Polanski slams authoritarianism, live with Trevor Phillips

Zack Polanski has appeared on the 15 February edition of Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips. If you’re unfamiliar with Phillips, he has a decades’ long history in Labour Party politics. As such, it wasn’t surprising to see him denying the creeping authoritarianism which is happening under Keir Starmer’s government:

Labour liar, pants on fire

In the clip above, Phillips says:

In the press release today, you talk about a ‘Big Brother Britain’. I’m assuming that you’re talking about George Orwell’s oppressive state rather than the telly programme. Isn’t this going over the top a bit? I mean, this is not a country where people get thrown in jail for things… they say, at least not very often.

If you’re a regular reader of the Canary, you’ll know this is complete horseshit from Phillips. Thankfully, Polanski explained why for us:

Well, I think we’re spiralling down that road. First of all, we saw 2,700 people potentially imprisoned, some of them waiting trials, a lot of them for holding up signs saying, I oppose a genocide. We have seen a genocide happen in Israel now for the last couple of years.

To add some specificity, the signs in question said this:

The government proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, which allowed them to arrest those who support the group. The people who held these signs got arrested for speech, albeit in written form.

As we reported on 13 February, a court has now overturned the proscription. Polanski also touched on this:

Back to the interview, Phillips responded:

No, that’s not the signs that they’re being arrested for. It is signs which say things like, from the river to the sea, a sign which imply elimination of the State of Israel, which are at some sense antisemitic and intimidating.

This simply isn’t true; Trevor Phillips is a fucking liar.

He’s not just any liar, either; he’s a liar who picked Peter Mandelson of all people to be the best man at his wedding.

The 2,700 in question relates to those arrested for supporting Palestine Action. Additionally, the ‘River to the Sea‘ chant is a call for the Palestinians to no longer be contained in an open air prison — not anything else.

Polanski responded:

Well, as a Jewish person, I don’t find that antisemitic. And in fact, Benjamin Netanyahu himself has used that phrase.

I’m one of only five people in British history who have been Jewish and lead a political party. So antisemitism needs to be taken really seriously in the same way that Islamophobia or any form of racism or hate crime needs to be taken seriously.

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But criticism of the Israeli government, I would say, is a moral responsibility when we’re seeing what they are doing to innocent people day in, day out. And our government is not just complicit in that. They are actively enabling it.

So for people who are protesting against the genocide, I would say those people are actual patriots of this country who are saying, let’s have a world where we make sure we’re standing for human rights.

It’s not just Palestine action, though, by the way. We’ve seen authoritarianism over the prime minister wanting mandatory ID cards. We’ve seen the authoritarianism of scrapping jury trials. Pattern over pattern shows that Keir Starmer is a deeply desperate caretaker prime minister who is clinging on to power by trying to crush dissent.

Things took a turn for the ridiculous later on, by the way:

In bed

As Novara’s Aaron Bastani highlighted, the New Labour types have a lot of support in broadcast media:

Phillips perverting reality as he did above is a clear example of this.

Featured image via the Canary