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Ever since Rishi Sunak announced that a General Election would take place on July 4, some commentators have been suggesting that those of us who are implacably opposed to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza — as all decent people should be — should boycott the Labour Party entirely, because of the unconditional support for Israel demonstrated by Keir Starmer and key members of his shadow cabinet.

Starmer, shamefully, told LBC on October 11 that Israel had “the right” to withhold power and water from Gaza, while claiming that, “Obviously, everything should be done within international law”, even though, as a former human rights lawyer, he must have known that international law prohibits withholding power and water from a civilian population, because it is collective punishment, and a war crime under Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, which entered into force in October 1950.

Emily Thornberry and David Lammy were also criticised for statements they made in the first week of Israel’s ultra-violent response to the deadly attacks by Hamas and other militants on October 7, and were all included in “a notice of intention to prosecute UK politicians for their role in aiding and abetting Israel’s perpetration of war crimes”, issued on October 16 by the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), “an independent organisation of lawyers, politicians and academics who support the rights of Palestinians and aim to protect their rights through the law.”

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Please support my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist and commentator.

What a great, great, great, great, great day for the fundamental decency of so many of the British people, after seven long years of cruelty, mean-mindedness and division.

Last night was, undoubtedly, Jeremy Corbyn’s night. Vilified by the media since winning the Labour leadership contest in September 2015, he nevertheless survived a cynical coup implemented, insanely, the day after the EU referendum by the Blairites in his own party, when Labour should have been focusing all their energies on discrediting the Tories, and two months ago, when Theresa May cynically called a General Election, he finally got to shine.

In complete contrast to the Prime Minister — shifty, aloof, paranoid, disdainful, dismissive, invisible — Corbyn staged an honest and heartfelt assault on the disgraceful and horrendously damaging “age of austerity” the Tories introduced in 2010 — pretending that the bankers’ 2008 crimes were the fault of Labour’s investment in public services, and using it as an excuse to try to destroy the state provision of services almost entirely, to remove the safety net of the welfare state, and, for good measure, to relentlessly kick those who then fell into abject poverty and misery; primarily, the disabled and the unemployed. Read the rest of this entry »

Nearly four months on from the EU referendum, and Britain is in meltdown — and yet the Tory government and its unelected leader, Theresa May, continue to behave as though nothing is wrong, while what springs to my mind is the Emperor Nero, fiddling while Rome burned.

You can see how delusional the Tory leadership’s state of mind is from a few facts from last week: the pound slumping in value to a 168-year low, and the Treasury — yes, the economic heart of the government itself — pointing out that “Britain will lose up to £66 billion a year if it pursues the so-called ‘hard Brexit’ option of leaving the single market and EU customs union,” as the Independent described it, adding, “Government figures suggest the UK’s gross domestic product (GDP) could fall by as much as 9.5 per cent if it leaves the EU and reverts to World Trade Organisation rules.”

I examined the folly of the “hard Brexit” option — and the alarming racism evident at the Conservative Party conference — in an article last week, Theresa May and the Conservative Party’s Alarming White Fascist Aspirations. Read the rest of this entry »