Left-wing author Leo Panitch’s digital launch of his new book “Search for Socialism” at the weekend featured luminaries of the Labour party’s new hard-left faction; John McDonnell, Zarah Sultana, Corbyn’s former adviser Andrew Murray and former head of strategic comms, James Schneider. Guido joined the Zoom…
John McDonnell had a lot to say on the recent leadership election result, describing the election of Sir Keir – whom he identifies as “a lawyer, white, middle–class, in a suit” – as “defeatism” on the part of the membership, and the result of the working classes’ ‘forelock-tugging’ mentality to the middle class, akin to the election of Tony Blair. Labour’s 500,000 overwhemingly middle-class members might feel somewhat insulted…
The group also used the book launch to plot about the tactics they plan on using to regain ‘leadership’ in the party, with Zarah Sultana – a leading proponent of the newly-revitalised Socialist Campaign Group – setting out:
“in the years ahead, the SCG has a huge role to play in terms of defending and advancing our socialist principles to give our class, anti-racist politics a voice in Parliament and nationally”
It is worth repeating that Zarah, along with the majority of the Labour Party’s supporters are now middle-class, that is why they lost so many traditional Labour seats. The weird and woke policies of the modern Labour Party are not too popular with the socially conservative working classes. “Our class” is not the working class.
Son of a stockbroker and aristocrat Andrew Murray argued that Labour has to urgently “reconstitute working class politics” for Labour to win again, and son of a multi-millionaire property developer James Schneider agreed with the rest, saying the left need to stay within the party to “organise” – “That’s the way that we will, with a pincer movement, get the leadership of the party to back the policies that we want”. Guido imagines Sir Keir will be only too proud to see his party’s hard-left refusing to respect an electorate’s decision…
Yet more video footage has been unearthed by the tireless Iggy Ostanin of Seumas Milne airing more of his… unorthodox views. This time Milne is giving his opinion on “the ISIS franchise and its relationship to Israel”. There are no caveats, Milne is clear that it is his own view:
“I think that’s a very interesting phenomenon myself. At the moment we have on the effective Israeli border, the ceasefire zone in the Golan Heights, one of the most sectarian jihadist groups of the al-Qaedi franchise, Jabhat Al-Nusra, which is actually on the border with Israeli troops.
“Nothing happens, it’s interesting, the Israelis don’t seem too bothered about it. So I think that the role these groups are playing in the region is sometimes illuminated by that kind of fact, who their real enemies are.”
Milne was speaking at a Stop the War conference in June 2015 alongside speakers including George Galloway, Andrew Murray and Jeremy Corbyn – barely three months before Corbyn became Labour leader and appointed Milne as his comms chief. These aren’t just fringe views being spouted at tinfoil hat conferences any more, they’re intrinsic to the worldview of Corbyn’s inner circle…
Jeremy Corbyn’s adviser Laura Murray (daughter of literal communist Andrew Murray) is being sued by Rachel Riley for libelling her yesterday on Twitter. Murray has today been moved by the Labour Party from being “Stakeholder manager to Leader of the Opposition” to providing support to the party’s complaints department. You couldn’t make it up…
Nice for Jewish people to know that the complaints team is now advised by someone who lied about a Jewish woman on Twitter, and after thousands of retweets then decided to delete her entire Twitter account in shame. Looks like she will have a serious complaint in herself to be dealing with first…
Another top Corbyn adviser, Andrew Murray, has reportedly been working in the Labour Leader’s Commons office for eight months without the required security clearance. His application has been pending for over a year..
Andrew Murray was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain until he joined Labour two years ago.
A quick glance at the parliamentary pass application form might explain why so many of Corbyn’s team have been having trouble. Question 30 asks if applicants have ever been associated with people or groups who have “intended to overthrow or undermine Parliamentary democracy by political, industrial, or violent means?” A number of Corbyn’s top team are probably going to need more than half a page to give full details on that one…
h/t Seb Payne
Guido can reveal a few changes to the Corbynista backroom operation. We remember when David Lammy’s Director of Communications Jack McKenna was a moderate, but he is now heading to the Leader’s Office to join their spin team. McKenna was employee of the month recently when he dug out this killer Theresa May Question Time clip. David Prescott is becoming Jezza’s press and events manager. Angie Williams is leaving her job as a press officer in LOTO. Rumours are swirling today that Corbyn’s commie aide Andrew Murray has fallen out with Seumas Milne and Karie Murphy. Unite are denying that Murray is set to quit…
Meanwhile, John McDonnell is seeking a new spokesman after some trouble at Mills. His current spinner, the universally popular Lobby favourite James Mills, is now focusing on comms for rest of the Shadow Treasury team. There is speculation that McDonnell’s policy chief James Meadway is also being sidelined. One to watch…
Len McCluskey’s now infamous New Statesman article dismissing anti-Semitism as a “smear” and threatening Labour MPs who spoke in the anti-Semitism debate with deselection was actually written by Corbyn aide Andrew Murray, Jon Craig reports. Murray is Len’s chief of staff at Unite but is also a “part-time consultant” in Corbyn’s office. Readers will remember the former Communist Party member’s other greatest hits include defending Stalin, the Soviet Union and North Korea, celebrating the Russian Revolution and repeatedly parroting Kremlin talking points. Craig says he has had it “confirmed by a top union source” that Murray was the author of McCluskey’s article. Corbyn publicly says that anti-Semitism stories are not a smear and praises the MPs who spoke out about abuse. Privately his aides are writing articles saying it is a smear and threatening them with deselection…
UPDATE: Unite dispute Jon Craig’s top union source and insist Len wrote it himself.
