Will the mortgage holiday not help parasitic capitalists erm I mean landlords not lose money anyway?

Bunch of sellouts trying to appease the landlords and rentier class.

 

I guess next they'll be supporting Help To Buy being extended until the end of time so the CEO of Persimmon can get another £75 million for building cheap and shoddy homes for first time buyers.

Do you mean they shouldn't pay back the arrears at all? I'd have thought allowing them longer was a good idea! No private landlord is just going to let them off the amount they owe. I think most will apportion it over the next few months to their monthly payments. Not demand it in one go.

 

Landlords are as a whole a far more protected class, the few that cannot financially bear this can ask for mortgage holidays or whatever, and the government can find a way to support those who really need it. The economy is sure as hell not going to be restarted if the vast majority of renters are in needless debt, because then they won't be spending anything on other things. Even a little extra on monthlies (we're talking like £100+/pm extra at least given the ridiculous price of rents in the UK, and that WILL cripple anyone without savings, which is a lot of renters). So yes, yes I do mean they should not be paying back the arrears. It wouldn't be right or sensible even for those that can pay.

 

The minorities of landlords aside, landlords do very little useful labour (no, turning up once every few months for maintenance isn't useful labour) and the only purpose they serve is to extract money from poor people (who as a whole actually do have jobs doing useful labour) to keep them poorer. In a just society, renters do not 'owe' anything. If they had no opportunity to earn money in these months, they should rightly also have no necessity to pay, and ideally we'd do away with landlords altogether but that's going a bit beyond the scope of this argument

 

Labour's voter base is renters. This is the sort of policy they need to be flatly opposing or there is little point voting them in. These are emergency times, and the people they need to support are most certainly not landlords.

Keir Starmer has sacked Rebecca Long-Bailey for sharing an article promoting anti-Semitic views. As far as going to show that this isn't the Labour Party of the last election cycle, he's done so in one clean swoop.

Keir Starmer has sacked Rebecca Long-Bailey for sharing an article promoting anti-Semitic views. As far as going to show that this isn't the Labour Party of the last election cycle, he's done so in one clean swoop.

 

Not only that, the Momentum movement is now firmly kicked out. You felt Long-Bailey only got a job in the Shadow Cabinet to appease party politics. On a side note, it was a bloody ridiculous conspiracy that she retweeted. Glad to see he has taken some decisive action and acting upon the report that was published.

Oh wow. I kind of liked Long Bailey by Momentumite standards, I honestly don’t know if what she retweeted was true but bold move either way. The meltdowns have already begun on twitter 😬

Edited June 25, 20205 yr by Andrew.

The article has been amended now to remove any mention of the pertinent bit, and it was a long interview that she retweeted in full, and it seems what I would consider the important part of the accusation, that US law enforcement travelled to Israel, is true (though the anti-semitic conspiracy theory is thankfully not confirmed by any official report). I was all ready to condemn her for being anti-semitic but this seems very tangential.

 

That indicates to me more that he was looking for an excuse to get rid of her, I suspect for optics over ideology, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It'll probably help in the short term. The replacement should be from the left of the party though, you have to keep the broad church a true broad church.

1) She was daft to share anything that could be construed as critical bc Starmer couldn't afford to be even a little on the fence, and also bc she had proven herself to be a political rival, however...

 

2) That is not in any way shape or form an antisemitic article, unless one is conflating any criticism of any Jewish or Israeli person as antisemitic persecution.

 

Personally, I think that state of affairs is insane. How, for example, would a newspaper be expected to cover the case of the young British tourist who was sexually assaulted by Israeli men in Cyprus, if any criticism of any Israeli person is now antisemitism?

 

You can bet your bottom dollar too that the Tories wouldn't come under a fraction of the scrutiny for anything similar. Even today rightwingers all around the net are condeming Nancy Astor, known Nazi supporter,'s statue being graffitied.

Indeed, how many Tory MPs should be gone from the cabinet under those same standards or otherwise f***ups? Gove, certainly - that bookcase of his was far more egregious. Jenrick because there's currently cries to sack him all over the shop, Raab for Game Of Thronesing the knee thing up, way more that I cannot think of right now.

 

Rachel Reeves on the current Labour front bench even wrote praise for Nancy Astor, so this is obviously about more than anti-semitism.

I agree that part of it comes down to the fact he only appointed her because of his promise to give all leadership contenders a role but I think it’s one of those things where Labour comes under 10x the amount of scrutiny and criticism than an act by the Tories. He has to take action to downplay it being brought up at every opportunity, particularly at a time where focus should be on Robert Jenrick. It also shows they’re willing to take action which I think is needed to strengthen the party and their arguments whenever something goes wrong with a Tory MP. The Tories always bumble around and cover up at all opportunities and use whataboutery

1) She was daft to share anything that could be construed as critical bc Starmer couldn't afford to be even a little on the fence, and also bc she had proven herself to be a political rival, however...

 

2) That is not in any way shape or form an antisemitic article, unless one is conflating any criticism of any Jewish or Israeli person as antisemitic persecution.

 

Personally, I think that state of affairs is insane. How, for example, would a newspaper be expected to cover the case of the young British tourist who was sexually assaulted by Israeli men in Cyprus, if any criticism of any Israeli person is now antisemitism?

 

You can bet your bottom dollar too that the Tories wouldn't come under a fraction of the scrutiny for anything similar. Even today rightwingers all around the net are condeming Nancy Astor, known Nazi supporter,'s statue being graffitied.

 

It was political naivety from Rebecca Long-Bailey and by all accounts from what I read she was not performing in the role. Problem is that anti-semitism plagues the Labour Party still and they have to distance it, one to not give the Tories any ammunition from a weaker stand point and two because they lost the Jewish community, which they need to win back if they are going to have any chance of winning the election in 2024.

From what I've read RLB's actions lately have been to stand with the teacher unions against school openings, which was clashing with Starmer, but was also the correct move. She is completely politically naive in an optics respect though, I'll grant you that.

 

This seems designed to give Starmer plenty of political points to use in his next bout against the Tories, very clear contrast to be made between his zero tolerance and the Tory refusal to sack Jenrick and Cummings, and make clear a break with anti-semitism, which is good, it's good political operating. But I'm also concerned it has the long-term side effect of doing a lot of damage to the trust between him and the Labour left.

 

There's also the timing, the Israeli government is looking to occupy the West Bank and they need to be internationally condemned for that. What is also not a conspiracy theory is that the IDF does use the knee tactic against Palestinians* and are pretty generally brutal elsewise. Lisa Nandy's currently leading the Labour response to that well, but this has made the atmosphere quite electric, she'll have to be careful at a time when the Israelis need to be sanctioned.

 

*the anti-semitic bit being, so everyone understands and knows I understand, the absurd theory that there are connections between this and the start of the BLM protests with the US police training being the 'link', which is... a reach to say the least and nothing that RLB has shown any signs of giving credence to.

 

(the other thing to say is that I think the Maxine Peake article, calling people who didn't vote for Corbyn Tories no matter what they voted for, is pretty dumb as its main political point also, both factions of Labour need to stop acting like all centre and left votes are theirs by right because they do not have to be)

I understand the juxtaposition Starmer is going for — not entirely sure it's worth it long-term. This is only going to cause further division within the party when unity is still so important.

 

I don't have much to say beyond that — I'm mostly just tired. It's tiring being Jewish and watching antisemitism being used — again and again — as a political weapon. It's tiring watching (mostly) non-Jewish people explain why that isn't the case. It's exhausting to be considered antisemitic, as a Jew, for opposing the Israeli government and having left views. Exhausting.

Edited June 25, 20205 yr by blacksquare

Ugh just FO Starmer!

 

He's clearly just moved against her due to the ideology and he will replace her with a centrist bore.

 

Funny enough there's not been any talk of antisemetism since Corbyn has gone as the media done its job.

 

I understand the juxtaposition Starmer is going for — not entirely sure it's worth it long-term. This is only going to cause further division within the party when unity is still so important.

 

I don't have much to say beyond that — I'm mostly just tired. It's tiring being Jewish and watching antisemitism being used — again and again — as a political weapon. It's tiring watching (mostly) non-Jewish people explain why that isn't the case. It's exhausting to be considered antisemitic, as a Jew, for opposing the Israeli government and having left views. Exhausting.

 

 

THIS

I'm torn because although it feels like an overeaction to something that RLB (who I am no huge fan of) did which clearly did not mean to cause harm or upset, there was however probably little option for Keir Starmer in terms of seeking to make a clean break with the previous leadership of the party. Basically it was a lose/lose option and IMO he probably took the least worst option - it does however open up the wounds within the Labour party and likely damages the unity message that he was elected on.

 

Obviously this feels very unfair, and of course the BBC ran with this in its 6 lead rather than the Tory MP in the pockets of property billionaires. Thank fuck I don't fund that state broadcasting puppet anymore.

Do you think this would have made the news without Starmer sacking her though?

Do you think this would have made the news without Starmer sacking her though?

 

100%. "Labour is anti-semitic" is a long running news story so of course it would be picked up. You're never going to shred the skin if you keep blindly associating yourself with potential ant-semitism. It's political naievty and that in itself shows she shouldn't be in the Shadow Cabinet.

If I was going completely into conspiracy territory I wouldn't entirely discount this being planned strategically by both RLB and Starmer from the off. Everybody wins. Starmer projects strength, antisemitism is buried because he took immediate decisive action, RLB is unshackled from a more centrist alliance and can continue with her career elsewhere with her existing supporters, and the 'antisemitism' in question isn't really so RB won't face any kind of prosecution or career blockers as a result.

 

Strategically in terms of buffing Labour it ticks all the boxes.

Kate Green is the new Shadow Education Secretary.

 

The previous most notable thing she did was chair Owen Smith's campaign, which I thought all of Labour had agreed to forget as the very embarrassing episode it was. Doesn't really sound like party unity to me.