The new leaf is just like the old one

Luckily for Sir Keir Starmer, Boris’s activities misfortunes and a happy event have overshadowed the tribulations of the Labour Party. At the moment, the main criticisms of Sir Keir are directed at his wooden, charisma-free personality. However, it’s Sir Keir’s deeds (or lack of) rather than his words that people are beginning to notice.

Starmer under pressure from Jewish Groups! The BBC reports his failure to act after Diane Abbott and another weirdly-named Labour woman, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, were caught hosting a Zoom meeting in which two activists who had been expelled for antisemitism were allowed to participate. 

As if to distance itself from accidentally making a ‘value-judgement’ the BBC was careful to point out that ‘Jewish Groups’ are the ones who happen to be concerned.  The bold is actually the BBC’s 'allegedly.'

“The Jewish Chronicle reported that Tony Greenstein, who was thrown out of Labour in 2018 for offensive comments, and Jackie Walker, who was expelled over allegedly anti-Semitic comments, had attended the meeting.”

Gideon Falter, the Chief Executive of Campaign Against Antisemitism, said: 

“The participation of Diane Abbott and Bell Ribeiro-Addy in an online conference with Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein, is a brazen challenge to Sir Keir Starmer. During his leadership campaign, Sir Keir pledged that any MP who provides a platform for Labour members expelled in connection with antisemitism will themselves be suspended from Labour. Instead of keeping his promise and immediately suspending both Diane Abbott and Bell Ribeiro-Addy from the Party, Labour has merely ‘reminded them of their responsibilities’. 

“After half a decade of the Labour antisemitism crisis, no MP should need ‘reminding’ not to engage with those expelled from the Party over antisemitism. Instead of ‘tearing antisemitism out by its roots’, Sir Keir has welched. Through his inaction he is telling Britain’s Jews loud and clear that his apologies are meaningless, his promises will be broken, and MPs who consort with even the most notorious expelled activists still have a place on the Labour benches.” 

On 27th November 2019 while Corbyn was still Labour leader Allister Heath wrote in the Telegraph:

“If one studies the litany of disgusting anti-Semitic incidents involving Labour members and far-Left activists these past few years, they span almost every possible strand of Jew-hate, virtually every demented conspiracy theory. It would take an immense effort for any party to cure itself of an infection of such virulence, even were it truly committed to doing so (and Labour isn’t): no wonder the Chief Rabbi felt compelled to speak out, warning of Corbyn’s unfitness for high office and that the “very soul of our country is at stake”[…]

"All of which takes us to Israel, a country with which Britain’s Jews are more culturally and personally connected than ever before. Many Corbynites see it as a “white” colonial state, an oppressor nation: in their deranged loathing, they don’t criticise or seek to boycott any other country. They refuse to accept that most Israeli Jews are descended from refugees from the Middle East, Asia and Africa, and the rest escaped the Holocaust.

The only baddies are Israel and the US, the two nations with the biggest Jewish populations. Israel is the only country they want to abolish; the Jews the only people they don’t believe deserve a national homeland." 

Also in the Telegraph, but just the other day, Tom Harwood wrote about the recent Panorama Programme that was stuffed with aggrieved persons who turned out to be Labour party activists in the guise of NHS workers. No label. No mention of any affiliation. Even worse -

‘Nor were BBC viewers informed about the political background of the ‘A&E Nurse’ who turned out to be a Unite activist who “fights the Tories hard”, or Professor John Ashton (also featured in the Panorama disaster), who proudly described himself as a Labour Party member “for 53 years” 

- and Guido has unearthed more on John Ashton, a regular BBC ‘go-to’ expert who happens to be a pretty rabid antisemite. We used to say these people were ‘on the BBC's speed dial’.

The Jewish Chronicle says:

“But aside from offering his advice over health issues, Professor Ashton, who has been a long-time member of the Labour Party, regularly posts on social media on issues involving Israel and Zionism. In one tweet he suggested it was, "Time to isolate Zionists and all religious fundamentalists whatever colour of black." 

An analysis of social media posts made by the former President of the Faculty of Public Health from 2012 until 2018 shows that he has frequently equated Zionism with Nazism.
Writing in November 2012 in response to Israeli military actions in Gaza, he stated: "Sickening to see Zionists behave like Nazis.”

Melanie Phillips highlights the spat between Robert Halfon MP, whom I rather like, and the Jewish community’s left-wing officials and spokespersons who don’t appear able to see past some of Sir Keir’s new appointments, at least not enough to realise that they belie his vow to turn over a new leaf and eradicate antisemitism in the Labour Party.

There’s Naz Shah. When outed for antisemitism Shah made a suitably grovelling apology and promised to learn from the incontinent and ‘inadvertently’ racist Tweets and remarks she’d accidentally made; then promptly forgot the apology and made a few more.  

More troubling is Sir Keir's choice for Labour’s foreign-affairs spokesman, Lisa Nandy. Why on earth did he give Nandy ‘foreign affairs', when the one foreign affair she’s been deeply involved in is Labour Friends of Palestine? While 'chair' (is she still or not?) she actually pledged to campaign for the Palestinians' Right of Return.

“This places her among the opponents of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. For the “Palestinians” have no such legal, moral or historical right; the so-called “right of return,” which would flood Israel with Arab immigrants, is merely a device to destroy the State of Israel.”

How she reconciles that with her support of ‘Zionism’ is a mystery, but perhaps the good residents of “my constituency" Wigan, are as obsessed with Palestine as she is. For some reason.

The Board of Deputies are a shocking lot. Like Andrew Doyle said (of lefty Remainers) "they’re not just like turkeys who voted for Christmas, they’re like turkeys who’ve plucked themselves and climbed into the oven as well."  Not to mention the stuffing.