Original article republished form the Skwawkbox for non-Commercial use.
Motion condemns Starmer party’s attack on democracy
‘Democracy’ in Labour – often rigged before members even start to vote
Members of a Labour front-bencher’s local party passed a motion last week condemning the regime’s shameless rigging of party democracy and demanding to be allowed to select their candidates without interference.
Hornsey and Wood Green members voted strongly for the following emergency motion:
Selection of Candidates
HWG CLP notes the Labour Party’s assertion that it is a ‘democratic socialist party’ (Clause IV). HWG CLP further notes that Keir Starmer stated in February 2020:
‘The selections for Labour candidates needs to be more democratic, and we should end NEC impositions of candidates. Local party members should select their candidates for every election.’
HWG CLP agrees with this statement, and strongly believes that it should be the democratic right of constituency members to choose their prospective candidates and regrets that this is not being acted upon.
Keir Starmer’s statement on 15th February 2023 regarding Islington North [where Starmer is blocking former leader Jeremy Corbyn from standing as a Labour candidate], the imposition of shortlists in Wakefield, Bolton North East, and other constituencies, and the suspension or expulsion of very good potential candidates prior to selection processes commencing are all contrary to this democratic principle.
HWG CLP calls on the NEC to confirm that the selection of candidates is the democratic right of local Labour Party members and must be upheld. In Solidarity.
The motion, no doubt cautiously worded because of the regime’s readiness to punish members for speaking out against its misdeeds, triggered ludicrous responses from a few right-wingers – including the husband of one key Starmer adviser, who tried to argue that it was ‘anti-democratic’ for the ‘CLP’ to follow its own standing orders and hold a vote on whether the motion was in order before a vote on the motion itself was held.
Starmer’s lackeys have routinely been put in direct charge of selection processes in areas considered to be likely to select a candidate who isn’t a Starmer clone – and in many cases have rigged longlists to exclude the candidates local members prefer, leaving them with no choice but to choose which of the approved drones will stand for election.
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Original article republished form the Skwawkbox for non-Commercial use.
Even middle England can see that privatisation costs, rather than saves, billions. Will MPs take a historic chance to undo this market mess that’s crippling our NHS, this Friday?
The experts turn the nostrums of market efficiency which the free-marketeers have inculcated us with over the last 30+ years, on their head, writing:
“Privatised services cost the NHS and taxpayer far more than when provided by our publicly owned and publicly run NHS. That is because public health systems don’t seek profits. They don’t need to pay dividends to shareholders. They don’t have the added costs of private sector loans. And they don’t have privatisation’s heavy and unnecessary marketising costs of contracts, billings and all the extra administration involved.
The huge commercial costs and chaos caused by the ongoing NHS fragmentation are the direct result of privatisation. This is endangering the quality and safety of our public healthcare. That is why we need the National Health Service bill.”
And – noting how so much is being sneakily privatised under the NHS logo, they add:
“NHS services and assets, including blood supplies, nurses, scanning and diagnosticservices, ambulances, care homes, hospital beds and buildings – which the British public own – are being handed over to UK and foreign private companies. This is being done without a public mandate.”
I only really got hold of this when I had an MRI scan last September. From quizzing the radiographer, my GP and scanner suppliers and researching the purchase, manning and maintenance costs it seemed clear that my scan – provided by a private company – cost the NHS at least 25% more than if it had been provided by a nationalised NHS.
The inflated costs are everywhere – from PFI (£1bn a year) to profits made by private providers, to the vast costs of running the NHS as a ‘market’ (in fact, as a privatisers’ bureaucracy) – costs that are fiercely denied by pro-market advocates and carefully obscured by government – and independently estimated to waste anywhere between £4.5bn and £10bn a year – or more.
The economic case for renationalising the NHS and restoring it as a publicly owned and run entity seems unarguable. It should be the Labour Party’s trump card.
So why is the Corbyn leadership being so slow to grasp this gift horse? Why hasn’t it yet publicly embraced the NHS Bill which clearly sets out its intent to strip away the expensive market bureaucracy the NHS can ill afford?
Is Corbyn being “got at” as a well-placed observer suggested at the NHS Bill group meeting I attended a few days ago? Is his party running scared of fuelling the Greens, whose solo MP Caroline Lucas has been the tabler of the NHS Bill in Parliament and of whose renationalisation-studded Election manifesto the President of the RMT Peter Pinkney barked last March “If that isn’t bloody Socialism I don’t know what is!”
Or is the mantra of electability and the City-honed Damocles sword of Labour’s economic ‘incompetence’, which the Mandelson camp followers have held to the party’s throat for so long, still keeping even its newbie lefty(ish) leadership kneeling in an NHS policy desert?
A member of my West London 38 Degrees group, a lifelong Tory now lapsed, has no such hesitation. She supports the Bill and doesn’t mince her words in her letter to our local Tory MP; “We are not idiots; this government is pushing the country into private hands in every direction – and you only got 24% of the vote. I doubt any of you will get another term in office and the opposition parties are not any better.”
Signing herself “a sad, disillusioned resident of Fulham and ex-believer in the Conservative Party” she’s a powerful example of the simmering rage at the privateers’ long unfettering. “All they think of is money. What’s more important? Being aware of other people or just making money?” she asked me rhetorically.
This quiet rage at the corrupting monetisation of our political and civil institutions runs deep and wide and courses across party lines. And it’s up for grabs by a Labour Party prepared to stick its neck over the parapet and see a landscape budding with potential and surprising allies.
Suddenly this weekend there are straws of hope in the wind for NHS campaigners. The Socialist Health Association (SHA), like ex-Shadow Health Minister Andy Burnham, have been purveyors of the Blair/Mandelson City-sugared line on the NHS, which would leave it vulnerable to continuing privatisation under international trade and competition agreements. Accordingly they (the SHA) have been long-time opponents of the Bill.
But on Saturday their AGM voted by 30-1 to strongly back the Bill and do everything they could to encourage Labour MPs to back it. Does this signify a ‘left turn’ within the SHA? And – given some of its senior figures are rumoured to be amongst Heidi Alexander’s close advisors – what might all this portend for her future positioning on the NHS?
More importantly Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has publicly re-confirmed his support for the Bill. The Shadow Health team have agreed to attend its Second Reading and debate next Friday 11th. Campaigners understand that there have now been discussions between Jeremy Corbyn, Heidi Alexander and Caroline Lucas.
Filming Joanna Adams in Darlington two days ago for the continuing saga of my documentary series Groundswell about her and the 999 Call For The NHS campaigners, I asked this organisation’s founder what she made of the Labour Party’s post-Corbyn shapeshifting. An acute campaigner, Joanna senses a sliding of the sands from under the Blairite sword-wielders of old and their followers.
But for now she’s staying with the Greens. If Labour can’t win back grassroots supporters like her from Labour’s old heartlands then its future as a party with a working majority seems bleak. It is in danger of being outgrown by the ‘new’ politics of internet-savvy, issue-driven grassroots. For them the 2008 crash and bank bailouts were a game changer – exposing not only the dirty secrets of the privateers and bankers, but the how whole the Blair project depended on the rigged, debt-inflated airbagging of Western economies which has been the developed world’s economic cornerstone since the late 1960’s and has now been punctured.
The NHS Bill is a game-changer, too, for the Labour Party. As its co-author Peter Roderick has said, it’s a gauntlet thrown down to the party and its moribund inheritance. Friday’s Day Of Action is an early staging post in the long struggle ahead to save the NHS from the bankers and privateers.
It’s a significant moment for the party that brought the NHS into being and an opportunity for it to further the necessary reconnection with its origins that the Corbyn ‘phenomenon’ has signalled.
How you can help: We’re asking everyone to ask their MP to attend the debate on Friday (details on the NHS Bill website) and, if you can, to come to the rally outside parliament from 11am on Friday, details here, and/or earlier outside the Department of Health at 9.45am, details here.
A fuller Q&A can be downloaded here, and leaflets to distribute in advance or on the day, clearly spelling out what’s at stake, can be downloaded here. This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. source
Three weeks ago the Tory-led House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee advised that intervention in Syria was not a good idea. Peter Oborne – until recently chief political columnist of the Daily Telegraph – has described Cameron’s strategy as “Bomb and hope for the best.” And concludes; “We should not go ahead until we have a better idea of what we are doing.” Right-winger and iconoclast Peter Hitchens wrote yesterday; “On the basis of an emotional spasm and a speech that was illogical and factually weak, we are rushing towards yet another swamp, from which we will struggle to extract ourselves and where we can do no conceivable good.” And he says the former ambassador to Syria, Peter Ford energetically opposes what he calls ‘recreational bombing’. The Observer believes expanding military action into Syria is a mistake – so too does the Daily Mail which writes “It sickens the Mail to find ourselves in the same camp as Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell … even more, it distresses us to know many of our readers may disagree with us. But on balance, and with many misgivings, this paper believes the case for bombing Syria has not yet been made.”
On Saturday, the Egypt-led investigation committee issued a statement, according to which the reason for the Russian Kogalymavia plane crash in Sinai is yet to be determined. The following day, Reuters reported, citing a unidentified member of the inquiry, that investigators into the plane crash in Egypt were “90 percent sure” the noise heard on the final seconds of a cockpit recording was an explosion caused by a bomb.
“News and media claims, quoting an anonymous source, allegedly one of the members of the Commission, are incorrect, and should not prevail,” Ayman Muqaddam was quoted in the statement published by the Egyptian Ministry of Civil aviation.
…
We’ve had an absolute deluge of bullshit from corporate media about the Sinai plane crash being a terrorist act. It appears that it was aided by UK authorities claiming that “chatter” was identified. This incident has been a wonderfull illustration of deliberate deception, of fake, manufactured terrorism.
The Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations sent three of its aircraft to the crash site. The Investigative Committee also started a legal case against Kogalymavia under legislation regulating “violation of rules of flights and preparations.”[55]
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Natalya Trukhacheva, the ex-wife of co-pilot Sergei Trukachev, said in an interview with NTV that her ex-husband had complained to their daughter about the aircraft’s technical state.[52][65]
The aircraft involved in the crash had suffered a tailstrike while landing in Cairo fourteen years earlier.[30][64][66] Some have drawn comparisons to Japan Airlines Flight 123, which crashed into a mountain in 1985, seven years after the plane had suffered a tailstrike while landing.[64] Flight 123 suffered catastrophic damage in mid-air while climbing to its cruising altitude. The crash of Flight 123 was caused by an incorrect repair of the aircraft’s tail section following the tailstrike, which left the rear pressure bulkhead of the plane vulnerable to metal fatigue and ultimately resulted in explosive decompression.[64] Reports on the wreckage of Flight 9268 have suggested that a “clear break” occurred near the plane’s rear pressure bulkhead, possibly indicating failure of the bulkhead.[66]
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Doesn’t the Wikipedia entry strongly suggest the real cause of this accident? Why is corporate media so keen to deliberately deceive and support governments in their bullshit terrorism narrative? Is it that they are partners in the deception – two cheeks of the same arse?*
