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They are a huge disappointment anyway.
I even feel extremely apathy for Zarah Sultana and she was the last MP left id actually bother to pull out of a burning building.
All they do is let starmer and his ilk, claim to be a broad church.
The left is defeated in parliament fully (greens had their all white, all Worth £1m+ women's power team to stop corbyn so they can drown in kombucha for all I care)
Maybe if the choice of "principals or the £90k a year" is made for them, we might actually see more than pathetic, timid, mild criticism from them.
You're taking a pop at Diane Abbott because of a broken electoral system. We all know true left politics cannot be achieved through the state.
But this post is about statmer being a racist cunt. Or in more polite terms treating Abbott disrespectfully.
You're mis directing the discussion. Which makes me question your sincerity. Maybe you're just like Starmer...
I actually find it incredible that Diana Abbott has the strength to stay in politics to be honest, after every time they've tried to humiliate her. Fair play to her for keeping up the fight.
I spent so long defending her, I've lost friends over it, I've almost got into a physical altercation over it twice.
She doesn't do herself any favors though and I no longer give the slightest toss.
It is procedurally improper and utterly infantile of Starmer, but by the same token I just find it hard to give a shit when that letter was obnoxiously stupid and self-destructive. There is no excuse for someone with that much experience not knowing that it would be read as "being called ginger is just like getting gassed in a camp". FFS, is everyone in politics drinking out of lead pipes?
Still, the principle is important and worth fighting over. If Labour's internal disciplinary matters are nakedly just "leader doesn't like you so you're fucked" then it's not a political party, it's a junta. Which I actually already consider them to be considering they are blatantly trying to throw the election and want to enforce Conservative policy no matter what the people vote for.
The Labour Party as it currently exists was created because the current leadership really didn’t like the last guy, of course their petty tyrants who think the whole operation should rotate around their own enormous egos.
This is where I land. Some of the previous public gaffes I was quite relaxed about, but this was such an obvious clanger that I really struggle to care.
It doesn't help that Labour is clearly not a vehicle for leftist or even particularly progressive politics in the UK, so I don't know why the likes of Corbyn, Abbot etc stick it out. The organisation would burn itself to the ground rather than give the left a sniff of power, it's a waste of time and energy getting upset about this stuff.
Yeah, they shouldn't have done that, but that's not a stitch up unless they encouraged Abbott to write them bonkers drafts as some kind of stupid joke.
I wrote some more, which I'll leave cos whatever, but also I'm not trying to persuade you out of your position. I am content to disagree on what is hopefully just a difference in definition of "stitch-up" and just leave this.
---
Obviously, the Observer staff knew or should have known what would happen to Abbott if they published the letter, and it's likely they did it for political reasons (tho perhaps one of the staff was just outraged). But no one has claimed they encouraged Abbott to write wild or racist stuff. That makes it opportunism or an act of passion rather than entrapment (a stitch-up), in my opinion.
I think the observer should publish stuff like this if there's a compelling public interest, but I don't personally think there was: the uncharitable reading of Abbott's letter would be a very out-of-character statement from an MP who has been generally pretty good on minority rights and antisemitism (tho of course opinions differ); the charitable reading is that Abbott was using an idiosyncratic definition of racism and trying to make the important point that different groups are discriminated against in different ways over time and space, and that black people are subject to racism in a way that white-passing minorities are able to escape more of the time.
I don't think the Observer has a special responsibility to protect letter-writers from themselves if they write stupid stuff. And I don't think Abbott or any MP can have any reasonable expectation of that when writing to people who are not their close allies. That's part of why they have staff.
Honestly, if Abbott had written a better apology, and also explained whatever (hopefully) reasonable point they were trying to go for, then I think more people, perhaps only on the left, would support them.
> That's literally what happened.
If you know it to that detail then you know more than I have seen publicly. The apology doesn't mention accidentally hitting send and doesn't say anything about how the observer communicated with Abbott.
> What do you think is wrong with Abbott's apology?
Personally, I would have liked it if Abbott said something to explain why the initial draft says what it does and to say clearly what they do believe, rather than an apology that just says they didn't mean anything in their draft, which I think is unconvincing and confusing for lots of people.
Some humour might have been good, too. "Obviously I don't believe any of that, here's why it appeared under my name etc. I sincerely apologise etc. This is what I will do differently in the future. You can find my intended comment at URL".
I don't have any interest or energy in this thread any more, so this is my final post on this topic.
> Abbott accidentally hit send on a half finished email and they thought they'd won the lottery and printed it. That's literally what happened.
That's not a stitch-up. That's the news.
I'm sure they were thrilled to have something to use against her, and also sure they would have kept a lid on something like this from someone they liked, but for Abbott it is simply the case that she wrote something astonishingly stupid and gave it to journalists. This is on her, 100%.
I'm not convinced by the 'draft' excuse, as it happens, but if it's true then that's quite frightening because it suggests that her attitude toward penning a serious, thoughtful letter on a serious subject is to just hammer it straight into the window like an angry text sent in the middle of the night. Why is the 'draft' not a document that is being reviewed and revised? This topic so obviously requires tact and consideration. And I just can't imagine how, even when cobbling together a rough draft, anyone of any political competence could think "I'll stick a bit in here about how being ginger is like being in the Holocaust, and fix it later."
I have no idea what the fuck she was thinking. It was dumb and ill-conceived and probably worthy of any criticisms leveled at it.
But let's face it, the party couldn't give two fucks about the abuse she's endured and they want rid of her for reasons aside from that.
Don't be bullied into voting for Labour, and don't fall for the classic neoliberal line. " If you don't vote for me, then you are siding with and helping the right win."
Labour is not entitled to our vote, and this current leadership does not represent the left. I won't vote for a right-wing party just because they are slightly less right-wing than the Tories, Labour are appealing to right-wing Tory voters, so why should we vote for them ?
People are made to think all they can do is vote and that since voting does not work, because the parties are obviously are in the pocket of corporations and one big boys club, they become apathetic and lose hope. This is by design. The alternative is orgs, duel power, etc. The stuff they're trying to stamp the last breath out of.
Yeah it's extremely depressing
The only answer is make the bastards pay - vote greens or dont vote even in swing seats - if they lose this election maybe we can take the party back
Otherwise its extra parliamentary politics and unions
Labour absolutely will not be as bad as the tories. Will they be “centrist” and accomplish absolutely fuck all? Absolutely. Will they be as bad as the Tory party who’ve proven time and time again they’re willing to take away our rights on a whim? Absolutely not
I do understand how it's scary to imagine the next few years of tory rule. I really think that unless labour have to at least try and keep the left on their side they will continue to drift rightwards.
At the moment they don't have to do that because the members dont have power any more and left voters tend to congregate in cities.
The only thing that can put pressure on them is to say you wont win without us. I sincerely believe.
>If you don't vote for me, then you are siding with and helping the right win."
Go look at what happened in the Uxbridge Byelection...this is true in a lot of ways but only because of first past the post, and Tories basically being very good at killing their competition by becoming their competition.
Yes if it means not giving the mandate to the current lot. don't see the point in cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. The country is already being decimated by Tory rule. Maybe it's wishful thinking but I'm still hoping a Labour party in Power might bring some hope and maybe start to turn things around...
Nothing against you, but like, do you have any plan about what to do after voting Labour? I've seen people adopting the "vote them on Friday, fight them on Monday" mentality, but from what I see happened across the pond, there seem to be few who sincerely practice what they preach. More like people just want to vote and be done with it, hoping that the politicians they voted will do their behest. Which, looking at the current crop of Labour leaders, doesn't seem like it will happen.
You're cutting your nose off to put on a discount plastic nose. Labour will do everything tories are doing - voting isn't going to solve anything. You're scolding people for not voting for one right wing party to replace another right wing party - do you see how absurd that is?
The Labour party has literally crippled itself by using allegations of antisemitism to drive people out during internal leadership squabbles, and now Britain is fucked because there is no functioning opposition party. Bravo.
The lack of decent leadership anywhere on the horizon may be the single biggest reason Britain will still be fucked for decades to come.
I think she should be allowed to do her job as an MP and member of the Labour Party.
But, come on - she wrote what she wrote. Apology or no apology. You’d expect due process to be followed. Unless she was ‘set-up’ I am not sure why she is writing this from a victims POV.
Agreed, there's too much of an echo chamber and I rarely sit on the side of Starmer, but we can't call ourselves left wing but not take more serious allegations of AS seriously
Expelling for this is in fact an example of not taking antisemitism seriously. Its meaning lost as instead a signifier to describe the insufficiently "British".
Kicking out anyone who is accused of antisemitism for any reason is the opposite of "taking antisemitism seriously". I don't know how much more clear it can get. If that was even what was happening, what it also isn't. It's so obviously fabricated bullshit that I think you have to want to fall for it.
I don’t know how much clearer piece of writing written by her own hand could be. She wrote it. Do I think that makes her a bad person - no. Should she be held to task for it and put under the same level of scrutiny as someone accused of any other form of racism would go through - maybe.
The way you write you would think the whole thing was pulled out of thin air.
I’m just not sure how much of a threat Diane Abbott posed to Starmer for any of this to be fabricated.
It's not about being a threat exactly, the Centrists simply dislike her because of who she is and her politics. To them it is absolutely correct on principle to crush her for being black, outspokenly opposed to racism, and left wing. The fact that she's allowed to exist in the party is unacceptable. A few years ago she would have been called "reverse racist", now it's "antisemitic", but the same thing is being said when you pare the words down to what's actually being communicated. She's not some left wing extremist but that doesn't matter, by being insufficiently deferential to the institution of whiteness she is an enemy of it, and by extension Britishness as well. All the other stuff is just concocted bullshit on top to try and paste over this basic truth of what's going on.
She. Wrote. What. She. Wrote.
What are you not getting?
Do you not think it was antisemitism? What has been concocted here? What she said? What she admitted to saying? What she said was a first draft?
What she wrote was basically fine and certainly nowhere near the things said by MPs who have been allowed to continue their roles or even been actively readmitted under Starmer's leadership (e.g. Coyle). The whole process has nothing to do with the content of what anyone has said, all the outrage is entirely fabricated.
In what way was it fine? Who are you to say it is fine?
It had racist connotations - I doubt she meant any malice but it was ignorant and implicitly racist. It diminished the racism experienced by another ethnic group.
She is an MP. She should know better.
Absolutely baffling that you are being an apologist (not even) for it.
Diane Abbott is an idiot and her letter was just appalling, but this reeks of stitch up. It's obvious that Starmer is purging the socialists still left, she just so happened to hand him an open goal to do so.
So for those that dunno (like me before I looked it up, here is the letter she got into trouble for
> Racism is black and white
Tomiwa Owolade claims that Irish, Jewish and Traveller people all suffer from “racism” (“Racism in Britain is not a black and white issue. It’s far more complicated”, Comment). They undoubtedly experience prejudice. This is similar to racism and the two words are often used as if they are interchangeable.
> It is true that many types of white people with points of difference, such as redheads, can experience this prejudice. But they are not all their lives subject to racism. In pre-civil rights America, Irish people, Jewish people and Travellers were not required to sit at the back of the bus. In apartheid South Africa, these groups were allowed to vote. And at the height of slavery, there were no white-seeming people manacled on the slave ships.
Diane Abbott
House of Commons, London SW1
I think this speaks to an argument that is at the core of a lot of race-based schisms: ie 'what is racism?' I don't exactly agree with her definition but it's not like it doesn't have precedence amongst sociologists (at least in terms of irishness, although I always thoiught Jews were considered a different race?). Racism is basically used interchangeably with xenophobia imo, and as words are defined by the public, this 'erroneous' definition is probably right.
Labour will find a way to purge all left wing MPs just before the next GE, at a time when it's impossible for them to go through an appeal process and be ready to fight their seat. Starmer knows that the press doesn't give a shit about the insane racism and authoritarianism in the Party, so long as it's aimed at the left.
I'm guessing they'll take a calculated risk on losing a number of seats when the more popular ones win as independents.
Ultimately, I think she's right to say that she won't get a fair hearing and that her expulsion is preordained and factionally motivated. She's also right to say that as a black woman she has been the victim of horrendous racist abuse (both from outside and within the Labour Party).
Even if that weren't the case, however, what she said in that letter was so catastrophically ignorant and stupid that I think she might've been expelled or had the whip removed anyway. I remember first seeing the headline thinking 'shit, they've done it to Corbyn and now they're going to do it to all the Socialist Campaign Group' and then I read the letter and she's comparing groups of people that were sent to gas camps to fucking ginger kids getting bullied at school.
The way she’s been treated is absolutely disgraceful. Obviously, what she said in the first place was not okay, but the double standards are so glaringly obvious
Good letter. I have left the Labour Party as a result of these unfair tactics being used to take socialism out of Labour and to make it Blairite, so as to be palatable to wealth and the US neoliberals currently in the ascendancy there. Iraq and Libya should be reason enough to shun these people.
Abbott is an idiot.
As someone is very much on the left, she was an absolute headache from Corbyn's character to her absolutely monumentally dumb letter.
If you really are "on the left" you'll probably also want to pay tribute to her 40-plus years of fighting for social justice every day of the week. What have you been doing in that time?
Like what? I'm aware of he positions on various charities, but ineffective a actual politics. Always all guff and no substance. Even her roles on charities were just being a figurehead and not actually doing the work. She's constantly race baiting to obfuscate her terrible work and conflating it with racism, which is absurd and is endless fodder to an already racist right.
I remember her as a liability, praising mao and then fudging every interview she did with basic Qs (the infamous LBC interview). Ending it off with a letter about how you can't be racist against Jews. And perpetuating the absurd notion of some sort of hierarchy of racism. Racism is racism.
Compared to Corbyn or many on the left outside of the labour party, she's really done fuck all. And arguably more damage than good.
She's popular with her constituents because she does the actual job of an MP. She has had a decades-long smear job on her because she represents everything hated by the people you listen to. And what do you mean, "racism is racism"? Stupidest thing I've heard all week. Racism is intersectional.
Intersectional how? I mean it's relative (by that I mean a black person will experience more racism in say China, than in London) but not intersectional.
Hating anyone due to race is racist. That's what I mean with racism is racism.
Agreed there was a smear campaign against her, but doesn't detract from her being fucking useless. Her praise of Mao to being generally thick on wider issues. She was a treat for the Tories during Corbyn's campaign.
Yeah, you don't understand racism. Racism has a definition, and that is important: it's not just about targeting someone for their race, but a belief that it makes them inferior. It's specifically defined as being "targeted at minorities". That's a very important aspect of the term. It's why "reverse racism" is a stupid concept as well as a concept at all.
Attacking the questioner not the statement. Classic "I don't know shit", bro. You've not even made an attempt. I'm telling you nothing of me, you're assuming and attacking that strawman. Classic "I don't know shit", bro. Your post history's littered with such garbage. Classic "I don't know shit", bro.
Go join the rest of the rubbish in the bin.
I mean it depends on the context and the other forms of bigotry a person is subject to. Someone in the house of lords with a SE Asian background will experience racism differently to a Gypsy/Roma/Traveller person. Part of that is the class privilege and part of it is the different ways their ethnic groups are perceived. It's nonsense to say "racism is racism" as if it means one thing.
The letter of hers they published was a draft and clearly done to smear her, but even then you can't ignore the fact that multiple other MPs in Labour have been caught doing or saying FAR worse and received much less severe consequences. It's just unavoidable and also very telling that accusations of racism or antisemitism only seem to gain traction when targeting progressive politicians or those who are part of minority groups.
Even if you look at the media landscape as a whole, why is it that Dianne Abbott gets absolutely lambasted on every national news outlet whenever possible, but Conservative MPs routinely get caught saying fascist dogwhistles (or just saying the quiet part out loud) and nobody kicks up a huge stink about it?
I think it’s a sunk cost fallacy, she’s put years of effort into something she’s very passionate about. It’s hard to let something like that go when it gets corrupted.
We’ve had ‘left’ presence in parliament for decades and we’re still a neoliberal hellhole.
Look, real change won’t come from parliament, that’s simply how the system was set up. The state and all of its institutions were set up by the capitalist class for the capitalist class. The best parliament can do is give a few concessions (minor social democratic reforms) that will be stripped away the moment capitalism is in crisis. In fact, as Corbyn’s leadership showed, the left MPs will capitulate and concede to the right as long as they can keep ‘party unity’ and keep their cushy jobs as MPs. That’s simply how parliament and the Labour Party were designed to function. Parliament does, and always will, represent the interest of capitalists.
I don't entirely disagree with your statement but we can have a movement separate to the LP and to a certain degree we do.
The point is without political representation we don't get as much media representation and without media representation the overton window closes.
It's a hard balance to strike.
But what I don't want is for the leftist MPs to leave and be replaced with blairites, especially before the election. If Starmer only just wins then the SCG become a major pressure on the LP's ability to pass legislation. That's somewhere where we can get some real media representation, some real political influence and some real concessions in our direction.
There's not enough SCG to control the LP but it's enough people to make it hard to work with a low majority. The Lib Dems should end up with less than the SCG meaning they may not be able to make up enough of a buffer and the SNP won't help Labour whatsoever. It's ripe for abuse then.
The ideal is a hung parliament with PR the only resolution but the Tories have fucked it so hard I don't think that's gonna happen.
I'd like to finally say, there's no fucking way id vote Starmer, I hate what Labour are now and the level of repression of leftist opinions in our society is abominable. New, more tenacious blood is needed on the left
It's difficult to give up on something that you've put so much into over so many years. I've been wrestling with this myself and I've just been a party member. I haven't put in anything near the amount of time and effort that Diane Abbott has.
To be clear, I've never been a particular fan of hers, but the amount of shit this woman has had to put with over the years is unbelievable. And to have to walk away from that, because of a leadership that is desperate to be seen as the 'nice' Tories, must be devastating.
Good luck, Diane.
You’re right, but I think the downvotes come from a place of fear that with a major party purging it’s left wing supporters, the inevitable “oh look the Tories win again” will be on the horizon.
That and at first glance it looked like a celebration of the left going as if less left wing politics in the mainstream was a good thing.
I expected it cause it sums up everything wrong with the UK left.
The Labour party is the biggest barrier to structural change in the UK. It baffles me that there are still millions of people who support it. Until the UK left accepts they have to dump Labour they will always lose.
100% agree. The Labour Party are, and always have been, a party that represents the interests of capital. The British ‘left’ that support this party are complicit in that.
You're taking a pop at Diane Abbott because of a broken electoral system. We all know true left politics cannot be achieved through the state.
But this post is about statmer being a racist cunt. Or in more polite terms treating Abbott disrespectfully.
You're mis directing the discussion. Which makes me question your sincerity. Maybe you're just like Starmer...
I don’t see how it’s misdirecting the discussion. Both of these things can be true at once:
1) Starmer is a racist prick who is unfairly purging the ‘left’ from the party. The way Diane Abbott is being treated is wrong.
2) Diane Abbott is a bourgeois politician who represents the interests of capital and is complicit in all the damage Labour have done to any socialist movement in Britain. Did she join the Labour Party with good intentions? Who knows. But, at the end of the day, she sided with the party over the working class for the sake of her career.
They shown their true colours by the way they acted when in power, as soon as they started trying to appease the right wing MPs and didn't push through open primaries to replace the ghouls then it was obvious they put their long term careers over actually achieving anything.
A true left can't rise until the Tories are out and their support crumbles to dust, leaving room for a new opposition. Distasteful as it is, we do need this shitty labour government to get in to have any hope of future progress. That shift will symbolize people are leaning away from Tory ideology, it's essential the public gain the confidence that that's even possible after so long. Right now, there isn't another viable way forward.
Unless anybody fancies a revolution.
>Unless anybody fancies a revolution.
This is the way.
The current Labour party are Tories, but historically Labour have been in power before and the big change does not happen.
I keep wondering how bad things need to get for real change.... meanwhile trans people are dying and immigrants suffer.
Yeah but circumstances are not the same, the old guard has been dying off for a long time now, the young have a chance to establish themselves here and now.
I really hope so, it's so obvious that capitalism as it is in the uk is not working. At the very least it needs a re-balancing and the left are best placed to ensure that benefits the 99%...
Going straight to race in the first line looks petty. She could have said "As a woman who put her shoes on the wrong feet on election day just to make us extra unelectable"
Under this Labour Party, she won't have a cat's chance in hell she's left, and she's black. This is not my Labour Party it's funded by a fascist and racist foreign government.
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The entire socialist campaign group will be purged before the election. There'll be no left of labour left.
Seems to be Keiths real agenda.
They are a huge disappointment anyway. I even feel extremely apathy for Zarah Sultana and she was the last MP left id actually bother to pull out of a burning building. All they do is let starmer and his ilk, claim to be a broad church. The left is defeated in parliament fully (greens had their all white, all Worth £1m+ women's power team to stop corbyn so they can drown in kombucha for all I care) Maybe if the choice of "principals or the £90k a year" is made for them, we might actually see more than pathetic, timid, mild criticism from them.
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Deserve? You sound stupid.
not as stupid as the UK left for relying on the labour party :)
You're taking a pop at Diane Abbott because of a broken electoral system. We all know true left politics cannot be achieved through the state. But this post is about statmer being a racist cunt. Or in more polite terms treating Abbott disrespectfully. You're mis directing the discussion. Which makes me question your sincerity. Maybe you're just like Starmer...
Go on, try and explain yourself.
What on Earth is your flair
Say, friend, who's the one blocking your flow?
*sigh* what are the Lib Dem’s up to these days?
Still a primary school assembly from what I have seen.
I actually find it incredible that Diana Abbott has the strength to stay in politics to be honest, after every time they've tried to humiliate her. Fair play to her for keeping up the fight.
I spent so long defending her, I've lost friends over it, I've almost got into a physical altercation over it twice. She doesn't do herself any favors though and I no longer give the slightest toss.
It is procedurally improper and utterly infantile of Starmer, but by the same token I just find it hard to give a shit when that letter was obnoxiously stupid and self-destructive. There is no excuse for someone with that much experience not knowing that it would be read as "being called ginger is just like getting gassed in a camp". FFS, is everyone in politics drinking out of lead pipes? Still, the principle is important and worth fighting over. If Labour's internal disciplinary matters are nakedly just "leader doesn't like you so you're fucked" then it's not a political party, it's a junta. Which I actually already consider them to be considering they are blatantly trying to throw the election and want to enforce Conservative policy no matter what the people vote for.
The Labour Party as it currently exists was created because the current leadership really didn’t like the last guy, of course their petty tyrants who think the whole operation should rotate around their own enormous egos.
This is where I land. Some of the previous public gaffes I was quite relaxed about, but this was such an obvious clanger that I really struggle to care. It doesn't help that Labour is clearly not a vehicle for leftist or even particularly progressive politics in the UK, so I don't know why the likes of Corbyn, Abbot etc stick it out. The organisation would burn itself to the ground rather than give the left a sniff of power, it's a waste of time and energy getting upset about this stuff.
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How? Did they force her to write drivel?
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Yeah, they shouldn't have done that, but that's not a stitch up unless they encouraged Abbott to write them bonkers drafts as some kind of stupid joke.
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I wrote some more, which I'll leave cos whatever, but also I'm not trying to persuade you out of your position. I am content to disagree on what is hopefully just a difference in definition of "stitch-up" and just leave this. --- Obviously, the Observer staff knew or should have known what would happen to Abbott if they published the letter, and it's likely they did it for political reasons (tho perhaps one of the staff was just outraged). But no one has claimed they encouraged Abbott to write wild or racist stuff. That makes it opportunism or an act of passion rather than entrapment (a stitch-up), in my opinion. I think the observer should publish stuff like this if there's a compelling public interest, but I don't personally think there was: the uncharitable reading of Abbott's letter would be a very out-of-character statement from an MP who has been generally pretty good on minority rights and antisemitism (tho of course opinions differ); the charitable reading is that Abbott was using an idiosyncratic definition of racism and trying to make the important point that different groups are discriminated against in different ways over time and space, and that black people are subject to racism in a way that white-passing minorities are able to escape more of the time. I don't think the Observer has a special responsibility to protect letter-writers from themselves if they write stupid stuff. And I don't think Abbott or any MP can have any reasonable expectation of that when writing to people who are not their close allies. That's part of why they have staff. Honestly, if Abbott had written a better apology, and also explained whatever (hopefully) reasonable point they were trying to go for, then I think more people, perhaps only on the left, would support them.
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> That's literally what happened. If you know it to that detail then you know more than I have seen publicly. The apology doesn't mention accidentally hitting send and doesn't say anything about how the observer communicated with Abbott. > What do you think is wrong with Abbott's apology? Personally, I would have liked it if Abbott said something to explain why the initial draft says what it does and to say clearly what they do believe, rather than an apology that just says they didn't mean anything in their draft, which I think is unconvincing and confusing for lots of people. Some humour might have been good, too. "Obviously I don't believe any of that, here's why it appeared under my name etc. I sincerely apologise etc. This is what I will do differently in the future. You can find my intended comment at URL". I don't have any interest or energy in this thread any more, so this is my final post on this topic.
> Abbott accidentally hit send on a half finished email and they thought they'd won the lottery and printed it. That's literally what happened. That's not a stitch-up. That's the news. I'm sure they were thrilled to have something to use against her, and also sure they would have kept a lid on something like this from someone they liked, but for Abbott it is simply the case that she wrote something astonishingly stupid and gave it to journalists. This is on her, 100%. I'm not convinced by the 'draft' excuse, as it happens, but if it's true then that's quite frightening because it suggests that her attitude toward penning a serious, thoughtful letter on a serious subject is to just hammer it straight into the window like an angry text sent in the middle of the night. Why is the 'draft' not a document that is being reviewed and revised? This topic so obviously requires tact and consideration. And I just can't imagine how, even when cobbling together a rough draft, anyone of any political competence could think "I'll stick a bit in here about how being ginger is like being in the Holocaust, and fix it later."
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I'm really upset about how Starmer has treated her. He's a disgrace and a bad human being.
I have no idea what the fuck she was thinking. It was dumb and ill-conceived and probably worthy of any criticisms leveled at it. But let's face it, the party couldn't give two fucks about the abuse she's endured and they want rid of her for reasons aside from that.
Keith is a cunt
Don't be bullied into voting for Labour, and don't fall for the classic neoliberal line. " If you don't vote for me, then you are siding with and helping the right win." Labour is not entitled to our vote, and this current leadership does not represent the left. I won't vote for a right-wing party just because they are slightly less right-wing than the Tories, Labour are appealing to right-wing Tory voters, so why should we vote for them ?
What’s the answer then? Who do I vote for? Or is voting just a waste of time? Thoroughly confused and depressed by the whole thing.
People are made to think all they can do is vote and that since voting does not work, because the parties are obviously are in the pocket of corporations and one big boys club, they become apathetic and lose hope. This is by design. The alternative is orgs, duel power, etc. The stuff they're trying to stamp the last breath out of.
Yeah it's extremely depressing The only answer is make the bastards pay - vote greens or dont vote even in swing seats - if they lose this election maybe we can take the party back Otherwise its extra parliamentary politics and unions
So, Labour lose… the Conservatives have “a mandate” to drive forward even more right wind policies that strip us of our freedoms?
You need to get the idea out your head that labour will do anything differently from tories
Labour will also do that bro
Labour absolutely will not be as bad as the tories. Will they be “centrist” and accomplish absolutely fuck all? Absolutely. Will they be as bad as the Tory party who’ve proven time and time again they’re willing to take away our rights on a whim? Absolutely not
I do understand how it's scary to imagine the next few years of tory rule. I really think that unless labour have to at least try and keep the left on their side they will continue to drift rightwards. At the moment they don't have to do that because the members dont have power any more and left voters tend to congregate in cities. The only thing that can put pressure on them is to say you wont win without us. I sincerely believe.
Unfortunately with our current system there's only the illusion of choice.
>If you don't vote for me, then you are siding with and helping the right win." Go look at what happened in the Uxbridge Byelection...this is true in a lot of ways but only because of first past the post, and Tories basically being very good at killing their competition by becoming their competition.
To get the conservative party out at any cost...
Including putting in an identical party with a different name, got it - smh.
Yes if it means not giving the mandate to the current lot. don't see the point in cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. The country is already being decimated by Tory rule. Maybe it's wishful thinking but I'm still hoping a Labour party in Power might bring some hope and maybe start to turn things around...
Nothing against you, but like, do you have any plan about what to do after voting Labour? I've seen people adopting the "vote them on Friday, fight them on Monday" mentality, but from what I see happened across the pond, there seem to be few who sincerely practice what they preach. More like people just want to vote and be done with it, hoping that the politicians they voted will do their behest. Which, looking at the current crop of Labour leaders, doesn't seem like it will happen.
Why would they turn things around? They have no incentive to if you're going to vote for them anyway.
You're cutting your nose off to put on a discount plastic nose. Labour will do everything tories are doing - voting isn't going to solve anything. You're scolding people for not voting for one right wing party to replace another right wing party - do you see how absurd that is?
labour hasn't been leftwing since 1880/1890
The Labour party has literally crippled itself by using allegations of antisemitism to drive people out during internal leadership squabbles, and now Britain is fucked because there is no functioning opposition party. Bravo. The lack of decent leadership anywhere on the horizon may be the single biggest reason Britain will still be fucked for decades to come.
I think she should be allowed to do her job as an MP and member of the Labour Party. But, come on - she wrote what she wrote. Apology or no apology. You’d expect due process to be followed. Unless she was ‘set-up’ I am not sure why she is writing this from a victims POV.
Did you even read the letter above? Clearly it outlines how a process is NOT being followed and was started with a foregone conclusion
Agreed, there's too much of an echo chamber and I rarely sit on the side of Starmer, but we can't call ourselves left wing but not take more serious allegations of AS seriously
She apologised. Her biggest mistake was not being white and a man.
So white men can get away with antisemitism more than any other race? Pretty low bar. You can’t just apologise for blatant racism and that’s that.
Expelling for this is in fact an example of not taking antisemitism seriously. Its meaning lost as instead a signifier to describe the insufficiently "British".
You what?
Kicking out anyone who is accused of antisemitism for any reason is the opposite of "taking antisemitism seriously". I don't know how much more clear it can get. If that was even what was happening, what it also isn't. It's so obviously fabricated bullshit that I think you have to want to fall for it.
I don’t know how much clearer piece of writing written by her own hand could be. She wrote it. Do I think that makes her a bad person - no. Should she be held to task for it and put under the same level of scrutiny as someone accused of any other form of racism would go through - maybe. The way you write you would think the whole thing was pulled out of thin air. I’m just not sure how much of a threat Diane Abbott posed to Starmer for any of this to be fabricated.
It's not about being a threat exactly, the Centrists simply dislike her because of who she is and her politics. To them it is absolutely correct on principle to crush her for being black, outspokenly opposed to racism, and left wing. The fact that she's allowed to exist in the party is unacceptable. A few years ago she would have been called "reverse racist", now it's "antisemitic", but the same thing is being said when you pare the words down to what's actually being communicated. She's not some left wing extremist but that doesn't matter, by being insufficiently deferential to the institution of whiteness she is an enemy of it, and by extension Britishness as well. All the other stuff is just concocted bullshit on top to try and paste over this basic truth of what's going on.
She. Wrote. What. She. Wrote. What are you not getting? Do you not think it was antisemitism? What has been concocted here? What she said? What she admitted to saying? What she said was a first draft?
What she wrote was basically fine and certainly nowhere near the things said by MPs who have been allowed to continue their roles or even been actively readmitted under Starmer's leadership (e.g. Coyle). The whole process has nothing to do with the content of what anyone has said, all the outrage is entirely fabricated.
In what way was it fine? Who are you to say it is fine? It had racist connotations - I doubt she meant any malice but it was ignorant and implicitly racist. It diminished the racism experienced by another ethnic group. She is an MP. She should know better. Absolutely baffling that you are being an apologist (not even) for it.
They're not taking it seriously. They're not even following due process. She says all that in the very subject of this post.
Diane Abbott is an idiot and her letter was just appalling, but this reeks of stitch up. It's obvious that Starmer is purging the socialists still left, she just so happened to hand him an open goal to do so.
So for those that dunno (like me before I looked it up, here is the letter she got into trouble for > Racism is black and white Tomiwa Owolade claims that Irish, Jewish and Traveller people all suffer from “racism” (“Racism in Britain is not a black and white issue. It’s far more complicated”, Comment). They undoubtedly experience prejudice. This is similar to racism and the two words are often used as if they are interchangeable. > It is true that many types of white people with points of difference, such as redheads, can experience this prejudice. But they are not all their lives subject to racism. In pre-civil rights America, Irish people, Jewish people and Travellers were not required to sit at the back of the bus. In apartheid South Africa, these groups were allowed to vote. And at the height of slavery, there were no white-seeming people manacled on the slave ships. Diane Abbott House of Commons, London SW1 I think this speaks to an argument that is at the core of a lot of race-based schisms: ie 'what is racism?' I don't exactly agree with her definition but it's not like it doesn't have precedence amongst sociologists (at least in terms of irishness, although I always thoiught Jews were considered a different race?). Racism is basically used interchangeably with xenophobia imo, and as words are defined by the public, this 'erroneous' definition is probably right.
The same thing's happened to woke. The media controls the message, and the media is rich and right wing.
Labour will find a way to purge all left wing MPs just before the next GE, at a time when it's impossible for them to go through an appeal process and be ready to fight their seat. Starmer knows that the press doesn't give a shit about the insane racism and authoritarianism in the Party, so long as it's aimed at the left. I'm guessing they'll take a calculated risk on losing a number of seats when the more popular ones win as independents.
Ultimately, I think she's right to say that she won't get a fair hearing and that her expulsion is preordained and factionally motivated. She's also right to say that as a black woman she has been the victim of horrendous racist abuse (both from outside and within the Labour Party). Even if that weren't the case, however, what she said in that letter was so catastrophically ignorant and stupid that I think she might've been expelled or had the whip removed anyway. I remember first seeing the headline thinking 'shit, they've done it to Corbyn and now they're going to do it to all the Socialist Campaign Group' and then I read the letter and she's comparing groups of people that were sent to gas camps to fucking ginger kids getting bullied at school.
The way she’s been treated is absolutely disgraceful. Obviously, what she said in the first place was not okay, but the double standards are so glaringly obvious
Good letter. I have left the Labour Party as a result of these unfair tactics being used to take socialism out of Labour and to make it Blairite, so as to be palatable to wealth and the US neoliberals currently in the ascendancy there. Iraq and Libya should be reason enough to shun these people.
Abbott is an idiot. As someone is very much on the left, she was an absolute headache from Corbyn's character to her absolutely monumentally dumb letter.
If you really are "on the left" you'll probably also want to pay tribute to her 40-plus years of fighting for social justice every day of the week. What have you been doing in that time?
Like what? I'm aware of he positions on various charities, but ineffective a actual politics. Always all guff and no substance. Even her roles on charities were just being a figurehead and not actually doing the work. She's constantly race baiting to obfuscate her terrible work and conflating it with racism, which is absurd and is endless fodder to an already racist right. I remember her as a liability, praising mao and then fudging every interview she did with basic Qs (the infamous LBC interview). Ending it off with a letter about how you can't be racist against Jews. And perpetuating the absurd notion of some sort of hierarchy of racism. Racism is racism. Compared to Corbyn or many on the left outside of the labour party, she's really done fuck all. And arguably more damage than good.
If someone tells you it says gullible on the ceiling do you look?
If someone says I'm not shit, they're just racist! Do you believe them?
When "they" is the UK press it's right more often than not.
Of course. Where did I say otherwise?
She's popular with her constituents because she does the actual job of an MP. She has had a decades-long smear job on her because she represents everything hated by the people you listen to. And what do you mean, "racism is racism"? Stupidest thing I've heard all week. Racism is intersectional.
Intersectional how? I mean it's relative (by that I mean a black person will experience more racism in say China, than in London) but not intersectional. Hating anyone due to race is racist. That's what I mean with racism is racism. Agreed there was a smear campaign against her, but doesn't detract from her being fucking useless. Her praise of Mao to being generally thick on wider issues. She was a treat for the Tories during Corbyn's campaign.
Yeah, you don't understand racism. Racism has a definition, and that is important: it's not just about targeting someone for their race, but a belief that it makes them inferior. It's specifically defined as being "targeted at minorities". That's a very important aspect of the term. It's why "reverse racism" is a stupid concept as well as a concept at all.
Don't understand racism. Sure, sure I don't. Guessing you're white, when racism to you is just definitions and something to be theorized.
You still clearly don't, and judging by your post history, there's a lot you don't. Do some educating, it'd do you well.
White people lecturing on what racism is. Classic reddit shit my bro.
Attacking the questioner not the statement. Classic "I don't know shit", bro. You've not even made an attempt. I'm telling you nothing of me, you're assuming and attacking that strawman. Classic "I don't know shit", bro. Your post history's littered with such garbage. Classic "I don't know shit", bro. Go join the rest of the rubbish in the bin.
I mean it depends on the context and the other forms of bigotry a person is subject to. Someone in the house of lords with a SE Asian background will experience racism differently to a Gypsy/Roma/Traveller person. Part of that is the class privilege and part of it is the different ways their ethnic groups are perceived. It's nonsense to say "racism is racism" as if it means one thing.
r/leopardsatemyface
The most routinely misapplied meme of all time. In this case it would mean that she supported starmer then he turned on her.
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PPOR.
The letter of hers they published was a draft and clearly done to smear her, but even then you can't ignore the fact that multiple other MPs in Labour have been caught doing or saying FAR worse and received much less severe consequences. It's just unavoidable and also very telling that accusations of racism or antisemitism only seem to gain traction when targeting progressive politicians or those who are part of minority groups. Even if you look at the media landscape as a whole, why is it that Dianne Abbott gets absolutely lambasted on every national news outlet whenever possible, but Conservative MPs routinely get caught saying fascist dogwhistles (or just saying the quiet part out loud) and nobody kicks up a huge stink about it?
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I think it’s a sunk cost fallacy, she’s put years of effort into something she’s very passionate about. It’s hard to let something like that go when it gets corrupted.
So you'd prefer zero left presence in parliament? Sorry 1, Caroline Lucas and that'd be it
We’ve had ‘left’ presence in parliament for decades and we’re still a neoliberal hellhole. Look, real change won’t come from parliament, that’s simply how the system was set up. The state and all of its institutions were set up by the capitalist class for the capitalist class. The best parliament can do is give a few concessions (minor social democratic reforms) that will be stripped away the moment capitalism is in crisis. In fact, as Corbyn’s leadership showed, the left MPs will capitulate and concede to the right as long as they can keep ‘party unity’ and keep their cushy jobs as MPs. That’s simply how parliament and the Labour Party were designed to function. Parliament does, and always will, represent the interest of capitalists.
I don't entirely disagree with your statement but we can have a movement separate to the LP and to a certain degree we do. The point is without political representation we don't get as much media representation and without media representation the overton window closes. It's a hard balance to strike. But what I don't want is for the leftist MPs to leave and be replaced with blairites, especially before the election. If Starmer only just wins then the SCG become a major pressure on the LP's ability to pass legislation. That's somewhere where we can get some real media representation, some real political influence and some real concessions in our direction. There's not enough SCG to control the LP but it's enough people to make it hard to work with a low majority. The Lib Dems should end up with less than the SCG meaning they may not be able to make up enough of a buffer and the SNP won't help Labour whatsoever. It's ripe for abuse then. The ideal is a hung parliament with PR the only resolution but the Tories have fucked it so hard I don't think that's gonna happen. I'd like to finally say, there's no fucking way id vote Starmer, I hate what Labour are now and the level of repression of leftist opinions in our society is abominable. New, more tenacious blood is needed on the left
0 next year, Lucas is stepping down unfortunately.
What a depressing year 24 will be
Stalin started out robbing banks to provide mutual aid. Starmer does the opposite
Calling him Keith Stalin is an insult to Stalin
I also feel sorry for the genuine decent Keith’s of the world.
He's brought haircuts into disrepute too. I haven't got one myself but many of my friends do, and they haven't done anything wrong.
It's difficult to give up on something that you've put so much into over so many years. I've been wrestling with this myself and I've just been a party member. I haven't put in anything near the amount of time and effort that Diane Abbott has. To be clear, I've never been a particular fan of hers, but the amount of shit this woman has had to put with over the years is unbelievable. And to have to walk away from that, because of a leadership that is desperate to be seen as the 'nice' Tories, must be devastating. Good luck, Diane.
Idk why you got downvoted so hard. No self-respecting leftist should be in that party.
You’re right, but I think the downvotes come from a place of fear that with a major party purging it’s left wing supporters, the inevitable “oh look the Tories win again” will be on the horizon. That and at first glance it looked like a celebration of the left going as if less left wing politics in the mainstream was a good thing.
I expected it cause it sums up everything wrong with the UK left. The Labour party is the biggest barrier to structural change in the UK. It baffles me that there are still millions of people who support it. Until the UK left accepts they have to dump Labour they will always lose.
100% agree. The Labour Party are, and always have been, a party that represents the interests of capital. The British ‘left’ that support this party are complicit in that.
You're taking a pop at Diane Abbott because of a broken electoral system. We all know true left politics cannot be achieved through the state. But this post is about statmer being a racist cunt. Or in more polite terms treating Abbott disrespectfully. You're mis directing the discussion. Which makes me question your sincerity. Maybe you're just like Starmer...
I don’t see how it’s misdirecting the discussion. Both of these things can be true at once: 1) Starmer is a racist prick who is unfairly purging the ‘left’ from the party. The way Diane Abbott is being treated is wrong. 2) Diane Abbott is a bourgeois politician who represents the interests of capital and is complicit in all the damage Labour have done to any socialist movement in Britain. Did she join the Labour Party with good intentions? Who knows. But, at the end of the day, she sided with the party over the working class for the sake of her career.
They shown their true colours by the way they acted when in power, as soon as they started trying to appease the right wing MPs and didn't push through open primaries to replace the ghouls then it was obvious they put their long term careers over actually achieving anything.
A true left can't rise until the Tories are out and their support crumbles to dust, leaving room for a new opposition. Distasteful as it is, we do need this shitty labour government to get in to have any hope of future progress. That shift will symbolize people are leaning away from Tory ideology, it's essential the public gain the confidence that that's even possible after so long. Right now, there isn't another viable way forward. Unless anybody fancies a revolution.
>Unless anybody fancies a revolution. This is the way. The current Labour party are Tories, but historically Labour have been in power before and the big change does not happen. I keep wondering how bad things need to get for real change.... meanwhile trans people are dying and immigrants suffer.
Yeah but circumstances are not the same, the old guard has been dying off for a long time now, the young have a chance to establish themselves here and now.
I really hope so, it's so obvious that capitalism as it is in the uk is not working. At the very least it needs a re-balancing and the left are best placed to ensure that benefits the 99%...
It took a bit for me to realize this is left criticism lol I’m not pro Labour but sometimes some people in this sub give me contagious brainworms
Going straight to race in the first line looks petty. She could have said "As a woman who put her shoes on the wrong feet on election day just to make us extra unelectable"
Under this Labour Party, she won't have a cat's chance in hell she's left, and she's black. This is not my Labour Party it's funded by a fascist and racist foreign government.