British Blairite snobbery in Young Labour

This video from the USA says about itself:

Rupert Murdoch Pressured Tony Blair Over Iraq

18 June 2012

“Rupert Murdoch joined in an “over-crude” attempt by US Republicans to force Tony Blair to accelerate British involvement in the Iraq war a week before a crucial House of Commons vote in 2003, according to the final volumes of Alastair Campbell’s government diaries. In another blow to the media mogul, who told the Leveson inquiry that he had never tried to influence any prime minister, Campbell’s diary says Murdoch warned Blair in a phone call of the dangers of a delay in Iraq…”.* The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.

*Read more here from Nicholas Watt in The Guardian.

Within the youth organisation of the British Labour Party, there is a clique basing itself on the right wing ideas of Tony Blair.

News about them, from London daily The Morning Star:

Young Labour‘s ‘classist snobs’

Monday 9th February 2015

APPARATCHIKS at the heart of Labour’s youth movement were accused yesterday of acting like “classist snobs” when they discovered that a party member they had fallen out with worked in a restaurant.

Jake Johnstone, who has been a member of Young Labour for five years, said members of the youth wing’s top committee had “pointed and laughed” when they entered the south London restaurant where he works as a waiter.

In an explosive open letter to Labour general secretary Iain McNicol, Mr Johnstone said Labour NEC youth rep Bex Bailey was among the group.

She was joined at the restaurant by Young Labour national committee members Jack Storry and Jack Falkingham, former Labour Students vice-chair Ben Dilks and party organiser Ashley Wise, according to the letter published on Mr Johnstone’s blog.

“Upon seeing me stood working front-of-house and greeting customers on a fairly busy shift, they felt it appropriate to stand at the top of the stairs and point and laugh at me,” he wrote.

“I’ve been in this job for just over a month and for that to happen in front of colleagues and customers — it was humiliating and degrading to say the least.”

He said a colleague had told him that one of the group had said: “As if he works in a fucking restaurant.”

“Instead of upholding the fundamental principles of the party that they work for and support, they’re classist snobs who feel it best to intimidate and mock someone who they deem to be beneath them,” Mr Johnstone blasted.

When the Star went to press, none of the accused activists had responded publicly to the allegations.

HUNDREDS of Labour leftwingers resolved to up the ante against austerity on Saturday as experts warned that the party was in danger of pushing through “the same agenda” as Tories and Lib Dems. The Left Platform conference at the defunct University of London Union was addressed by Labour MPs as well as academics, Scottish Labour leadership contender Neil Findlay and trade union activists: here.

GREENS hailed a major coup yesterday after RMT president Peter Pinkney sensationally announced he would join the party as a parliamentary candidate. The “lifelong socialist” becomes the most senior figure in the trade union movement to break with Labour before the general election: here.