NM's blog

It should be The Character of the British Regime under Starmer, for Britain is not Labour or the regime. “Labour approved more arms sales than the Conservatives permitted over the previous four years…  [W]e cannot accuse Starmer of ‘inaction’ or ‘complicity’. For he is not a bystander, but a perpetrator…  [A]n adamantine commitment to upholding the interests of the powerful which sanctions even the most intense forms of violence, including the crime of genocide. “Rather than trying to resolve the war in Ukraine, Starmer proposed a major provocation: sending UK troops to the front line as part of a ‘coalition of the willing’. Rather than calming tensions with China, his government inflamed them by announcing that it is ‘ready to fight’ in the Pacific.” Palestine Action. “ The decree is without precedent in British history. Never before has the state taken such extreme measures to eradicate a protest movement. “During his time in office, environmentalists have reportedly receive...

Before he became part of the genocide supporters “Starmer wants to be thought a 'safe pair of hands', communicated above all in his commitment to the country's most conservative institutions and ideas, from NATO to sound money to royalism. He clings insecurely to the symbolic security of the flag and its metonyms, sends himself up with tryhard images of himself enjoying football with the lads and a pint, because he is terrified of being seen as anything but utterly mediocre. It's shameful to have a political enemy like Starmer , who progresses almost by default, simply because of the way the historical deck is stacked, and because of his willingness to exploit whatever evanescent advantages come his way, rather than because of any particular skill, charisma, or historical necessity of his appearance.” Good, but What is the point of using wrods that do not exist in a dictionary or online?

Faiza Shaheen, an economist at the London School of Economics, surely knows there is a  Ralph Miliband  Centre at the School. Miliband has some insights to offer on the Labour Party. Same blade / the purge Related British elections and the Gaza war

A Jacobin’s article in Capital section. Yet Capital mostly looks nationalist and patriotic, not a web of social relations and geopolitical power. This kind of capital is not connected to the Israeli war on Gaza, Gulf capital in UK, the ‘new cold war’, the stagnation of the UK economy and low productivity … ‘The Big Money’ are treated as an isolated thing that bears no relation to capitalism and the environment as one whole.  Furthermore, capital in the article has no relation with why people vote and why [will] vote Labour – the article was published before the Labour win in the 2024 elections. Why do people vote and keep voting although they know about ‘ the big money ’. Is this big money really the fundamental factor or is it the years if not the decades of interconnected social and economic factors of the British capitalism that makes ‘a government loose and an opposition doesn’t win’, thus perpetrating the power of capital, capital accumulation, an imperialist regime of terror...

Ms Blakeley admits she is writes as a Marxist. It is astonishing that she and the Tribune encourage the fragmentation of social thought . Complicity in crime (with Israel) besides hypocrisy, double standard, war on refugees and descrimination, obscene inequality … are not topics to be included in what is missing in Starmer’s manifesto.   At the time of publishing, I have not yet received a reply by Tribune to my comment.

“ In the midst of all this politicking, thousands of civilians have lost their lives as the West refuses to address the root cause of this decades-long conflict: the continued oppression and dispossession of the Palestinian people.” Oppression and dispossessions are the key aspects. It is not a ‘conflict’ though. “It is difficult for Western audiences to understand the terror and oppression to which ordinary Palestinians are subjected on a daily basis, because it is simply not reported throughout much of the media.”  As for solidarity and what can be done, I do think that the solution lays in the region, not outside it. Another revolutionary, but radical, upheaval that topples the rotten, complicit regimes in the region could bring justice to the Palestinians by changing the balance of forces. There is no solution that will come from ‘the West’. Palestinian trade unions

“The future of Britain under Starmer looks like an outdated 90s tribute act to Blairism and Thatcherism.”

I think ‘Western imperialism’ in the title is an overstretch. The article does not deal with Western imperialism. Nor does it mention economic imperialism. “Starmer’s flame-war against the left has become so extreme that, as some critics have pointed out, both Pope Francis and Amnesty International would face expulsion from Starmer’s Labour Party were they members. ”

“ There was no reference to apartheid , and no reference, even, to a fifty-five-year-long illegal occupation. Worse, he drew on racist anti-Palestinian tropes about Israel having been founded in an empty land, in wilful denial of the Nakba. To add insult, all of this was delivered in the presence of Tzipi Hotovely, the Israeli ambassador, with her own  track record  of egregious racism—including opposing Jews marrying Palestinians.”

“Sir Keir’s record shows his evolution into an unabashed authoritarian. As a young lawyer from a Labour-voting family, he dedicated significant time and energy to liberal causes, using his natural diligence to win a number of worthy cases against powerful interests […] his identification with socialists and environmentalists was always secondary to his ambition and the conformist reflexes that came with it.” A Journey to the Right

Via Andrew Burgin 03 February 2021 A resignation letter

Ishmahil Blagrove, 21 November 2020: It’s interesting how some people nowadays avoid using ‘the ruling class’ and opt for ‘the establishment’.