A Very Blairite Coup

A Very Blairite Coup

• Katy Sian, 12th July, 2016

Rather like Harry Perkins in A Very British Coup, Corbyn has been harassed and bullied by the Blairites and fellow travellers, who have contempt for the membership and overdue regard for the neoliberals. They do not seem to be ashamed to be on the same side as the Tories, nor have they been ashamed to be on the side of bankers and warmongers. It appears, according to Len McCluskey, that PR company Portland Communications, wrote the script for this elongated coup, in which every hour a resignation was choreographed to ensure that the headlines remained focused on the Labour Party, rather than the shambolic Tories and the disaster they have managed to engineer.

What Labour needs to do is get behind Corbyn and not stab him in the back. Members must recognise that this unthought coup will only divide the party. If the Labour Party is to mean something of real significance it has to depart from an out-dated and out of touch neoliberalism, disguising itself as common sense. The reason why so many people have been energized by Corbyn’s campaign is because he symbolises an alternative in which all members of the Labour movement should have no difficulty in embracing.

In the penultimate scene of A Very British Coup, Perkins was prevented from being cut off by a conspirator in a crucial live broadcast because of the decency of his Head of Security, Inspector Page. When Perkins thanks him, Page replies, “with respect sir, I don’t actually vote for you – but I know what’s right.” It is incredible to think that in our current times the parliamentary Labour Party gives the impression that it doesn’t know what is right, and lacks basic decency and respect for democracy. What the country needs is a Labour Party committed to leading the country out of the mess created by the Tory government. It does not need a Labour Party that is on strike against its own leader. If the coup is to succeed the risks to this country and its future will be grave. The policies that bought us to the chaos that we now find ourselves tangled up within cannot get us out of here. Labour MP’s who care about the future should support the leadership, support the membership, and fight the Tories. Ditch Blairism and keep Corbyn.

 

Explosion outside Colorado NAACP building may be hate crime says FBI

The outgoing president of the Denver chapter of the NAACP says she is certain the explosion that rattled the Colorado Springs branch of the nation’s oldest civil rights organization was a targeted hate crime. Late on Tuesday morning, a homemade explosive device detonated outside a local NAACP office building in Colorado Springs, about an hour south of Denver. No one was injured in the explosion, and the building was only minimally damaged…

See: The Guardian, 7th Jan, 2015

Amnesia, not immigration, is Europe’s problem

Anti-Muslim protesters should heed the past century’s grim history – and its lesson that Europe’s future must be multicultural…

See: The Guardian, 6th Jan, 2015

Germans take to the streets to oppose rise of far-right ‘pinstripe Nazi’ party

Thousands of Germans demonstrated in four cities on Monday in opposition to the weekly rallies in Dresden against the perceived “Islamisation” of Europe that have attracted growing numbers of supporters. Organizers of the demonstrations in Berlin, Stuttgart, Cologne and Dresden said they were rallying against racism and xenophobia to instead promote a message of tolerance.

See: The Guardian, 5th Jan, 2015

Poverty leads to death for more black Americans than whites

Being poor has an adverse effect on one’s health and poorer communities have a higher mortality rate. That’s no secret, admits Amani Nuru-Jeter, associate professor at University of California Berkeley. What is less well known is how race plays into it. It appears that living in poverty takes a harsher toll on black Americans than white Americans, according to the conclusions from Nuru-Jeter’s research…

See: The Guardian, 5th Jan, 2015

Thousands march in New York over Garner and Brown police deaths

Thousands of people gathered on Saturday in the New York borough of Staten Island to protest near the spot where Eric Garner, an unarmed 43-year-old black man, died last month after white police officers used an illegal chokehold while trying to subdue and arrest him…

See: The Guardian, Aug 23rd, 2014

 

Israel-Gaza conflict: Gaza death toll rises as the world protests

More than 300 have been killed since Israel launched its offensive 12 days ago, and hospitals are struggling to treat all the injured, many of them children…

See: The Independent, 20 July, 2014

GPs’ exams disadvantage ethnic minority students, says high court judge

International medical graduates are nearly 15 times more likely to fail the CSA than white UK graduates…

See: The Guardian, 10th April, 2014

Section 60: a most draconian stop-and-search law that plays to police prejudice

With no ‘reasonable suspicion’ required, black people are 23 times more likely to be targeted. The courts must address this…

See: The Guardian, 6th Feb, 2014

Whitehall probe into Thatcher role in 1984 Amritsar massacre ‘too narrow’, say Sikh groups

Sikh groups have criticised the scope of a Whitehall review into whether British SAS soldiers were involved in the 1984 Amritsar massacre. They are concerned that the review only covered any British complicity in the first part of 1984 – not in the latter half of the year at the time of the massacre, in early June 1984. David Cameron launched the probe last month after archive documents suggested that a British officer helped the Indian authorities with plans to remove Sikh separatists from the city’s Golden Temple…

See: Telegraph, 3rd Feb, 2014