General election 2017

After Tony Blair won his landslide victory in 1997, I wondered if the Tories will ever get elected again.  Twenty years later I am asking the same question to myself but this time it is whether Labour will get back in.  I think we are seeing the death of the Labour party in front of our very eyes, which is sad because weak oppositions lead to bad governments.

Naz Shah

I just found this little upload from Youtube

Its about that nasty, smelly, anti-semitic Labour MP Naz Shah, who has resigned from being a parlimentary aide to shadow chancellor John McDonnell. Here Labour front bencher Lisa Nandy MP is taken to task for it, with Liam Fox MP adding a few titbits. A couple of telling comments.

1. Nandy says that the majority of Labour members are not antisemitic.  That's ok then, so it means a minority are.  So when will Labour do something about them?
2. Naz Shah said she did not agree with some of the racist images and posts that she shared.  So why did she share them then? She's either too thick or thinks the public is too thick.
3. Liam Fox makes a very telling point, its not only the images and posts that you share but also the underlying sentiment behind it.  This suggests that Shah strongly believed in antisemitism. 

So another Labour member has been rumbled for anti-semitism, in other news, scientists discover that doing push ups is good for your biceps.

George Galloway and Brexit

Now that Cameron has given us the date of EU referendum of June 23rd, both sides are already working hard in achieving victory.  The PM's recent renegotiation to me is an irrelevance, it is now understood that the deal he negotiated is not even legally binding.  Especially the rules surrounding the take up of benefits by EU migrants.

However the most surprising thing for me so far has been the entry of George Galloway on the Brexit side, sharing a platform with Nigel Farage on the Grassroots Out meeting. This must be the only thing that Farage and Galloway agree on.  Even though I loathe his views on Israel, Galloway is correct here. The EU is not only a businessmen's club but an attack on our democracy and freedoms.  For me it means that GG is at least a man of socialist ideals unlike Jeremy Corbyn and Labour party who have thrown their weight behind the remain campaign.  Corbyn's main argument is that the EU has brought in many workers' rights, however I think these are just delusions. Corbyn and Labour want the EU because it brings in more migrants, who are more likely to vote Labour.  So Corbyn has sold out his principles for votes as he was once fiercely anti-Europe like Tony Benn. My view is that Galloway might sway some of the UK's muslim vote towards Brexit.  Time will only tell.

My other salute is that Michael Gove and Boris Johnson have both backed the leave campaign.  Again this must be the first time I have agreed with either man.

The Left's EU problem

Since my move from being pro-EU to being anti-EU, the questions and contradictions that dog the left still remain.  The EU, along with the EC and EEC before that, is essentially about trade, that is the free flow of goods, capital and people. Therefore at its inception the left was hostile to the concept of a trade bloc. Indeed, during the original EEC membership referendum the late Margaret Thatcher campaigned for a yes to enter vote and the late Tony Benn campaigned for no to stay out vote.  This changed slowly in the 80s and 90s as the EC and later EU moved more to the left with laws to protect worker's rights, thereby circumventing the sovernignty of its member states. But in the 2000's a new factor entered the mix - immigration.  The addition of the former Eastern bloc countries and the Blair government's policy of allowing citizen's from these new members to enter the UK to work and live turned the whole debate on its head. So instead of the EU being a businessman's club to help them earn more profits, the paradigm was about cultural diversity, enrichment and the benefits of immigration. Now the axiom was that if you were against the EU then you were racist, in the same way that being against mass immigration was racist.

We can see this in the way UKIP are demonized during the 2015 general election, and the Green's party rather confused policy of campaigning to stay in the EU during the referendum but cutting down on the amount of trade between the UK and EU.  Strange that Greens do not mention cutting done the free movement of labour, only the free movement of goods and capital.

So therefore now we are in a situation where the British left are essentially campaigning to stay in a businessman's club , because it does not want to be seen as being pro-nation state, pro-sovereignty and against immigration.  This all ties in with the fact that since the fall of the USSR, the left has been pushing a cultural marxist of Frankfurt school agenda rather than an economic one.  In that anything that undermines British or western culture is good as the western or British culture is essentially racist, imperialist and made no positive contributions in the the left's view of the world.

Corbyn's shadow cabinet

Now that Jeremy Corbyn has named is shadow cabinet, there were very few surprises. Apart from leadership rival Andy Burnham, every one is on the hard left.  There are a new faces (Lisa Nandy) but then there are the old dinosaurs in Diane "whities divide and rule" Abbott and IRA fan John McDonnel as shadow chancellor.  I cannot see how this lot will help Labour win back to those swing voters in the marginals who deserted to the Tories in the last election.  Corbyn is turning a party that should be trying to win elections into a six form Sociology debating class. Bit sad as I think the Tories need a strong opposition to hold them to account. Apart from Cameron and the Tories, the big winner from all this is UKIP, who I think will challenge Labour very hard in its heartland. 

Jeremy Corbyn is unclear

..... about the need to kill a British jihadi with a RAF drone strike. Jez, maybe its because he has joined a group that is at war with the British people and which has promised terrorist attacks on British soil.  Does that help, Jez?  Lest we forget, the people already killed by IS in Syria and Iraq already, I would not lose sleep over his death.

Corbyn and Bin Laden's death

Jeremy Corbyn has said that the assasination of Bin Laden was a tragedy. It was..for islamists and their self hating leftwing friends. He suggests that OBL should have been brought to trial. What a load of nonsense. OBL was not a common criminal and 9/11 was not a crime, it was an act of war.  The west treated it as war. The left should get over this. OBL's death brought closure for the victim's families and that is the end of the matter as I see it.