Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader who was banned from standing as a candidate for the party earlier this year, has taken an almighty swipe at Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, after it was confirmed that the pair would not look to implement a wealth tax if elected into office.
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Keir Starmer also confirmed last month that would retain the two-child benefit limit – despite growing calls from poverty campaigners for the cap to be abandoned. The controversial stance has divided politicians within the Labour Party.
It’s another questionable policy u-turn from Starmer, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed by Jeremy Corbyn. The two-time Prime Ministerial candidate ripped into Sir Keir, saying that a wealth tax could easily fund an extension to the two-child cap.
Corbyn also urged his successor to ‘side with those in need’:
“With the money raised from a 1-2% wealth tax on assets over £10 million, we could afford to scrap the two-child benefit cap SEVENTEEN times over. Politics is about choices — and we should be on the side of those in need, not those with greed.” | Jeremy Corbyn
In thirty years, maybe less, people will ask: why the hell didn’t we do anything to mitigate and prepare for climate breakdown in the 2020s? Scientific predictions about global heating have been surpassed, and temperature records are now broken with increasing rapidity. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has called for immediate, radical action on climate change, arguing that the Earth is entered an “era of global boiling”. News reports are filled with stories about people being evacuated to escape uncontainable wildfires in Europe. Globally, heat and floods are killing and displacing people.
Yet despite all this, our leading politicians are rowing back on net zero promises and policies, finding reasons not to act positively for a transition to a socially just and sustainable future. We need environmental policies like those in Labour’s 2019 manifesto and an unswerving commitment from politicians to carry them through. Instead, we have a Tory government that has granted licences for Rosebank, a new oilfield in the North Sea that alone would exceed the UK’s carbon budgets. But this is just the tip of a melting iceberg. The government is also backing airport expansion despite the uncertain and meagre economic benefits.
The government’s failure on climate progress has turned former Climate Change Committee (CCC) chair and Conservative Environment Minister, Lord Deben, into an eco-warrior! The CCC was set up by the Labour government in 2008 to monitor and report on the government’s progress in meeting environmental and climate targets. Their recent report is damning. It highlights a failure to invest in green technologies, to make progress on insulating homes or in rolling out heat pumps to replace gas boilers in homes – and so it goes on. Deben points out that “Defra (Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs) is a department which has no full programme to reach net-zero, which is a scandal”, and he describes granting planning permission for a new Cumbrian coal mine, as “absolutely barmy”.
Though frequently referencing the climate crisis, mainstream politicians fail to make the connections between climate breakdown, social injustice and the growing risks and crises we face. For example, it’s estimated that environment breakdown will increase forced migration to 1.2 billion people by 2050 and 1.4 billion by 2060. Following that, the numbers will soar. Rather than addressing the urgent underlying factors behind migration, the political response is a poisonous campaign to “stop the boats”!
Labour leader Keir Starmer (centre) with then US secretary of state Mike Pompeo (R) and then US ambassador to Britain, Woody Johnson, in London, 21 July 2020. Pompeo said in 2019 “we will do our level best” to stop Jeremy Corbyn getting elected. (Photo: US State Department)
Starmer served on the Trilateral Commission alongside two former heads of the CIA without telling Jeremy Corbyn—who would have blocked it, Declassified can reveal.
Declassified discovers Starmer joined the Trilateral Commission between 2017-18 while he was Corbyn’s shadow Brexit secretary
He is one of only two serving British MPs to have been a member, according to available records
Starmer spoke at group’s London event in 2017 alongside former heads of MI5 and GCHQ
Former CIA director said in 2019 “we will do our level best” to stop Corbyn getting elected
Corbyn’s former spokesman tells Declassified that Starmer’s membership “was plainly incompatible with Labour’s then-stated policies”
Keir Starmer joined an international grouping closely linked to US and UK intelligence while he was serving in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, Declassified has found.
The Trilateral Commission describes itself as a “global membership organisation” which seeks “to discuss and propose solutions to some of the world’s toughest problems”. Its meetings are strictly off-the-record.
It was founded in 1973 by billionaire banker David Rockefeller as a networking group for elites from the US, Europe and Japan. Rockefeller was close to the leadership of the CIA at the time.
Membership records seen by Declassified show Starmer joined the Trilateral Commission at some point between March 2017 and October 2018. He left at some point between April 2021 and June 2022.
Starmer was a member of the Trilateral Commission alongside two former heads of the CIA, and spoke at one of its London events alongside the former heads of MI5 and GCHQ.
The current Labour leader served as Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow Brexit secretary from 2016-19. In this role, he was integral to the push for a second referendum on exiting the European Union, a position that many fault for Labour’s catastrophic performance in the 2019 election.
Anti-boycott law would have forced public bodies to do business with racist South Africa in the 1980s – and will force them to do business with apartheid, racist Israel now
Parliamentary friends of apartheid visit the illegal wall
The government has published its ‘anti-boycott bill’, which aims to prevent public bodies from choosing not to use products or services from countries with appalling human rights records – and in particular, to neuter the pro-Palestinian ‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions’ (BDS) campaign against the use of products, services and companies involved in illegal Israeli expansion onto Palestinian territory.
BDS has long been targeted by official and ‘cut-out’ organisations of the Israeli government, which has rightly been condemned by human rights organisations such as Amnesty International and, in Israel, B’Tselem, for its apartheid policies that the latest hard-right regime is entrenching even further – and the apartheid regime is avidly supported by the Tories (and ‘without qualification’ by the so-called ‘opposition leader’ Keir Starmer.
So there is no expectation of any significant parliamentary opposition to the bill and it is left to human and civil rights campaigners and organisations to mount resistance, such as Liberty, which has today published a statement on the anti-democratic bill, co-signed by unions, human rights groups and others, noting that such a policy would have forced public bodies to do business with apartheid South Africa and scuppered the campaign that eventually helped bring down that regime:
As a group of civil society organisations made up of trade unions, charities, NGOs, faith, climate justice, human rights, cultural, campaigning, and solidarity organisations, we advocate for the right of public bodies to decide not to purchase or procure from, or invest in companies involved in human rights abuse, abuse of workers’ rights, destruction of our planet, or any other harmful or illegal acts. We therefore oppose the government’s proposed law to stop public bodies from taking such actions.
The government has indicated that a main intention of any legislation is to ensure that public bodies follow UK foreign policy in their purchasing, procurement, and investment decisions, particularly relating to Israel and Palestine. We are concerned that this would prevent public bodies from deciding not to invest in or procure from companies complicit in the violation of the rights of the Palestinian people. We affirm that it is the right of public bodies to do so, and in fact a responsibility to break ties with companies contributing to abuses of rights and violations of international law in occupied Palestine and anywhere else where such acts occur.
From bus boycotts against racial segregation to divestment from fossil fuel companies to arms embargoes against apartheid, boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaigns have been applied throughout history to put economic, cultural, or political pressure on a regime, institution, or company to force it to change abusive, discriminatory, or illegal policies. If passed, this law will stifle a wide range of campaigns concerned with the arms trade, climate justice, human rights, international law, and international solidarity with oppressed peoples struggling for justice. The proposed law presents a threat to freedom of expression, and the ability of public bodies and democratic institutions to spend, invest and trade ethically in line with international law and human rights.
We call on the UK government to immediately halt this bill, on opposition parties to oppose it and on civil society to mobilise in support of the right to boycott in the cause of justice.
Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has also spoken out to underline the importance of BDS in opposing apartheid and pledge his support in fighting the latest anti-democracy bill:
Boycott, divestment and sanctions helped end apartheid in South Africa.
They will be essential to ending the apartheid regime in Israel, too.
I will firmly oppose the government’s anti-BDS bill — a disgraceful attack on our freedom to fight for human rights, justice and peace.
The evening has also seen the Glastonbury festival cancel its planned showing of the excellent film exposing the sabotage of Corbyn’s Labour and the smear campaign against him – many are presuming that his principled stand and the cowardly Glastonbury decision are not unconnected.
