Guido understands Labour will no longer use Ken Loach as the producer of their election broadcasts following his comments on anti-Semitism this week. Labour sources say they have plans for two more PPBs in the current round and confirm Loach will not be doing them. Inevitable after this recording emerged this morning. That’s one Ken dealt with…
Ken Loach was condemned by Owen Jones for his call to deselect Labour MPs who protested against anti-Semitism earlier this week. Is he sorry? LBC have audio of him speaking in Canterbury yesterday in which he doubles down and asks:
“Why aren’t the Board of Deputies demonstrating outside of Tory Party Headquarters? We know why. The Chairman of the Board of Deputies, as I understand it, I may be wrong, but was among the first to send a congratulations to Trump and this is not a Labour organisation. This is an organisation that is I read, largely hostile to Labour. Now why aren’t they demonstrating against the other parties?”
Loach went on to warn that media anti-Semitism stories would only become more frequent as:
“it will get worse because if the Labour Party gets into power and if they stick with the manifesto and do go further you have the full range of international capital against us”
Is Corbyn going to do anything about his official election broadcast producer spouting this stuff around the country? Will he still be hired to do Labour PPBs? What is it with Labour Kens?
The Mail has caught Ken Loach, producer of Labour election broadcasts, telling a CLP meeting in Kingswood that MPs who protested against anti-Semitism should be deselected. Guido has the full quotes – Loach says the 30 MPs who attended the rally at Parliament Square “are the ones we need to kick out”:
“You can tell if they (Labour MPs) have supported Jeremy from the beginning, that’s a good sign. If they’ve been going to the demonstration against him outside Westminster, that’s a bad sign, so those are the ones we need to kick out. You cannot work with people who have come to undermine the biggest challenge we’ve had – we’ve never had a leader like Corbyn before in the whole history of the Labour Party… and that’s why the dirty tricks are going to come out.”
Loach went on to claim that anti-Semitism among Labour voters had decreased since Corbyn became leader, “dropping from 22% to 14%”. And he told Labour members to watch the controversial Al-Jazeera series “The Lobby“, which exploited the Holocaust and defended Jackie Walker as a victim of an Israeli government backed conspiracy. Loach said:
“It explains the role of the Israeli government in infiltrating and undermining the Labour left.”
The local Labour candidate Nicola Bowden-Jones seemed to enjoy the event:
Not sure how the Leader’s Office can reconcile their claims to be taking anti-Semitism seriously with Loach continuing to make their PPBs. Not to mention standing a parliamentary candidate who endorses his conspiratorial nonsense. “Pockets…”
UPDATE: Ken condemned by Owen Jones:
Ken Loach is one of Britain’s best ever filmmakers.
His call to expel MPs who attended the Enough Is Enough rally – which Jeremy Corbyn backed the right of MPs to attend – is bang out of order and the vast majority of the left will oppose it.
— Owen Jones🌹 (@OwenJones84) April 11, 2018
The miserabalist left-wing film director Ken Loach is joining the chorus of anti-Israelis trying to get Radiohead to abandon playing in Tel Aviv. Thom Yorke says Radiohead have performed in Israel for 20 years and “we don’t endorse Netanyahu any more than Trump, but we still play in America”. Quite.
The pernicious cultural boycott that the left is seeking is part of their effort to demonise the only Western-style liberal democracy in the Middle East. Nevertheless you can still enjoy Hollywood movies in Tel Aviv cinemas. You can even enjoy left-wing art house type films. In fact if you pop down to the Lev Cinema in Tel Aviv you catch the afternoon showing of “I, Daniel Blake” directed by, err, Ken Loach…
