The weird thing is that the parliamentary letter about the Julian Assange case would have been absolutely right and proper except for the incredible lapse of judgement by the organisers in letting alleged sex pest John Woodcock sign it.
Diane Abbott's good faith response this letter is absolutely spot on in the way she clearly delineates between the sexual assault allegations against Assange and the fact that he's actually been arrested on trumped up hacking charges designed to punish him for his role in leaking masses of evidence of US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Abbott's position is that Assange should not be extradited to the US to face political persecution for revealing the truth about grotesque war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he should be extradited to face a fair trial in Sweden if the authorities there do re-open the sexual assault case against him.
Abbott would have been quite within her rights to point out the absolute hypocrisy of including the signature of an alleged sex pest who then blatantly ran away from the Labour Party in order to evade the internal party investigations into the serious sexual misconduct allegations against him, but she chose to deal with the letter in good faith without raising this issue.
As someone looking at this from outside the parliamentary bubble, I obviously agree with supporting victims of sexual violence, but it's absolutely mind-boggling that the organisers of this letter decided to allow Woodcock to sign it, and that others who knew that his signature was on it decided to go along with it regardless of the hypocrisy.
It seems so obvious that once you've decided to publicly legitimise an alleged sex pest who ran away from investigations into his behaviour, any legitimate point you're trying to make about the importance of showing solidarity with victims of sexual abuse is completely annihilated by the hypocrisy.
In fact, allowing an alleged sex pest to sign the letter trivialised the issue of sexual abuse by making it look like nothing more than an exercise in petty political point scoring.
It makes it look as if you don't actually give a toss about the very real importance of showing solidarity with the victims of sexual misconduct, and you're just using the issue to score incredibly cheap political points against your political opponents.
Allowing an alleged sex pest to sign this letter about the importance of showing solidarity with the victims of sexual abuse just makes you wonder what the hell the organisers were thinking.
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In June 2016 the right-wing pro-privatisation, pro-austerity neoliberal faction of the Labour Party were so confident of success that they openly briefed the Daily Telegraph on their ludicrous plot to use the Brexit referendum result (whichever way it went) as an excuse to launch an internal labour Party coup against Jeremy Corbyn.
We all know how that turned out now. Their cowardly orchestrated bullying tactics to try and force Corbyn to resign; their disgraceful scheming to game the party rules in an effort to keep Corbyn off the ballot; their pathetic inability to find or field a unity candidate for weeks until they finally shoved the hapless Owen Smith into the jaws of almost certain defeat; and their ruthless systematic purge of left-leaning Labour members for the slightest of indiscretions (retweeting a non-Labour MP on one occasion, voting for another party long before they'd even joined Labour, and even liking the Foo Fighters too much) in a desperate last-ditch effort to rig the leadership vote in their favour.
You couldn't really imagine a more damaging and strategically inept failure than that, but they're actually at it again.
In August 2018 a different right-wing rag has broken the story, but the cynical underhand scheming is the same. The hallmarks of arrogance and absolute strategic ineptitude are the same. The names of those involved are the same (Chris Leslie, Liz Kendall, Chuka Umunna, Stephen Kinnock, Gavin Shuker, and disgraceful John Woodcock - until he resigned from the party to escape the investigation into his alleged sexual misconduct)
This time it's the Express, which is admittedly enough to get any right-thinking person's alarm bells ringing, but the article is full of corroborating details. The luxury country estate they hired to scheme away in, the cost of the booking (£144 per head), the number of MPs involved, and even the time of the train they caught to get there.
The scheming
One of the strategies these disgraceful plotters scratched together is to launch their putsch after a successful General Election, suddenly resigning as a bloc of rebel right-wing MPs to keep Corbyn out of power!
How they imagine the electorate would react with anything but unbridled fury at such a cynical and anti-democratic wrecking tactic to deny the nation the Prime Minister they'd just voted for is anyone's guess.
Coalition with the Tories?
How they would actually keep Corbyn out of power is another mystery. The only conceivable way would be for them to actually form some kind of political pact to form a coalition with what's left of the Tory Party.
How hard-Remainers like Chris Leslie, Chuka Umunna, Liz Kendall and their ilk could actually share power with whichever of the fanatical Tory Brextremists manage to keep their seats (Jacob Rees-Mogg, Liam Fox, David Davis, Priti Patel, Boris Johnson, Chris Grayling, John Redwood, Peter Bone ...) is anyone's guess.
But then where there's utterly ruthless self-interest driving your every political move, there's likely a way isn't there?
Another leadership election?
Another of the coup-plotters' schemes is to keep flaming the anti-Semitism row as hard as they possibly can for as long as they possibly can in order to try to break Corbyn, then put forward one of their truly laughable selection of leadership candidates in a new leadership election:
The suggested candidates are the disgraceful Chris Leslie (one of the main architects of Labour's woeful election-losing austerity lite strategy at the 2015 General Election), Yvette Cooper (who finished 3rd in the 2015 leadership election with a paltry 17% of the vote and is married to one of the other main architects of austerity-lite!), Chuka Umunna (the absolute embodiment of the grossly unappealing career politician who will switch his 'principles' in a second if he thinks there's an advantage in it), and Stephen Kinnock (a man with no discernible political qualities at all other than the blessing of a great big dollop of nepotism).
How the hell the coup-plotters think that any of this unappealing bunch could win over the Labour Party membership is anyone's guess. Perhaps they'd look at some way of cheating the election again, maybe with ludicrous nonsense like back-dating the membership eligibility to vote date to 2005, or trying to cut the membership out of the decision altogether.
Rigging or evading the ballot seem like incredibly unlikely options given they'd need control of Labour's executive committee to make such changes, which was vanishingly unlikely even before an infuriated membership found out about this latest disgustingly cynical coup-plot to defy the will of the membership again.
This coup-plot just adds even more incentive for all genuinely left-wing Labour members to vote for the Momentum-backed NEC candidates, and against the right-wing Progress-backed slate who are aligned with the right-wing coup-plotter politicians.
Mandatory reselection
The consequence of this outright defiance against the Labour Party membership really must be the introduction of mandatory reselection of all Labour MPs by their local constituency parties.
Democratic reselection is hardly a radical idea because reselection is commonplace in democracies across the developed world. Just think of the primaries in US elections where other candidates from within the party can challenge the incumbent to go forward as the party's official candidate.
You don't even have to travel that far to see it. Just north of the border in Scotland the SNP have a mandatory reselection policy. Before the 2017 General Election all 54 of the SNP's Westminster MPs were reselected by their local party members without problems.
The only thing MPs have got to fear when it comes to reselection is whether they have done a good job of representing their party, and their local constituency.
No local Labour group is going to take the massive risk of ousting a loyal and hard-working MP, because replacing the familiar local MP with a new face would clearly increase them losing the seat to another party.
The only MPs who have anything to fear from democratic reselection would be lazy, arrogant, self-entitled MPs with reputations for working against the interests of the Labour Party, and against the interests of all of the local Labour activists who worked so hard to help them win their seats in the first place.
Given the absolute belligerence of the right-wing coup-plotter MPs, and their continual efforts to actively damage and run down the long-term reputation of the Labour Party solely in order to undermine Jeremy Corbyn, it's very likely that mandatory reselection will be very near the top of the agenda at the next Labour Party conference.
Theresa May to the rescue?
The looming prospect of reselection means only one thing: The only person who can save these disgraceful coup-plotters from deselection is Theresa May!
She can do it by calling another snap election in the autumn of 2018 so that Labour simply doesn't have the time to make the rule changes and carry out the reselection process before they have to throw themselves into the chaos of a general election campaign.
This kind of scenario would actually make their post-election putsch strategy seem a lot less incoherent, but only in a desperate, pathetic, disloyal, and disgustingly cynical way.
Theresa May saves the Labour right-wingers from the deselections they so richly deserve, then the Labour right-wingers break away from the Labour Party and prop up whoever the Tories select as Theresa May's replacement.
The big problem from the coup-plotter perspective of course is that if Labour manage to win more comfortably than the coup-plotters are gambling on. Then they simply wouldn't have the numbers to do the damage.
A comfortable Corbyn win isn't actually as far-fetched as it seems. In 2017 the Corbyn surge lifted Labour from the mid-20s when the election campaign kicked off to a final vote share of 40%. Since then Labour have hovered at around 40%, so another Corbyn surge from a much higher starting position, even a much smaller surge than last time, could lift Labour well clear of the Tories.
Then there's the utterly fickle blue-kip demographic to consider. Soaking up the majority of the voters fleeing the wreckage of UKIP with her hard-right ethno-nationalist Brexit sponge turned out to be absolutely crucial for the Theresa May in 2017, because without so many blue-kippers on board, the Tories would have fallen way short of even being in a position to bribe the DUP bigots into backing their shambles of a government.
So if Corbyn managed to deliver another mini-surge, while the Tories fell back as a lot of the fickle blue-kip demographic return to the UKIP fold, it could well end up being mathematically impossible for the right-wing coup-plotters to actually return the Tory favour by ruthlessly stabbing Jeremy Corbyn on the finishing line.
So would the Tories play their part in such a gamble by triggering another snap election, knowing that they'd be saving a load of their orthodox neoliberal comrades who are embedded within the Labour ranks, but at the risk of never actually receiving their payback?
I guess it just depends how desperate they are doesn't it?
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One of the most extraordinary things about the anti-Semitism furore is the way that Jeremy Corbyn's right-wing opponents are prepared to issue blatantly anti-Semitic statements in order to attack him as an anti-Semite, but they repeatedly get a total free pass from the mainstream media.
First we had Theresa May using the grotesque "self-hating Jew" trope to attack every single Jewish member of the Labour Party as tolerant of anti-Semitism, then we had the Tory government minister Sajid Javid hiding behind parliamentary privilege to smear hundreds of Jewish Labour activists as supporters of the fascist ideology that resulted in the genocide of their forefathers!
Incredibly, right-wingers have tried to argue that silencing and delegitimising Jewish voices you don't agree with by smearing left-wing Jewish people as "self-hating Jews" and "neo-fascists" is somehow not anti-Semitic behaviour!
Now the right-wing (and non-Jewish) Labour MP John Woodcock has gone even further by slamming Jeremy Corbyn for celebrating the Jewish Seder festival with a left-wing Jewish group called Jewdas.
Apparently Corbyn is still an anti-Semite for attending and participating in a Jewish festival, because the people there are somehow the wrong kind of Jews.
Using grotesquely divisive 'good Jew - bad Jew' shit to delegitimise and dismiss Jewish voices you disagree with is about as clear an example of anti-Semitism as it's possible to see. But Woodcock didn't just get a free pass on it, his vile comments were uncritically repeated all over the mainstream media, including the oh-so-impartial BBC.
It's difficult not to resort to anger when you see a person resorting to spectacularly divisive anti-Semitism in order to smear one of their political opponents as anti-Semitic, but perhaps the best response to this kind of sick hypocrisy is humour.
One of the most telling responses to Woodcock's vile effort to delegitimise and silence left-wing Jews came from the poet and children's laureate Michael Rosen, who wrote him a poem (see picture).
Not only did Woodcock resort to the anti-Semitic game of dismissing Jews who don't agree with him as illegitimate Jews, he also attached a link to the filthy extreme-right Guido Fawkes hate chamber to his Tweet.
If anyone has any doubt about why politicians (and especially Labour MPs) should not be giving free publicity to Guido, just find any Guido article about Sadiq Khan or Diane Abbott and take a look through the disgusting tidal wave of bigoted and abusive filth in the comments section.
Not only has Woodcock resorted to the anti-Semitic 'good Jew - bad Jew' game in order to smear Jeremy Corbyn as anti-Semitic for actually attending and participating in a Jewish religious festival in his spare time ... he's also posted a link to one of the most outrageously bigoted extreme-right hate chambers in British politics whilst pretending to oppose bigotry!
Here are a selection of Guido comments about Sadiq Khan and Diane Abbott for you to consider as you evaluate John Woodcock's decision to support this site whilst simultaneously posturing as someone who is opposed to bigotry!
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
The right-wing Labour MP John Woodcock is one of the most duplicitous wreckers in the entire party. Whenever there's an opportunity to attack Jeremy Corbyn and the hundreds of thousands of Labour members who support him, Woodcock is always at the forefront slinging as much political abuse as possible.
Now it turns out that Woodcock has been going around threatening to quit the Labour Party in order to inflict as much damage on the party as possible before the local elections.
The reasons he gives are the usual stuff. The Corbyn's a "Russian stooge" smears (despite the Tories taking £800,000 in donations from Russian oligarchs and Putin cronies and Labour taking £0 since Corbyn took over) and the anti-Semitism smears (despite the fact that Jeremy Corbyn can point to a track record of opposing all forms of racism and bigotry all the way back to before he became an MP in the 1980s).
Woodcock is also whining that the Labour MP Dan Jarvis is being asked to stand down as an MP if he wants to become the mayor of the Sheffield region, because of the Labour Party policy of no double-jobbing.
Jarvis is trying to claim he should be allowed to do both jobs, but the precedent is absolutely clear. Sadiq Khan stood down as an MP in 2016 to become London Mayor, Andy Burnham stood down as an MP in 2017 to become Mayor of Greater Manchester, and Steve Rotherham also stood down in 2017 to become the mayor of the Liverpool City Region.
Why Jarvis thinks he shouldn't follow this precedent is anyone's guess, and why Woodcock has decided that this particular argument is the one he wants to have a final ruinous tantrum over is anyone's guess too.
If Woodcock does go ahead with his threat to quit the Labour Party and see out the parliament as an independent MP he won't just be betraying his constituents in Barrow who voted for him to serve as a Labour MP, he'll also be demonstrating that he's got significantly less integrity than Ukippers.
When Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless quit the Tory party in 2014 to defect to UKIP, they at least had the decency to call by-elections to give their local constituents the right to choose whether they were still wanted. By-elections they both won by the way.
Woodcock has no intention of doing that because he'd almost certainly lose his seat to the replacement Labour candidate, so he's planning on squatting in the seat for as long as possible in order to attack the Labour Party at every move, which is hardly what his constituents voted for.
If Woodcock does go ahead with this threat to quit the Labour Party and then squat in the seat for as long as possible, it'd be proof that he's got less integrity, less regard for his constituents, and less commitment to democracy than the Ukipper fruitcakes on the extreme-right fringe of UK politics!
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
