UN agencies, WHO, MSF etc. ….and unequivocably calls for a stop to the killing of innocents, he and his Cooper, Lammy , Streeting et. al. bunch are complicit in mass murder and war crimes.
All we can do other than to keep asking for this – is to actually recognise how dark a place we are in… as you are doing.
To be fair to BBC, Mishal Hussein on Today this am had James Heapey (I think) Tory minister in defence and did a good job in challenging him on both Gaza and on the marches. Heapey was as slippery and disingenuous as we’ve come to expect from Tory ministers. He seemed to have read all about the peace march (Telegraph, Mail..?) and but claimed to be mysteriously uninformed about the far right mob who caused most of the serious trouble. On Gaza he just parroted the lines of IDF spokesmen.
As I’ve said elsewhere, the far right mob who caused the trouble looked exactly like the mob who caused trouble at the end of the pro- Brexit March when it arrived in Westminster. I was there, and ended up got talking to the police who had to clear them up. A bunch of drunk, scruffy, middle aged and young men.
This government has a track record of breaking the law, whether domestic law they have created themselves e.g. covid or international law which in theory they’re signed up to. They think they’re above it. Another reason (amongst many) why this country needs to be rid of them.
Just been watching some of the speeches from yesterday and one of the questions that stuck in my mind was why are we sending warships to Gaza? Why are we not sending hospital ships?
More to the point why is Keir Starmer not asking this question of the government? The only logical answer is that in his heart he’s taken up sides! If Harold Wilson could be brave enough not to get this country embroiled in the Vietnam war then Starmer could avoid taking up sides too!
There a no comparison at so many levels
Probably three quarters of a million marched for a ceasefire and talks re Gaza. Each of those that did so then see the March reported as less than half that number. Each knows it was peaceful and good hearted.
This mismatch between the truth they experienced and the way it’s reported is a valuable political education that they will not forget and each will tell others about it.
Also small demonstrations are taking place – in Penzance we have held two- people who never spoke to a crowd before bravely stood on a wall and did so. People took homemade placards . We know there was only a brief heckling from someone who passed by. A Palestinian spoke movingly, heard in respectful silence and moving many to tears.
Action is the antedote to despair and I believe these actions will have a good effect on our society.
Agreed
Well at least the dog-whistler has been sacked this morning. And Cameron’s reward for the Brexit disaster is the office of Foreign Secretary…but are the British public up to the revolution that seems to be needed? Richard you help keep me sane!
Sunak also told every MP that he doesn’t trust them enough to be foreign secretary.
He’s not going to last much longer, is he?
Watching today’s cabinet reshuffle is a bit like watching an episode of “Black Mirror “/”The Twilight Zone” /”Dallas” (bare with me here).
The bad dream of the far right being given equal share of TV/radio/news platforms for “balance”, the rise of the far right and Farage and his ilk becoming TV celebrities………..
The EU referendum and Brexit, Boris Johnson becoming an MP then PM, going full tonto right wing vote chasers……….
The nightmare of Boris Johnson visting Ukraine to see Volodymyr Zelenskyy while Ukraine was ahead in the war with Russia.
Boris ditching security to go to party at a villa in Perugia owned by his KGB handler “Baron Evgeniy Aleksandrovich Lebedev” and as if by magic the Russians have the secret intelligence needed to beat the Ukrainian forces plans……Not too dissimilar to when king Edward and Wallace Simpson gave Hitler all the info needed on the WW2 French defences on the “western front”, enough to destroy it and invade France, then being forced to abdicate, be banished to Jamaica, never to return….. funny how history repeats itself……
The destruction of the economy by Tuss & Kwarteng, to the almost desolation of the UK finances because of “mates rates contracts”.
I think that because the far right are most vocal/shouty, the cabinet (that is full of millionaires and no where near the population/voters) thought the majority were far right and that was the way to go…..(squeeky wheel getting the oil).
But with the peace marches of the last few weeks, in particular the far right EDL scum behaviour on Saturday (11/11) at Suella Bravermans request being a sunny morning wake up call…
The numbers and behaviour on Saturday was a wake-up call to the real feelings of the country and the small pro-rata share of voters the far right actually are so they need to sort their shit out quick.
James (not so) Cleverly going from foreign secretary to home secretary because a few weeks ago as foreign secretary he backed Israeli genocide on Gaza.
Changing the foreign secretary hopefully means changing the government support (without having the balls that French president Macron has to change his mind).
And now the UK wakes up to the latest cabinet reshuffle this morning, replacing hard far right wing nut jobs for just tory right wing nut jobs, Boris Johnson is long gone and David Cameron comes back into government and ….
Just as Pamela Ewing steps out of the Shower to find Bobby Ewing is still alive, was never really shot dead and it was all just a bad dream that never really happened……
like UK politics and Brexit from the 2016 till 2023 Cameron is back….but the twist in the story is we’re not awake yet, the nightmare isn’t over, it’s just a new chapter.
Some time ago the UK government went off script, started to do improv, tried a bit of standup comedy and steadily declined to the point it’s sat in a corner beat boxing and doing arm pit farts.
Or as described to me by my brother just now, from his vantage point in France – he is French having been there for 40 years; its like a failing TV series that brings back a character from an earlier series in the plaintive hope that it will rescue them.
He echoed my thoughts that the Europeans will loath him, as the person responsible for the referendum and Brexit. The idea that he is respected as a global statesman is laughable. By Orban perhaps, as Cameron took the Conservatives out of the European centre-right group of parties, to join Orban and the far Right gang.
I am sure that is true
I cannot imagine what his reception in Brussels will be like
To be fair to Cameron—and why should I bother?—he had assumed the UK public would vote to Remain, thus putting the Nigel Farages and other Leavers in his own party in their place. He got it wrong, of course …but Cameron didn’t want to leave the EU. He resigned because the vote didn’t go his way.
Cameron and ‘Better Together’ had just ‘won’ the Scottish referendum to keep the status quo, and his tail was up at the time. If he had lost, and Scotland had voted to leave the union, I doubt if he would have had the confidence to set up the EU referendum at all.
Such a shame the two results aren’t swappable….
Matt Carr on substack has just captured recent events perfectly. It’s only when you see them as a whole that the true madness is revealed.
https://mattcarr.substack.com/p/braverland?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=472970&post_id=138801326&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=qshi&utm_medium=email
Thanks