Woe, woe and thrice woe

Jewish Voice for Labour reports that complaints to the Labour Party about alleged anti-Semitic comments made by right-wing Labour MP Neil Coyle have gone unacknowledged, months after the complaints were made. This seems to be in complete contravention of the Party’s stated commitment to resolve complaints quickly. Perhaps complaints about right-wingers don’t deserve the same attention. Given that one of the complaints was made by Jewish member Sir Geoffrey Bindman QC, a very prominent human rights lawyer, I reckon the Party may have to buck its ideas up. Assuming of course that the Party HQ is in any fit state to buck anything up (party staff in the UNITE union have just voted to strike and many staff have been made redundant as a result of the party’s failure to stop a mass migration of its members and resultant loss of income). But this latest case of clear anti-left victimisation left me wondering how a party led by the human rights lawyer Sir Keir Starmer could treat its members so abysmally. I looked at Starmer’s Wikipedia page to see what his human rights credentials were or are. Clearly he took part in one or two cases which any thoughtful person might think worth fighting (e.g. MacDonalds v. Helen Steel) but on the whole, and taking into his later career as Director of Public Prosecutions, his record suggests a degree of pragmatism which undermines a reputation for single minded advocacy of human rights vis-a-vis prosecutorial authority. Of course one can only learn so much from a Wikipedia entry, but I would be willing to bet my bottom dollar that his page is regularly reviewed by his staff and if necessary edited. So it comes with some credibility. As yet there is no mention of his war against the left in the Labour Party and the horrendous mess he’s making of it, not least how the £13.8 million inherited from the Corbyn era has been squandered, e.g. as the Guardian reported last year, how more than half the party’s income had been spent on needless legal cases. Maybe there’s a lesson here—get a lawyer for your leader and lawyers’ pockets will be well lined.

I think this stuff is actually more important than ‘Partygate.’ At least we always knew Johnson couldn’t be trusted. We are now discovering that Starmer can’t be trusted either, but in this case he can’t be trusted on matters rather more significant in the grand scheme of things, such as whether a cake was served during a lockdown No.10 party or not. From my own experience locally, I know that many members think Starmer should go—but with Labour’s poll ratings boosted by Johnson’s incompetence, etc., etc. people think the timing is wrong to demand Starmer’s resignation. Relying on keeping Johnson in place is Starmer’s greatest - and possibly only - asset.