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Cake day: July 16th, 2023

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  • I’m not really dancing around it. Our first past the post system is to blame for the difficulty. I want Labour to be beaten from the left (quite a low threshold these days), not by the Tories. Starmer winning by being not-the-Tories is not a particularly strong endorsement; it also hands him and Labour great power to act without much accountability to any particular programme. They’ve already abandoned serious policy, he has long since abandoned his leadership bid pledges, all the while taking spineless positions on a multitude of major issues.

    With FPTP, clearly this year people must vote Labour if in their constituency it’s otherwise a win for the Tories. But where a third party could win, people should vote with policy and conscience in mind. That could be LD/Green/SNP/PC, perhaps. None are perfect, but a plurality (maybe coalition) would better serve the people over swinging from one morally bankrupt ruling party to another.

    Personally, I’ve always lived in extremely safe Labour seats. I support vote swapping where possible, until we get a mature, proportional electoral system.



  • Just to clarify, of course I mean beaten electorally. By who? That’s a great question.

    Antisemitism in the Labour party is a real issue. It is an issue across society. If Labour has a particularly prominent antisemitism problem, we can most likely consider it to have derived at least in part from the Palestine issue. That categorically does not excuse antisemitism, but it does give us a clue as to how to fairly judge when a member or supporter has been antisemitic, and a possible approach to preventing further encroachment of antisemitism into the Israel-Palestine issue.

    Opposing adoption of the IHRA was one a way to ensure antisemitism could be countered successfully. The IHRA conflates criticism of Israel or of Zionism with antisemitism. It ensures there will always be a steady stream of wrongful accusations of antisemitism, drowning out the true cases, and perhaps driving people towards genuinely antisemitic views in response to the overreaching definition.

    Kier Starmer very clearly supported adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism, binding him to an impossible stance on Israel-Palestine. He is partly responsible for the electoral bind he finds himself in today.

    I can’t say he supported adoption of the IHRA solely to hurt Corbyn and the left, but it was certainly a useful tool in doing so. I also don’t think he supports any of the awful things happening right now, but his past actions have him in a bind.

    He could quite easily condemn genocide of Palestinians and also condemn antisemitism. The public are not so apathetic as to not care for tens of thousands dead, injured, orphaned, dying, whilst also supporting safety for Jewish people and safety for Israelis.

    If not Starmer, who? Great question, I don’t have an answer to that, but he needs to think more than one step ahead and do the right thing. If I were him, I’d prefer not to win simply for being the lesser of two evils.