George Monbiot: How is Reform’s charmless candidate still a contender in Gorton and Denton? Ask Labour
This byelection should have been a stroll for Keir Starmer’s party. Instead, all hope of defeating Matt Goodwin now seems to lie with the Greens
Every barb Labour has directed at the Greens can now be returned with interest. “It’s a wasted vote.” “Do you want to see Reform in power?” New polling ahead of the crucial Gorton and Denton byelection this week, while by no means decisive, puts the Greens first on 22%, followed by Reform UK (20%), then Labour (18%), with 31% undecided. But still Keir Starmer falsely claims that “only Labour can beat Reform”. Does he want to see Reform in power?
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A survey of 6,000 people by the group Persuasion UK found that by far the most effective message of five options was focused on corporate interests and went as follows: “Nigel Farage says he’s on people’s side – but when you take a closer look it’s pretty clear who he’s really fighting for, isn’t it? It’s the rich, the powerful, his mates in big business.” It explained that Reform UK has taken vast donations from fossil fuel investors and climate science deniers. This, Persuasion UK said, is why Farage wants to cut public services, workers’ rights and taxes for the richest. “He’s not smashing the system. He and his rich friends basically are the system.”
None of the other attack lines came anywhere near this for efficacy. So why doesn’t Labour use it? Because that might alienate the people Starmer seems keenest to appease: Labour’s own corporate backers and the billionaire proprietors of the rightwing press. The leadership’s key objective is not stopping Farage, but frightening people into voting Labour. Quite frankly, it has nothing else left.
One by one, it has destroyed the hopes that people vested in it, alienating potential voters on everything from Gaza to benefits to its self-destructive apeing of Reform’s rhetoric on immigration; from its vicious factional warfare against leftwingers in the party to its tearing up of environmental protections and attacks on wildlife, which, in a country of nature lovers, is utter, self-defeating madness. Disgust and disillusionment among former supporters is everywhere palpable.
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See the original article at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/feb/25/reform-matt-goodwin-labour-gorton-and-denton-byelection-greens
Morning Star Editorial: Labour Together’s sinister actions must be fully investigated
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/labour-togethers-sinister-actions-must-be-fully-investigated
Downing Street chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, in Downing Street, central London, ahead of the visit today of President Zelensky, October 10, 2024…
McSweeney deceitfully claimed that Labour Together was about uniting factions in the party. In reality, it ran a concealed campaign to undermine leader Jeremy Corbyn and force him out of office.
It operated on the understanding that the party membership would never willingly embrace a rightwinger as leader and that the restoration of Labour to what it regarded as its only fit and proper stewards would have to proceed through lies.
Keir Starmer was the instrument of this project, used by McSweeney to pose as a continuer of Corbyn’s policy agenda, but in reality someone prepared to discard all the policies on which he won the leadership and hand the management of the party over to the hardest right-wing faction.
In running this deceit, Labour Together under McSweeney “forgot” to declare nearly three-quarters of a million pounds in donations to the Electoral Commission. It was found guilty of 20 breaches of electoral law.
It was unwilling to submit its funding by multimillionaires to scrutiny while it was secretly backing Starmer’s leadership bid, all the time denying that it was doing so.
All this and much more was revealed in the book The Fraud, by investigative journalist Paul Holden. Labour Together was anxious to divert attention from its law-breaking, since that would undermine McSweeney, by then virtually running Starmer’s Labour.
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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/labour-togethers-sinister-actions-must-be-fully-investigated
Trial of Palestine solidarity leaders is an attempt to ‘make an example’ of peace activists, campaigners say
Activists, MPs, trade unionists and artists protest in support of Palestine Solidarity Campaign director Ben Jamal and Stop the War Coalition vice-chair Chris Nineham at Westminster magistrates’ court, February 23, 2026…
Speaking outside the court, Stop the War convener Lindsey German said: “The people who should be in the dock are [Israeli PM Benjamin] Netanyahu, Keir Starmer and David Lammy.
“They have facilitated and allowed a genocide. We are the people standing up to it. And we will not stop. We will not stop organising.
“We have had 43 national demonstrations. Every single one of them has had restrictions put upon them by the Metropolitan Police.
“What is the aim of that? The aim is to stop people from protesting.
“There is no justification to do so. Our demonstrations have included people from every community, and they have been there to stand up for the Palestinian people.”
Her sentiment was echoed by Stop the War colleague Alex Kenny, who along with CND general secretary Sophie Bolt, will face a trial starting on March 10 facing similar charges.
“Criticising genocide is not only legitimate, it is necessary,” he said.
“We will not stop because a world that tolerates genocide is a world that can tolerate any atrocity, any crime, any violation of rights.
“Those who protest it should be thanked, not put on trial.”
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See the original article at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/trial-palestine-solidarity-leaders-attempt-make-example-peace-activists-campaigners-say
