Keir Starmer Labour Leader

Nogbadthebad said:
She's John Ashworth's wife. The guy who, 3 days before the election last year had his 'bants' phone call with a tory mate leaked saying corbyn can't win.

Oldknow is currently a senior director at Unison.

Unison backed starmer without even holding a member ballot.
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Unite backed Long-Bailey without holding a member ballot. GMB backed Nandy without holding a member ballot. Let's not present standard stuff as out of the ordinary.
 
Nogbadthebad said:
She's John Ashworth's wife. The guy who, 3 days before the election last year had his 'bants' phone call with a tory mate leaked saying corbyn can't win.

Oldknow is currently a senior director at Unison.

Unison backed starmer without even holding a member ballot.
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Perfect post summing up the shit show that is the British Labour movement.

nimic said:
I can only imagine how that would be covered. It would have been nothing short of a second Great Purge. Bonus points for somehow working the word "gulag" into it.
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Oh yeah of course, a few on here would have piss their pants but the general public wouldn't of cared(Boris chucked out a ton of tory MP's). And it would have been beneficial for the party in the long term. Sadly the labour left is useless when it comes to taking power.
 
Silva said:
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It's also massively selectively edited

06/04/2017, 21:11 - Emilie Oldknow: Got a crazy tale for you... Apparently Karie has been telling Shadow Cabinet members that I have orchestrated the Ken situation so that KL made provocative comments and then Tom got his people on the panel to make a soft decision, all in order to embarrass JC and create a crisis.
06/04/2017, 21:11 - Emilie Oldknow: TW has heard this too
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Given the amount of actual awful shite in there, why they have to misrepresent stuff is anyone's guess.
 
Ubik said:
Unite backed Long-Bailey without holding a member ballot. GMB backed Nandy without holding a member ballot. Let's not present standard stuff as out of the ordinary.
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I was more talking about the obvious quid pro quo of her getting the general secretary position as a result.

As an aside, when you read oldknow's comments, remember that she was being paid around £70K a year for that.

Shes on more for Unison.

I wouldn't pay her a full bag of skittles for that 'intellect'.
 
Ubik said:
It's also massively selectively edited



Given the amount of actual awful shite in there, why they have to misrepresent stuff is anyone's guess.
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Yeah I've seen that going round on twitter with some high profile people retweeting. Difficult to tell whether the sharing is in bad faith or just people not reading the document properly (I'd imagine a bit of both). The quote itself appears twice in the document - once in the short form which, when taken out-of-context, implies its Oldknow stating that Watson interfered, and once in the longer form where it's clear that she's discussing a rumour about the case which had come from the leader's office.

The reason I clarify is because I read the short form and initially read it in the same way as that tweeter and was going to post it here, but read the rest of the section first and realised it didn't mean what I'd initially thought.

As you say, there's plenty of stuff in there without people getting trying to take down their preferred political targets (like Watson) using evidence that isn't there. We can't sink to this lots level.
 
Nogbadthebad said:
I was more talking about the obvious quid pro quo of her getting the general secretary position as a result.

As an aside, when you read oldknow's comments, remember that she was being paid around £70K a year for that.

Shes on more for Unison.

I wouldn't pay her a full bag of skittles for that 'intellect'.
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I mean there's always movement between unions and the party, a lot of people that were in Corbyn's office (and Formby) were Unite allies of McCluskey, for example. Also not sure what Ashworth has to do with it.
 
Classic. Anyone with any level of critical thinking could tell there was a faction in the Labour party trying to sabotage the left wing. I would be interested in seeing their affiliations and seeing do these elements of the Labour party have many of the same funders as the Tories. My bet is they have many of the same backers.

These people should be expelled immediately and legal action brought against them.
 
Sweet Square said:
British people of colour are the group Labour has for some time now taken for granted the most(It's getting worse as the party grows it's obsession with white voters in small north towns). There's no reason to vote Labour until the people mentioned in these leaks are thrown out and sadly I can't see that happening for a very long time(Starmer pick for General Secretary was Emily Oldknow)

It's also a failure of the Labour left for not kicking these arseholes out.
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Can’t see this new Labour lot caring about ethnic people of colour.

If this is the party they want, they can keep it.
 
You have to wonder if the Ashworth phone call blunder before the election was actually a blunder and not a concerted effort to undermine Corbyn. Sounds a bit tinfoil hat, but is it really with what’s just come out? Given the stuff from his wife in those documents it wouldn’t surprise me. Great repayment for the cabinet position.

Disappointed with Starmer now. He obviously knew about all this and had still reportedly earmarked Oldknow for a senior role. Still no statement from him, Unison or anyone else yet.
 
There are just too many ruthlessly ambitious careerists in politics now. As with Gove and his wife, they have true allegiance to absolutely nothing beyond their own interests.
 
SteveJ said:
There are just too many ruthlessly ambitious careerists in politics now. As with Gove and his wife, they have true allegiance to absolutely nothing beyond their own interests.
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That’s possibly what irks me the most about politics. Full of people in it purely for the prestige and the opportunity to swell their pockets. I’d wager there’s about a 1/4 of MPs in the HoC for the right reasons i.e. on the basis of sincere beliefs and principles and a wish to represent and benefit people’s lives. And it applies to all parties equally.
 
Ubik said:
How is the "emphasis" on the third point of a three part inquiry?
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Unless Bastani has other sources I don't agree with that.. I'm just drawing a contrast between the 'no stone unturned' vs 1/3 of this enquiry being 'oh shit how did this stone get turned'
 
Untied said:
Unless Bastani has other sources I don't agree with that.. I'm just drawing a contrast between the 'no stone unturned' vs 1/3 of this enquiry being 'oh shit how did this stone get turned'
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From what I gather there may be some legal repercussions for the party due to the report explicitly giving the personal details of those people who lodged complaints (I haven’t read it yet, this is just something I’ve seen mentioned today). If that’s the case then it may explain the need to investigate its release.
 
@sun_tzu is it a bit weird for you that the people in these leaked messages have pretty much the same politics as yourself ?
 
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sullydnl said:
Probably important to make clear that the report doesn't even slightly vindicate those who claimed the anti-semitism allegations were manufactured or a witch-hunt. It highlights that anti-semitism was and is a very real and serious problem within Labour.
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This suggests that at least some complaints were, if not manufactured, sent by someone who had no real interest in the party solving the problem. Since I've not read the full report, I was wonering if my interpretation is correct.

Smores said:
Nothing we didn't already know.
I can't even get worked up about this shit to be honest. Labour is in a new chapter now and i can only hope and focus on it being successful.
I do not for one second expect any reflection from the centrists and I'm certain like Brexiteers they'll pull the "it's done now we just have to move on" card.
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I'm not surprised either and I will never understand those who assumed the centrists were sincere. The person I am disappointed with is Corbyn and his aides, they either didn't know that the entire party structure was plotting against him, or did know and still did nothing about it. Either way it's incompetent.

Kentonio said:
No she didn’t, and I’m not defending her or her anti-Semitic filth in the slightest. But I think if you’re going to hold historical figures to account for their racism then you have to be consistent about it. Churchill was a racist bastard too. Vast swathes of the aristocracy and the governing classes were racist and anti-Semitic as hell. My issue is with this idea that Lady Aster was somehow an outlier. She wasn’t. Fascism had a large amount of support in the U.K. in the years before the war, and even the ones who weren’t pro-fascist were largely racist as all hell towards other ethnicities.

It just feels a bit hypocritical to call one person out for anti-semitism in the 30’s if we’re not going to call out others for blatant racism towards blacks and Asians. And let’s make no mistake, it wasn’t just bigotry, it was often support of policies that included genocide and ethnic cleansing.
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I don't know if you read my post fully, but I'm all for that last paragraph. (It's in fact why I liked Corbyn so much - he represented a fundamental break with colonial legacy).

I also think her views go a little beyond someone "of her time".
Astor wrote Kennedy that Hitler would have to do more than just "give a rough time" to "the killers of Christ" before she'd be in favor of launching "Armageddon to save them. The wheel of history swings round as the Lord would have it. Who are we to stand in the way of the future?
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I think the bit in bold is particularly chilling. But as I said before, this is not a real debate, this is about whether you give Reeves a charitable reading or not.
 
Sweet Square said:
@sun_tzu is it a bit weird for you that the people in these leaked messages have pretty much the same politics as yourself ?
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Hang on I thought I was a Tory slum lord... I honestly can't keep up with what you seem to think I am (though for watch collection alone sign me up to be Putin)
I better go back to the Wuhan thread where I'm probably a bat eating Commie
 
sun_tzu said:
Hang on I thought I was a Tory slum lord... I honestly can't keep up with what you seem to think I am (though for watch collection alone sign me up to be Putin)
I better go back to the Wuhan thread where I'm probably a bat eating Commie
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Looking at these leaks it seems possible to both be a higher up in the labour and also a tory.

But seriously you've done the whole ''ironic'' anti semitism jokes, talks of gulags, trots, calling woman mp -- ''Corbyn in a dress'' etc. Must be odd seeing labour high ups also talking the same shite.
 
2cents said:
From what I gather there may be some legal repercussions for the party due to the report explicitly giving the personal details of those people who lodged complaints (I haven’t read it yet, this is just something I’ve seen mentioned today). If that’s the case then it may explain the need to investigate its release.
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Whoever leaked it unredacted is... not going to come out of this well.
 
Chris Williamson, at it again

 
No-one should have any complaint about a section of the investigation looking into who leaked the document - the way it was done has the potential to have serious ramifications to innocent peoples' lives. The identities of victims of abuse should have been redacted, instead they're out there I'm the public sphere for anyone to see. I find it incredible that someone trusted with access to that document was either dim enough to believe it wasn't a consideration or heartless enough not to care, although I suppose given that most of the document is party staffers being dim, heartless or a combination of both I'm perhaps being a little naive.
 
Ubik said:


Whoever leaked it unredacted is... not going to come out of this well.
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Yes I’m sure the name of a Jewish Labour Officer ended up on neo Nazi websites because of this document.

This entire dossier shows to not trust people because of their politics. I’m not going to start now. Her entire thread is underplaying the scandal and trying to apportion blame back on the left. I don’t believe her “apparently”
 
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