Earlier, Skwawkbox reported on Australian police officers’ vicious beating of a restrained and helpless anti-genocide protester. The beating came as police attacked protesters demonstrating peacefully against a visit by war-criminal Israeli president Isaac Herzog.
The attack was not an isolated incident. In yet another assault, police fractured the spine of 69-year-old Jann Alhafny. The Australian government has given police immunity from legal consequences.
Describing the incident, Alhafny said that an officer had pushed her “very violently” to the ground “without warning” as she protested in Sydney – but worse was to come:
I knew straight away I’d hurt my back [but the officer] grabbed one arm and he yanked me up onto my feet, like really severely, and that was excruciating.
Moving someone who has suffered a spinal injury at all, let alone “really severely”, can result in permanent paralysis or even death. Doctors later found that Alhafny had four fractured vertebrae. New South Wales Police denied any knowledge.
But police knew they were able to act with impunity. NSW authorities had designated the area a “major event”, giving police and the state immunity from ‘tortious acts’ that cause injury. It appears that state enforcers made full use of this immunity: the march of around 30,000 was kettled and pepper sprayed as well as being beaten.
Alhafny, whose late husband was Palestinian, said she and her daughter would not be deterred from anti-genocide protests:
We always go to the protest, my daughter and I, and it’s just the right thing to do. Even if my husband wasn’t Palestinian, I’d still be supporting Palestine.
Featured image via the Canary
US president Donald Trump is determined to starve Cuba of oil in his bid for control of the Western hemisphere. Cuba buys oil from Mexico despite heavy US sanctions. Now Trump is threatening to hit Mexico with tariffs.
Trump has also been channeling a mix of Cold War and War on Terror rhetoric to justify himself. He’s accused Cuba of hosting Russian spies AND Hamas and Hezbollah agents. Any one will do, right?
The New York Times reported that although Trump did not name the US’s southern neighbour:
The threat seemed to be directed at Mexico, one of the few countries still delivering oil to Cuba. Earlier this month, he even said that he had specifically asked President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico to cut off its supply.
Mexico is a key regional ally of the Cuban government:
Mexico and Cuba’s long alliance — rooted in economic and cultural cooperation and a shared wariness of U.S. intervention — survived and even deepened after the Cuban Revolution, when Mexico preserved ties with Havana even as much of the region aligned with Washington.
No one can ignore the situation that the Cuban people are currently experiencing because of the sanctions that the United States is imposing in a very unfair manner.
Trump is no more a fan of having a ‘communist’ nation close by than any other US leader. But his Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a son of Cuban refugees, is even more neurotically anti-Cuba.
The Cuban ambassador to the UN Ernesto Soberón Guzmán laid into Rubio in a Newsweek interview on 7 February:
What is clear to me is that Rubio has never come to Cuba, and he’s talking about something he knows nothing about.
He said Rubio’s position was contradictory because of how own family had fled the pre-Castro US-backed regime:
His parents came to the United States before the revolution. It’s false this image people have that they came to the United States running away from the revolution.
They came to the United States fleeing the dictatorship that existed in Cuba, which was supported by the U.S. government at the time, under [then Cuban President Fulgencio] Batista.
Guzman suspected Cuba lived rent-free in Rubio’s head:
Whether it’s harmful or not, whether it’s clinically harmful or not, whether it’s clinically proven, that’s something you have to find out as a journalist.
But there is a also bigger geopolitical picture beyond the contents of Rubio’s brain.
Oil politics and the personal obsessions of Trump’s goons clearly play a part in the current situation. It’s also important to recall Cuba was effectively the first colony in what would become the US’s global empire. And US policy now has reverted in some ways to the gunboat diplomacy of an era which saw the US attack Cuba, the Philippines, and China in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Trump’s National Security Strategy (NSS) demands control of the hemisphere. In some ways, this is a return to the old Monroe Doctrine which helped drive US empire building in the first place.
The NSS asserts:
The United States must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity—a condition that allows us to assert ourselves confidently where and when we need to in the region.
For the US, is it ‘our way or the highway’ on the American continent. Or rather: our way or you’ll be starved, shot, drone-struck, and/or kidnapped into submission.
Accusations about foreign influence in Cuba echo the NSS precisely:
Some foreign influence will be hard to reverse, given the political alignments between certain Latin American governments and certain foreign actors.
And at the heart of US strategy, as ever, are the demands of the American market:
The choice all countries should face is whether they want to live in an American-led world of sovereign countries and free economies or in a parallel one in which they are influenced by countries on the other side of the world.
The Trump administration is driven by greed, ego, and a yearning for hegemony. This isn’t so different from its predecessors, Trump and his lackeys are just more open about it. What is different is that the US empire’s decline is rapidly turning into a freefall. And a wounded beast is a dangerous thing, as Cubans and Mexicans are well aware.
Featured image via the Canary
Health secretary and all round wrong ‘un Wes Streeting has revealed his messages with disgraced paedophile’s mate Peter Mandelson. Or at least some of them. It was a huge self-own and more revealing than he may have wished.
Streeting may have been hoping that openness would rescue his ambitions to replace his boss when he is (soon) forced out. However, the resulting disgust and mockery have surely put a final nail in the coffin of that nightmare scenario.
Not least because Streeting’s Mandelson association is just the latest such link.
Streeting was asked by Sky’s Beth Rigby about his messages. It was short and may well have been an exercise intended to neuter the impact of them. But it was still grim:
However, a look at some detail of the messages reveals not just how chummy the health secretary and Mandelson were, but how terrified Streeting is after almost losing his seat in 2024, as PoliticsUK pointed out in an X post. It exposes Streeting’s own low opinion of his own party. And it proves that Streeting continued to support Starmer despite having lost faith, and deny that Israel is committing genocide, despite knowing otherwise (emphases added):
[28/03/2025, 11:36:06] Wes Streeting: I fear we’re in big trouble here – and I am toast at the next election. We just lost our safest ward in Redbridge (51% Muslim, Ilford S) to a Gaza independent. At this rate I don’t think we’ll hold either of the two Ilford seats.
[28/03/2025, 11:39:54] Wes Streeting: There isn’t a clear answer to the question: why Labour?
[28/03/2025, 11:48:44] Lord Mandelson: The government doesn’t have an economic philosophy which is then followed through in a programme of policies.
[28/03/2025, 11:49:15] Wes Streeting: No growth strategy at all
“Israel is committing war crimes”
[24/07/2025, 23:00:29] Wes Streeting: Am sure this will come up in coming days, so wanted to check in with you on recognition of Palestine and the domestic politics of it.
Keir’s statement today was excellent, but Macron’s statement tonight ups the ante.
Morally and politically, I think we need to join France.
Morally, because Israel is committing war crimes before our eyes. Their government talks the language of ethnic cleansing and I have met with our own medics out there who describe the most chilling and distressing scenes of calculated brutality against women and children.
Politically, a Commons vote will be engineered in September on recognition and we will lose it if we’re not ahead of it. There are no circumstances in which people like me or Shabana could abstain or vote against, for example. Conference will be a sea of Palestinian flags and the moderates will be waving them.
We need to be leading the charge on this. The alternative is being dragged there with enormous damage to Keir, the govt and the party.
I’ve never been a shrinking violent on Israel. I’ve supported LFI for over 20 years. Our sister party, Haaretz, and progressives are clear about what’s being done in their name and they oppose it.
I appreciate these things are always more complicated than they appear to those of us who aren’t up close as you are and I also appreciate how much Keir and David are giving to this personally.
But it is what it is. We need to lead, not follow.
[24/07/2025, 23:11:47] Lord Mandelson: I can see all this but I am worried that such a gesture now could blow a 2 SS out of the water if Israel decided that unilateral recognition justified further WB annexation which the US would be powerless to stop or reverse. That would be the end of it.
So I think we need to employ practical means to get a 2SS, not quickly I grant but realistically [written by Mandelson after almost two years of Israel’s genocide in Gaza]. The PA with reform and new leadership can advance this with Arab/US/European support. The alternative is a further deadlocked death spiral on an even greater scale than now.
[24/07/2025, 23:12:10] Wes Streeting: Israel is doing it anyway.
[24/07/2025, 23:12:39] Wes Streeting: This is rogue state behaviour. Let them pay the price as pariahs with sanctions applied to the state, not just a few ministers.
But Mandelson is far from unique in Streeting’s circle. His former office manager Sam Gould was convicted of child sex offences. One of his closest associates and now fellow MP Jas Athwal was accused of “serious” sexual assault, and the allegations remain murky. Streeting’s colleague Ivor Caplin was arrested in January 2025 in a paedophile sting. His other colleague Conor McGinn has just been charged with sex offences.
At what point does a coincidence become a pattern – one that releasing a few direct messages can’t mask?
As the @solutionsilford X account commented:
Wes Streeting “never knew” about Conor McGinn. Never knew about Ivor Caplin. Never knew about Ivan Lewis. Never knew about Sam Gould. Never knew about Peter Mandelson. Either the most incurious man in Labour… or taking the public for fools.
Featured image via the Canary
Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham, September 2025 (PA Images / Alamy Live News)
3 min read
Labour is increasingly confident that it could win the Gorton and Denton by-election – and it is relying on Andy Burnham to help hold the seat, despite blocking him as a candidate.
Labour activists and MPs who have been door-knocking in the Greater Manchester constituency ahead of the by-election later this month have reported that they are cautiously optimistic that Labour could hold the seat, which some party sources had briefed would be impossible when it was first vacated.
Gorton and Denton is a typically safe Labour area. The party won the constituency with a majority of over 13,000 at the 2024 general election, making it one of 70 seats that Labour won with an absolute majority. Defeat there would represent a major blow to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who is trying to shore up his position in Downing Street. Both the Greens and Reform UK believe they can win it.
Andrew Gwynne stood down as the seat’s MP last month on health grounds. The former health minister took the decision after he was dismissed from his post and suspended from Labour over leaked offensive messages he sent on a WhatsApp group called “Trigger Me Timbers”.
Burnham announced his intention to seek the Labour candidacy, but he was blocked by the Prime Minister and his allies on the basis that the sitting mayor of Greater Manchester would trigger a costly mayoral by-election if successful in his parliamentary bid.
Although Burnham appeared to dismiss Labour’s chances of winning the by-election, after he was barred from running amid a bitter row, he has become central to the party’s efforts to hold the seat.
Burnham is making regular visits to the campaign trail and is featured prominently on some Labour campaign literature, which also centres the Labour candidate Angeliki Stogia rather than Starmer.
Angela Rayner, the MP for Ashton-under-Lyne – another Manchester seat – and former deputy prime minister, is also considered a key asset to the local campaign. She is widely thought to be a potential successor to Starmer, though she gave him her explicit support on Monday.
The Prime Minister has not visited the seat so far, and a well-placed source said he has no plans to do so.
PoliticsHome understands that when canvassers come across a resident who is a Burnham fan on the doorstep, which is described by sources in the area as a frequent occurrence, they can tick a box to indicate that the party should send a letter from the mayor to that constituent.
Multiple people who had door-knocked in the seat said they did not find that the scandal around Peter Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador was being raised by locals, but that residents were proactively bringing up the “Trigger Me Timbers” story and could even name the WhatsApp group.
Labour sources indicated they were increasingly confident of Labour holding the constituency because the party looked like it could be a “strong second” to the Greens and Reform respectively in different wards.
“Our vote in the Muslim community is holding up really well,” reported one Labour MP. “The by-election is anything but written off, and some of it will depend on getting out the vote – where one would assume Labour has an edge.”
“Nobody talked about the selection row, but people did praise Burnham,” they added.
On Monday night, a minister told PoliticsHome that the by-election on 26 February would be the next “trigger point” for the Prime Minister after a call by Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar for the Prime Minister to resign failed to trigger a wider move against him.
Labour have suspended a peer and former chief spin doctor to Keir Starmer over his links to a sex offender.
Matthew Doyle, who was made a Lord by the prime minister last month, campaigned for Sean Morton after he was charged with having indecent images of children.
Six months later, Morton, a former Labour councillor, admitted the charges.
The Sunday Times reported that senior No.10 officials were aware of Doyle’s links to Morton before he was nominated by the PM for a life peerage last December.
He was ennobled as Baron Doyle of Great Barford in January.
It is understood that Labour has suspended Doyle – who was No.10 director of communications until March last year – from the party whip in the Lords but not his party membership.
In a statement, Doyle said: “I want to apologise for my past association with Sean Morton.
“His offences were vile and I completely condemn the actions for which he was rightly convicted. My thoughts are with the victims and all those impacted by these crimes.
“At the point of my campaigning support, Morton repeatedly asserted to all those who knew him his innocence, including initially in court. He later changed his plea in court to guilty.
“To have not ceased support ahead of a judicial conclusion was a clear error of judgment for which I apologise unreservedly.
“Those of us who took him at his word were clearly mistaken. I have never sought to dismiss or diminish the seriousness of the offences for which he was rightly convicted. They are clearly abhorrent and I have never questioned his conviction.”
Doyle admitted he maintained contact with Morton after his conviction but insisted it had been “extremely limited and I have not seen or spoken to him in years”.
He added: “Twice I was at events organised by other people, which he attended, and once I saw him to check on his welfare after concerns were raised through others.
“I acted to try to ensure the welfare of a troubled individual whilst fully condemning the crimes for which he has been convicted and being clear that my thoughts are with the victims of his crimes. I am sorry about the mistakes I have made.”
Bloomberg via Bloomberg via Getty Images
Posting on X, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said: “Keir Starmer handed a peerage to Matthew Doyle despite knowing about his ongoing friendship with a man charged with child sex crimes.
“The prime minister has now suspended the whip, but he must come clean about what he was told before making this appointment. We won’t let this go.”
A Labour Party spokesperson said: “All complaints are assessed thoroughly in line with our rules and procedures.”
The row will raise further questions about Starmer’s judgment following his decision to appoint Peter Mandelson the UK’s ambassador to Washington despite knowing about his friendship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
A play in three acts:
And you thought ours were spineless.
Poor old Anas, though.
If 24 hours is a long time in politics these days, a week is forever.
And a month hardly even bears thinking about.
As for a year and a half, well, the less said the better.
The Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association (TSSA) rail union boss Maryam Eslamdoust has been accused of continuing her war on her own staff, members, and democracy after the union broke its own rules to cut retired union members out of its structures and conference votes.
Eslamdoust is despised by TSSA members and staff, who accuse her of bullying, victimisation of staff and representatives, and of anti-union tactics when they organise against her. Branches have voted overwhelmingly for motions of no confidence in her. Reps in the union’s biggest branch, Network Rail voted unanimously last month for her removal – just the latest in a string of no-confidence votes after repeated anti-union attacks on staff and the GMB union that represents them at work.
Eslamdoust even went repeatedly to the Guardian to attack the GMB – and then de-recognised it as the staff’s workplace union. Eslamdoust demanded the GMB prioritise her feelings over their members’ needs.
The years-long scandal has included attacks on TSSA’s internal democracy. She and her team have twice annulled elections in which members had voted her rivals into the key positions of treasurer and president. And on the same day as the latest unanimous vote against her, TSSA declared her ally as the new, uncontested treasurer after again suspending the candidate who beat her. Eslamdoust and her supporters also wrecked the union’s conference to prevent another no-confidence vote.
Now, they have staged another attack on the voting rights of members – by unilaterally closing all but one of the union’s retired branches.
Eslamdoust has moved all TSSA’s retired members from their existing branches into a single branch for the whole UK. The immediate effect of this imposed decision is to reduce the five delegates that the five previous branches could send to the union’s conference down to a single delegate. It also cuts the number of motions they can bring from ten to just two. It has been done without any conference vote or approval by the union’s various divisional councils and the officers holding roles in the original branches have been summarily removed from their positions.
The move is in breach of the TSSA rulebook and was imposed without warning at a weekend, preventing any opportunity to oppose it before it was a done deal.
Former TSSA assistant general secretary Steve Coe has been expelled from the union for blowing the whistle on the actions of Eslamdoust and her cronies. He posted to his personal social media about the latest assault on democracy that:
I hear that the TSSA Executive Committee has once again decided to ignore the union conference policy, and rig Rule Book and Annual Conference. And apparently discrimination on grounds of age is ok with the leadership!!
A retired member quickly responded to confirm the impact:
My branch has been dissolved deleted destroyed which ever you prefer fact no longer on the website!
Eslamdoust claims she is being criticised by staff and members because she is female.
TSSA has not responded to a Skwawkbox media enquiry since 2024.
Featured image via the Canary
The RMT is demanding a new law to safeguard transport workers in Scotland against a sharp rise in assaults. This comes ahead of a meeting with MSPs in Holyrood.
The union will hold the ‘Action Against Assaults’ event at the Scottish Parliament on Wednesday 11 February at 1pm.
This event will bring together:
RMT general secretary Eddie Dempsey will set out the union’s demand for the creation of a standalone offence of assaulting or abusing a public transport worker at work. This is similar to protections already in place for retail staff and emergency service workers.
The union is calling on all political parties contesting the Scottish Parliament elections in May 2026 to commit in their manifestos to introducing such legislation if elected.
Dempsey said:
No worker should go to their job fearing they will be assaulted, abused or threatened simply for doing their job.
But that is the daily reality for far too many public transport workers.
Seventy per cent of rail workers have faced violence in the past year and nearly half of our ferry members say the threat of violence is harming their mental health. That is a scandal which demands action.
We welcome the engagement from the Scottish Government to date and the meeting with the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, but warm words must now become law.
Retail and emergency service workers rightly have specific legal protection and we want the same for public transport workers too.
As we approach the 2026 Scottish Parliament elections, every party must commit to creating a standalone offence of assaulting or abusing a public transport worker.
An RMT survey found that 70% of rail workers in Scotland experienced workplace violence in the past year. 80% believed violence had increased over the same period. The survey identified lone working as a major risk factor. Nearly 60 per cent of those who experienced assaults said they were working alone at the time.
The union also highlighted Scottish government research from 2023 which found that women and girls feel significantly safer on public transport when staff are present. This applies at stations, in ticket offices and onboard trains.
Nearly half of RMT passenger ferry members reported that the threat of violence at work has negatively affected their mental health.
In 2022, the Scottish government confirmed it was exploring the creation of a standalone offence.
Since then, a working group involving rail unions has been convened to consider enforcement measures. The cabinet secretary for Transport, Fiona Hyslop MSP, told parliament that stronger legal protections were under consideration and that the government was taking the matter “extremely seriously”.
Featured image via the Canary
Keir Starmer has slapped down Wes Streeting after the health secretary chose to release his own message exchanges with disgraced peer Peter Mandelson.
Police are currently looking into the former UK ambassador to the US over allegations of misconduct in a public office.
It comes after unearthed emails suggest Mandelson sent convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein confidential government information when he was the business secretary between 2008 and 2010.
A Commons motion is also set to force the release of government documents related to Mandelson’s appointment as the ambassador to the US.
But Streeting chose to preemptively release his personal exchanges with his former ally Mandelson on Monday.
He shared a transcript of messages from August 2024 to October 2025 to address what the minister described as the “smear and innuendo” from the weekend which suggested he had something to hide.
The messages showed the health secretary feared the government had “no growth strategy” and that he would be “toast” at the next general election.
Starmer rejected these concerns from Streeting when asked by the media, insisting chancellor Rachel Reeves is “turning the economy around”.
He added: “Now we have to nurture that. We have to make sure that this is for real, and it’s felt in people’s pockets.”
The prime minister continued: “The issue of text messages and all information that’s being gathered as a result of the humble address last week, that needs to be a managed process, both in government and obviously, there’s a police element to it.”
Asked specifically if he had reprimanded Streeting for releasing his Mandelson messages, the prime minister said: “I’m not going to comment on the health secretary’s disclosure of those messages, that’s for him.”
But he added: “I do think that we all need to ensure that we’re all acting together in this, because all the information needs to be pulled together.”
Scotland Yard encouraged members of the government not to share documents which could be used in their investigation on Tuesday, saying it was “vital due process is followed” and that its probe is not jeopardised.
“An investigation into alleged misconduct in public office is under way and it is vital due process is followed so that our criminal investigation and any potential prosecution is not compromised,” the Metropolitan Police said in a statement.
“As part of our inquiries, we will review material identified and provided to us by the Cabinet Office to assess whether publication is likely to have a detrimental impact on our investigation or any subsequent prosecution.
“We will work alongside the Cabinet Office to review relevant documents over the weeks ahead. The process to decide which documents should ultimately be published remains a matter for government and parliament.
“As we have stated previously, this investigation may be complex but we are focused on a timely and thorough process so that justice is served in this case, or future ones linked to the Epstein files.”
Keir Starmer has said he will never walk away as he vowed to lead Labour into the next general election.
The PM insisted his landslide election victory in 2024 had given him a “mandate … to change this country” and he was determined to do so.
He was speaking just 24 hours after Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar broke ranks by demanding Starmer stand down over his handling of the Peter Mandelson scandal.
The disgraced peer faces a criminal investigation into allegations he leaked sensitive government information to convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein when he was business secretary.
Despite knowing about his links to the billionaire financier, Starmer made Mandelson the UK’s ambassador to Washington, only to sack him just seven months later.
Sarwar said: “The distraction needs to end and the leadership in Downing Street has to change.”
However, his attempted coup backfired and more than 100 Labour MPs – including every member of the cabinet – publicly backed the PM.
In his first public comments since the leadership crisis, Starmer said: “There are some people in recent days who say the Labour government should have a different fight, a fight with itself, instead of a fight for the millions of people who need us to fight for them.
“And I say to them – I will never walk away from the mandate I was given to change this country, I will never walk away from the people that I’m charged with fighting for, I will never walk away from the country that I love.”
Asked by broadcasters if he will lead the party into the next election, the prime minister said: “Yes I will. I had a five-year mandate to deliver the change. I intend to get on with what I was elected to do, which is deliver that change.”
His comments will be seen as a direct challenge to those Labour MPs who want his job, including health secretary Wes Streeting and former deputy PM Angela Rayner.
Speaking at an event in Hertfordshire, Starmer said he was determined to improve the lives of ordinary people, as Labour had promised to do.
He said his own brother, Nick, who died in 2024, “spent his adult life wandering from job to job in virtual poverty”.
“This system, this political system, didn’t work for him and there are billions of people in the same boat, children in poverty, young people who don’t get the opportunities they deserve,” he said.
“Millions of people held back because of a system that doesn’t work for them, who are not given the dignity, the respect, the chance that they deserve.
“And I’m fighting for them. I am their prime minister, and this is their Government and I will never give up on that fight.”
Has there ever existed a man whose arrogance is so out of proportion to his talents? I am of course talking about Wes Streeting – Britain’s secretary of state for health, cracker of the most terrible committee-written jokes, and the man hilariously gushed over by witless centrists as the saviour of Labour. No shade, but if the answer is ‘Wes Streeting’, you are asking the wrong question. Unless the question is ‘Who’s the biggest tit on the frontbench?’.
Streeting is back in the news, like that C-list celeb who just won’t leave us alone, after self-leaking the WhatsApp chats he had with ultimate wrong’un, Peter Mandelson. Peeved that some in the media have been calling him a mate of Mandy, Streeting wanted to set the record straight. He was merely an acquaintance of Mandelson’s who would occasionally ask that Prince of Darkness for advice on the burning issues of the day and then put kisses all over his messages, okay? Not buddies at all.
Now that Mandelson’s love-in with crooked girl-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein has properly blown up, Streeting is doing some serious distancing. He says he dumped his Mandy texts on the web because he’s sick of all the ‘smear and innuendo’ suggesting he has ‘something to hide’. He should have kept them private. Because it turns out he does have something to hide – that he’s a properly haughty politician who’ll happily throw everyone and everything under the bus to save his own lacklustre career.
The thing that really leapt out at me was Streeting’s bitching about Israel. It oozes with imperious conceit. In July 2025, he pressed Mandelson for his thoughts on recognising a Palestinian state. ‘Morally and politically, I think we need to join France’, said Streeting, referencing President Macron’s decision to recognise Palestine. There they are, Wes and Mandy, like a couple of Poundshop Sir Mark Sykes, musing on how to carve up the Holy Land. Someone please tell these donuts the British Empire is kaput. White men in Whitehall no longer get to magic up states in the Middle East.
What Streeting said next is genuinely troubling. Israel is behaving like a ‘rogue state’, he said. Let’s punish it, he suggested. We should ‘let them pay the price as pariahs’. He said we should impose sanctions on the entire dastardly nation, ‘not just a few ministers’. Who the hell does he think he is? Mate, you run the NHS – badly – not the Middle East. The breezy manner with which he proposed that Israel be damned with pariah status speaks to the staggering hubris of these two texting technocrats.
It confirms what the recognition of Palestine was really about – not improving the lot of Palestinians but shaming and isolating Israel. It was nation-building as a weapon, driven by a colonialist instinct to reprimand the uppity Jewish State. It was a back-covering exercise, too. ‘There are no circumstances’, Streeting texted, ‘in which people like me or Shabana [Mahmood] could abstain or vote against [Palestine recognition]’. Britain and France’s recognition of Palestine emboldened Hamas. Hamas gushed that it was one of the ‘fruits’ of their fascistic pogrom of 7 October 2023. And for what? To let a couple of crisis-ridden hacks in the Labour Party save face in the Commons and their own constituencies? Now that’s pariah behaviour, Wes.
Other messages confirm why Streeting was so adamant about a Palestinian state – because he lives in fear of losing his seat to the Muslim vote. He said in one message that he thinks he’ll be ‘toast’ at the next election (don’t threaten us with a good time). That’s partly because Labour has ‘no growth strategy’ and no answer to voters’ question of ‘Why Labour?’, he said. And it’s partly because the sectarian vote is viciously nipping at Labour’s heels.
‘I fear we’re in big trouble’, he said in one message. ‘We just lost our safest ward in Redbridge (51 per cent Muslim, Ilford [South]) to a Gaza independent’, he wrote. And ‘at this rate I don’t think we’ll hold either of the two Ilford seats’. One of those seats, of course, is Streeting’s: he’s MP for Ilford North. This is why he thinks he might be ‘toast’, and this is why he was insistent he could never oppose a Palestinian state – because ‘the Gaza vote’ is coming for him.
The levels of pork-barrel calculation on display here are staggering. ‘Save Gaza’, the left yelps, yet Streeting is more interested in saving his own arse. Screw the State of Israel, I need to protect my little fiefdom of Ilford. Is this cultural appeasement of sectarian voters? It smacks of it to me. That Streeting thought these messages would paint him in a positive light post-Mandelson is mindblowing, for what they really confirm is the willingness of the nominal secularists of Britain’s social-democratic party to play the sectarian game if it will help them keep their grubby mitts in the till of power.
Oh, Wes – you thought you were moving on from the Mandy years but all you’ve done is confirm that Labour is entirely unfit for power. It’s a lost party, bereft of principle, cruel to its allies and craven in the face of sectarianism. Listless, exhausted and boring. I already knew I wanted Labour out – now I really know.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. His latest book – After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation – is available to order on Amazon UK and Amazon US now. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy.
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Driving instructor urges all learners to do 1 check before entering roundabout
