The Politics Thread

Many people donate to MPs because they want them to have extra funds to hire staff and be able to do a better job for their constituents. There is no requirement to get anything in return.
I am not naive enough to believe that all donors and MPs are trustworthy about this but as is usual in life the vast majority are not criminals and will have accepted donations in good faith with no intention of them affecting their voting choices.

 

Starmer: Quote,' I am a Zionist' Quote : 'I stand with Israel'. Quote: Israel is entitled to stop food and water to Gaza. It's not ambiguous is it.

As I said the British Government supports Israel, that's not speculation. We also have detailed information on how the lobby works from Sir Alan Duncan. Connected to that is a film of an Israeli embassy official talking to a foreign office official about how to sabotage his appointment. I am quoting facts. You can speculate about good intentions but it does not alter what is happening on the ground.

 

More paper castles based on incomplete data and (less than) half truths.

Akehurst is one out of forty members of the NEC.

The NEC agrees the longlist of proposed candidates who wish to stand as an MP.

That list is then turned into a shortlist by the appropriate regional CLP.

Akehurst's remit with the NEC is as one of three members on the PLP.

The PLP's job is to scrutinise the party's leadership and question or discuss concerns with policy, behind closed doors. It has nothing to do with formal appointments.

Akehurst is therefore one voice out of forty who decide who makes it to the longlist of parliamentary candidates. His involvement in the shortlist is zilch.

I struggle to see how this reality could translate into "paid Israel lobbyist decides who is and isn't allowed to stand as a Labour MP".

 

If Akehurst's role has nothing to do with formal appointments, why is it blocking MPs from standing - and, as I'm on the subject, why did it select him to be MP for Durham North in spite having zero connection to the area?

Also, his remit does not include stalking people on Twitter demanding their name and CLP - yet that's exactly what he does

 

The NEC blocks MPs from standing for a hundred different reasons if not more, ranging from basic competence to economic views to likeability etc. Within that is of course that person's political views but to pretend that their view on Israel is the only one taken into consideration and the only reason ever used to block someone and the only person making that decision is Luke Akehurst, is simply spurious.

MPs not native to the constituencies they are selected to stand in can hardly be news to you? Parties have done this forever up and down the country. They'll move the pieces across the board if in their judgement it will deliver a candidate to office in a safe constituency, or if they feel that candidate has a greater chance of an upset than any native/local options.

Can't comment to the Twitter claim as I am blessedly not on that platform.

 

What a ludicrous suggestion!

 

In all likelihood it is true.

The term 'deployed' is deliberately opaque and serves that poster's overarching agenda, but this wouldn't be the first time a small number of special forces from allied countries have been sent to the region.

The reason is obvious. The conflict in Gaza and to a lesser extent Lebanon are essentially unique globally with little if anything to compare them with. Special forces will attach to local army units to observe tactics, manoeuvres and strategy, learning exponentially more from this than war games or simulations could ever teach.

The coalition defeat of ISIS a few years back relied heavily on intelligence and insight Israel gleaned from its operations in Gaza and the West Bank against various terrorist groups, especially how to deal with complex tunnel systems etc.

 

I know it's difficult when you find out that the country you live in is on the wrong side. This is what Gaza has brought out. There are numerous reports from publications around the world that the SAS has been deployed. The SAS were sent to Cyprus and then a D notice was placed by the UK Gov.

 

And on the subject of things the BBC seem to have forgotten about...

 

If the NEC blocked people from standing as Labour MPs for likeability most of Starmer's cabinet wouldn't be there given they're as likeable as unintentionally wiping your backside with a handful of stinging nettles - and the Durham North CLP would have had some say in who the candidate to be their MP was at the last election

Of course MPs standing in constituencies that they have zero connection to is not news to me, given my local MP claims to live in the borough but ****ed off the Hampstead so he could be closer to his family TV studios in the last year or two, or for that fact my grandparents had Frank Field foist upon them in the 70s and I was in the area more often than he was for the subsequent decades, the difference being that usually a member of the NEC is not so shameless they appoint themselves as a candidate - a move so appreciated the Durham Miner's gala specifically told him to **** right off

As for the Twitter thing, that goes back to the point of likeability: when a member of the NEC is more interested in petty vendettas against people on Twitter than doing their ****ing job, that alone should disqualify them from standing as an MP - but for some strange reason that did not seem to be an issue when nominating himself, did it?

 

No, seriously, I have no idea how the Democrats ****ed the election so hard...

 

For no reason whatsoever, would you like to guess how many farms are in Croydon South...?

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And look who else is on the picket lines joining the working class struggle!

 

Around 50% of farm land is owned by the aristocracy (no surprise) and property tycoons who have invested for the IHT tax breaks.
So the very public bleating (baaaah) and media attention it is receiving is entirely predictable. The rich and powerful have the loudest voice. And they use “poor” farmers as their standard bearers.

 

I've not argued whether the UK supports the state of Israel...that's been the policy since the 1950s. Personally I think it started out as a not unreasonable policy to try to make up for the way Europe failed to protect Jews during the second world war. Having managed to found the state and treat the Palestinians so badly we've got ourselves into the position we had in NI with the IRA. That took decades to solve even when we were in sole charge. There is no way we can influence Israel very much at all.
My issue with your argument is that I don't think the UK support for Israel is anything to do with political donations. It's much more to do with politicians being terrified of looking like they are supporting Hamas or Hezbollah so their default position is to support the state we created instead. You would think that Israel's own actions would have led us to desert it by now.

 

I would not go so far as to say it has nothing to do with political donations otherwise, as I said why would Israel bother. New MP's are routinely invited to Israel (expenses paid). Jeremy Corbyn, as Labour leader, was asked at an 'extremely hostile' meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party to give a blanket undertaking to support any military action Israel undertakes. He refused and we all saw the subsequent branding of him as antisemitic. This is more IMO than just fear of being seen as supporters of Hamas or Hezbollah. Those groups have been branded as 'terrorist' and therefore the law can be used to try to silence you, as it has in 5 recent cases where journalists homes were raided by armed police and all electronic equipment removed. I think it's more to do with keeping British Foreign Policy in line with the USA.

While Israel likes to have the voice of Britain supporting it because it's a voice that is still heard all over the world despite reducing influence, the main need, of course, is American support. Without the support of the USA, Israel would be in an extremely weak position so the Israeli lobby AIPAC is both extremely important and extremely powerful.

Most of Western Europe is in thrall to US Foreign policy and for Israel this works well, as the slaughter and ethnic cleansing continues in Gaza and The West Bank, Ilan Pappe predicts that a Judean State will subsume Israel producing a Theocracy. Already some 600,000 affluent Israelis have left to make their lives in Europe and the USA. This exodus will take Israel even further to the right.

 

That snivelling little creep Gavin Williamson claims that Trump is going to recognise Somaliland

I am willing to bet a sizeable amount of money that Trump was talking about Somalia and got the name hopelessly wrong

 

When you have James Dyson, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Jeremy Clarkson standing next to you on the picket lines while Nigel ****ing Farage waltzes in like a conquering hero, that is the moment you should realise you have been played like useful idiots for at least eight years

 

That's all reasonable but what is the solution. I firmly believe that the existence of a terrorist organisation is usually proof of an ongoing injustice because it's quite hard to get people to put their lives at risk of they are being treated OK. Hence the IRA analogy I used earlier, and that could only be addressed by negotiations to remove the injustices. There was actually common ground between the parties in that case.
Their is very little common ground in the Palestinian case. The current Israeli Government is bent on removing all threats to its security while Hamas and Hezbollah are backed by Iran and as a matter of policy don't think Israel should exist.
There seems no plausible way forward that doesn't lead to even bigger bloodshed.
In a thousand years time I hope there will be historical discussion of the huge number of deaths caused by arbitrary lines drawn on the ground and defended by violent means but I don't see the route to get there.