Labour Leadership election: Stage 1

This was first posted on Facebook on 29th January 2020, with support from my Ko-Fi network.

The next general election for the UK is likely to be in 2024. According to the terms of the Fixed Term Parliament Act, GE2024 would be held Thursday 2nd May (but Johnson says he intends to repeal FTP): according to the Parliamentary Act of 1911, the next general election can be held at the whim of the Prime Minister but no later than Thursday 12th December 2024.

The Leader of the Opposition until the next general election, and of course we hope Prime Minister thereafter, will be one of four people:

What does this remind you of?

The US justiciary has, for twenty-plus years in the “war on drugs”, selectively locked up far more black people than white people or Hispanic, and the US prison system is huge: the US has 2% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s prisoners. America’s police are becoming more and more like soldiers making war on a conquered-but-not-subdued population. (via)

Ian Welsh:

Police exist primarily to protect property arrangements. The war on drugs has paramilitarized police, with a heavy emphasis on overwhelming force. While police have always considered themselves above the common herd, and have always looked after themselves first and civilians second, it’s very clear that police today are much worse in this regard than they were 10 years ago, and 10 years before that, and 10 years before that. Police are well aware that they have near full immunity: they can beat people, kill people, plant evidence on people and they will, in most cases, get away with it. Even if caught on tape, the worst punishment is likely to be paid suspension.

Prisons are expensive to run? Yes, but prisoners can work long hours for a few pence per hour:

“The private contracting of prisoners for work fosters incentives to lock people up. Prisons depend on this income. Corporate stockholders who make money off prisoners’ work lobby for longer sentences, in order to expand their workforce. The system feeds itself,” says a study by the Progressive Labor Party, which accuses the prison industry of being “an imitation of Nazi Germany with respect to forced slave labor and concentration camps.”

Things white people like: Blackbusters

Diane Abbott, MP for Hackney, Shadow Minister for Health, was having a conversation on Twitter about criticism of “Black leaders” by black communities who feel these “leaders” do not represent them.[Update: As usual – it was more complicated than that.] In the course of that conversation, she tweeted: White people love playing ‘divide and rule’ We should not play their game #tacticasoldascolonialism

She was right of course. There’s nothing to apologise for in a politician having a public conversation about a controversial topic.

And the notion that it was racist because it expressed a negative view of “white people”?

What this absurd flap demonstrates is the desperate longing of some privileged people to wear the rags of victimhood. Any whiff of black-on-white racism, like misandry and heterophobia, is an excuse for these delicate souls to downplay the dominant prejudice and argue that there is a level playing field of bigotry or, on the crazier fringes, that there is a “war” on white people/men/straight people/motorists, etc. Coming so soon after the Lawrence verdict, Abbottgate is a nasty attempt to pretend that, hey, there’s racism on both sides now. A black man gets knifed to death by a white mob; a black MP writes a carelessly worded tweet about white people. It all evens out.33revolutionsperminute: racism vs “racism” – why Diane Abbott was right

In a racist culture, public criticism of white people by a black person is not allowed. Any number of white people suddenly got up and yelled RACIST! Including the white man who was one of her fellow contenders for leadership of the Labour party – Ed Milliband called her when she was live on air to give her a telling-off. White man scolds black woman at a time when he knows the black woman will just have to stand there and take it, in public, on video. (Today Ed Milliband tweeted “Sad to hear that Bob Holness has died. A generation will remember him fondly from Blackbusters.” Yes, Ed, I’m sure.)

To prove the exact point Diane Abbott was making about stuff white people like to do, Ed Milliband seems to have told Chuka Umunna to criticise Diane Abbott’s comment and David Cameron got Tory MP for Stratford Nadhim Zahawi to call for her resignation.

Sometimes it’s so blatant even a Daily Mail columnist (and one that doesn’t like or agree with Diane Abbott) can see what you’re doing:

Interestingly, though, as one of my extremely learned friends pointed out, that very act of Ed Miliband’s intervention, and her subsequent retraction, actually served to re-inforce the truth in what she was saying. Albeit a point she had made poorly.

And who could deny that? The situation was clear for all to see. Here was her boss, the white man, and here was she, the black underling, and she was gagged and undermined and it was right in front of us. No confusion there.

She followed this with a time honoured cop-out ‘taken out of context’ and responded by saying it was ‘a mis-interpretation as it refers to nature of 19th century European colonialism which cannot be explained in 140 characters’. Sonia Poulton, Daily Mail, 6th January 2012

Stuff white people like to do: complain about ‘racism’ against white people