By Calvin Tucker in Britain:
From Pfizer lobbyist to Citizen Smith
Monday 8th August 2016
“THE economic circumstances demand that we seek more fundamental solutions than tinkering around the edges of capitalism.”
Not my words, but the words of Angela Eagle.
And then we have Owen Smith and his 20-point manifesto of borrow and spend — which even includes a wealth tax which the Morning Star pointed out was lifted straight out of the programme of the Communist Party.
I’m perplexed.
Two weeks ago the narrative was that Labour could never win on a left-wing ticket.
Now, it seems, the people’s flag can’t be red enough.
The Bitterites, as John Prescott dubbed them, have overnight metamorphosed into the Moderate Popular Front, and the Pfizer lobbyist and Welfare Bill abstainer has recast himself as Citizen Smith.
Except this time round he’s shouting: “Power to the PLP!”
You couldn’t make it up if you tried.
They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so let’s take Smith’s Damascene conversion as a tribute to Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership in moving the centre of political gravity to the left.
These moderates talk about winning elections. Yet despite their disloyalty and sabotage, Jeremy has won four out of four by-elections, four out of four mayors, and finished first in the local elections.
And we were drawing ahead in the polls when they began their choreographed resignations.
I’m a big fan of fair elections. As a way of resolving differences, they sure beat staging a coup, banning meetings, disenfranchising 130,000 members, and pricing the poor out of a vote.
Seven years ago, I was travelling with the first lady of Honduras during a military coup.
The army stopped our convoy and threatened to shoot us. But the first lady got out of her car and began walking towards the line of soldiers until we were quite literally looking down the barrels of their guns.
Then an extraordinary thing happened. Like the Biblical parting of seas, they fanned out and let us pass.
As we went through, she said to me: “They are scared of us because we are not scared of them.”
Whether the gun held to your head is a real one, or in the case of the Labour Party, a figurative one, the lesson is the same: never give in to threats and intimidation.
So cast your vote with pride for the undefeated leader of our party: man of steel and integrity, Jeremy Corbyn.
Smith should stop denying he’s part of the coup and admit to being its chief enabler, writes CHARLEY ALLAN.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has ruled out any challenge to the June 23 referendum vote to leave the European Union. In an interview published over the weekend, Corbyn rejected calls for either a second referendum or a general election to re-decide the issue. Asked whether he thought calls by leadership contender Owen Smith for a second referendum were anti-democratic, he replied, “I think we’ve had a referendum, a decision has been made, you have to respect the decision people made”: here.
The High Court has ruled that 130,000 people who recently joined the Labour party could be allowed to cast a vote in the upcoming leadership election, in a move that many expect to be advantageous to Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign: here.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
Every time I hear Owen Smith speak it simply spurs me on in my conviction to support Jeremy Corbyn.
LikeLike
I think many people think likewise.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Maybe he’s serving some sort of purpose then – apart from his own.
LikeLike
🙂 🙂 🙂
LikeLike
Pingback: Owen Smith’s Blairite flop in London | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: British Blairite Owen Smith, nuclear weapons and Pfizer | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: British Blairite Owen Smith’s ISIS gaffe | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Corbyn-Smith British Labour leadership debate | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Monday 22nd August 2016
posted by Morning Star in Britain
London mayor backs Smith despite relying on Corbyn voters for success
by Conrad Landin Industrial Reporter
TRADE unionists have been “stabbed in the back” by Sadiq Khan, a union leader who backed his candidacy said yesterday after the London mayor endorsed Owen Smith for the leadership.
Mr Khan said Jeremy Corbyn was “unable to organise an effective team” and had “failed to win the trust and respect of the British people,” meaning Labour was “extremely unlikely to win the next general election” under his leadership.
In an article for the Observer yesterday, Mr Khan said the Labour leader had “failed to show the leadership we desperately needed” in campaigning to stay inside the European Union, and that Mr Smith was “far more popular with the public than Jeremy.”
Mr Khan was selected as Labour’s mayoral candidate in a tough contest where he positioned himself to the left of Tessa Jowell — the Blairite favourite. He was nominated by a number of major Labour affiliates — including train drivers’ union Aslef.
Aslef president Tosh McDonald told the Star: “Without the Corbyn effect, Sadiq Khan would never have won.
“My personal view is that not only is Sadiq Khan stabbing Jeremy in the back, he’s stabbing Aslef and all our members in the back.
“I don’t know where he gets this idea that Jeremy Corbyn is unelectable from. We keep winning elections under Jeremy — mayoral elections, by-elections, even in Scotland we won a local authority by-election the other week.
“Sadiq Khan will be losing himself a lot of credibility in London, certainly among Aslef, who worked hard to get him elected and are working hard to get Corbyn elected.”
In May Sam Tarry, who worked on Mr Khan’s campaign, told the Star that the London mayor had won by “explicitly riding the huge wave of support for Jeremy.”
A spokesman for Mr Corbyn’s leadership campaign said: “Sadiq Khan is entitled to his opinion. But he won the London mayoralty, as others have pointed out, by standing on a Labour platform under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, backed by the huge numbers who have joined our party to support Jeremy and now campaign for Labour.
“The Tories mistakenly thought that linking Jeremy and Sadiq as their main focus of attack would play badly for Labour.”
Fire Brigades Union general secretary Matt Wrack said supporters of Mr Khan would be “a little bit disappointed.”
“In terms of electability the biggest damage that has been done to Labour in the past few months was the… attempted coup by a whole number of Labour MPs over that infamous weekend where they systematically resigned one after the other, causing as much damage as they could,” he told Sky News. “They need to take responsibility for that, including Owen Smith.”
http://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-a475-Train-drivers-leader-lays-into-backstabbing-Khan#.V7sOrTWAb6g
LikeLike
SADIQ KHAN’S ill-judged intervention in the Labour leadership race demonstrates that Labour’s Establishment has learned nothing since being routed by Jeremy Corbyn last year.
Last summer a constellation of New Labour heavyweights lined up to ritually denounce Corbyn, on pretty much the same grounds that they do now: he would be unelectable, a threat to security, a disaster on the doorstep.
In seeking to portray Corbyn as out of touch, they only succeeded in showing that they themselves were on another planet.
The bankers’ crash of 2008, the catastrophic growth of inequality on New Labour’s watch and the defeat of an unreconstructed Labour Party at two successive elections did not teach these luminaries that something had to change.
In the event, interventions by the likes of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown only cemented Corbyn’s popularity, proving he was the fresh start the party needed.
Khan’s Observer article contained nothing new. It repeated the nonsense about Labour being unable to win elections with Corbyn at the helm, something which seems a bit rich coming from a London mayor elected on a Labour ticket thanks to the untiring campaigning of thousands of Corbyn-supporting members.
That Labour has won three other mayoral elections and every by-election it has fought, mostly with big swings in its favour, under Corbyn is also ignored.
Because real, measurable elections don’t support his argument Khan relies on polls — though the reality that a poor poll performance might be linked to constant sniping by senior figures in his own party such as, ahem, Khan, escapes him.
Nor does he consider the impact of the MPs’ mutiny from late June on nosediving poll approval after that date.
Corbyn is apparently “unable to organise an effective team,” although under him Labour has forced government retreats on multiple fronts — one of which, on tax credits, Khan is forced to mention in order to have something positive to say about his favoured candidate, Owen Smith.
And he repeats the old saw about Corbyn failing to show leadership on the EU, somehow concluding that Labour only convincing two-thirds of its voters to support its leader’s stance means it would go down to defeat against the Conservatives, two-thirds of whose supporters voted against the Remain position of David Cameron and Theresa May.
Khan may feel that in London, where most people voted to stay in the EU, it will go down well to berate Corbyn for failing to keep us in.
But his arrogant assumption that the British people made a mistake on June 23 is exceptionally dangerous for Labour.
Millions of people have had enough of know-it-all leaders who lecture them on the advantages of globalisation while doing nothing to protect their jobs or incomes. Smith’s kite-flying for a second referendum is electoral suicide.
Labour needs to stop reproaching the voters for getting it wrong and start looking, as Corbyn and John McDonnell have done, to how the exit negotiations can be used to advance working people’s interests, through removing restrictions on public ownership, for example.
With a leadership election — however unnecessary and self-defeating — under way, Khan is “entitled to his opinion,” as Corbyn’s team says.
And few will be surprised that he plans to vote for Smith, since he has never been a figure of the party’s left.
That could have been said without a raft of insulting drivel about Corbyn having “totally failed” and being “extremely unlikely” to win a general election, comments he knows will damage Labour in the rather probable eventuality of Corbyn winning this contest.
http://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-fc94-Khan-peddling-old-smears#.V7slmDWAb6g
LikeLike
Saturday 20th
posted by Morning Star in Editorial
BLAIRITE backbencher Wes Streeting tells us that Jeremy Corbyn’s reluctance to pledge that he would declare war on Russia if it invaded a Nato country amounts to a “gross betrayal of Labour’s internationalist values.”
It might seem that way to the humanitarian bomber wing of the Labour Party whose concept of internationalism stretches little further than ordering air strikes.
But it must surely seem a little foolhardy, even in the midst of an election contest during which many anti-Corbyn MPs have lost their grip on what is acceptable comment, to suggest that conflict with Russia is advisable.
But, of course, they will say, that’s not what we mean. We just want to see a united front of Nato members telling Russia to withdraw its forces.
How, in that case, does this stance differ from Corbyn’s response that he “would obviously try to avoid that happening in the first place, you would build up a good dialogue with Russia to ask them and support them in respecting borders?”
The Labour leader stressed the need for an inclusive approach involving the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which includes all European states.
He spoke out against a military build-up leading to a “calamitous, incredibly dangerous situation,” which will not endear himself to arms-traffickers, but it makes sense.
Even his challenger Owen Smith was forced, having postured over the need “to come to the aid of a fellow member of Nato,” to admit that this “would be calamitous and we must never see that happen.”
Smith stressed the importance of improving diplomatic links with Russia, which is the only sensible way forward for Europe.
Many British politicians remain beset by imperial nostalgia, believing that Westminster has a right and responsibility to read the Riot Act to the world — at least those bits outside Nato. This translates easily from “we must do something” hand-wringing to the least costly and least effective option of bombing, but this would not work with Moscow.
Russia’s reduction to the status of an international joke in the 1990s, when bumbling drunk Boris Yeltsin allowed transnational corporations and domestic oligarchs to loot the country, engendered a great deal of national resentment.
His successor Vladimir Putin presides over an authoritarian regime, with severe limitations in democracy and human rights.
But he has restored the strength of Russia’s armed forces and his national standing owes much to people’s memory of their country’s humiliation under Yeltsin and their reluctance to return to such a state.
Nato ought not to exist any more since the Warsaw Treaty dissolved itself in 1991.
Corbyn was right to say last year that this “cold war organisation” ought to have been wound up at the same time as its rival, while accepting that there is little appetite in Britain for that to happen.
Whether it continues to exist is possibly of less importance than what it does while it’s here.
None of the European members of Nato has the capacity to challenge Russia militarily, so all tough talking by Britain or relatively new Nato members in eastern Europe previously linked to the Soviet bloc has resonance only because of the US connection.
In contrast, Washington is currently examining an alternative scenario of working together with Russia to improve matters in hot spots such as Syria.
That’s the position favoured openly by Corbyn and, even, when you scratch the surface, by Smith, so who, apart from arms traffickers, has any interest in promoting tension on Russia’s borders in Europe?
http://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-2f81-Nato-nostalgia-is-no-strategy#.V7sl7TWAb6g
LikeLike
Monday, 22 August 2016
WRACK CONDEMNS BACKSTABBER KHAN FIRE
Brigades Union general secretary Matt Wrack yesterday responded to London mayor Sadiq Khan’s decision to backstab Corbyn and urge Labour voters to ditch him as leader and vote for Owen Smith in the party’s leadership contest.
Asked to comment on the BBC, Wrack said: ‘I’m a little bit disappointed but it’s probably no great surprise. Sadiq comes from that part of the Labour Party that was in government under Blair and Brown.
‘It is disappointing, nevertheless. Jeremy Corbyn gave full support to Sadiq in his campaign for mayor, as did a number of unions including my own. Sadiq hasn’t consulted us or Labour Party members across London about this latest statement.
‘I think a lot of people will be quite let down by that.’
On Khan’s allegations about Corbyn and the EU Referendum vote, Wrack said: ‘I read the article this morning and thought that was the most silliest part of it. Alan Johnson led that campaign for Labour. He lost heavily in his own constituency as did a whole number of Labour MPs who are criticising Jeremy Corbyn over this issue. Whereas Jeremy Corbyn won in his own backyard.
‘I think Jeremy Corbyn’s approach reflected the views of a great many of ordinary voters. That’s how you engage with people by actually acknowledging the concerns that they have.’
Pressed over the FBU leadership’s support for Corbyn Wrack said: ‘Many of our members, over many years, are quite cynical of politicians who often sound the same, look the same, spout the same policies.
‘Jeremy Corbyn is different. He’s been consistent. When our pensions were under attack, Jeremy Corbyn stood by us. Others did not. When our pay has been under attack Jeremy Corbyn stood by us. Others did not do so.
‘When jobs are slashed in the fire service Jeremy Corbyn has stood up for us. Others have not done so. We wait to see if Sadiq Khan, for example, will honour his pledges to end the cuts in the fire service and see some investment in the fire service, and other public services.’
http://wrp.org.uk/news/12387
LikeLike
Pingback: British Blairite Owen Smith, parody song | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: British Blairite Owen Smith, Pfizer, ISIS parody songs | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Retired British miner banned from Labour for criticizing Owen Smith | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Thousands hear Corbyn in Norfolk, England | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Jeremy Corbyn, Owen Smith, British Labour parody songs | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: British film director Ken Loach interviewed | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: British Liberal Democrats sing about ‘shite’ Blairite Smith | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: British trade unions don’t like Blairite-Pfizerite Owen Smith | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Jeremy Corbyn victory in British Labour, bigger than last year | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Re-elected British Labour leader Corbyn thanks supporters | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: British Blairite Labour leader candidate Smith defeated, satiric song | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Clinton’s pro-bankers speeches, Trump’s sexism revealed | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: British Blairite Owen Smith’s fat cat money | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: British Conservatives lost, Theresa May should quit | Dear Kitty. Some blog