This story caught my eye today. Here’s the essential guts of it in the Daily Mail: ‘Shadow Minister Fabian Hamilton had said that using ‘our military forces not to fight wars and further conflicts but to save life’ would ‘pay back for our imperial past’. He also branded Britain’s Trident nuclear deterrent ‘utterly useless’. The remarks were made a couple of years ago at a CND rally. Fabian is currently Shadow Minister for Peace and Disarmament, a role created by Corbyn and, as unlikely as it seems, retained under Starmer. I wonder what a minister with this portfolio is supposed to say? I suspect Fabian’s days are now numbered. He has in the past got into trouble with remarks made during the height of the great anti-Corbyn anti-Semitism smear campaign, when as reported by the Jewish Chronicle ‘Mr Hamilton had sparked fury within the Leeds Jewish community after he told a Jewish constituent to be “less hysterical and angry” about the antisemitism crisis [sic] in Labour.’ So, here we have two elements of a cause for deselection under Starmer’s rule—not being fully on board with NATO’s nuclear stance (Fabian spoke to a CND rally for heaven’s sake!) and not buying into the Great Labour Anti-Semitism Crisis. How will Starmer deal with this waywardness? I have an interest in this since I devoted part of my life to getting Fabian elected, as his agent in 1997—and as the Leeds Labour organiser with a role in the de-selection of his predecessor ‘hard’ left candidate, Liz Davies. What an irony it would be now if Fabian were to be barred from standing again. Mind you, at 68 years old, and having served as an MP for 26 years, maybe he wouldn’t be all that bothered. I doubt that the position of Shadow Minister for Peace and Disarmament will survive much longer either. What an invitation it must be for the postholder to go rogue and upset Starmer’s cart of Atlanticist apples.
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