HAMAS has shocked the world with both the scale and success of its attack on Israeli territory over the weekend — and British politicians have been quick to offer Israel their full support.
Hundreds of Israelis have been killed or kidnapped and, while hundreds of Palestinians have already been killed in vengeful air raids on Gaza, the Israeli military was still struggling to reassert control within its borders last night.
Benjamin Netanyahu does not downplay the disaster, warning the country is on the brink of “a long war.” If that is the case, as demonstrators marching on the Labour conference in Liverpool today warned, it will entail many thousands of deaths.
But for millions of Palestinians that “long war” didn’t begin on Saturday. Keir Starmer portrays Hamas’s action as an unjustifiable act of terror, and talks of it undermining “any chance for future peace in the region.”
His rhetoric is familiar: political leaders across western Europe and the United States respond in this way every time Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land and blockade of Gaza flare into open conflict. But this default alignment with Israel is partly responsible for the scenes now unfolding.
The Green co-leader has set out her party’s red lines.
Image of the Green Party’s Carla Denyer on BBC Question Time.
The Green Party would make proportional representation and meaningful action on the climate crisis red lines in any post-election negotiations with Labour, the party’s co-leader Carla Denyer has said. She made the comments at a fringe meeting at the Green Party’s conference in Brighton in response to a question from Left Foot Forward.
Asked what red lines the Greens would have in any coalition negotiations with Labour if Keir Starmer’s party fails to win an outright majority at the next election, Denyer said: “I think at the very least the two red lines would need to be obviously strong policies on climate change and a proportional voting system”.
She went on to say, “While we are happy to work with other parties where we have common ground, we’re not just going to be rolling over and doing whatever they say, we’re going to be negotiating hard.”
Green Party co-leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay have delivered their speech to their party’s autumn conference with a call for key public services to be brought into public ownership. The conference speech – likely the last before the next general election – ripped into the failures of privatisation in sectors from water to the health service.
Green Party Co-leader Adrian_Ramsay. Wikipedia CC.
Ramsay told attendees: “Private water companies are dumping sewage into our rivers and seas, while taking on billions in debt to fund dividend payments to shareholders.”
He went on to say: “We’ll have the platform to say what none of the other parties has had the courage to say: that the privatised water companies have failed, that there must be no more shareholder payouts until the water companies stop dumping sewage in our rivers, that the money we pay for our water bills must be spent updating our infrastructure not filling the pockets of shareholders, and that water is run as the public service that it should be, not the profit-making scheme that it’s become – by bringing it back into public hands.”
Ramsay’s comments were met with eruptions of cheers and applause from the audience.
Image of the Green Party’s Carla Denyer on BBC Question Time.
Denyer, meanwhile, highlighted the issues currently facing the NHS. She said: “The NHS and our other public services have been brought to breaking point by 13 years of Conservative cuts – with patients and staff paying the price. Has it ever been so hard to find a dentist? Have we ever had to wait so long to see an NHS consultant? Those that can afford it are forking out for private health care, those who can’t afford it are left behind. And meanwhile, no solutions are being offered.”
She went on to criticise the record and position of both Labour and the Tories on the health service, telling attendees: “The Tories blame medical staff – those frontline workers calling for a long overdue and well-deserved pay rise, and Labour’s promise of ‘reform’ rings hollow given the scale of the crisis – and hints at more privatisation by the back door. We know we can do better than this.”
Finishing her comments on the health service, Denyer called for the NHS to be reinstated as a fully public service – with free dental provision included. She said: “The Green Party believes in an NHS that sits fully in public hands, free at the point of use for all – including dentistry – and with four Green MPs in Parliament, we’ll never let the other parties forget it.
“We know that claps don’t pay the bills. We believe in decent pay and fair conditions for public sector workers and an NHS that provides the health safety net it was designed to all those years ago.”
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Elsewhere in their address, Denyer accused the Labour Party of being “more interested in fossil fuel investors getting their dirty profits” than addressing the climate crisis. She told the conference: “Energy bills in the UK are nearly £2.5bn higher than they would have been if the government hadn’t dismissed climate policy over the last decade. Not content with that, they are now doubling down on their climate vandalism: granting permission for a huge coal mine; failing to get a single bid for vital offshore wind projects; weakening our net zero commitments; and opening up the enormous Rosebank oilfield.
“And Labour are following them every step of the way – willing onlookers to the Conservatives’ climate crimes. Rosebank? ‘The right decision,’ says Gordon Brow[n]. Their reasoning: ‘investor certainty’. Sounds good right? But let us translate: Labour is more interested in fossil fuel investors getting their dirty profits, than in taking meaningful climate action.”
Just Stop Oil protesting in London 6 December 2022.
Donor Dale Vince is abandoning Just Stop Oil and is instead intending to fund a campaign encouraging young people to vote and to vote Labour. He claims
The dividing lines have been drawn: Labour is green, the Tories are not. A vote for anyone other than Labour, or no vote at all, is a vote for another Tory government – this time with a mandate to pursue its anti-green crusade. Preventing that from happening is the only way to “just stop oil”.
I fundamentally disagree with him. I see no evidence that the Labour Party under Keith Starmer is in any way ‘green’. The Red Tories have made huge efforts to be indistinguishable from their Blue brothers and their intention to continue with Rosebank shows that they are in no way green and totally willing to analing Murdoch and the fossil fuel industry in exactly the same way.
9.40pm: A vote for Labour is a vote for the wolves dressed as sheep covert Conservatives and most definitely not a ‘green’ vote. It is so important to use votes to register support for climate action but that is certainly not done by voting Labour. I suggest that Dale Vince is blind to Labour’s obvious and glaring flaws.
Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer says he is happy to continue to write and work for The Sun newspaper – as he prepares for his party conference in Liverpool.
During his 2020 leadership campaign, Mr Starmer claimed he would not to speak to The Sun newspaper during a hustings in Liverpool.
He said at the time: “I certainly won’t be giving any interviews to The Sun during the course of this campaign.”
Many people in Liverpool have chosen to boycott The Sun because of a front page it printed shortly after the Hillsborough disaster.
When asked why he has since decided to write for the tabloid, Mr Starmer said: “I have to make sure that what we have to say is communicated to as many people as possible in the time that we’ve got available and that is why I am very happy to work with The Sun, to write for The Sun, to do interviews with The Sun.”
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It also means that Keith sucks up to Rupert Murdoch …
