The Labour Party will be fighting itself today.
Ostensibly the issue is Gaza.
Actually, the issue is that the Labour leadership think that they cannot cooperate with the SNP on any issue, and so they would rather vote against a ceasefire in Gaza rather than admit that the SNP were right to call for one before they did.
This is not just pathetic. It shows three other things.
The first is that labour remains totally tribal in its thinking - which is of absolutely no benefit to anyone in the UK. We live in a vastly more nuanced world than that. It's time labour admitted that fact. It is possible for people outside Labour to be right.
Second, it shows them as irrational. I watched Yvette Cooper squirm on this issue in an interview at the weekend and her tortuous language only revealed that fact.
Third, it shows that they care more about fighting the SNP than they do about people in Gaza. And that is unforgivable.
It really is time that this lot grew up. We need grown-ups in government and they very clearly have not reached that low bar as yet.
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Totally agreed.
I am very concerned as to another issue today: the Supreme Court decision on Rwanda flights.
Either way, Braverman looks like she is building allies in her campaign against the ECHR.
If it goes for the government, the nutters on the Tory right will demand withdrawal from the ECHR (as the people who put the case before the Supreme Court will then take it to the ECHR); and if it goes against the government, the nutters in the Tory right will demand withdrawal from the ECHR.
After Braverman’s ‘letter’ yesterday, if I were Sunak I would threaten them with a general election now.
I doubt they would now have time to deliver this
BUT, it could be a manifesto commitment
Thankfully, even they think these will now be meaningless
As was made clear in today’s judgement the court did not rely only on the European Convention on Human Rights but also cited various other international treaties as well as current UK law. My impression, not being a lawyer, is that it would have come to the same conclusion based on these treaties as well. The dismissal of a counter claim indicates that the court did not consider retained EU law to be relevant. I don’t think there would be much point in joining Russia and Belarus in withdrawing from the convention if it is likely to have no effect on the legality of the process.
I have read that too – which is very good news
Canvassing in Scotland for many years, there is still the hard core saying, “Ma faither voted Labour, so I’m daeing the same”. They should listen to what the great Jimmy Reid said, “I didn’t leave the Labour Party, the Party left me”.
He was right
It’s true for many
The Labour Party left me way back in the late 60’s when Callaghan made a speech I thought was racist.
Well said!. Of course those of us who live in Scotland have known this since the very first time the people voted in the SNP instead of returning Labour as they had always done. Ever since then the entire party, like petulant children, have continuously thrown their toys out of the pram every time they are not voted back into power.
Many of the current crowd only got into Hollyrood on the list vote, their numero uno pin up, Ruth Davidson, never won any vote.
And here we are again, up to their old tricks. Ite embarrassing, seeing them climb into bed with the Tory party to “win” a council or overturn an SNP bill is just, well, spiteful. Of course everything will be ticketty boo if only the people of Scotland stopped voting for the other side and let “Scottish” Labour back into the drivers seat. Then all would be well, I mean, don’t those people know there are scams to be arranged, positions filled with cousins and backers, nepotism does not happen on its own!
Let me be clear: I do not think the SNP innocent of cronyism either.
You are quite right about Labour’s tribalism. It was made formal by Willie Bain, a former Labour MP in Glasgow, whose doctrine was ‘if the SNP are for it, we are against it’. Its chief practitioner these days is Dame Jackie Baillie MSP, who seems to have a hotline to the BBC in Scotland for they religiously report whatever anti-SNP comments she comes out with. She got her gong ‘for services to the nation’. We all know which nation and it was not Scotland.
I try to like people
I find it very hard to like Jackie Baillie
The tribalism transcends the immediate issue. This is the deep unbridgeable flaw in a political system built on Party. Real issues and real solutions are always; always, the first casualty of Party politics. The claim is made that Party-FPTP (the two are joined at the hip) alone provides assured stability in Government. Look at Conservative and Labour; blindingly obviously it doesn’t: rats fighting in a sack over which incompetent Party, authoritarian minority can stay in power the longest. It never changes.
PMQs and the new Home Secretary’s statement in Parliament today confirmed the manic, mindless tribalism that dictates the politics. It offers nothing whatsoever to provide real, constructive, debatable, definable practical solutions to Britain’s urgent problems. Parliament has been reduced to embarrassing, non-representative, utterly pointless, toe-curling, Punch and Judy, low farce; an utter disgrace.
The politicians have trashed a Constitution that is so out of time and place it is no longer functionally workable: a PMQs in which the PM spends his answers, bringing the Opposition to account. What is the purpose of that waste of breath and all our time, except to promote Party tribalism – and nothing else?
Lib dems also calling for ceasefire I think.
All ‘we’ (Briden, Sunak Starmer etc) are supporting is the failed West/israel strategy – this time multiplied by ten. What Paul Rogers calls ‘lidism’ keeping the lid on using military action every year or two and assuming the political need for Palestinan freedom doesnt need to be addressed.
The semantics (pause, ceasefire ) should not really matter so much – the killing has to stop immediately – and for enough time to enable food water energy medical supplies to get in and be distributed – which looks like a ceasefire.
I find it difficult even to hear R4 presenters joking about the ‘next item’ immediately after talking to someone in a Gaza hospital, never mind the parties playing politics between or within the parties.
This is very short-sighted of Labour and is frankly unforgivable.
Having that said, you only have to reflect on the Corbyn episode to understand why they’d choose to pick a fight with the SNP than over what is happening in Gaza.
Agreed Richard, except for one thing, viz “- which is of absolutely no benefit to anyone in the UK”.
There are several groups of people which very much benefit from this – the tory party, it’s media backers and it’s donors. Since Labour’s selfish tribalism is the No1 reason they are usually in power, they benefit.
Election after election, FPTP and labour’s refusal to cooperate with other non labour parties hands them an unearned, undeserved and disastrous grip on power. Well done labour.
True
I strand corrected
I have no experience of Scottish politics but where I live in Hertfordshire the Labour Party seem to feel they are entitled to certain demographics’ votes. When I have stood as a Green Party candidate I was constantly told by Labour activists “You are stealing our votes!” or words to that effect. The truth is that, thanks to FPTP, they are stealing our votes. I have met a vast number of people who support the Green Party’s agenda but think there is no point in voting for it in the current system.
I like that idea
Hertfordshire too Bernard. Hemel, in my case. You?
Utter rubbish from the labour idiots. Their arrogance and stupidity is grotesque. Just as in Scotland, they think they’re entitled to the entire non tory/progressive vote. And as you say, FPTP has stolen our votes, not the Greens.
In that case, try coming up with some decent progressive policies…like electoral reform, renationalisation of ciritical infrastructure which the private sector has proved unfit to run, and making it absolutely clear that any licences issued by this present ‘government’ for new fossil fuel extraction will be cancelled straightaway by a new labour government.
I am hoping that labour MPs find some backbone, particularly the front bench, and vote for a ceasefire, no matter whose amendment it is.
But nobody on this thread has mentioned it, apart from Richard. Why not?
I agree. As to why no one has mentioned a ceasefire, I think it is something better handled by a poll. I can’t see anyone seriously arguing against one here and the reasons for one are so well known and so obvious that they barely need discussion.
For me the real message of Richard’s post is that Labour is continuing to play political games even up to the point of voting against something that one would have thought them morally bound to vote for.
https://labouroutlook.org/2023/11/15/over-10000-from-500-clps-call-on-starmer-to-back-ceasefirenow/
I wonder how many more will leave the party if he doesn’t allow his MPs to support a ceasefire.