Social media has been in uproar over now-renamed Keir Starmer’s announcement that the Labour Party will keep the two-child limit on benefits like Universal Credit. So-called “Sir Kid Starver” has briefed his front bench to hold the line over the controversial plan. However, the fuss over the policy fails to put it into context: that the Tory-created cap on benefits is little more than Eugenics, to stop poor people having kids.
Two-child limit: a devastating policy
Sir Kid Starver told BBC hack Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday 16 July that Labour would not scrap the two-child limit policy if it won the next election:
This makes me want to scream in frustration. It's heinous for the Labour party and @Keir_Starmer to keep the two-child policy, especially after his pledge and knowing 1.5 million are affected by it.#AllKidsCountpic.twitter.com/motCkcpWv0
— Ben Claimant Join a Union (@BenClaimant) July 16, 2023
As the Canary previously wrote, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) brought in the Tory policy:
on 6 April 2017. It meant the DWP would only pay Child Tax Credit and Universal Credit for two children in a family; any more than this the DWP would not count in benefits calculations.
The policy has beenĀ controversial. A court ruled in June 2017 that the policy was ādiscriminatoryā against single mothers with children under two. Then, in April 2018, another court said the cap was unlawful. This was in relation to young carers. The so-called ārape clauseā, where women have to prove theyāve been raped to get an exception to the two-child limit, also sparkedĀ outrage.
With this in mind, you’d think Sir Kid Starver would consider it wise to scrap the policy, especially given the Ā£1.3bn cost of doing this is less than half a percent of total DWP budget. But no – once a Red Tory, always a Red Tory. Moreover, shadow culture secretary Lucy Powell doubled down on Sir Kid Starver’s pledge while doing the breakfast media rounds on Tuesday 18 July:
Lucy Powell, shadow culture minister, invokes Liam Byrne's infamous note to justify Labour's decision not to lift the two-child benefit cap if it wins election
She tells @TimesRadio 'We can't do everything we want to do because, quite honestly, there's no money left'
#SirKidStarver is being pretty clear what most of us can expect from him if he wins a general election- and its absolutely nothing- #SirKidStarver represents Rupert Murdoch, the corporations and the Billionaires… pic.twitter.com/zb6bG2IZta
Note as well that Sir Kid Starver is supporting a policy that’s just a little bit systemically racist (no surprise there, given his ownracism):
Black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi families are more likely to live in households with 3+ children, so are disproportionately impacted by the two-child limit
Scrapping it would be an effective way to reduce the shocking levels of child poverty in the UK https://t.co/sR76pcBT9f
However, what most people failed to mention was that when you actually break the two-child limit down, it is dripping in Eugenics.
Sir Kid Starver: supporting Eugenics
As the Canarypreviously reported, after the Tories brought in the two-child limit, abortion rates among women who already had two or more kids increased rapidly. However:
The Canary analysed the birth ratesĀ for women by socioeconomic status; that is for the richest and poorest women.
Our research found that birth rates fell generally between 2017 and 2019. But we found the biggest falls were among the poorest households. For example, between 2013 and 2016, birth rates in four bottom deciles (10%’s of population) fell overall by 0.9%. Then suddenly, between 2017 and 2019, this accelerated to a 12.4% fall in birth rates. This fall also correlated with an 11.74% increase in abortions – and the poorest women were having abortions at over twice the rate of the richest.
What does this mean?
Well, itās hard not to look at the figures and think that the Tories intentionally designed the two-child policy to stop poor people having children. As the CPAG noted:
If these findings are related to the two-child policy, it is horrifying. Chinaās one-child policy was driven by burgeoning birth rates. We have sub-replacement fertility. There is no other country in history that has adapted social security policy to increase child poverty to reduce fertility or encourage abortion. It is a completely outrageous assault on liberty.
That is – the Tories introduced a policy to socially engineer certain groups of people to stop them having kids. This is Eugenics in all but name – and the evidence backs up that assertion. Now, with Sir Kid Starver and Labour supporting it, they’ve shown their true colours – and there’s no red anywhere to be found.
A petition overĀ Personal Independence Payment (PIP), a benefit from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), has sparked a parliamentary debate. It’s a surprising development, because the petition didn’t reach the 100,000 signatures usually required for this. However, it presents as an opportunity for MPs and claimants to publicise the huge problems with PIP.
PIP: dogged by controversy
PIP is a benefit for chronically ill, sick and disabled people. Itās supposed to help with the extra costs of living with illnesses or impairments. As the Canaryreported in November 2022, Keely Santos set up a petition calling on the government to conduct a “full review” of the PIP application process. It said that the benefit’s:
application and assessment process is inhumane and degrading. We believe Capita and Atos are not fit for purpose to be contracted as independent assessors, and that this leads to many people being unfairly denied benefits.
PIP has been dogged by controversy. From stealthĀ real-terms cuts toĀ huge rates of successful appeals, the benefit is a shambles. Also, between April 2013 and 30 April 2018, around 12 disabled/chronically ill people a day died waiting for the DWPās decision on their applications.
DWP: mismanagement
Then thereās the DWPās assessment process for PIP, which has been unfit for purpose for years. Independent Assessment Services (IAS), formally ATOS, is the company that does PIP health assessments for the DWP. However, this area of the benefit has been a mess, too. Official probes have shown ādishonestā assessment reports and high ratesĀ of appeal wins.
The DWPās management of PIP has been such a disaster that it prompted theĀ UN to say PIPĀ had effectively reduced the number of people who should have been entitled to health-related benefits, negatively impacting on peopleās living standards.
A debate that MPs must attend
So, Santos’s petition is asking the government to address all of that.
The petition also noted the high number of claimant appeals over DWP PIP decisions. Figures for July-September 2022 show that 68% of tribunals went in the claimants’ favour. They also reveal that the number of people appealing a decision in the first place went up by 119% year-on-year.
Overall, PIP is a mess. Now, thanks to Santos, parliament will debate the state of the benefit and how the DWP manages it.
The debate will take place on Monday 4 September. The Canary is encouraging everyone affected by PIP, or the DWP, to write to their MP. They should ask them to attend the debate on their behalf. You can do this via email using the Write To Them website here.
With the school holidays set to begin in the UK, the issue of child poverty has once again come to the forefront. Children who receive free school meals during term time may go without over the holidays. This leaves parents “faced with the grim choice of going hungry, getting behind on essential bill payments or taking on debt to cover” the cost. So, the People’s Assembly has announced a national day of action to take place on 22 July 2023. In the runup, it’s targeting supermarkets and the government over “gross profiteering”.
In the midst of a year of financial fear for families on low incomes, parents of school-age children are now facing the summer holidays and all the extra meals and childcare that comes with them. Too many families lack the income to cover the essentials and are already regularly going without them, including food.
She added:
Now, more than ever, they [families] will be faced with the grim choice of going hungry, getting behind on essential bill payments or taking on debt to cover it.
The Peopleās Assembly suggests little has changed since then, with the reality being that the situation may actually have worsened.
Child poverty: taking action
According to government figures, 23.8% of pupils received free school meals – a figure which “represents over 2 million pupils”. The figure is also up from 22.5% in 2022. And according to the Big Issue, the problem of child poverty likely runs deeper than those figures suggest:
Around 14.4 million people are living in poverty in the UK in 2021/2022, according to the governmentās official statistics. That is around one in five people. Around 4.2 million children are affected.
These harrowing figures were captured before the cost of living crisis took its toll on the country, driving hundreds of thousands more people into poverty.
So the Peopleās Assembly has spoken out against what it calls “obscene profiteering” from supermarkets. It says they “are shamelessly cashing in on the cost of living crisis”. The group’s day of action over child poverty will take place on the first day of the school holidays. It corresponds with a list of demands, including:
Immediate supermarket price reduction – profits must be used for lower food prices and higher wages for supermarket workers.
Government price controls on food to make it affordable for everyone.
A raise in wages, benefits and pensions to create hunger free communities!
Free school meals for all children.
According to the group itself, People’s Assembly “formed a decade ago to campaign against the Conservative Governmentās austerity program”. It recently “put on waves of demonstrations around the UK in response to energy price hikes back in February 2022″.
‘Devastating’ effects
Economist and long-standing supporter of the People’s Assembly Michael Burke said:
These demonstrations are vital and we hope that thousands will turn out across the country. Everyone should have a basic right to food & no child should be left hungry this summer. As millions of us struggle to pay our basic food bills, the government and their profiteering backers blame inflation on wage growth. However, the real crisis is food price inflation as wage growth is just a third of the 19% inflation rate of food this year.
The effects are devastating – in 2010 there were 50 Trussell Trust foodbanks. Now the number of foodbanks has reached 2600. NHS England reports a quadrupling of poverty diseases such as scurvy and rickets over the last 15 years as well as malnutrition. All this while in recent weeks Tescoās, Iceland and Sainsburyās have all reported surging underlying profits.
The People’s Assembly said it “has local groups across the UK” and “they expect thousands to turn out at the protests which will target supermarket profiteering and what the groups describe as ādeliberate inactionā from the Tory government”. Organisers added:
Weāve already been faced with 13 years of Tory austerity, services have been cut to the bone and families are struggling to survive, The Cost of Living Crisis could be brought under control by the Government, yet they are allowing gross profiteering from Supermarkets and energy companies. At the end of the day this is just the latest form of austerity as it serves exactly the same purpose – the transference of wealth from ordinary working class families to the super rich.
Peopleās Assembly National Secretary and former Labour MP Laura Pidcock said:
With 4.2 million children in poverty, the situation families are facing is grim. Summer holidays are always a particularly difficult financial time for parents and carers. Extreme wealth inequality and grotesque levels of poverty are becoming endemic in the UK and people are absolutely sick of platitudes about āhard decisionsā from both sides of the Westminster political establishment.
Campaign group Friends of the EarthScotland has exposed how fossil fuel giants like BP and Shell have been lobbying the Scottish government to use “inefficient” hydrogen technology under the guise of renewable energy. While it brings into question Scottish politicians’ agendas, it also shows how toxic Big Oil is.
Moreover, hydrogen is hardly a climate panacea – and it’s also perpetuating colonialism in the Global South.
Hydrogen: not as renewable as it seems
Many people have touted hydrogen as part of the future of renewable energy. For example, the International Energy Agency (IEA) wrote that:
clean hydrogen is currently enjoying unprecedented political and business momentum, with the number of policies and projects around the world expanding rapidly… now is the time to scale up technologies and bring down costs to allow hydrogen to become widely used…
Hydrogen can help tackle various critical energy challenges. It offers ways to decarbonise a range of sectors ā including long-haul transport, chemicals, and iron and steel ā where it is proving difficult to meaningfully reduce emissions. It can also help improve air quality and strengthen energy security.
However, this is not the whole story. As Hiroko Tabuchi wrote for the New York Times, a study from 2021 found, for example, that:
Most hydrogen used today is extracted from natural gas in a process that requires a lot of energy and emits vast amounts of carbon dioxide. Producing natural gas also releases methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas.
And while the natural gas industry has proposed capturing that carbon dioxide – creating what it promotes as emissions-free, āblueā hydrogen – even that fuel still emits more across its entire supply chain than simply burning natural gas
So, when it comes to tackling the climate crisis, hydrogen isn’t the ideal solution it seems to be. Yet as Friends of the Earth Scotland has exposed, governments like the Scottish one have been allowing Big Oil to cozy up to them over hydrogen, anyway – and at an alarming rate.
Big Oil: lobbying the Scottish government
The group said in a press release that:
Campaigners unearthed over 30 meetings with oil and gas companies where hydrogen was discussed, along with an additional 70 meetings with companies who stood to benefit from the roll out of hydrogen technology in Scotland…
On the same day (10/11/21) during COP26 as the Scottish Government published their draft Hydrogen Action Plan it organised a lavish dinner for the Hydrogen industry with 52 company lobbyists at Edinburgh Castle that FOIs reveal cost the public purse Ā£11,000. It was attended by BP, INEOS, Shell, Wood Group and Offshore Energies UK. It was hosted by Business Minister Ivan McKee and attended by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.
Then Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero Michael Matheson travelled to Rotterdam in May 2022 to speak at the World Hydrogen Summit which marketed itself as “the global platform where hydrogen deals get done.ā The two day conference had host partners BP and Shell and ādiamond sponsorshipā from Saudi oil company Aramco and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.
Shell met with then Energy Minister Paul Wheelhouse in January 2021, where the official record states Shell specifically āemphasized the importance of both blue and green hydrogen.”
In recent years, Friends of the Earth Scotland found that fossil fuel giants BP and Shell met with MSPs 17 and nine times respectively. At the same time, theĀ Scottish Government has pledged over Ā£100m to the hydrogen industry. It has refused to rule out using hydrogen from fossil fuels. The government even refers to fossil fuel derived hydrogen as “low carbon“. This is despite methane leaking during gas production, as well as the extra energy required for the carbon capture process.
Overall, Friends of the Earth Scotland says its evidences shows:
how hard the industry is pressing politicians to claim hydrogen as a climate solution despite mounting evidence that the technology is too expensive and inefficient.
Evidence shows that using hydrogen for heating our homes is more expensive and less efficient than direct electrification through technologies like heat pumps. Hydrogen is not suitable for most transport needs due to cost and how far the technology is behind electrification.
However, the use of hydrogen isn’t just a Scottish issue.
Al Jazeera reported on a study from the Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) into hydrogen and the effects on the Global South. It wrote:
its production can fuel āgreen grabbingā, or the appropriation of land and resources for environmental ends.
āA big chunk of the green hydrogen that the EU plans to use will be imported from North Africa and the Middle East,ā Belen Balanya, researcher at CEO, told Al Jazeera.
It noted a horrific instance of the forced displacement of an Indigenous community:
One example of human rights violations connected with green hydrogen projects was Saudi Arabiaās planned megacity Neom, CEO found, where German multinational Thyssenkrupp was installing a huge electrolyser to produce hydrogen for export.
āAncient tribes have been forcibly evicted from their land to make way for Neom,ā according to the report, while several residents who resisted evictions were sentenced to death.
So, not only is hydrogen not green, but the West’s extraction of it in the Global South is perpetuating colonialism.
‘Depressing but unsurprising’
Friends of the Earth Scotland climate campaigner Alex Lee said:
Hydrogen lobbyists have made a targeted push trying to persuade the Scottish Government to ignore the mounting evidence about the technologyās inefficiency and huge costs.
By incorrectly classifying hydrogen from fossil fuels as ālow carbonā, Scottish Ministers are doing the greenwashing job for fossil fuel companies. Big polluters like Shell and BP are selling hydrogen hard because it allows them to keep on drilling for fossil fuels and keep the public locked into an energy system using oil and gas for decades to come…
If the Scottish Government want to tackle the climate crisis and deliver a just transition away from oil and gas, it must cut ties with the fossil fuel industry and ban them from lobbying.
depressing but sadly not surprising to learn of the toxic financial interests behind some of the UKās biggest hydrogen proponents..
The global drive for hydrogen, which the UK seems to be at the forefront of, is coming squarely from a fossil fuel industry overwhelmingly responsible for the climate crisis.
Hydrogen is a way for those companies to do the same toxic practices that have brought the world to the brink of disaster, hidden behind a phoney green PR spin.
It is exactly this PR spin we’re seeing from the fossil fuel industry – and the Scottish government has been lapping it up. Meanwhile, hydrogen itself is no solution to the climate crisis – and globally, is often little more than a continuation of Western colonialism.
A Tory minister showed not only that a contentious government plan has no basis in fact, but also that there is no political talent in the government – as he fell apart live on Good Morning Britain (GMB) when questioned over a controversial new policy on university caps.
The limits will be imposed on courses that have high dropout rates or a low proportion of graduates getting a professional job.
Rishi Sunak’s government is doing this in response to a review launched by former PM Theresa May. Sky News noted that:
Among the report’s recommendations – which also included cutting tuition fees and more funding for further education – was an aim to reduce the number of “low value” courses leaving students with poor job prospects.
Predictably, the government has broadly ignored the cutting tuition fees recommendation – except for classroom-based foundation degrees. However, what the Tories have latched onto is stopping so many students going to university. As the Guardianreported:
The policy will limit student applications in England for the first time since the government scrapped the previous institutional numbers cap in 2015, which set off a surge in applications to selective universities.
Of course, people have kicked off about the plan. Some professionals in higher education have said the policy will hit marginalised students the hardest. Meanwhile, University and College Union (UCU) general secretary Jo Grady told iNews:
This shows how wrong Tory governmentās priorities are. If they get their way only the richest students would be able to study cultural subjects.
Sunak was able to study philosophy, the Tory government should stop trying to deny working class people the same opportunities.
It is clear they have misunderstood the value of learning and the value our members add to society.
With a backlash from the university sector, you’d think education secretary Gillian Keegan would be on TV to defend her government’s plans. However, that would take some semblance of a backbone. So instead, the Tories shoved education minister Robert Halfon on – and as quickly as he arrived he began falling apart.
Halfon: car crash 101
Halfon waffled for what seemed like 10 minutes (but was actually 30 seconds) before host Susanna Reid interrupted him – reminding the minister he hadn’t actually answered her question, which was:
which degrees are you going to cap?
Halfon said it was:
those courses that have poor-quality outcomes.
Reid asked what the definition of a “poor-quality outcome” was. Utterly predictably, the minister couldn’t give a quantifiable answer. He said the courses were those where:
a student doesn’t progress to a good job… [or] doesn’t continue the course… or complete their course.
Co-host Richard Madeley asked Halfon to define a “good job”. The minister had a remarkable answer, showing his keen insight into the complex world of educational outcomes:
if people are doing degrees they should get good jobs at the end.. but there are too many students not getting those jobs… who aren’t completing… dropping out…
So, the Tory definition of a “good job” is a ‘good job’, then. Glad Halfon cleared that up:
'There are too many students not getting [good] jobs, too many students who aren't completing, too many students who are dropping out of courses.' – Education Minister.
Under new Govt plans, universities will be forced to limit the number of students they enroll inā¦ pic.twitter.com/aZP4HNmLCM
The minister’s word-soup-with-a-side-of-alphabet-salad responses exposed the problems at the heart of the Tories’ plan. For example, as Sky News reported, the courses with the highest drop-out rates were:
Computer science
Business and administrative studies
Engineering and technology
Mass communications and documentation
Creative arts and design
But hold up. Sunak himself has in the past 18 months:
Admittedly, the Tories will probably quite happily stifle “mass communications” (namelyĀ journalism) and the “creative arts” – given their respective wars on both. But the government also wants to cap three degrees which directly tie into Sunak’s claims.
Of course, the Tories’ plan to cut uni courses is in tandem with their push on further (vocational) education. But they could do both. And moreover, this doesn’t address Halfon’s other claims about “poor-quality outcomes” linked to some degrees. For example, Sky Newsreported that:
five years after graduation… in the UK, medicine and dentistry had a median graduate earning of Ā£52,900, whereas performing arts stood at Ā£21,200.
Once again, the Tories will be attacking the arts. However, this is not a performing arts degree problem. This is a capitalism problem where people in the creative sectors are notpaidenough – like many people doing degrees:
Worth noting that this presents the degree as to blame for the rise in student debt & poverty, the mass wage suppression & precarious work lives caused or enhanced by this Govtās own policies. Come on! https://t.co/qsMxoMvN1E
— Dr Ali FitzGibbon fitzali@mastodon.ie (@Fitzali) July 17, 2023
Tory class war continues
The minister’s catastrophic interview – repeating ‘good jobs’ and ‘poor-quality outcomes’ until he nearly blew his sphincter – sums up the state of the government. The Tories are allegedly running the country while having some of the most stupid ministers in government of recent times.
Halfon is a prime example: unable to deviate from his press release (ironically written by someone possibly with a degree in mass communications), he falls apart when even GMB‘s warm and fluffy corporate hacks do some primary school questioning of him:
When even Richard Madeley can demolish you in an interview, you are probably talking absolute shite. https://t.co/nyyp97FzIz
Most importantly though – and as always – if you pick away at what a Tory minister says and move past the jargon and buzz words, the reality becomes apparent: that the government’s cap on uni courses is class war:
Except that he could not name one single course that this related to. This is class war and social control by stealth The rich get educated and the well paid employment – you work to keep the rich rich#ToriesOut375#SunakOut265#GeneralElectionNowhttps://t.co/tngeyqSmmw
Not that any of this is new. From disabled peopleĀ to energy pricesĀ via housing – at the heart of successive governments’ agendas has been the battering of poor and marginalised people. Stopping us going to university, therefore keeping us out of well-paying jobs, and stopping us learning, is part of the same pattern.
Activists from the group Green New Deal Rising have staged more sit-outs targeting Labour Party MPs. The group has vowed to protest outside their offices every week until the party takes “bold action” on the climate crisis.
It follows several instances of what the group describes as Labour “backsliding” on its environment promises – as well as people from the campaign disrupting a speech by Keir Starmer:
BREAKING: We just disrupted @Keir_Starmer's speech to say, 'No more u-turns, we need a Green New Deal now!'
We need politicians who will take our futures seriously and tackle the climate and economic crisis facing us all.
One of the latest climate-related actions also took place outside the office of Scottish Labour MP Ian Murray. According to the group:
Similar protests were also staged in London, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, Brighton, Cardiff and across the Midlands, targeting other members of the Shadow Cabinet.
Green New Deal Rising said of the Murray protest:
Beginning at 11am on Friday, young climate activists in Edinburgh gathered outside of Ian Murrayās constituency office, urging them to commit to doing more in the face of the Climate and Ecological Emergency. The group criticised the Labour Partyās failure to adequately respond to repeated calls from young people for rapid decarbonisation, a just transition to a low emissions economy and investment in green jobs. Ian Murray is the Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland in Keir Starmerās Shadow Cabinet.
The group says it wrote to Murray’s office in advance of the protest – to which a member of staff replied. However, the group also asked if Murray still supported a Green New Deal. So far, neither he nor his office have responded. The group said of 14 July’s action that protestors:
stayed outside for the morning holding placards and engaging with Murrayās constituents, and were met with great support from passers by in cars and on foot. āClearly, there is an appetite in his constituency for Labour to be bolder on their climate policiesā, Calum from the group said after speaking with many passers by. āIn a number of conversations, we were asked how people can get involved or whether we had a petition to signā.
‘Do more’
The Murray protest formed, according to the group:
part of a national campaign by Green New Deal Rising pressuring the Labour Party to āBe Boldā in their manifesto pledges ahead of the next UK General Election, which must be held before December 2024.
Delivers a green jobs guarantee and a living income.
Enacts a National Nature Service.
Makes polluters pay globally.
Calum Hodgson, a member of the group from Edinburgh said:
We are protesting because as Scotlandās only Labour MP, we need to see Ian Murray do more for young people in Scotland. He has previously written in support of a Green New Deal, so if heās serious about tackling the climate crisis we need him to stand up and speak out against the Labour Leadershipās current backsliding. The sit-out was a brilliant celebration of young peopleās commitment to climate justice.
Green New Deal: Labour “failing voters”
The group has drawn attention to the fact that:
Keir Starmer announced Labourās āGreen Industrial Strategyā earlier this year, but has already U-turned on a number of issues in response to fossil fuel lobbying, by reneging on his commitment to prevent new North Sea oil fields from opening and delaying the timing of green investment. Polls consistently show that the electorate are in favour of more action on environmental issuesas well as public ownership.
Molly Shelton, a member of the national campaign group, said:
With broad support across the UK for a Green New Deal, Labour is failing voters and refusing to show leadership on climate. We need to rapidly reduce emissions, tax polluters and create millions of good, unioned, green jobs. With the election on the horizon, thereās never been a better time for Labour to prove itself by taking bold action and implementing our well-researched and entirely reasonable demands.
Green New Deal Rising says it will return to Labour MPs’ offices again next Friday.
On Sunday 9 July, the ordinarily uncurious Laura Kuenssberg identified the problem with Labour‘s economic policy – namely that it’s just austerity under another name. This week, the presenter actually laughed out loud as Keir Starmer‘s pathological inability to answer a straight question confirmed that yes, Labour’s plan is more of the very thing that got us here in the first place:
"Do you believe public services in this country need more money if they're going to improve?"
It’s tempting to call Starmer a joke. However, it’s hard to laugh when you remember that we’re the ones who’ll get hit by the punchline.
Kuenssberg: just answer the fucking question, Starmer
Starmer’s latest appearance on BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg was another example of his complete inability to answer the most basic questions. As the BBC reported afterwards:
Asked repeatedly if he believed public services needed more money and if a Labour government would offer this, Sir Keir would only say: “A Labour government will always want to invest in its public services.”
Before the third time he robotically repeated this line, Kuenssberg asked:
Do you believe, after years of saying austerity has damaged the public sector [Kuenssberg laughs before continuing]; do you believe that part of the answer has to be more money?
Without registering any sense of shame or emotion, a dead-eyed Starmer repeated the stock response they’d loaded into his mainframe that morning:
A Labour government will always want to invest in its public services.
What does it even mean? Is this how he answers every question? If his wife asks ‘have you done the dishes, Keir?’, does he respond:
Keir Starmer will always want to have done the dishes.
It’s unclear why Starmer is like this. Perhaps a witch cursed him, and he now finds himself unable to present as being trustworthy or honest. Maybe Batman’s archrival the Joker kidnapped his family and put Starmer under strict instructions to act like a boring ham-robot lest the Clown Prince of Crime do something less than mirthful to his auntie.
“Reform” was another phrase Starmer kept getting stuck on. As the BBC noted:
Sir Keir insisted his promise to reform public services was bold.
Presumably this reform will have some sort of cost attached – unless we’re to believe that after 13 years of austerity-driven “efficiency savings”, Starmer has devised a strategy that will enhance performance by 3,000% while simultaneously costing less than we pay now?
Of course he fucking hasn’t.
Not unless he’s invented a device that will allow public sector employees to work in their sleep. Saying that, though, going off how listless he seems in these interviews there’s a chance they’re using such a device on him. There’s an even greater chance that the “reform” he’s talking about is more privatisation, given that Labour’s already made it abundantly clear that’s what the plan is – something these interviewers are criminally failing to press him on.
‘Economic responsibility’
As reported in the Observer some hours before the Kuenssberg interview, Starmer said:
Taking seriously the foundations of economic responsibility may not set peopleās pulses racing, but the new country we can build on top of them will do.
Ah yes, so we’re back to throwing around terms like ‘responsibility’ and ‘big boy politics’ and hoping nobody digs deeper than that. Unfortunately for Mr Responsibility, folks have dug a little deeper.
As the Canary covered last week, journalists like Raoul Martinez have reported that far from being a ‘foundation of economic responsibility’, austerity as an ideology has led to the slowest recoveries on record whenever a country has been foolish enough to implement it. He also noted that:
President Herbert Hooverās austerity response to the 1929 economic crash was followed by the Great Depression.
The historical failure of austerity as a response to economic crises resulted in a widespread consensus among academic economists that, since recessions are caused by a reduction in demand (and when there is no room to offset cuts by reducing interest rates), cutting spending only makes the situation worse. The textbook response to economic downturns, as any student of the subject knows, is to increase spending. By spending more in the short term, a government can reduce public debt faster because smart spending creates jobs, increases tax revenues and releases more people more quickly from dependency on the state.
However, as governments began to embrace austerity, a handful of economists produced research telling them exactly what they wanted to hear.
Ironically, Keir ‘Big Boy Politics’ Starmer also said the following in the Observer piece:
Frankly, the left has to start caring a lot more about growth, about creating wealth, attracting inward investment and kickstarting a spirit of enterprise.
But is Starmer “kickstarting a spirit of enterprise”, or is he flogging what remains of an already well-flogged horse?
We won’t get a response to that question, obviously. If Starmer were to provide a straight answer his head would explode.
For the few
You’d be forgiven for screaming into a pillow at this point. Unless you’re one of 200 rich dudes who’ll benefit from another round of austerity, of course – in which case you’re welcome to take a celebratory trip to wherever the new Epstein Island is. Oh, and speaking of which:
Extent of Jeffrey Epsteinās contact with frmr Minister & Starmer adviser Peter Mandelson is laid bare in newly released report that describes repeated meetings between the disgraced financier & the politician he knew as āPetieā 1/2 https://t.co/QfvufCcqGA
Is it unfair to suggest that Starmer’s key motivation is the betterment of the rich simply because he has connections to the most oily of plutocrats? Oh – and also because he’s worked hard to ensure that wealthy donors primarily fund Labour – donors who notably wanted nothing to do with the party when its aim was to minimise the gap between rich and poor?
No, it’s not unfair at all.
Interestingly, according to Bloomberg,Ā Labour invited several Tory donors to breakfast the other day. It was apparentlyĀ in an effort to woo them. So, it makes you wonder – when these wealthy donors ask a question, does Keir Starmer give them a straight answer?
We think he probably does. Moreover, we all know exactly what that answer will be – namely whatever they want to hear.
On 14 July, Swedish police said they had granted permission for a protest which would include burning holy texts outside the Israeli embassy in Stockholm. The controversial protest, which has raised concerns around respect for religious beliefs, is scheduled for Saturday 15 July. It comes just weeks after a man set fire to pages of the Quran outside Stockholm’s main mosque.
So far, there seems to be little information on who has organised Saturday’s protest. According to Agence France-Presse (AFP):
The demonstration would include a burning of the Torah and the Bible… in response to the Koran burning protest and would be an expression in support of freedom of speech, according to the application to police.
But I don’t need to know who’s organising this ‘protest’, or why, in order to know that it is not only misguided but utterly deplorable.
Religious belief: the freedom to be
Being a religious minority living in the West is a grinding experience. This is particularly the case for Muslims. The constant superiority of Western mores and laws wears you down to the point where faith itself becomes an act of defiance. Few issues reflect a supposed ‘clash of civilisations’ between the West and Islam more so than the conflict between religious belief and freedom of expression.
The trope that Muslims’ desire for respect towards their religion violates Western ‘freedom of expression’ constantly remains under the surface. It also rears its ugly head periodically. We saw it with the Rushdie Affair, with the Danish cartoons of Prophet Muhammad, with the Charlie Hebdo debacle. And now we see it with the burning of the Quran in Sweden.
Proponents of free speech will say that freedom of speech includes ‘freedom to offend’. What they don’t realise, however, is that for people of faith, degradation of their religion and its associated symbols goes far beyond mere ‘offence’.
For those who adhere to a religion, it forms a part of their identity. It’s not simply something they believe – rather it constitutes an integral part of who they are. Freedom of religion, therefore, isn’t just the freedom to be religious. It is the freedom to be. The freedom to affirm what you believe to be true, and to live your life accordingly.
I don’t expect non-religious people to understand the pain felt by a person of faith when seeing their faith being humiliated. However, the issue here is not respect for beliefs, but respect for human beings. What we are asking for is not reverence towards the Quran, the Torah, or the Bible. It is basic human empathy.
Hierarchy of freedoms
Stockholm police stressed that in line with Swedish legislation, they granted permits for people to hold public gatherings and not the activities conducted during them. Carina Skagerlind, press officer for Stockholm police, said:
The police does not issue permits to burn various religious texts – the police issues permits to hold a public gathering and express an opinion.
What an absurd rationalisation. Following the Quran-burning, Swedish authorities said they had opened an investigation against the perpetrator over “agitation against an ethnic group”. Which begs the question: if they know the desecration of religious texts constitutes “agitation against an ethnic group”, and they know the protest they approved involves this action, why are they approving it?
The behaviour of authorities in these situations demonstrates a truth I’ve come to know all too well: freedom of expression is only protected for those agitating against marginalised and oppressed groups of people.
Meanwhile, people from marginalised groups must stick together. It is for this reason, and also due to being a person of faith, that I will always condemn the desecration of sacred texts. If you can’t make your point in a way that shows empathy, especially for marginalised groups, then I have no interest in what you have to say.
Prime minister Rishi Sunak has made a final offer on public sector pay. Or so he says. The PM said in a speech that the government would be not budging on future strikes, but also that pay rises would not come from taxes or cuts. Barring a magic money tree, how’s he going to manage this, then?
It seems he plans to put the cost on migrant workers. This will be done through visa fees and charges for using the NHS that migrants will have to pay. So, in other words, he’s punishing migrants for the Tories own poor economic management.
Thatās why the decision has been difficult, and why it has taken time to decide the right course of action. I can confirm today that we are accepting the headline recommendations of the pay review bodies in full, but we will not fund them by borrowing more or increasing your taxes.
According to Politico, the money will also be made up by freezing recruitment in some departments:
The government promised that a rise in visa fees and extra charges on migrant workers using the health service will meet some of the cost while there will be a civil service recruitment freeze in the Ministry of Defense until March 2025.
The planned pay rises will go to doctors, police officers, teachers, prison officers and senior civil servants. But, Sunak maintains that further rises will make the cost of living crisis worse. Yet not everyone is convinced.
Reactions
The reaction among different militant sectors has been varied. Teachers, for example, look set to end their strikes. But doctors look ready to press on. Unite general secretary Sharon Graham told reporters:
I think weāll be seeing a new wave of industrial action.
It also has to be said that many people simply did not believe there would be no cuts. Diane Abbott applauded the workers for beating the Tory government, but said services would be cut to fund the rises:
Striking workers have done well to force the government into this. But with real pay falling it is not enough to prevent staff leaving. And Sunak is butchering services to fund it.
Sunak offers at least 6% pay rise to millions of public sector workers https://t.co/HIPlZxxezX
Meanwhile one trade unionist warned Sunak about his tone, reminding him workers are also voters:
MEMO to Rishi Sunak. PM, you need to pause & reflect on the tone & content of your "Pay award" speech today. The arrogant contempt in which you appear to hold public sector workers does you no credit. Just bear in mind, the workers to whom you addressed your remarks are voters.
One immigration lawyer pointed out that fees and surcharges for migrants in the UK are already some of the steepest in the world:
Rishi Sunak has proposed partially paying for salary increases in the public sector by increasing immigration visa fees and increasing the immigration health surcharge… Our fees are ALREADY some of the highest in the world… A brief thread on this…. 1/
Sunak’s attempt to look like the adult in the room has fallen flat. There will certainly be cuts in one form or another. And putting an additional burden on hard-pressed migrants is just quintessential Toryism.
As for striking workers, having forced this concession, this is exactly the moment to recommit yourself to more militant trade unionism.
Bastille Day marks the storming of the notorious Parisian fortress and political prison in 1789. The day is meant to embody the liberal and egalitarian values of the French Republic. On 14 July that year, locals rose up against monarchy and totalitarianism. The French stormed the fortress, killed its governor, and freed prisoners from their cells. With this in mind you’d think the French ruling class might be a little more reflective. But not so, at least as far as president Emmanuel Macron is concerned.
This year the holiday comes after weeks of riots against the Macron government following the police killing of a Muslim and immigrant teenager. Macron himself chose to mark the day in a less traditional fashion: signing an arms deal with a repulsive xenophobe, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi.
Riots in Paris
On 17 June, French police shot dead a 17-year-old know as Nahel M. Protests started in Toulouse, Dijon, and Lyon before spreading to Paris. Thousands of riot police were deployed onto the streets.
Macron’s response to the killing and the protests was typical of his flip-flopping centrism. As the Canary’s Maryam Jameela wrote:
Macron has said that the protests are āunjustifiable.ā Earlier, however, he alsoĀ said that Nahelās deathĀ was āinexplicable and inexcusableā. So, which is it?
Macronās response is typical from those who, thanks to footage of killings, are forced to acknowledge the horror, without allowing for criticism of a system that equips murder at traffic stops.
Macron’s death-dealing
This is the climate in which Macron has chosen to sign an arms deal with Modi, himself no stranger to authoritarian, xenophobic violence, Modi, who is also close to Rishi Sunak, allegedly had a BBC office in India raided recently.
It followed the airing of a documentary on a 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom by supporters of his Hindu nationalist party. This was in Gujarat when Modi was provincial governor. As the Canaryreported at the time:
In fact, theĀ BBC documentary on Modi cited a British foreign ministry report claiming that Modi met senior police officers and āordered them not to interveneā in anti-Muslim violence.
Around 45,000 police have been deployed nationwide in France ahead of a ceremony for Modi. Firework sales are banned by the government following protests around the police killing. The Indian leader will be awarded the Legion of Honour after a military parade.
Complex colonialities
But, beneath the ridiculous pomp, the profit motive drives proceedings. The Indian defence ministry on Thursday announced its intention to procure another 26 French-made Rafale fighter jets as well as three more Scorpene-class submarines. The deal is expected to be worth billions of euros.
Bastille Day has long since been militarised and stripped of its radical origins. The fact that an event meant, at least in spirit, to mark the fraternity of humanity is reduced to an arms deal sweetener says it all.
Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip ErdoÄan and the US are embroiled in a row over fighter jets. It’s not unusual for states to haggle and bargain over deals for military hardware, even if they are allies. But this disagreement says something important about NATO.
Al-Jazeerareported that the fighter jet deal is not unrelated to Turkey acquiescing to Sweden’s entry into NATO:
Hours after Ankara said it would allow Stockholm into the bloc, the US said it will proceed with the transfer of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey, theĀ likely trade-offĀ for Ankaraās green light.
However, the outstanding multi-billion-dollar deal for F-16 fighters is not complete yet. ErdoÄan told reporters that, ultimately, the decision would be down to Turkish parliament. Turkish parliament, however, is on recess until October.
Alper Coskun, a former deputy permanent representative for Turkey to NATO, told Al-Monitor:
We’re not as close as we thought whenever Erdogan initially made the statement that he will greenlight this
Coskun seemed to suggest ErdoÄan was dragging his feet over the issue to ensure progress on the fighter deal:
While Erdogan has greenlit this, what he greenlit is sending it to parliament.
Coskun said ErdoÄan “will be signalling to the US that unless there’s progress on the F-16s, it might be more difficult for parliament” to approve Sweden’s membership.
US jet denials
The US officially denies that the jets are related to the slow progress on Swedish NATO membership. However, according to Al-Monitor, US officials accept the two are related. Furthermore, America is also trying to use the deal to leverage Swedish membership:
But privately, US officials told Turkey that Sweden’s stalled NATO application was the primary obstacle to congressional approval of the long-delayed $20 billion sale, sources close to the Turkish government said.
Given that NATO likes to portray the appearance of unity, not least with the Ukraine war raging, the hold-up is significant. The fact that it is an arms deal, rather than some point of principle, which seems to be dictating if and when a new member can join arguably captures the essence of this military alliance.
UK defence secretary Ben Wallace has railed against the idea that the UK is an Amazon shopping service for weaponry. His comments were aimed at Ukraine, whose officials he said once confronted him with a shopping list of arms.
But there’s a problem with his claim that the UK isn’t simply Amazon for arms and ammunition. It’s that the UK sort of … is Amazon for arms and ammunition.
Even a brief investigation shows that the UK would sell lethal military hardware to anyone, including your nan if she had the money. This includes people with appalling human rights records, and I don’t mean your nan there. In fact, customers include nations on UK human rights watchlists and states which are long-term rivals.
Ukraine summit
Wallace was speaking ahead of a G7 summit to discuss Ukraine joining NATO. He told reporters he wanted to see more gratitude from Ukraine for British support. He also said he had told Ukraine before that their demands for arms in their war with Russia must be carefully framed:
You know, my counsel to the Ukrainians is sometimes, āLook, you are persuading countries to give up their own stocks and yes, your war is a noble war and we see it as you waging a war not just for yourselves but for our freedoms’.
And he said of British contributions to the war effort:
We are not Amazonā¦ I told them that last year, when I drove 11 hours to be given a list
Arms emporium
One can spend all day debating the Ukrainian approach to lobbying for support. But one thing is clear: if Ben Wallace doesn’t want the UK to be treated like arms and ammunition Amazon, it could try being be less like Amazon.
UK military support for Ukraine has been belligerent from the start of the war. The Canary has reported on the dangers and risks inherent to the government’s commitment to arming Ukraine. In fact, we only recently reported on arms giant BAE System’s nefarious plans to turn post-war Ukraine into an arsenal.
Then, we must consider that arms licences to Saudi Arabia and Israel since 2015, for example, come to Ā£8.2bn and Ā£472m respectively. This is despite serious human rights concerns about both countries. Interestingly, UK governments have also approved Ā£103m in arms sales to Russia and Ā£304m to China since 2008. This is despite the latter two being long-term power rivals of the UK and its allies.
And we note that all the countries mentioned here (and many others the UK has licenced arms to) feature on the government’s own human rights priority list. You can use Campaign Against the Arms Trade’s (CAAT) export data tracker to compare.
So, Wallace might not like the UK being seen as a sort of weaponry Amazon by Ukrainian leaders, but in reality, that’s what it is. This country is nothing more than a Supermarket Sweep for dictators, albeit with Ben Wallace rather than Dale Winton urging eager shoppers around dank aisles of exploding death.
Hospital doctors in England staged the biggest walkout in the history of the NHS on Thursday 13 July. The strike action over pay and staff retention involves an unprecedented five-day stoppage.
Moreover, this is the latest in eight months of industrial action across the NHS, which has been reeling from over a decade of Tory cuts.
Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn tweeted his support:
Trade Unions Congress worker Shelly Asquith reported that doctors are saying “more than half their pay goes on rent and they’re burnt out”:
Paid a visit to the brilliant junior drs at my local hospital on strike for 5 days with @theBMA for a credible pay offer
They were telling me more than half their pay goes on rent and theyāre burnt out, donāt want to leave the NHS but colleagues are and itās getting harder. pic.twitter.com/GzrKSNlWXd
Nurses, ambulance staff and other medical workers have all joined picket lines in recent months.
The industrial action by junior doctors – those below consultant level – will run until 7:00am on Tuesday 18 July.
It comes against a background of walk-outs across the economy from train drivers to lawyers over the past year, as people in the UK battle the cost-of-living crisis.
Impact on patients
Mainstream media and the government have been raising concerns about the strikes posing a threat to patient safety. However, speaking to BBC Breakfast, the British Medical Association’s (BMA) Junior Doctors Committee chair, Vivek Trivedi, said that patients:
like us.. want a credible workforce to be able to look after them. They don’t want to have to wait up to two years, and in some cases even more, for things like clinics and surgeries, and they’re furious at the government for allowing this situation to develop.
It's not the junior doctors who are being unreasonable. Solidarity with @_VivekTrivedi and all his colleagues who are on strike today. pic.twitter.com/BkBT8XAAuD
Moreover, Trivedi and BMA co-chair Robert Laurenson said in a statement:
The complete inflexibility we see from the UK government today is baffling, frustrating, and ultimately destructive for everyone who wants waiting lists to go down and NHS staffing numbers to go up.
Around a record seven million people were waiting for treatment in April, with nearly three million waiting more than 18 months, according to the BMA.
Pay restoration
Junior doctors have been campaigning for the government to restore their pay to 2008-9 levels in real terms.
One handmade sign at the picket line at Bristol Royal Infirmary read “It’s not a payrise, it’s pay restoration”. Meanwhile, placards at picket linesat other hospitalsalso called for “pay restoration” for doctors.
The BMA’s Junior Doctors Committee says medics have effectively had a 26% pay cut in real terms in the last 15 years, as salaries have failed to keep pace with soaring inflation.
The government claims that backdating their pay to reflect inflation since 2008 is too costly, and has instead offered an extra 5%.
Laurenson and Trivedi said:
Today marks the start of the longest single walkout by doctors in the NHS’s history, but this is still not a record that needs to go into the history books
We can call this strike off today if the UK government will simply follow the example of the government in Scotland and drop their nonsensical precondition of not talking whilst strikes are announced and produce an offer which is credible to the doctors they are speaking with.
Similar stoppages in June and April resulted in massive disruption, with hundreds of thousands of hospital appointments and operations rescheduled.
Strike Map has posted a thread for people wishing to support doctors at hospital picket lines:
A campaign group led by chronically ill and disabled mothers has launched a ‘Charter of Rights’. It is in relation to how social services and family courts treat them and their children. However, the charter shouldn’t be needed in the first place – as all the campaigners are ultimately calling for is the respect and implementation of their fundamental human rights. Sadly, with discrimination in social and child services rampant, these mothers and their allies have little choice.
Social services: providing a wholesale marketplace for children
The stateās adoption of children has effectively become an industry in recent years. However, not all mothers and caregivers are subject to social services taking their children from them. This is because the state is disproportionately targeting women the system marginalises ā be it due to ethnicity, class, disability, or chronic illness. It shows that systemic racism, ableism and classism pervades a service that is supposed to support children, not snatch them from their mothers. And the driver for all this is private profit.
Adoption and care in the UKĀ are industries where children are worth huge sums of money to private companies.
However, one campaign group is fighting back against this discrimination with a plan that outlines just what needs to change.
A disabled mother’s charter
The Disabled Mothersā Rights Campaign (DMRC), part of campaign group WinVisible (Women with Visible and Invisible Disabilities), has drafted the charter. Organisations that have endorsed it include:
The Alliance for Inclusive Education.
Camden Disability Action.
Inclusion London.
The English Collective of Prostitutes.
Global Womenās Strike.
Women with lived experience of disability and social services have created the charter. It covers:
What support the state should provide chronically ill and disabled mothers with.
The promotion of their human rights.
Ensuring social services and courts’ systems are accessible and public.
What councils, social services, and the family courts must do to end the discrimination and abuse of power disabled women face at these institutions’ hands.
If you speak to women affected by social services, it becomes clear just why this charter is so sorely needed.
Forced adoptions due to disability: not the exception
5News did an investigation with Support Not Separation and DMRC. It found, for example, that social services are 54 times more likely to take the children of learning-disabled parents into care. 5News also found:
in the last three years, almost five-and-a-half thousand times where a parent’s physical disability was a factor in a child being taken into care.
One person 5News spoke to was Jean. Social services took her two-year-old daughter off her in a forced adoption. However, they failed to consider Jean’s chronic illness, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, when making the judgement – and an appeal later said social services should have done so.
I’d grown up being told I was adopted. I had always been told you [Jean] weren’t capable of looking after me… that you just wouldn’t have been a good parent.
This was clearly not the case. Jean and Tye are now reunited:
So, rightly, DMRC said in a press release that the charter is “urgently needed”. This is, according to the group, also at a time when:
Disabled families are disproportionately targeted by cuts in support services, poverty-line benefits and the cost of living crisis, in particularĀ disabled single mothers andĀ Black and Brown families.
Poverty is conflated with ‘neglect’ and children are removed from loving families, with over 82,000 children now in ‘care’…
Profiteer companies such as the Hesley Group are charging councils millions each year runningĀ residential homesĀ where children who are disabled /of colour are neglected and abused.
A sorely-needed charter
The charter has six very clear points:
Women with disabilities have a right to family life ā to start a family and keep our children.
DMRC said:
Our children have a right to be raised by their mother and family, and not be denied her love and care due to disability prejudice.
“We have a right not to be discriminated against”.
DMRC said the state and system must not discriminate against mothers:
just for being disabled, of colour, immigrant, LGBTQI+, working class, single, on benefits, survivors of violence and abuse, or [because] we grew up in care.
“Support services under the Care Act and Children Act must be obligatory”.Ā
DMRC said:
We must be given information about how to get that support, and get non-discriminatory assessment of our needs as a family.
“All meetings and hearings in āchild protectionā and/or family court proceedings must be made accessible”.
DMRC said this was:
so we can have our say.
“Court hearings must be open to the public”.
DMRC said this was:
so courts can be accountable for the treatment we are receiving.
“Mothers, overwhelmingly the primary carers, must never be cut off benefits”.Ā
DMRC said:
We support the call for a Care Income for the work of raising children. Child poverty is state neglect not mothersā neglect.
You’d think these six points were fairly standard and already in place in the system. However, evidence of the sort 5News found, and the work of groups like Support Not Separation, show they aren’t. So, mothers and campaigners had little choice but to take action.
‘Privatised child removal’
Tracey Norton from DMRC told the Canary:
We have come together to make the situation of disabled mothers and our children visible. The universal bond between mother and child must be respected and supported financially, and in every way, not the privatised child removal industry which disproportionately takes children who are disabled/of colour and targets disabled mothers as harmful.
Another organisation supporting the DMRC charter is the Chronic Collaboration. It campaigns around chronic illness and intersecting issues. The group previously protested outside the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) and at parliament. Its founder Nicola Jeffery is a chronically ill and disabled mother who has lived experience of battling social services and the courts to keep her child. She told the Canary:
This much needed charter along with its five demands are crucial in firstly highlighting the discriminatory proportion of disabled mothers that are having their children taken into care, and secondly the complete lack of financial support disabled mothers can be subjected to – often leading to state-sanctioned poverty.
The charter and its demands, as simple as they may seem in an open, democratic country are so often being neglected here in the UK, and around the world. This has led to constant discrimination against disabled mothers with an often-automatic, systemic attitude that disabled women are unfit mothers – and are therefore penalised simply for asking for help or support.
Social services: not fit for purpose
In the end, the Charter of Rights serves to outline just how the system should treat chronically ill and disabled mothers. DMRC has done an excellent job of drawing together people’s lived experience and turning it into an accessible, succinct call to action. However, the group shouldn’t have had to do this in the first place.
The fact that in 21st century Britain, chronically ill and disabled mothers – along with other marginalised yet apparently ‘protected’ groups – are treated in the same way as they were in the times of eugenics, is damning. Sociologist Angela Frederick argued in a paper that the legacy of eugenics for marginalised women persists to this day. However, she summed up by saying:
Despite the gains of the disability rights movement, disabled women still receive undue scrutiny about their right to mother. Instead of asking whether or not disabled mothers should have children, we should be asking how we can help their families to thrive.
Surely, this and the system’s adherence to DMRC’s charter aren’t too much to ask?
Featured image via Disabled Mothers’ Rights Campaign
More evidence has emerged showing just how inaccessible the UK rail network is for many chronically ill and disabled people. It comes amid the scandal of the government-backed train operators’ plan to close the majority of ticket offices at England’s stations.
Britain’s train network: not completely accessible
The Office for Rail and Road (ORR) is the government’s independent regulator – specifically here, of train travel. It has released its annual report into passengers’ experiences of the rail network. The findings for chronically ill and disabled people were not good.
Part of the report looked at the Passenger Assist scheme. As the ORR wrote, this:
is a service that enables passengers with disabilities, or other people who may require help, to book and receive assistance to enable them to make their rail journey. Rail companiesā participation in Passenger Assist is mandated through the regulatory requirement to have an Accessible Travel Policy (ATP) approved by the Office of Rail and Road (ORR). The purpose of Passenger Assist is to make rail travel accessible to everyone. Passenger Assist is open to anyone who needs assistance; this could be due to a disability or long-term health condition, a temporary health issue or old age.
So, the ORR looked at people’s experiences of Passenger Assist. In its research, speaking with over 8,000 people, the ORR found that the majority of people were happy their experience. It noted that:
90% of people were satisfied with “the entire process of Passenger Assist throughout the passengerās journey”.
81% got “all of the assistance types that they booked”.
However, there was a significant number of people who experienced issues. Specifically, the ORR found that:
there are still too many passengers receiving only some (10%), or none (8%) of the assistance that they booked. This means that just under one in five (18%) did not receive all the assistance that they had booked for their journey.
It also found that 26% of people “who booked a taxi service to provide assistance to or from an inaccessible station” did not actually get it. 14% of people were not satisfied with Passenger Assist when it involved an unstaffed station.
Chronically ill and disabled people: at the sharp end of train issues
Moreover, there were specific problems for chronically ill and disabled people. For example, one disabled survey respondent said:
It took them far too long to get the equipment for the ramp to get me off the train. I then needed the toilet, a porter came but he had no key. I wet myself as I waited 15 minutes for a key to be found for the toilet.
Their experience is shown in the ORR’s figures. For example:
15% of people did not get the assistance they booked to alight the train.
16% did not get their assistance to the wheelchair area.
16% did not get assistance “to and from connecting services”.
17% did not get assistance to get “in/out of the station”.
Those whose journey experience would be made more accessible using a mobility aid or wheelchair (11%), places to rest (11%), accessible / blue badge parking (10%), seats with backs and arms (10%) and step free access (9%) were more likely to state that they didnāt receive this assistance, where they had booked it.
So, overall, the UK’s rail network is still not completely accessible. And now, train operators want to close ticket offices as well.
Ticket office closures: compounding the inaccessibility
As the Canarypreviously reported, 23% of disabled people are internet non-users. Ticket vending machines are often inaccessible. Plus, wheelchair users can only get their 50% discount on tickets from an office. So, even before disabled people get to an inaccessible station, and don’t get the assistance they booked, they’ll now have an additional barrier via train operators closing ticket offices.
The UK rail network should be accessible for all. However, it currently isn’t, as the ORR report shows. Train operators closing ticket offices will merely compound this issue.
The Guardian has published a new article on the disease myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME). However, the original copy was littered with errors. Moreover, it landed on the side of discredited medical professionals and their supposed treatments – yet failed to mention their own conflicts of interest. Overall, the Guardian‘s article was yet another hit piece on a community whom the medical establishment, state, and society have abused for decades.
ME: not all in people’s heads
Some people refer to ME as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). It is a debilitating and poorly-treated chronic, systemic neuroimmune disease that affects every aspect of the patientās lives. You can read more about ME symptoms here. The disease has been at the centre of various scandals for decades. These include medical professionals saying it was a psychological illness – that is, that it’s ‘all in people’s heads’.
Recently, one scandal involved the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE). The Canaryreported extensively on this. Essentially, in 2021 NICE was going to update its treatment guidelines for ME. It hadn’t done this since 2007. The old guidelines recommended doctors treat people living with ME with graded exercise therapy (GET) and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). Patients and medical professionals generally say GET and CBT are either harmful or ineffective in ME.
So, NICE’s new guidelines removed these – but not without delays, lobbying by proponents of the discredited treatments, and the need for protests. All this caused people living with ME anger and distress. However, some medical professionals seem hell-bent on claiming GET and CBT do work.
that the dissonance between this and the previous guideline was the result of deviating from usual scientific standards of the NICE process. The consequences of this are that patients may be denied helpful treatments and therefore risk persistent ill health and disability.
So, the Guardian reported on this. However, the article was shoddy, biased, and filled with errors – so much so, the Guardian had to correct parts of it.
It spoke as if CFS and ME are two different conditions, but then said ME is “also called CFS”.
The symptoms it lists did not include a hallmark symptom, which is post-exertional malaise (PEM) – a worsening of symptoms.
However, these were not the main problems with the Guardian‘s original ME article.
First, its use of language went against both campaigners’ and charities’ advice on ME. The Guardian used “chronic fatigue” in both the original headline and opening paragraph. This is not ME: chronic fatigue is a symptom, not an illness. The Guardian knows this – as on other occasions it calls ME ‘ME’, or ‘chronic fatigue syndrome’. It has since updated the article to use ‘ME/CFS’ and ‘chronic fatigue syndrome’.
Many patients are sensitive to the inference psychological factors such as stress may contribute to the condition and dismiss psychological treatments such as cognitive behavioural therapy
This is something the majority of patients would argue is false – and gaslighting.
Hiding conflicts of interest?
Perhaps most damningly, though, and the Guardian failed to mention that the main doctor it quoted on the new study had a glaring conflict of interest.
One of the studyās lead authors, Prof Trudie Chalder from the psychiatry department at Kingās College London, said: āThe decision to change the guideline has had a direct effect on doctorsā and therapistsā ability to treat patients. Services are no longer able to provide a full range of evidence-based therapeutic interventions.
Of course, what the Guardian failed to mention is Chalder was a researcher on the original study that said GET and CBT worked on ME patients – the study NICE removed from its guidelines.
At best, the litany of errors and bad reporting in the article could be put down to lackadaisical editorial standards. At worst, some may view the Guardian article as intentional gaslighting of people living with ME.
However, the biggest issue with all this was not theĀ Guardian‘s coverage, but the new study itself.
Psychologising the physical
The original study Chalder, White, and Sharpe worked on was called the PACE Trial. The Canary has reported extensively on how:
Overall, patients, advocates, politicians, and many medical professionals believe the PACE Trial was a con to keep ME as a psychological illness, and to deny people benefits and private health insurance. So, it is of little wonder that Chalder, Sharpe, White, Wessely, and others continue to push back against the discreditation of their research. As the Canary previously wrote:
One prominent ME doctor called… [the PACE Trial] āscientific and financial fraudā. An MP said it was potentially one of the ābiggest medical scandals of the 21st centuryā.
This new study is the latest attempt to keep ME psychological. It’s not the only thing doing this, either. Proponents of the psychologisation of ME also privately lobbied NICE to keep its old guidelines – as the Canary previously revealed.
Flawed studies, flawed guidelines
However, these medical professionals’ latest attempt to maintain their discredited status quo is limp at best – and at worst, once again catastrophically flawed. As ME researcher Dr Keith Geraghty wrote on Twitter:
For some time now, I have been saying that Evidence-Based Medicine is as much a ‘political process’ as a ‘scientific’ one: above we see authors unhappy with their star RCTs [randomised control trials] being downgraded as weak evidence, challenging the procedures of an independent NICE treatment review.
…49 author names on the 2023 ‘NICE Challenge Paper’, many wedded to a CBT Model of ME/CFS… are in fact a lobby group, and many of their points of challenge to NICE require robust and careful rebuttal, as many are factually incorrect.
We reject entirely the conclusions drawn by the authors of this analysis, and in particular their conclusion that Nice has not followed international standards for guideline development which has led to guidance that could harm rather than help patients. In developing our guideline, as well as bringing together the best available scientific evidence, we also listened to the real, lived experience and testimony of people with ME/CFS to produce a balanced guideline which has their wellbeing at its heart.
However, none of this should detract from the fact that the new NICE guidelines still have numerous issues. You can read the Canary‘s full analysis of them here. Overall, though, and as we previously wrote:
Yes, NICE has removed GET. On paper, this looks like a breakthrough, but in practice itās far from that ā and it really changes very little. Doctors could well still cause patients harm. Justice for those already harmed seems a long way off. And nothing NICE has done will begin to change the deeply-held views among some medical professionals that ME is āall in peopleās headsā.
So, with NICE guidelines still flawed, some medical professionals actively working against patients, and the media either toeing the line or making myriad errors in its reporting, what are people living with ME to do?
ME: fight the good fight
Patients, their families and loved ones, and advocates are used to media coverage like the Guardian‘s. They’re also used to the institutionalised gaslighting, discrimination, and negativity from medical professionals. People living with ME are also used to most of the rest of society, and the system and state, isolating them.
More than this, however, what the ME community is well used to is standing up for itself. People living with this disease will continue to fight for their rights, they’ll continue to push back against the psychologisation of their illness, and they’ll do all that while supporting each other, too. No amount of propaganda from medical professionals and the media will change that.
Content warning: contains descriptions of prison violence, self-harm, and suicide
Another prisoner has died in custody at Bristolās HMP Eastwood Park. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) confirmed to the Canary that an individual died in the prison on 10 June 2023.
On Sunday 9 July demonstrators gathered outside HMP Eastwood Park to mourn Taylor, another IPP prisoner. It marked one year since Taylor took his own life at the prison. According to a statement from Bristol Anarchist Black Cross, prison officers viciously assaulted Taylor just weeks before he died.
The IPP sentence has often been described as psychological torture. In fact, at least 81 IPP prisoners have died by suicide since the Labour government created the sentence in 2003. IPP sentences were abolished in 2012, but the state didn’t apply this retrospectively. Thousands of people remain in prison with no release date in site.
Under prison regulations, prison staff are supposed to be trained to use Respiratory Protective Equipment (RPE) in order to respond to fires inside prisons. The policy allows trained staff wearing RPE to enter a cell where a fire is taking place ā if it is safe to do so ā in order to remove prisoners. The prisonersā accounts suggest that this did not take place.
We contacted the MoJ about the latest death at the prison. It said that the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman would investigate it, but declined to make any comment over the circumstances.
Officers ‘use force’ to deal with self harm
It’s clear from the reports the Canary has received from prisoners over the past year, and from a scathing report from HMIP, that Eastwood Park is a deeply dangerous institution.
HMIP inspected Eastwood Park in October 2022. It found that several women were being held in bloodstained cells, that officers were not properly trained, and that they often used force to deal with prisoners self harming. Self harming was common among the prisoners, and staff’s use of force had increased by 75% since the last report. One prison inspector admitted that the conditions were the worst he had ever seen.
However, it is not just one rotten prison, or a few violent officers. The death of Keith a few miles away at HMP Bristol is an example of that. The problem is the whole carceral system, which is hardwired to dehumanise and brutalise the people it imprisons.
Our communities need to defend themselves against the violence of the prison system. We need to respond to every death in prison custody with the same grief and rage as when the cops murder people on the street. We need to come together and create a movement that can put an end to the violence and brutality of imprisonment for good.
On 5 July, Extinction Rebellion (XR) blocked access to Ffos-y-Fran coal mine in Wales. The mine is infamous for continuing to operate despite the council not renewing its planning permission last September. When police arrived on 6 July, however, it was to arrest XR members – and not the mine’s operators.
10 months of unlicensed activity
Merthyr (South Wales) Limited started operating Ffos-y-Fran, located about 25 miles north of Cardiff, in 2007. It is the UK’s largest opencast coal mine. However, after 15 years of opposition from local residents and ecological campaigners, Merthyr was supposed to stop mining on 6 September 2022. When the day arrived, though, the company simply applied for an extension and continued taking coal from the ground, causing despair for residents and campaigners.
Then, on 26 April, Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council unanimously rejected the extension. This should have stopped Merthyr completely. However, the company simply continued operating the mine, leading the council to issue an enforcement notice that took effect on 27 June and gave Merthyr another 28 days to comply. By then, though, Coal Action Network said Merthyr was likely operating Ffos-y-Fran “unlawfully”.
As a result, members of XR decided to stop it themselves.
‘Aggravated trespass’ at Ffos-y-Fran coal mine
The environmental group took its pink boat to Ffos-y-Fran coal mine’s access road and, along with at least a dozen protesters, blocked the entrance. This included “half a dozen” protesters that locked on to the boat, according to XR:
HAPPENING NOW
For over 8 months the Ffos-y-Fran #CoalMine has operated without a license releasing close to a million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere.
The authorities have failed to intervene. So WE did it.
— Extinction Rebellion UK (@XRebellionUK) July 6, 2023
Police ultimately arrested four Ffos-y-Fran coal mine protesters on suspicion of aggravated trespass. However, as one resident living near the coal mine said in an XR press release before the action:
The law of aggravated trespass is quite clear in that it must be obstruction of a lawful activity and it is quite clear that this mine is operating illegally. So, the decision will have to be made by the authorities about āWho are the criminals here?ā
On 10 July, following the blockade and arrests, XR Cardiff held its long-planned March on the Mine event:
Here at Ffos-y-Fran coalmine we demand that @WelshGovernment@MerthyrCBC issue a Stop Notice to bring this illegal mining to an end for the sake of future generations
It’s incredible that, as the climate crisisaccelerates, the state is still defending fossil capital – not just in South Wales, but also in its recent approval of a new coal mine in Cumbria. The story of Ffos-y-Fran coal mine lays this bare.
Two parties appear to have broken the law at Ffos-y-Fran, although only one of them is doing so out of compassion for life. However, one has had little more than sternly worded letters 10 months after they were supposed to have stopped, while police arrested the other after just a day.
It’s clear where the state’s interests lie, and it’s not in fostering a better world.
On 10 July, Thames Water announced a massive financial injection from its shareholders. This will, for now, keep the privatised water supplier from its rumoured return to public hands.
The company, reported to have beenĀ close to renationalisation ahead of the latest news, said shareholders agreed to provide further funding worth Ā£750m.
Sarah Bentley resigned as chief executive last month. The company has yet to appoint a permanent replacement. However, chairman Ian Marchant stated:
The additional investment announced today is the largest equity support package ever seen in the UK water sector and underscores our shareholders’ commitment to delivering Thames’ turnaround.
Too little, too late
Of course, this record package still falls short of the Ā£1bn Thames Water was looking for. That’s on top of Ā£500m it secured from shareholders in March. The company alsoĀ noted that it would need a further Ā£2.5bn of support between 2025 and 2030.
Canadian pension fund Ontario Municipal is its biggest shareholder. It owns almost a third of the group. Other major investors include the UK’s Universities Superannuation Scheme, and China Investment Corp.
The company claims that it hasn’t paid these external shareholders dividends for five years. However, that hasn’t stopped them from drawing Ā£45m in debt payments.Ā
Thames Water supplies 15m homes and businesses in London and elsewhere in southern England. What’s more, it has a complete monopoly over the region.
In spite of the fact that it supplies a captive market with a substance they literally can’t survive without, Thames Water has managed to rack up debts of almost Ā£14bn.
Environmental disaster
On top of all this, a court last week fined Thames Water Ā£3.3m for polluting rivers. It had pleaded guilty to pumping millions of litres of undiluted sewage into rivers near London’s Gatwick Airport in 2017, killing wildlife.
The utility isn’t alone in its environmental crimes, either. Britain’s privatised water companies recently pledged to make massive investments to stop raw sewage from being pumped into waterways.
To make matters worse – for the consumer, that is – reports said water bills could surge 40% by 2030. This is because the public is expected to fund infrastructure works amid mounting concerns over water quality and laxer environmental protections. So, those ‘massive investments’ are being boosted from the public pocket.
Thames Water: a study in extraction
So, let’s recap. The water supply was sold into private hands during the Thatcher years, completely debt free. Its customers have no choice but to buy from it. Still, Thames Water announced a pre-tax loss of Ā£82.6m for the last year. And, all the while, overseas shareholders have been drawing millions in debt payments.
Meanwhile, it has completely failed in the job it’s actually meant to perform – cleaning wastewater before it re-enters the environment. In so doing, it’s caused untold harm to the UK’s waters and wildlife. Compounding that fact, the public will be expected to pay to clean up the private company’s mess.
Thames Water is proof of one thing, and one thing only. Private companies cannot be trusted to safeguard the public, or the environment – they can only be trusted to enrich their shareholders.
Water is a necessity of life. The fact that its supply was privatised in the first place is a ludicrous demonstration of greed. And, over and over again, Thames Water has demonstrated that folly in action.
The Tory government has greenlit train operators to close the majority of ticket offices at stations. As is usual, bosses will do this claiming it won’t impact on passengers. Of course, the reality is very different – not least for chronically ill, visually impaired, and disabled people. So, one campaigner pulled apart the disastrous ticket office closures live on Channel 4 News.
Ticket office closures: months in the making
As the Canary has been documenting, the Tories began planning to allow train operators to close ticket offices in 2022. However, in recent weeks transport secretary Mark Harper has pressed ‘go’ on the scheme. We only knew this originally thanks to rail passenger group the Association of British Commuters (ABC).
The government has to sign the plan off, as there are regulations governing ticket offices. Of course, the arguments from the Tories and the companies include that only 12% of people buy tickets at offices. Train operators also claim that staff will be redeployed on stations.
However, campaigners, politicians, the public, and trade unions have all kicked off about the plan. The National Union of Rail, Transport, and Maritime Workers (RMT) has warned the Tories and train operators it will not “meekly sit by” and allow them to get away with this. But at the centre of this brewing scandal are chronically ill, disabled, and marginalised people.
Disabled people are not having it
As the Canary previously wrote, ticket office closures will hit disabled people particularly hard. So, on 6 July, campaigns and comms manager at campaign group Transport For All, Katie Pennick, made an argument as to why closing them is such a bad idea – and she made it brilliantly.
disabled people are so much more likely to rely upon the ticket office to make… purchases.
Why, you may ask? Well, apart from physical accessibility issues – as Pennick put it, “having to… trek up and down the platform” for a ticket machine – a lot of disabled people don’t have access to the internet:
23% of disabled people are internet non-users – they don’t access the internet, can’t book online. The alternative is to use ticket vending machines which are also inaccessible to so many disabled people – out of height, for example, for wheelchair users.
Moreover, another issue is – as Pennick pointed out – that the 50% ticket discount for wheelchair users is only available from ticket offices. However, there’s a deeper issue here, too.
Pennick summed up ticket office closures by saying:
We have Victorian infrastructure that is hideously inaccessible, we’ve got steps all over the place, and we need people to get out the manual boarding ramps, to sight-guide people through the station, to provide support for people who need it.
23% disabled people are internet non-users so canāt book online.
Ticket machines are inaccessible.
Staff provide assistance: if not in ticket office how will we find them?
If ticket offices close, thereās nothing to stop train operators from removing staff entirely! pic.twitter.com/1XyZrrvJc6
— Transport for All (@TransportForAll) July 7, 2023
More than one in 10 railways stations in Britain do not allow disabled passengers to āturn up and goā on some or all train services, according to research by campaigners.
The accessibility problems are caused by a combination of ādriver-only operationā (DOO) trains and unstaffed stations, which result in a lack of staff to help disabled passengers board their train. Some stations have no step-free access.
At worst, this lack of accessibility can be fatal.
Is a consultation on ticket office closures enough?
A train hit and killed visually impaired man Cleveland Gervais in February 2020. This was at Eden Park station in south London. As lawyers Leigh Day wrote:
He had been waiting for the train to arrive and moved closer to the edge of the platform after its impending arrival was announced because he was unaware of where the edge of the platform was.
Eden Park station did not have tactile paving at the edge of platforms. They’re often yellow paving slabs with raised bumps in them. An inquest into his death concluded that this lack of tactile paving “caused or contributed” to Cleveland’s death. Overall, England’s rail network is already dangerously inaccessible for disabled people. Ticket office closures will only compound the issue.
The government has launched a consultation on the plans. Also, as the Canary previously wrote, the independent rail regulator could intervene to stop the closures. Moreover, Harper and the Tories could stop the plan themselves. Of course, they won’t, as it will save train operators money – and acting in the interests of corporations is the Tories’ usual MO.
It is sadly unlikely the government’s consultation will make any difference to ticket office closures. Successive governments have decimated England’s rail network for decades. Privatisation has been a disaster. And now, we’re seeing the fallout from this: the rail system on its knees, and the Tories and train operators scrabbling around to save face while desperately hoarding their profits.
Disabled people are always expendable to governments – and closing ticket offices will just be the next move in the continued degradation of their most fundamental human rights.
Another Sunday, another dismal opinion piece from Laura Kuenssberg. Surprisingly, the subject of this week’s article is actually somehow less politically competent than the writer herself – said subject being Labour‘s Rachel Reeves. Labour is peddling an economic ideology it’s dubbed ‘Securonomics‘. Unfortunately for shadow chancellor Reeves, an uncharacteristically wily Kuenssberg peeled the ‘Securonomics’ sticker off the side of this ideology and revealed the words ‘George Osbourne-Grade Austerity’ written underneath.
Lower your expectations, plebs
Before we get on to Reeves, let’s make it clear that Kuenssberg’s latest piece was – as ever – right-wing propaganda of the highest order (that or the ramblings of an over-promoted political nitwit – your choice tbh). Her latest piece is titled:
Why you should not expect a cheque book election
Her argument for that is:
Voters on the left may be frustrated that Labour is promising less than in recent years, but it is harder to make big promises when there is less to go around – so we shouldn’t expect a cheque book election.
The odd thing about this argument is that there’s this thing called ‘the present world we all fucking live in’ where we tried to boost the economy by spending less on services and it clearly made everything worse. As the Trades Union Congress (TUC) wrote in 2019:
Austerity was supposed to repair the economy and the public finances.
But a decade after it was inflicted on the country by Tory Chancellor George Osborne, the UK economy is in a dire state.
GDP growth has hit a new low, employment is falling and insecure work has mushroomed. The pay crisis goes on and financial hardship has forced too many into debt.
In the same piece, the TUC notes that the standard of living fell, insecure work became more common, and economic growth flatlined. It has a graph showing that although the Tories sold austerity as the solution to the 2008 recession, it actually ended up being one of our slowest recoveries ever:
When the [2010 Conservative-Liberal Democrat] Coalition came to power, neither history nor mainstream economic theory provided any support for the claim that cuts were the only way to reduce the deļ¬cit. Cutting spending in a recession has been tried many times and ā without exception ā failed. For instance, in the aftermath of the First World War, the US, Britain, Sweden, Germany, Japan and France all adopted austerity policies with devastating impacts on their economies. President Herbert Hooverās austerity response to the 1929 economic crash was followed by the Great Depression.
The historical failure of austerity as a response to economic crises resulted in a widespread consensus among academic economists that, since recessions are caused by a reduction in demand (and when there is no room to offset cuts by reducing interest rates), cutting spending only makes the situation worse. The textbook response to economic downturns, as any student of the subject knows, is to increase spending. By spending more in the short term, a government can reduce public debt faster because smart spending creates jobs, increases tax revenues and releases more people more quickly from dependency on the state.
However, as governments began to embrace austerity, a handful of economists produced research telling them exactly what they wanted to hear.
However, journalists like Kuenssberg are now parroting what the government (and would-be Labour government) ‘want to hear’.
In their book Manufacturing Consent, Edward Herman & Noam Chomsky wrote that “money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print” in order to “to get their messages across to the public”. Back then, of course, there was usually a degree of subtlety to how those in power used the media to change public attitudes.
But now, ‘journalists’ like Kuenssberg simply tell you that “you should not expect” things to improve. The reason she gets away with it is that after decades of manufactured consent, much of the public think that ‘bad to worse’ is the only realistic direction of travel.
And speaking of bad to worse, let’s take a look New-New-Labour’s latest updates to its economic policy.
From the ashes of the old hyper-globalisation, securonomics emerges.
Okay, but what is ‘Securonomics’? She explained:
Building the industries that guarantee Britainās economic security.
Forging resilience at home, while creating new partnerships abroad.
And bringing together an active state in partnership with a vibrant market.
Securonomics means ensuring that a mum and dad in Worthing… who are doing everything right, no longer feel like they are doing āsomething wrongā.
But more than that ā they can start to take advantage of the enormous opportunities in our economies.
This is the true promise of securonomics.
Okay, but what is ‘Securonomics’? Spoiler alert: the answer is ‘gibberish’ – something that even Kuenssberg noted, as she wrote in her piece:
It is meant to sound radical, but what it means in practice is unclear.
She earlier noted:
Labour are not short of slogans about the state of the economy. You only need to glance at their MPs’ social media, or dip into the House of Commons for a few minutes, to hear one of the economic charges they are levelling against the Conservatives.
But when you look closely at the party’s actual plans, it is not so easy to spot the difference.
In the same article, Kuenssberg quotes an anonymous Labour wonk as saying:
Securonomics is extremely clever because it feels like there is a lot in there but it is not very obvious what is.
Given the stupidity of this statement, you can see why the wonk chose to remain anonymous. Given that even Kuenssberg – the UK’s shallowest political thinker – has identified the vapidity of ‘Securonomics’, it’s hard to believe that anyone will feel like there’s more there besides a subpar slogan. And that isn’t all that Reeves failed to get past Kuenssberg.
Reeves: busted by Kuenssberg (yes, you read that correctly)
In their interview on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, the host noted:
What’s interesting about this, is that the last time we had a government that said fiscal rules/spending limits were at the top of the list, the way they dealt with that was to introduce austerity.
You can’t see the video, but Reeves is wincing at this point (at least we think she is – she arguably just has resting-wince face). Kuenssberg continued, saying to Reeves:
that by your analysis – you’ve written – ‘austerity starved the economy of the investment it needs to grow; austerity failed’. But listening to you today, if spending limits those fiscal rules at the top of your list, by your logic, you might make the same mistake again.
Reeves responded:
No.
She then mumbled unintelligibly for several seconds before claiming outrageously:
This is nothing like what the Conservatives did.
We’re not going to waste time transcribing her explanation as to how the two ideologies differ, because said explanation failed to explain anything.
Arguably, by the end of it, we were even more confused than we were at the start. We suppose this is what makes Securonomics “extremely clever” – namely that when you’re listening to it being described, it makes you feel like you’re a genius in comparison to the person who’s babbling at you.
You can watch Reeves’ explanation below from 30 seconds in if you like. However, the tweet above it essentially tells you everything you need to know:
If you’re inclined to think Kuenssberg skewered Labour for being too close to the Tories, don’t be. The correct way of looking at the situation is that Reeves talked shit about austerity – something the BBC and Kuenssberg helpedsellto the public – and thus she needed taking down a peg.
It doesn’t matter how discredited austerity is; it doesn’t matter how things have demonstrably continued to worsen under it – these freaks are locked in. At this point, it’s like the ship is halfway sunk, and they’re yelling at us to bail more water in. The reason they don’t care is because they’re not on the same ship as us, and they never were. That’s why this use of the word “our” in Kuenssberg’s latest piece troubled us so much:
It’s a well-worn trope that the politicians who look after our wallets are the ones who tend to win.
Did you feel like your wallet was well looked after when the Tories won in 2015? In 2017? In 2019? We didn’t, but clearly some people did, and that’s why they see austerity as a positive.
For the rich at least, things do keep getting better. That’s who Kuenssberg is speaking to; it’s also what Securonomics exists to keep secure. And that’s why in the next election the choice is going to be between Tory Austerity or Off-Brand Labour Austerity Lite.
A group of nearly 80 public figures have issued a statement in support of activists for disrupting the UK operations of Elbit Systems – an Israeli weapons manufacturer. Elbit Systems has drawn significant controversy – not least for “marketing their weapons on the grounds that they have been “‘battle-tested‘ in the Gaza Strip” on Palestinians.
Imprisoned political activists
According to a press release from Palestine Action:
From inside Israeli jails, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement has issued a statement demanding the freedom of Palestine Action prisoners held in British jails. Six activists from Palestine Action are currently detained, and over 100 more are facing custodial sentences, for disrupting the British manufacture of Israeli weaponry.
As the Canary previously reported, one of the jailed activists is Mike Lynch-White. In June 2021, he took part in the occupation of company APPH’s premises. It is a supplier of drone landing gear to Elbit Systems. He and others covered APPH’s building in red paint, scaled the roof, and destroyed equipment so Israeli forces could no longer use it to kill people in Palestine.
However, cops and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) charged Lynch-White and two others over the action. In May, a judge sentenced him to 27 months in prison.
Solidarity from public figures
So, in response, Palestine Action organised around 80 “public figures” to release a statement. It’s in support of the imprisoned activists. The statement reads:
We demand the charges are dropped against those already incarcerated and at risk of prison over their work to disrupt the criminal production of Israeli weapons on British soil.
Signatories to the statement include:
Musicians Roger Waters and British rapper Lowkey.
Palestinian writer and activist Mohammed el-Kurd.
Professor Rabab Abdulhadi.
South African MP and Nelson Mandela’s grandson, Chief Nkosi Zwelivelile Mandela.
MEPs Mick Wallace and Clare Daly.
The group adds:
Palestine Action are calling for a day of action in support of the prisoners and the campaign to shut Elbit down on Saturday 22nd July. Elbit Systems supplies 85% of Israel’s military drone fleet and land based equipment. Recently, Elbit drones were used to assassinate Palestinians in Jenin and Gaza.
There are currently approximately 5,000 Palestinian political prisoners, including 1,083 jailed without charge or trial under “administrative detention”. Just as the arms industry of occupation is directly tied to the British weapons industry and colonialism in Palestine, the imprisonment of Palestine Action activists is part of the same framework of colonial repression. We urge all supporters of Palestine to follow in the footsteps of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement and push for the freedom of Palestine Action prisoners.
A statement from the Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement reads:
The British government currently imprisons several members of the Palestine Action movement, which takes action to challenge companies that are directly complicit in the ongoing Zionist occupation of Palestine and the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people….
Accordingly, we affirm the following:
First: We express our sincere appreciation for the efforts made by the Palestine Action movement, which led to the closure of several sites belonging to Elbit Systems, which specialises in producing drones and weaponry supplied to the fascist Zionist occupation, in addition to confronting the supply chains of the company and others that supply bulldozers and weaponry to the occupation to demolish Palestinian homes.
Second: The Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement condemns Elbit Systems and all British and other companies marketing their weapons on the grounds that they have been “battle-tested” in the Gaza Strip and throughout occupied Palestine.
Third: We condemn the British authorities’ arrest of members of the Palestine Action movement and call on all international legal and human rights organizations to take a serious position, and to take official and popular action to pressure the British government to immediately release the remaining activists, as well as to bring an end to the British complicity with the Zionist apartheid regime, from the issuing of the Balfour Declaration in 1917 until the present day.
On Monday 10 January, campaigners announced that Elbit ā IsraelāsĀ biggestĀ private drone maker ā willĀ closeĀ its Ferranti factory in Oldham. The company has sold Ferranti business despite aĀ massiveĀ Ā£6m drop in resale value.
The shutting down of Elbitās Ferranti factory in Oldham is the culmination of years of campaigning by local organisers in solidarity with Palestinians and Kashmiris.
The victory in Oldham should be a reminder of how powerful the combination of community organising and militant direct action can be.
And ā for me ā it reminded me of the people Iāve met whose lives have been torn apart by Israeli drones, and who have been calling for these factories to be closed down for years.
Activists from campaign group Open Cages protested outside 30 Lidl stores across the UK following the release of animal abuse footage. The images were recorded by a whistleblower from a Birchwood farm. The farm allegedly provides chickens to the supermarket brand, but Lidl has denied this – a source of further controversy given recent “indisputable evidence” which shows otherwise.
The leaked video can be viewed here. Viewers should be aware it contains disturbing images of animal abuse.
‘Crushed to death’ for being in the way
Protesters gathered at 30 Lidl stores on Saturday 8 July. These included locations in London, Bristol, and Glasgow:
A press release from Open Cages said:
From Penzance to Glasgow, Lidl faces the ire of animal welfare groups fighting to improve the welfare of the 1.2 billion chickens farmed for meat each year in the UK. The latest claim and counterclaim in the battle revolves around recent undercover footage passed onto Open Cages showing poor welfare standards and illegal cruelty on a chicken farm linked with Lidl. The footage shows:
Chickens being run over and crushed to death. Workers admitted on camera that the abuse is routine and āpart of the job.ā
Major welfare problems. Lame, dying and deformed birds are filmed being tossed like waste into wheelbarrows.
The farm manager confirmed that the chickens āgo to Lidl.ā
According to Open Cages, “Lidl originally denied any involvement with the supplier”. However, the group said that “indisputable evidence has since emerged” which proves that Birchwood farm chickens, owned by the 2 Sisters Food Group, were on sale at branches of the supermarket as recently as June 2023. Below is one such example:
Open Cages explained on its campaign website that the packaging contains the slaughterhouse identification “GB 2037”, which corresponds to a facility owned by 2 Sisters.
The group added that:
Lidl also lists the supplier in its own internal documents which were discovered by campaigners. Lidl is being accused of ādeceptionā as well as tolerating animal cruelty.
‘Retailers like Lidl are not telling the truth’
Tom Herok is the whistleblower who recorded the undercover footage. He joined protesters outside Lidl’s Tottenham Court Road branch in London:
He told Open Cages:
Iām protesting because retailers like Lidl are not telling the truth. I worked in one of Lidlās chicken supplier farms for 2 months last year, and I saw things I wouldnāt want anybody to see – birds who were clearly run over simply because they got in the way of a forklift – dying and deformed birds tossed aside like rubbish – I donāt know how Lidl cannot be moved by these images.
The group is now challenging Lidl to “sign up to the Better Chicken Commitment, an accepted improved welfare standard for the chicken industry backed by the RSPCA and supported by the UK government“. Other retailers and food businesses signed up to it include:
Marks & Spencer.
Waitrose.
KFC.
Subway.
According to Open Cages, Lidl has “signed up to the commitment” in France, “but not in any other country it operates in”. The group argued that “signing up to the welfare standard would alleviate many of the welfare problems witnessed by Tom”.
The ‘horror’ for chickens under Lidl farms
CEO & co-founder of Open Cages Connor Jackson said:
Tomās footage reveals the true horror of life on one of Lidlās chicken supplier farms – it has got to be seen to be believed. Naively, I hoped Lidl might put their hands up and admit that things need to change. Instead, I was shocked by such blatant deception about an issue that we Brits care deeply about. As the largest retailer of chicken in Europe, Lidlās lack of accountability and the abuse of these animals has got to stop.ā
In June, Lidl responded to the allegations, saying:
The farm and supplier in question does not supply Lidl. We take animal welfare extremely seriously and have long been committed to increasing welfare and traceability standards throughout our supply chain.
At the same time, Jackson commented:
Lidl claims to have cut ties with this farm. But that won’t solve the problem. These are the exact, ruthlessly intensive, and poor conditions on practically all Lidl chicken supplier farms because that’s what Lidl demands in its own policies. That’s why we have seen identical scenes of animal suffering in Lidlās chicken supply chain all across the UK and the world, regardless of the company or region. This will continue behind the scenes until Lidl adopts Better Chicken Commitment standards.
Featured image via James Chapelard – Open Cages, and additional images via Chapelard, Colin Moody, and Dan Phelan
Jeremy Corbyn’s ascendance to the leadership of the UK Labour Party in 2015 offered hope for a revival of the British left. With decades of experience and principled opposition to war and privatization under his belt, Corbyn was uniquely positioned to bring the Labour Party back from its neoliberal turn. But this was not to beājust five years later, Corbyn was ousted from the Labour Party and his supporters were purged. The political opposition to Corbyn was accompanied by a media villification campaign that conflated support for Palestinian rights with anti-Semitism. Ultimately, the question of Labour’s support for Israeli Apartheid was successfully wielded to isolate and expel Corbyn and his supporters. Asa Winstanley joins The Chris Hedges Report for an autopsy of Corbyn’s leadership.
Asa WinstanleyĀ is an investigative journalist living in London who writes about Palestine and the Middle East. He has been visiting Palestine since 2004 and is originally from south Wales. He writes for the award-winning Palestinian news site The Electronic Intifada where he is an associate editor and also a weekly column for the Middle East Monitor. He is the author of Weaponising Anti-Semitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn
Studio: David Hebden, Adam Coley, Cameron Granadino Post-Production: Adam Coley
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Chris Hedges:
When the socialist Jeremy Corbyn became the leader of the Labour Party in Britain in 2015 and mounted a grassroots campaign in 2017 to become the British Prime Minister, the ruling corporate elites along with the war industry panicked. They conspired with the Israel lobby to mount a vicious campaign of character assassination against Corbyn and his supporters accusing them even if they were Jewish of antisemitism. Corbyn has long been a champion of Palestinian rights.
The media did its part to crucify Corbyn as a bigot while Labour Party officials ruthlessly purged the party of Corbyn’s supporters. Corbyn was eventually driven out of the party in 2020 after the snap election loss against Boris Johnson. The neutralization of Corbyn is an ominous precedent. The purging of Corbyn and his supporters effectively emasculated the left within the Labour Party. This was its goal. The unholy alliance between Israel, the war industry, and the Corporatist raised the question of whether it is possible in Britain or the United States to reform the system from within.
Joining me to discuss these issues is Asa Winstanley, an associate editor and reporter with a website, Electronic Intifada and the author of Weaponizing Antisemitism, how the Israel Lobby brought down Jeremy Corbyn. Let’s begin with who Corbyn was and how he gained such support within the Labour Party. Because there’s a democratic process within the Labour Party whereby the members actually have the capacity to have their voices heard in a way that is not true in either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party in the United States.
Asa Winstanley:
Yeah, great to be with you, Chris. Yes, that’s right, there were changes to the Labour Party’s rules in 2015. The Labour Party was previously quite undemocratic, but the rule changes made it more democratic. It made it easier for anyone really to vote in parties internal elections. Wasn’t quite as open as the Democratic and Republican primaries in the US where anyone can essentially register to vote as a Democrat or a Republican and then vote in the primaries.
But it made it easier. It meant that not only were there Labour Party members could vote in the elections, but also anyone who was, you just had to pay three pounds basically to become a registered supporter of the Labour Party. It just made it a lot easier and it gave the members a lot more say. The percentage of the electoral college as it were within the Labour Party that went towards members and supporters as opposed to the MPs who would choose the leader, was increased. It meant that the left wing candidate won, which had never happened before.
Chris Hedges:
We should be clear that the Labour Party under Tony Blair transformed itself into a neoliberal version. Much like Clinton did to the Democratic Party. Labour, which traditionally had been a political bulwark for the working class, no longer was. It was a very different party from what it was at its inception.
Asa Winstanley:
Yeah, it was ostensibly still a socialist party on paper. But in reality it was the party of Tony Blair, which meant it was the party of privatization. It was the party of war. I first got my political education during the early ’90s after the 911 attacks and the invasion of Afghanistan being involved in the anti-war movement. To me at that time and to so many other people, the Labour Party was the war party. It was the party that was helping George W. Bush to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.
Jeremy Corbyn becoming the leader of the Labour Party, was the last possible thing you could imagine. Because he was in the Labour Party, he was a Labour MP at that time. But he was on the back benches. He was basically rebelling against his party leader. He was voting against the Iraq war. He was voting against privatization. He was voting against dismantling of the welfare state and things like that. He would be on our demonstrations, he’d be leading our demonstrations. He’d be doing the speeches against the Iraq war and crucially, he was part of the Palestine solidarity movement as well.
Chris Hedges:
The attacks against him began almost immediately. You write that Corbyn had barely arrived as Labour leader in September 2015 before a senior serving general in the British Armed Forces warned The Sunday Times that there would be a mutiny of Corbyn were elected Prime Minister. I’m quoting. “There would be mass resignations at all levels and you would face the very real prospect of an event which would effectively be a mutiny, the general said. Feelings are running very high within the armed forces.” You would see a major break in convention with some generals directly and publicly challenging Corbyn. He said the army just wouldn’t stand for it. I think people would use whatever means possible, fair or foul to prevent that. That’s just unbelievable. Was that the first real savo against Corbyn?
Asa Winstanley:
It was one of the early ones, absolutely. I think that took place before even he became… Wait, I could see the footnote now in my book. It was just after he became leader. It was one of the very early mutiny’s. What makes Corbyn different from even someone like Bernie Sanders, who he has a lot in common with, is that he was, and he is very much an anti-imperialist in a lot of ways. He’s very strong on foreign policy. He was sometimes known and described as the foreign minister of the left.
He voted against every war including the war in Libya. He was somebody who was very critical even of the British security services. He was involved in trying to campaign against apartheid South Africa at a time when the British government was supporting apartheid South Africa. He was involved in trying to overturn miscarriages of justice in campaigns like the Birmingham six, and which involved the collusion of security services. He was somebody who was in the North Ireland. He was campaigning for the end of the British occupation of the North of Ireland and he brought Jerry Adams to parliament at a time when-
Chris Hedges:
We should just for our American viewers, this is the political wing of the IRA.
Asa Winstanley:
Right. At a time when the IRA was involved in a armed struggle against British Armed Forces. Jeremy Corbyn was trying to negotiate an end to that armed conflict by bringing the political wing of the IRA into parliament. I suppose what you could call the British deep State had a long account against Jeremy Corbyn. There’s a long record of British Intelligence Services trying to spy on and infiltrate, not only left wing groups, but even left wing MPs including Jeremy Corbyn and his allies.
This was quite a very early and very open signal by a serving British senior, serving British general. He wasn’t named by The Sunday Times, but there’s no doubt about the credibility of the source because that’s exactly the sort of source that The Sunday Times has in military intelligence sources like this and that they base most of their reporting on. It was a very clear signal that if he became Prime Minister, there’d be steps taken against him.
Chris Hedges:
2008, a snap election is expected and two newspapers report that Corbyn has been quote, unquote “summoned” for a quote, unquote, “facts of life talk with the head of MI 15” and a quote, unquote, “acquaintance meeting with the head of MI-16.” These are domestic and foreign intelligence agencies. But that also was a fascinating moment when the deep state again sent signals that Corbyn was unacceptable. Can you talk about that?
Asa Winstanley:
Yeah. This was at a time when, as you said, it was a time of great political instability in the country and it was a period when there was a snap election expected at any time. Corbyn was the leader of the opposition. He was brought in for a meeting with MI-5 and MI-6 and it was supposed to be a secret meeting. It’s supposed to be a top secret meeting. Corbyn has talked about this. He later talked about it. He later talked about how it was very clear and it was made very clear to him and his staff that they were not to talk about the meeting at all.
That it was top secret, as you would expect with the heads of the intelligence services. Well then they proceeded to leak those meetings, They leaked them in the way that you described. That he was summoned for a quote, unquote “facts of life meeting.” That essentially they’re trying to put their foot down and trying to say, just in case you did become Prime Minister, you’re going to have to change all your anti-war ways and you’re going to have to go along with what we say.
Corbyn then later talked about that and about how it had been leaked deliberately by them as a way to undermine him. That they were putting out this idea that he was not fit for office. Not fit for high office. That he was some sort of danger to national security. The British press went along with this all along. Matt Kennard, a friend of mine, investigative journalist for Declassified UK. He put out a really good article studying this.
That he found 34 articles, I believe he put out his article in, I believe it was 2019, towards the end of 2019, and he looked at all of the reporting against Corbyn. He found 34 articles that had been openly sourced by MI-5 and MI-6. The domestic and international, effectively Britain’s FBI and CIA. That 34 of these articles had been sourced openly by MI-5, MI-6, and the military. In these articles, they’re openly stating according to military sources or according to intelligence sources, and these articles all portrayed Corbyn as a threat to quote, unquote, “national security.” That’s what they were doing openly. Very clearly within the national media, sending out these very clear signals against Corbyn. We can only imagine what they were doing secretly.
Chris Hedges:
I want to talk about the US because this is from a leaked audio recording obtained by the Washington Post. Then CIA director Mike Pompeo in a private meeting with the Israel lobby, said that the US government could stage its own intervention to stop Corbyn from becoming Prime Minister. This is the quote from Pompeo. “It could be that Mr. Corbyn manages to run the gauntlet and get elected.” Pompeo said, “It’s possible. You should know we won’t wait for him to do those things to begin to push back. We will do our level best. It’s too risky and too important and too hard once it’s already happened.” You even have the US government making in private, threats that they will prevent Corbyn from becoming Prime Minister.
Asa Winstanley:
Yeah. It’s pretty crazy. It’s so reminiscent of things like Operation Gladio and the CIA intervention in the Italian elections after the Second World War. It’s pretty crazy stuff. Again, this is what they were doing fairly openly. Yes, this meeting was in private, but it made its way into the Washington Post.
Chris Hedges:
Let’s talk about the weaponization of antisemitism. Which they used very effectively to destroy Corbyn and also to purge the party. What they went after were leftists within the party. The irony is that people they purged were in many cases or several cases, actually Jewish. 2018, three Pro-Israel, British Jewish newspapers publish identical front page editorials claiming that a Corbyn led government posed quote, “an existential threat to Jewish life in this country” due to the quote, “carbonite contempt for Jews and Israel.” You had clearly the forces, the intelligent forces, the military, the corporatist opposed to Corbyn. But the public truncheon that was used to bring him down was antisemitism. That’s what you do such a good job of chronicling in your book. Explain how the process worked.
Asa Winstanley:
It was really devastating. It was a really effective campaign. You have to hand it to the Israel lobby. They did it. They did it quite successfully. The main way they did it was to target Corby’s movement. His secret of his success was that he was an insurgent candidate for Prime Minister. That was his superpower, was that he had hundreds of thousands of people joining the Labour Party or rejoining the Labour Party. Probably many people had previously left during the Tony Blair years.
Who again, as you mentioned, was someone who was very much of the same sort of tendency as Bill Clinton. This so-called third way where we’re not conservatives, but we’re not socialists either. We’re a third way. A lot of these grassroots activists have left the party. In that period, because they were opposed to his policies of privatization, his policies of war, but also just because of the lack of democracy within the party, within the Labour Party. It was really hollowed out during the Tony Blair years.
It was really centralized in many ways. The Jeremy Corbyn era led to renewed hope that there could be democratization of the party. That there would be a new mass movement bringing hope really to the country. Bringing hope to working class. Bringing hope to these popular movements against racism, against war and so forth. The Labour Party membership had decreased so much over the years, and now it’s decreasing again. But in the Corbyn years, it went up to over half a million people.
It became the largest political party in Western Europe. It was absolutely huge. It was approaching 600,000 at one point. Then what happened was, this weapon of antisemitism became such a useful tool for the right. As you state, I think it’s important to note that it wasn’t only the Israel lobby, it was all these forces working together. The whole of the British establishment press, the whole of the corporate press and the British establishment in general was united against Corbyn.
But the unique weapon, the most powerful weapon against Corbyn was this weaponized antisemitism where essentially manufactured and fabricated forms of, or exaggerated forms of antisemitism were brought up and misportrayed in this way. Where first of all, they tried attacking Corbyn himself. That didn’t work so much at first because Corbyn has this long record of being an anti-racist. That record includes acting against antisemitism, against real antisemitism, which does exist from the right.
That wasn’t so effective at first. It later on became effective. But what then became really devastating was it was a really useful tool to divide the movement. These 200,000 people or more that joined the party just essentially to vote for Corbyn and to bring in something to change to the Labour Party, they were picked off one by one. His most prominent supporters within the party were attacked as anti-Semites falsely. Ken Livingston, for example, the former mayor of London, a Labour left-winger and rebel in his own right.
Who had ended up having to run against Labour. He did so successfully in the Tony Blair era because like Corbyn, he was very much a gad flight to Tony Blair. He achieved many things in power as mayor in London. He brought in all these left-wing policies. He was somebody who was in the ’80s, was involved in local government in London and supporting anti-racist causes and a supporter of the gay community at a time when it was quite unpopular in the country. When things that are now considered very mainstream.
Despite his long record, he was attacked as an antisemite because he was saying there was all these headlines about how Corbyn Corbyn’s movement was antisemitic. It was essentially all an attack on his record of solidarity with Palestinians, which was always misportrayed and smeared as antisemitism. Which is done all the time by Israel and it’s supporters. As we’re filming this, it’s going on against Roger Waters, the founder of Pink Floyd. They’re smearing his show as if it’s antisemitic. Corbyn’s supporters were essentially one by one picked off in this way, and eventually in the end they got him.
Chris Hedges:
Let’s talk about the role of Israel. Because as you point out in the book, you have these front groups in Britain purporting to represent British Jews with extremely close ties to the embassy. Some of those individuals actually came out of the embassy itself. Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, becomes involved also in the smears against Corbyn. Let’s talk about Israel’s role in this.
Asa Winstanley:
This is really important because there was actual involvement of the state of Israel itself. We saw, for example, when we talk about the Israel lobby, what do we mean? Well, it’s not one monolithic entity, as you know very well, Chris. It’s a a network, a diffused network of different organizations which work together. They work in coordination with each other for the most part. Occasionally they fall out with each other. You get 10 things like J Street, which it was supposed to be a more liberal Zionist organization, but is ultimately a Israel lobbying group.
Then you get APAC, which is nowadays very openly sort of Trumpist. Occasionally they will have falling out and they will be competing against each other. But by and large, these organizations work together and crucially most of them coordinate their activities with the state of Israel itself. With the Israeli embassy or with entities within the Israeli government itself, ministries within the Israeli government itself. There was one particular ministry which is now been folded.
Supposedly disbanded, but in reality folded into other Israeli ministries called the Minister of Strategic Affairs. Which was essentially another spy agency, really was what it was. It was a semi covert entity stacked with former military intelligence and other forms of Israeli spies. This was the entity which was really involved in attacking Corbyn. Several of these Israel lobby groups are in Britain, are Israel lobby groups that consider themselves to be liberal Zionist or even supposedly left-wing Zionists.
Several of them are actually within the Labour Party itself. Most notably, and obviously you’ve got Labour Friends. The way that Israel lobby works in the UK is a little bit different from the US. There’s no exact equivalent of APAC. There are some groups that want to be the equivalent of APAC, but they’re not as big. But the main way the lobbying is done is through groups within the two or three main political parties.
There’s a conservative friends of Israel, which obviously is the ruling party. There’s a Labour Friends, and there’s even liberal Democrat friends of Israel. Liberal Democrat being the third party, which is sometimes in coalition government. These groups are incredibly close to the Israeli embassy. The Al Jazeera, the Arab, the Qatari satellite channel did a really important, and I cover this in a chapter of the book, and I know you are very familiar with it as well in your reporting, Chris.
The Al Jazeera’s investigative unit did a really important undercover documentary series in 2017 about this. Their reporters infiltrated the British Israel lobby, especially Labour Friends. What they found was, in public Labour Friends says, “Oh, well, we’re just normal Labour members who we happen to support the state of Israel, the apartheid state of Israel.” Although obviously they deny it’s an apartheid state.
But in reality, what the undercover journalists found was that they actually work very, very closely with the Israeli embassy. The Labour Friends is essentially a front group. One of their staff members whose name is Michael Rubin, who’s now the director, who’s then a junior employee of Labour Friends of Israel, but is now the leader of Labour Friends. He was caught on camera in that investigation saying that they speak to the Israeli embassy quote, unquote “most days.” We like to have Labour Friends as a separate identity to the Israeli embassy. Because it helps us to get into places where we wouldn’t necessarily be able to do as Labour Friends of Israeli embassy was the way he put it.
Chris Hedges:
I only have four minutes left, and I want to talk about the role of the media. We should also be clear that Al Jazeera did a similar undercover operation in the United States on the power of the Israel lobby in the United States, which Israel managed to block broadcast. It never was broadcast on Al Jazeera. A pirated copy was up on Electronic Intifada. I hope it still is, because everyone should watch it. It’s quite disturbing. But let’s talk about the role of the media, because they amplified this smear of antisemitism. Every time they interviewed Corbyn, you have examples in the book, they just hammered him and hammered him and hammered him. Even times not even letting him answer. But they were a major part in this character assassination, or they played a major part.
Asa Winstanley:
That’s right. Yeah. I opened the book with a really quite good example, early example of that by Channel four News. Now, channel four news is well known in the UK as the Liberal TV channel, as the Liberal News program. It doesn’t have that much advertising on it. It’s subsidized by the state in a similar way to the BBC, although it doesn’t quite have the budget of the BBC. But it’s well known as a liberal news program. But they were really adamantly against Corbyn. They were really quite vociferous against him. The liberal media in general was really his worst enemy.
Chris Hedges:
The Guardian was awful.
Asa Winstanley:
It was. Even their news reporting was just very, very anti Corbyn. Nevermind the op-eds, the opinion pieces and so forth. The Guardian was really, really strongly opposed to him. It just showed that when it came down to it, they were really more about their advertisers.
Chris Hedges:
What happens? He’s essentially his own supporters are purged and right down to the lowest levels. Initially, you’re right, the senior leadership supported him is purged. But local groups are purged from Labour. Really ruthlessly down to the grassroots. He’s bereft of support within the party, in essence Labour, by the time he challenges Boris Johnson. By that time Labour has gutted or destroyed his own campaign on purpose.
Asa Winstanley:
Yeah. There was a really blatant form of internal sabotage to the point where there was Labour MPs who were really working against their own campaigns. Some of them did actually lose their seats. But it was so important to them that Corbyn not win, not become Prime Minister, that they’d rather lose their own seats. We saw that. There were several Labour MPs who actually left the party and tried to start a new party, which I forget the name of. It’s in the book. It was such a forgettable project that it was very clear that it was just a sabotage project to try and stop Corbyn winning. To the point where there was money set aside, leaked documents later showed there was money set aside. Labour Party money to work against the Corbyn’s Labour Party. It was an internal sabotage. It was very, very extreme.
Chris Hedges:
The same thing happened to George McGovern, the Democratic Party hierarchy. They again, had liberalized the rules by which candidates could get votes or support. The same thing. They joined forces with the Republican Party to destroy McGovern. Corbyn, of course, has now been pushed out of the Labour Party as an independent. When he stands for reelection, he’s still sitting in the House of Commons. When he stands for reelection, he actually will be challenged by a Labour Party candidate. I want to thank the Real News Network and its production team, Cameron Granadino, Adam Coley, David Hebden, and Kayla Rivara. You can find me@chrishedges.substack.com.
Everyone’s favourite right-wing libertarian dickhead Kate Andrews was once again on BBC Question Time (BBCQT). As always, the alleged economist-turned-alleged journalist was discussing the NHS. Of course, as is usually the case with Andrews, her passive-aggressive demeanour and weasel words masked her actual agenda – but only just.
Kate Andrews: manipulative figures on BBCQT
Andrews was discussing the NHS on BBCQT during the week of its 75th birthday. She summed up by saying:
I think politicians across the political spectrum have done a great disservice to the public by pretending… the NHS is the envy of the world. It’s not, and it hasn’t been for a very long time.
what good is it to say free at the point of use if you can’t see your GP?
Her use of figures was manipulative, to say the least. While the UK does have the sixth-highest spending of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) members as a share of GDP (as Andrews claimed), that’s not the whole story. In fact, UK spending per person, and overall cash spent, is lower than the so-called EU14 average (EU members prior to 2004). UK spending per person is also lower than most other Western countries.
Of course, Andrews also fails to mention the reasons why the UK spends so much on the NHS yet it’s still in crisis. For example, as openDemocracy uncovered in 2014, health bosses were spending at least Ā£10bn a year on administering the NHS’s internal market – that is, where private companies can bid for services.
An NHS mixed model: not what it seems
So, her answer to the chaos in the NHS? Getting the private sector more involved (and spending even more money on administration, presumably):
We need to be much more realistic about using the private, independent, and charity sectors for provision
Andrews argued the model would be a mixed one – with the state and private/other organisations working together. She pointed to Europe as an example of this. Andrews named:
France, Germany, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland…
as examples of her mixed model but where the system wasn’t ‘privatised’ and outcomes were better. Bear in mind, the UK has had a mixed model for the last decade – with private companies bidding for, and running, NHS services. Oddly, it’s since then that some people’s health outcomes and NHS performance have become worse. How strange that Andrews failed to mention this.
Of course, what she also failed to mention was that in many of these countries, people pay tax or insurance towards healthcare but then also have to pay extra on top for treatment (like France and Switzerland) or additional insurance (like GermanyĀ and Belgium). Sweden is an outlier, having a system like the UK.
The point is, that while these countries’ health systems are all free at the point of use, these systems are still two-tier: that is, the more money you have, the better quality treatment you get. This is the case in France, Germany, and Switzerland.
So, poor people in these countries don’t have access to the same healthcare as richer people. No surprise, then, that Andrews is pushing this model for the UK.
Andrews: a libertarian shilling for the free markets
As one Twitter user pointed out, the Canary has covered Andrews and her links before:
Kate Andrews, "Politicians have done a great disservice to the public by pretending and coming to this fake consensus that the NHS is the envy of the world. It's not." #BBCQT
From The Canary, "Kate Andrews is a prominent lobbyist for private healthcare companies. " pic.twitter.com/avNIce7Rz5
Andrews is a prominent lobbyist for private healthcare companies. Andrews is currentlyĀ news editor for the Institute of Economic Affairs [IEA], a hard-right thinktankĀ which promotes the shrinking of the welfare state. Before that, she was with theĀ equally hard-rightĀ Adam Smith Institute. As a spokesperson forĀ Republicans Overseas UK, it was Andrewsā job to sell the ideology of the US Republican Party to Britain. And everyone knows how the Republican Party feels about taxpayer-funded healthcare.
According to transparency advocates Transparify, the IEA is one of Britainās āhighly opaqueā think tanks which seeks āto shape public debates and influence politics and policiesā in the UK…
As Transparify has previouslyĀ reported, the IEA has one of the worst records for financial transparency.
Andrews is no longer with the IEA. Today, she’s economics editor at the right-wing libertarian Spectator. And in the past few weeks, she’s written a flurry of articles along similar lines to her BBCQT position. The point is that Andrews’ calls for a mixed-model NHS hide the reality of her position.
For her, free markets are king. If poor people don’t get such good health care, it’s their fault for being poor. And while Andrews might believe the NHS should be free at the point of use, she clearly thinks a two-tier system where the rich get better treatment is acceptable.
Despite her softly-spoken words on BBCQT and claims of ‘universal healthcare’, Andrews is quite happy politicians have left the NHS on its knees – because the private sector is already swooping in.
Disabled and marginalised mothers are coming together to fight back against social services‘ institutional discrimination against them. They’re doing it not only to protect their children and themselves but also to push for the support to which they’re entitled.
The stateās adoption of children has effectively become an industry in recent years. However, not all mothers and caregivers are subject to social services taking their children from them. This is because the state is disproportionately targeting women the system marginalises ā be it due to ethnicity, class, disability, or chronic illness. It shows that systemic racism, ableism and classism pervades a service that is supposed to support children, not snatch them from their mothers. And the driver for all this is private profit.
Adoption in the UK is little more than a wholesale marketplace for children. Itās easy to see why those controlling it target marginalised children. When the price tag on aĀ childās head is Ā£100,000, private companies will want the ones that either get them the easiest sales (dual heritage children) or easiest wins (children of chronically ill and disabled mothers who donāt always have the capacity to fight). Social services, medical professionals, and courts are complicit in this. They do the bidding of these private child snatchers without a thought for the impact on mothers and their kids.
However, one campaign group is fighting back against this discrimination.
Disabled mothers have rights
Tracey Norton is the coordinator of theĀ Disabled Mothersā Rights CampaignĀ ā part of campaign group WinVisible (Women with Visible and Invisible Disabilities). The group aims to bring ādisabled mothers togetherā to fight against the state taking their children away. The group told theĀ CanaryĀ it is fighting to:
stop the cruelty and discrimination we face from Council social services and the family courts taking our children away.
It also wants:
the support from official agencies which we are entitled to by law.
— Support not Separation (@NotSeparation) March 1, 2023
Trinity from @AfricanGr speaking at the picket. Cristel @woc_gws is looking on and holds a placard, Take away our poverty, not our children. Mothers' poverty is State neglect, not neglect by mothers! pic.twitter.com/pzxkP1XtZh
— WinVisible (women with disabilities) (@WinVisibleWomen) July 5, 2023
Now, the Disabled Mothers’ Rights Campaign is taking things a step further.
Reclaiming their rights
The group is launching a “Charter of Rights” on Wednesday 12 July:
Event: Disabled mothers speak out & launch Charter of Rights. Wed 12 July 1-3pm @ Crossroads Womenās Centre & Zoom. Disabled women are not unfit mothers! End discrimination by social services & the family courts. Implement mothersā and children's rights. https://t.co/2vhyHgalLPpic.twitter.com/UstTrMn50I
— WinVisible (women with disabilities) (@WinVisibleWomen) July 3, 2023
Disabled women are not unfit mothers. End discrimination by social services and the family courts. Our legal rights ā and our childrenās ā must be implemented! DMRC has come together to make disabled mothers and our children more visible and to raise our voices in the disability movement and in the community generally. The Charter of Rights aims to spell out what we are entitled to and what councils and the family courts must do to end the discrimination and hostility we face, especially if weāre also single, of colour, working-class, LGBTQI+, a victim of domestic violence…
The event on 12 July will let people affected by social services and adoption come together. The group wants to discuss what mothers can do to protect themselves and their children and how they can reclaim the support they are entitled to from the state.
Tracey told the Canary:
We have come together to make the situation of disabled mothers and our children visible. We are launching a Charter of Rights which will spell out what support we are entitled to, and what councils and the family courts must do to end the discrimination and abuse of power we face at their hands, especially if weāre also single, of colour, immigrant, working-class, a victim of domestic violence, a sex worker and/or were in care as children. The universal bond between mother and child must be respected and supported, financially and in every way, not the privatised child removal industry where disabled children/of colour are placed disproportionately.
The state of social services and family courts in the UK is dire. As a system, it routinely targets, demonises, and ultimately persecutes marginalised women – and snatches their children away from them. Disabled Mothers’ Rights Campaign’s upcoming Charter of Rights is the first step in redressing the balance.
Disabled Mothers’ Rights Campaign is holding the launch event at Crossroads Womenās Centre, 25 Wolsey Mews, London NW5 2DX, and it will also be on Zoom.
Pesticides in food production are overwhelmingly derived from fossil fuels and worsen the climate crisis. This is the verdict of NGO Pesticide Action Network UK (PAN UK), in a report released on 5 July. It urged action from the UK government.
Pesticides: ‘exacerbating’ the climate crisis
PAN UK said:
Pesticides exacerbate the climate emergency throughout their life cycle…
Unless we change our approach, the impacts of the climate emergency are expected to lead to an increase in pesticide use, which will create a vicious cycle between chemical dependency and worsening climate breakdown.
99% of pesticides are derived from fossil fuels. Many of the worldās biggest oil companies such as @exxonmobil@Shell and @chevronphillips produce pesticides or their chemical ingredients. Read our new report todayhttps://t.co/eiySrOFR3z
Global food systems account for more than a third of all greenhouse gas emissions, including from agriculture, according to the findings.
PAN UK published the report with fellow campaigners Pesticide Collaboration. The group said that major companies including ExxonMobil, Shell, and Chevron Phillips Chemical manufacture pesticides or their chemical ingredients. It added:
Despite this, pesticide reduction as a solution to the climate crisis has largely been ignored.
The agro-chemical industry presents pesticide use as a “climate mitigation strategy”, the report said. However, it added that such a strategy “perpetuates the myth” that:
continuous use of harmful chemicals is the only way to guarantee global food security while protecting precious habitats.
PAN UK also said the controversial herbicide glyphosate was increasingly being used. The report compared the overall impact of glyphosate to the carbon footprint of tens of thousands of long-haul flights from London to Sydney.
UK government must act
Britain has long vowed to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 to help tackle climate change. However, PAN UK said:
The UK government must take action to transform agriculture in order to avoid the worst effects of today’s climate and nature crises…
Policies addressing climate change should, therefore, include a focus on pesticide reduction as a key strategy for tackling greenhouse gas emissions and improving the climate resilience of food and farming system.
Moreover, Greenpeace UK’s chief scientist and policy director Doug Parr said:
Public understanding of the role that fossil fuel companies have played in driving the climate emergency has increased hugely in the last few years, and now we know that we need to add the pesticide industry to the list of climate polluters. Reducing the use of pesticides would be at least a double in addressing nature decline and climate crisis.
Covering the report on Medium, journalist Monica Piccinini wrote:
Some pesticides, such as sulfuryl fluoride, are powerful greenhouse gases, having nearly 5,000 times the potency of carbon dioxide.
Piccinini added:
With increasing temperatures, there is a corresponding surge in pest populations, leading to decreased crop resilience. Consequently, a greater quantity of pesticides becomes necessary.
The heightened reliance on pesticides subsequently fosters the proliferation of resistance among insects and weeds towards herbicides and insecticides. Moreover, it perpetuates the detrimental impact on human health and the environment.
SAS soldiers implicated in war crimesshould be named, a lawyer for alleged victims has said. In the opening session of an inquiry into the deaths during the Afghan war, the lawyers argued that blanket anonymity should not be given to members of the secretive unit.
One SAS soldier is said to have personally killed 35 Afghans. Legal representatives for the families claim soldiers carried out around 80 extrajudicial killings at the height of the war between 2010 and 2013.
Secret war crimes
Ministry of Defence (MoD) lawyers argued that identifying SAS soldiers would put them at risk. Further, they claimed that the MOD itself was expert enough at national security matters to say so. The inquiry is being led by lord Justice Haddon-Cave.
Defence secretary Ben Wallace made a rare move by acknowledging that the SAS were present in Afghanistan. Parliamentary convention is to never comment on special forces activity.
Allegations of a cover-up by the military have also circulated in the press. The NGO Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) said:
The inquiry also examines accusations of a systematic cover-up involving the highest echelons of the SAS and military investigators.
Referring to an earlier war crimes investigation conducted by the Royal Military Police named Operation Northmoor, AOAV said:
Upon being asked by Operation Northmoor investigators to examine the main computer server at the SAS headquarters in London, SAS commanders initially resisted. Subsequent orders to preserve all data were reportedly defied, with a significant quantity of data allegedly being erased before investigators could examine it.
Justice, finally?
Law firm Leigh Day is representing the families involved. When the MoD announced the inquiry in 2022, lawyer Tessa Gregory said:
Our clients have been fighting for years to find out what happened to their loved ones.
She said the military had tried to make sure the allegations never saw the light of day:
When they first issued these judicial review proceedings the Secretary of State for Defence contended that our clientsā pleas for a fresh investigation into the killings of their relatives were unarguable and sought to have their claims dismissed outright.
But ultimately, it had been the MoD’s own records which forced the statutory inquiry into existence, Gregory said:
Those documents show that members of the British army, including at the highest level, were raising serious and sustained concerns that UK Special Forces were carrying out extrajudicial killings in Afghanistan.
The MoD wants the inquiry heard in secret wherever possible. However, the BBC, Guardian, and others are currently pursuing a legal challenge in the interests of transparency. Other nations like Australia have had major trials around Afghan war crimes. However, the UK is yet to address these issues seriously.
This has an obvious deleterious effect on UK credibility. If British politicians want, for example, to point to other nations’ war crimes, they must be willing to hold themselves to the same standard.
Ahead of the House of Lords’ 16 June debate on the Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill, pro-trophy hunting group Resource Africa sent peers a campaign document. It was titled The Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill: The risks to conservation, rights and livelihoods. Presented as a scientifically-evidenced report, the document claimed to be about the risks of the UK prohibiting the import of hunting trophies.
Eterna Partners appeared to have produced the document. They’re a London-and New York-based commercial lobbying company whose clients include the UK gambling and South African tourism industries.
This is an industry lobbying document, not impartial evidence-based science.
Neutrality?
Resource Africa isĀ clear on its website that it campaigns āagainst anti-hunting legislationā, including the UK’s trophy hunting importation bill. Last year the group received funding of nearly $1m from a UK impact investing charity called Jamma International. This is a family foundation that has sought to invest in trophy hunting, such as in Mozambique, with expectations of returns on its investment. The three UK-based contributors to the House of Lords’ document are all linked with this organisation.
Dr Dilys Roe is a Resource Africa board member. She’s also chair of the International Union for the Conservation of Natureās Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Group (IUCN SULi), sitting alongside vice-chair Shane Mahoney, director of US-based sports hunting organisation Conservation Force. In 2021, IUCN SULi received a large donation (just over $84,360) from Jamma International to fund – among other things – āpolitical engagementā.
Another contributor to the Resource Africa document is professor Amy Dickman. She leads Oxford Universityās Wildlife Conservation Research Unit. It has projects part-funded by Jamma International on hunting and what it calls āmorally contested conservationā.
In early 2022 another contributing professor – Adam Hart – collaborated on a pro-trophy hunting film concerning the industry in Namibia, also financed by Jamma International.
Threatened species
The Resource Africa/Jamma International document lobbying peers claims that according to the IUCNās Red List of Threatened Species trophy hunting is not a threat to any species. Yet the document presents no evidence to support this claim. However, in a dramatically changing world, it seems impossible to know this with any certainty.
Indeed, a number of trophy-hunted species listed by the Convention on Trade in Endangered SpeciesĀ (CITES) as threatened with extinction, or requiring strict regulation to prevent this threat,Ā have not been formally assessed for IUCNās Red List for almost ten years. These species include leopard, lion, southern lechwe, giraffe, hog deer and striped hyaena, all of which were decreasing at the time of their last IUCN Red List assessment. With this assessment gap, combined with climate change and other uncertainties, how do we really know what impact trophy hunting may be having on vulnerable species? This is especially true when combined with all the other pressures species face.
Predicted impacts
The Resource Africa document also claims to know what would happen if a hunting trophy import ban was passed. Using Namibia as an example, it states that the proportion of economically viable conservancies on communal land here would fall from 74% to 16% without trophy hunting. This dramatic assertion is taken from a 2016 paper using data from 2013. In other words, it is out of date.
Current circumstances prove this projection to be inaccurate. Most conservancies in Namibia today do not rely on trophy hunting for their viability. This is illustrated on this map showing primary sources of income for 2021 – the latest available figures from public data:
Some of the absence of hunting and other forms of consumptive use here can be attributed to the impacts of coronavirus (Covid-19). However, other worrying factors are also at play.
Unnecessary population declines
For example, large conservancy areas in northwest Namibia have experienced serious declines in wildlife. This is the same area where the Jamma International film claims trophy hunting is essential for peopleās well-being. Declines are shown below for gemsbok, springbok, and Hartmannās zebra. Many attribute these serious population drops to high offtake levels via sanctioned āsustainable useā quotas into a multi-year dry period:
Detractors frequently dismiss this as an outlier situation. The fact is, however, that this is one of the most celebrated contexts pro-hunting groups use to demonstrate the success of a consumptive model of wildlife use for both conservation and livelihoods.
A dryland ecologist or pastoralist would probably advocate retaining herd sizes so as to survive the dry period that began in 2011. Instead, offtake levels were kept high into the dry period, as shown in the table below – calling into question āsustainable useā in this context:
Neocolonialism
One of the most cynical claims made in the Resource Africa document is that support for a hunting trophy import ban is neocolonial. The truth is, there is plenty about the trophy hunting industry that is neocolonial, extractive, racist, and sexist.
Indeed, it was during the colonial period, when Indigenous Peoples were displaced from their ancestral lands, that many species of indigenous fauna came under threat from colonial hunters with firearms. Often, the colonists were hunting for sport as well as for commercial gain. Laws protecting so-called āgameā were implemented largely as a response to wildlife declines caused by colonial actors. They were based on imported legal ideas, including from the UK, that had previously penalised āpoachersā seeking food from enclosed lands.
Today, we are told that commercialised hunting access by a global elite to lands in Africa and elsewhere is āessentialā for wildlife and habitat conservation, as well as for local livelihoods. What in effect is being argued is that the only valid users of appropriated land are paying hunters and commercial hunting companies.
Meagre benefits for Indigenous Peoples
But why should this be the case? Hunting organisations such as Safari Club International support this kind of justification – directly or indirectly. Personally, I hope it will be viewed with caution by peers deliberating at the committee stage of this bill.
Perhaps more significantly, the Resource Africa document fails to mention that the bulk of the trophy hunting industry in countries such as Namibia and South Africa in fact takes place on land appropriated through settler colonialism, and through businesses operating from these areas.
Conservationists use the meagre benefits received by local people from trophy hunting to claim the industry is necessary for local livelihoods. They avoid mentioning that in these contexts the vast bulk of the industry is on white-owned hunting farms. Most income from this industry accrues to descendants of colonists or foreign investors on stolen land. It sustains the lingering power and structural inequality of settler colonialism.
Strange claims
Some claims made in the Resource Africa document are frankly bizarre.
will only encourage our countries to look eastwards to grow alliances and markets for our natural resources.
But Namibia already looks east for investment and tourists. Its government recently proposed a visa exemption for Chinese nationals. These moves have nothing to do with the UKās bill.
Even more strange is the documentās assertion that promised aid funding linked with the bill would be demeaning to recipients. The āsustainable useā model of wildlife conservation promoted through Community-Based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM) programmes has been dependent on aid funding for decades.
A swathe of aid agencies have financed associated NGOs and CBNRM consultants to the tune of millions of dollars. Examples include USAID and the German Agency for International Cooperation (GiZ). Namibiaās most prominent CBNRM NGOs are currently in line for a new injection of $30m from the Legacy Landscapes Fund, supported by various aid donors and charitable organisations. I doubt recipients will consider the receipt of this funding demeaning.
Beware Trojan horses
I have been agnostic to date about the proposed UK bill, but itās hard to stay silent given the spin on information in a corporate document written to lobby peers and intervene in the political process.
Itās not only āanimal rights activists, backed up by celebrities and social mediaā who are concerned about trophy hunting industry structures, as claimed in the Resource Africa campaign document. Letās also be clear that this bill does not in fact prevent countries from hosting hunters. It prevents UK citizens from bringing back animal body parts taken through these hunts.
As peers proceed through the committee stage of this bill, I hope they will weigh carefully the information laid before them. The trophy hunting industry comes in many guises and with many faces. The lords should look out for Trojan horses.
The Canary asked Resource Africa for comment on the article, but it had not responded at the time of publication.Ā
A keen observer of the ex-military gravy train, I’ve been entertained by the likes of Johnny Mercer and the Captain Tom phenomenon for years. There are no normal weeks in the weird politics of British veteranhood, but this one has been especially unhinged.
Johnny Mercer is a man whose whole brand and, in fact, personality is based on a job he no longer does: that of army officer. This week, the self-appointed veterans champion got rightly panned. On this occasion (it happens quite a bit) it was for saying foodbank use was down to poor personal budgeting.
Around the same time, Captain Tom’s daughter landed in hot water again. Business ‘guru’ Hannah Ingram-Moore has been ordered to tear down a pool and spa built in Tom’s name, allegedly with charitable donations, but apparently for private use only.
Commando Alan Partridge
Mercer’s latest idiocy came during a heated interview with Kay Burley. It’s not for nothing I refer to him as ‘Commando Partridge’. He tried to blither and contort that foodbank use among military personnel was a matter of personal choice:
#KayBurley – Is there any need for military personnel to be using food banks?
Johnny Mercer – "These are personal decisions around the way people are budgeting every month… I don't want to see anybody using food banks, but being in the military still affords you a good wage.." pic.twitter.com/ju0E1Lo43G
This led to censure from, among other people, TV maths genius Carole Vorderman. Vorderman also helpfully tweeted Johnny Mercer’s own personal burden on the taxpayer:
NEWS@JohnnyMercerUK thinks food bank use is "a personal decision" He's wrong. I grew up in poverty, mum had 5 jobs, nearly killed her. It was NOT a choice
FACT Total cost to taxpayer of Mercer is Ā£373,663 Wife works in his office Their total taxpayers' salary is approx Ā£120,000 pic.twitter.com/chAg4KeUXR
Now, three entirely mediocre, hyper-privileged people arguing about poverty is probably a net good on the face of it. What interests me is how each individual demonstrates the militarisation of our culture and politics. Mercer trades off his association with the military, clearly. But so do the other two.
Vorderman, for her part, has been fully engaged in military cosplay for years. The honorary group captain and RAF ambassador likes nothing more than cutting around in uniform for a photo op:
Meanwhile, Thomas has clearly been parachuted (he is actually parachute-trained) into Plymouth to unseat Mercer because of his military credentials. This is a policy entirely in line with Keir Starmer’s flag-shagging strategy. I note that his endorsements page is filled with sycophantic comments about the candidate’s military service.
In our militarised democracy, all parties labour under the delusion that military service equals credibility, leadership ability, and morality.
Captain Tom’s Daughter – again…
Then, onto the new Captain Tom debacle. Hannah Ingram-Moore was already under investigation by the charity commission when the latest story broke. In this new twist, she has been ordered to demolish a pool and spa.
As the BBC has it:
It has emerged the Ingram-Moores requested planning permission for a “Captain Tom Foundation Building”, which was “for use by occupiers… and Captain Tom Foundation”, according to documents submitted to Central Bedfordshire Council in August 2021.
Then in February 2022, revised plans were submitted:
The plans included a spa pool, toilets and a kitchen, which the Design & Access and Heritage Statement said was “for private use”.
The specifics are not entirely clear. This led to questions around whether charitable funds were being used to build what appears to be a personal suite of nice things.
Either way, the Captain Tom Foundation has now announced it has ceased taking donations for the time being. Plus, the new facilities have been ordered to be demolished by the council.
It’s what he would have wanted…
Captain Tom Moore came to prominence during the first year of the pandemic. The elderly veteran raised funds for the NHS by walking up and down his garden. For some, he captured the heart of the nation with his selfless efforts.
A closer look suggests that his story was used for far more nefarious ends. My opinion is that the Captain Tom story was a way of draping the Union Jack over the Tories’ appalling – and, for many, deadly – Covid-19 response, with the added bonus of framing the NHS as a charitable cause.
These latest events further advance my theory that large parts of the British public are so inured by an imperial fantasy of Britain that they would marry a river turd if you put it in a beret and pinned some medals on it.
British military identity has become a truly strange thing. We are expected to praise and admire the military institution above all others. Yet at the same time it has become a cheap corporate and political brand. Even tenuous associations with Britain’s war machine can now bestow authority and credibility.
The fact that this is the case should be of concern to us all. Military worship is based on emotion, not reason. As a result, using it to grift people is easy.
As a veteran myself, that could never be me. Instead, you can buy my latest bookĀ – with chapters on Captain Tom and Johnny Mercer – here.
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