AFILM about how Jeremy Corbyn was targeted by a co-ordinated campaign to undermine his leadership of the Labour Party with false accusations of anti-semitism is now available online.
Oh Jeremy Corbyn — The Big Lie was due to be screened at last year’s Glastonbury festival but was dropped by organisers after they were hit by an online smear campaign which accused the film itself of anti-semitism.
Peace campaigners blast Sir Keir for pledging to boost arms spending while backing austerity for public services
LABOUR leader Sir Keir Starmer faced backlash as he vowed to put billions into the pockets of war-hungry arms companies after claiming there are no funds for cash-starved public services.
Today, Sir Keir announced plans to boost Britain’s defence budget to 2.5 per cent of GDP.
Matching the Tories’ current pledge, costs could amount to £9 billion.
He made the announcement ahead of a visit to a BAE Systems shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness, where the next generation of Trident nuclear submarines are being built.
According to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, costs for the programme could spiral as high as £205bn.
During the visit he pledged to “triple lock” Labour’s commitment to Britain’s nuclear submarine programme, backing the building of the four new submarines.
He reiterated his support for Aukus, a security pact with Australia and the United States, which involves the development of nuclear submarines as part of Washington’s bid to encircle China with military alliances.
Phase 3 of the Atom Bomb explosion in the Lapoon of Bikini Island
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Starmer claims that we need nuclear weapons “in the face of rising global threats and growing Russian aggression.” Well, Britain is already deeply embroiled in a conflict involving Russia. Nuclear weapons have done nothing to avoid that conflict and indeed, the expansion of nuclear-armed Nato to the borders of Russia is a huge contributing factor.
If Starmer truly believed in advancing international security, he would be calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine now, alongside a ceasefire in Gaza, where Israel (a nuclear-armed state) is committing genocide against the Palestinian people.
However, the biggest lie in today’s announcement is the idea that investment in weapons of mass destruction will “build a secure future” for families in Barrow or elsewhere.
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If Labour really cares about the creation of secure well-paid jobs, it would take the money to be wasted on Trident and invest in rebuilding Britain’s manufacturing base, creating high-skilled, well-paid jobs for communities which has suffered the ravages of 40 years of deindustrialisation.
As former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said today, “Security is being able to put food on the table. It’s having a roof over your head.”
Construction of one of the two nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point C in Somerset, UK. Credit: Anna Barclay/Getty.
Nuclear energy provides around 10% of electricity globally and around 25% of the world’s low-carbon electricity. With 439 operable reactors already in existence and a further 61 under construction, governments are investing in nuclear as a bridge in the energy transition.
However, according to Greenpeace director of policy Doug Parr: “Nuclear power can’t bridge the gap between anything and anything. It is too slow. It is too expensive. It is a massive distraction.”
Speaking about the role of nuclear energy in the UK’s transition, Parr tells Energy Monitor: “It doesn’t help with the kind of grid system that we need, which is going to be renewables heavy. I think the UK focus on nuclear power is now an obstacle to delivering net zero because it is sucking up time, energy and political bandwidth, which can be spent on more useful things.”
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Parr disagrees, arguing that governments should be investing in more immediate solutions. He points to investment in Sizewell C – the 3.2GW power station set to be built in the English county of Suffolk – where construction is set to commence this year. It is likely to take between nine and 12 years to complete, but delays at Hinkley C (of which Sizewell C will be a close copy) have stirred doubt.
“We will be putting a lot of money into something like Sizewell C, when actually we will find that it is a white elephant by the time it has opened,” he contends. “We will have spent all that time, energy and effort, which could have been put into improving our housing stock, improving our grid or improving the ability of electric vehicles to meet the needs of people through a proper charging network – things that would actually would deliver this decade, not in 15 years time. So, we would cut a lot more carbon, we would get something done that is useful and we wouldn’t have piles of messy radioactive waste that we still don’t know what to do with.”
“By the end of the summer, if we’re still looking at record breaking temperatures in the North Atlantic or elsewhere, then we really have kind of moved into uncharted territory,” Gavin Schmidt, the director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told BBC News.
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March 2024 was 1.68C warmer than “pre-industrial” times – before humans started burning large amounts of fossil fuels – according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Parachutes drop supplies into the northern Gaza Strip as seen from southern Israel, March 28, 2024
‘Arms exports must cease, the occupation and settlement policy must end,’ former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn says
THERE is “nothing natural” about the famine in Gaza and Western pressure on Israel through a total arms embargo is urgent, left MPs and campaigners said today.
They spoke out as the UN’s top human rights official said Tel Aviv could be using starvation as “a weapon of war” in the overcrowded territory as its invasion enters its fifth month.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk told the BBC that if the intent to do this was proven it would amount to a war crime.
Mr Turk condemned the Hamas attack of October 7, during which 1,139 people were killed and about 250 others were taken hostage. But he also said that no side in the war should evade accountability for its actions, including for any attempt to withhold aid supplies from the people who need it in Gaza.
He told the BBC: “All of my humanitarian colleagues keep telling us that there is a lot of red tape. There are obstacles. There are hindrances. Israel is to blame in a significant way.”
“When you put all kinds of requirements on the table that are unreasonable in an emergency that brings up the question, with all the restrictions that we currently see, whether there is a plausible claim to be made that starvation is, or may be used as, a weapon of war.”
Palestinians carry the body of a woman found under the rubble of a destroyed building following an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, Gaza Strip, March 27, 2024
‘It is utterly unconscionable for arms sales to continue’ when Israel has plausibly breached the Genocide Convention, a letter coordinated by Zarah Sultana MP tells the government
MORE than 100 MPs demanded the government halt all arms sales to Israel today because of its genocidal assault on Gaza.
The 108 MPs backed the call in a letter co-ordinated by Coventry South MP Zarah Sultana, which was also signed by 27 members of the House of Lords.
It comes as pressure mounts on the British government to give effect to the United Nations security council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza passed earlier this week.
Israel has rejected the resolution and continues its assault. MPs expressed concerns earlier this week that continuing to arm Israel would make Britain complicit in war crimes and other breaches of international law.
Signatories include ex-Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, former Labour Middle East minister Lord Peter Hain, SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn and former Labour shadow minister Jess Phillips, who resigned from the front-bench in November over the party’s refusal to back a Gaza ceasefire.
Ms Sultana said that “when Israel is ‘plausibly’ in breach of the Genocide Convention and flagrantly violates international law on a daily basis, it is utterly unconscionable for arms sales to Israel to continue.
“But the UK government is refusing to act, making it complicit in this atrocity.
Diane Abbott surrounded by supporters at last night’s rally. Photograph: Maya Sall
Hundreds of people gathered outside Hackney Town Hall last night for a rally in support of Diane Abbott, MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington.
On Monday, the Guardian revealed that the Conversative party’s largest donor, businessman Frank Hester, told colleagues that looking at Abbott makes you “want to hate all Black women” and that the MP “should be shot”.
At the demonstration, crowds chanted ‘We stand with Diane’ and heard speeches from people including independent Islington MP Jeremy Corbyn and a representative of Sistah Space, a domestic violence charity for Black women.
The speakers called for Labour to restore the whip to Abbott after it was removed in May last year.
Abbott has been MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington since 1987, making her the first Black female MP and the longest-serving Black MP.
Addressing the crowd, she thanked local residents: “It is Hackney that work to get me elected in the ’80s, and it is Hackney people who have stood by me year after year, decade after decade.”
“What I want to say is this: this is not about me,” the MP continued. “This is about the level of racism that there is still in Britain. This is about the way that Black women are disrespected.”
Abbott talked about the institutional racism faced by her mother after she emigrated to Britain in the 1950s, and said that racism is still embedded in our society today.
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Jeremy Corbyn MP, former leader of the Labour Party
Corbyn praised Abbott for her “steadfastness in coping with the personal stress that goes with the abuse”, and criticised the fact that she was unable to defend herself in parliament this week.
During Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Question Time, Abbott stood up 46 times in 35 minutes to ask for an opportunity to address the Commons.
It is tradition that if an MP is embroiled in a particular issue, or is in the news, the Speaker will call on them to address parliament. However, Abbott was never called.
In a post on X, Abbott wrote: “I don’t know whose interests the Speaker thinks he is serving. But it is not the interests of the Commons or democracy.”
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Cllr Adejare spoke passionately about Abbott’s legacy. “She paved the way for so many of us. Without her, it’s more likely than not that people like me would not be in politics.”
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Commenting on how quickly the rally was organised, she added: “It’s about making sure that when we look back in history, we know as a community that we stood up in solidarity against the oppression that’s Diane Abbott has experienced.”
