Another Tory antisemite to be widely ignored

One of the weirdest things about the politically motivated antisemitism witch hunt is the fact that so many of the self-appointed witch hunters are brazen antisemites themselves.

From accusations that left-wing and peace activist Jews are "self-hating Jews" (an ancient anti-Semitic trope) or "kapos", to the really obvious antisemitism of speaking about 'the Jewish Community' as if it's some kind of right-wing pro-Israeli, socialism-hating hive mind, rather than hundreds of thousands of individual people with incredibly diverse political views, and outright attacks on the Orthodox Jewish people, it turns out that a lot of antisemitism witch hunters are repeatedly proving themselves to be more antisemitic than a lot of the people they're accusing.

Sol Wielkopolski is the Tory councillor for Newbarns and Parkside in Barrow, and he's stumbled stupidly into the antisemitism debate with an egregious display of antisemitism.

He's found a video featuring Jeremy Corbyn explaining that millionaire Tories and their mega-rich backers won't suffer the terrible consequences of rising food prices in a No Deal Brexit scenario (see below) and disingenuously reinterpreted it as "inciting hatred of the wealthy".

Boris Johnson and his millionaire friends won't be affected by rising food prices in a No Deal Brexit. pic.twitter.com/lYDSn5c1XR

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) August 3, 2019

If he'd stopped there it would have been bad enough, given that it's just a fact of life that the wealthy are more financially insulated from the dire consequences of economic hard times than the poor and ordinary, but he decided to go a step further by linking this ludicrous accusation that Corbyn "incited hatred of the wealthy" into the antisemitism witch hunt, by claiming it's "consistent with his hatred of Jews".

Anyone who knows anything about Corbyn knows that the accusation that he hates Jews is a ludicrous smear.

Why would a man who "hates Jews" ever have campaigned to save a Jewish cemetery in Islington in the 1980s, or called on the government to accept Jewish refugees from Yemen in the 2000s, or signed dozens of parliamentary motions standing with Jews and condemning antisemitism, or organised resistance to the National Front when they tried to hold a neo-Nazi march in the Jewish neighbourhood of Wood Green in the 1970s.

But then Wielkopolski's effort to link Corbyn's justified criticism of the mega-rich Brextremists with supposed antisemitism is antisemitic itself because it invokes the age-old antisemitic trope of wealthy Jews controlling the world.

According to this utterly ridiculous argument, if anyone ever criticises the mega-rich beneficiaries of the capitalist system, they're supposedly being antisemitic because the mega-rich beneficiaries of capitalism are 'nasty Jews'.

The only person being antisemitic is Wielkopolski, but he's too damned stupid to even understand that he's invoked an antisemitic trope for no other reason than to smear a political rival.

The Tory party won't investigate or suspend him for invoking antisemitic tropes.

Why would they?

They sided with every extreme-right and neo-Nazi party in the European Parliament last year to stand in solidarity with Victor Orbán's antisemitic regime in Hungary last year and got a free pass on it, so why would they give a damn about one of their councillors lazily spreading antisemitic tropes?

And the mainstream media certainly won't give a damn, because "what if the antisemitism witch hunters are more antisemitic than the people they're accusing of antisemitism?" runs entirely contrary to the mainstream media groupthink that antisemitism is the Achilles Heel that will finally bring down Jeremy Corbyn, reverse Labour's return to democratic socialism, and restore the neoliberal orthodoxy that mainstream media journalists have benefited so handsomely from over the years.

Admittedly Wielkopolski is hardly a senior figure within the Tory party, and he's obviously too damned stupid to even realise that he's plucked an antisemitic trope out of nowhere to use it as a political smear, but he'll get away with it because that's just how things work.

If the antisemitism isn't useful for the primary purpose of attacking Corbyn and socialism, then it's widely considered to be irrelevant.

Which just goes to show how debased the whole thing has become.

Any genuine anti-racist should condemn racism because it's racism, not selectively call it out only when it's conducive to a partisan political agenda, like undermining Labour's return to its founding democratic socialist principles.

And the fact that witch hunters like Wielkopolski are invoking antisemitic tropes themselves in order to smear others as antisemites, with absolutely no fear of repercussions, is downright Kafkaeaque.

 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.

OR

12 questions to ask local Tories who turn up on your doorstep pretending to be your friend

As the May 2nd local elections approach many of us will have the uncomfortable experience of Tory canvassers knocking on our doors to pretend to be our friends. 
In this article I'm going to provide 12 questions you can use to blast them off their feet.

1. How much have your party cut the local government budget since 2010?

They will try to bluster and blunder their way around this question because they know the answer is not good for them at all. The Institute for government say that they've cut support for communities and local government by 67% since 2010. 

These ideologically driven Tory cuts are the reason your Council Tax bill is going up, while your local services are worse than they've ever been before.

2. Do you think that there is a link between rising violent crime and the 20,000+ police jobs you Tories have scrapped?

There is obviously a link between the Tories slashing 20,000+ police jobs and the soaring rates of violent crime, but the Tories will try to deny it because to admit it would be extremely damaging.

So instead of admitting the truth they assume that the general public are so thick that we'd actually reject our own common sense understanding of cause and effect, and mindlessly believe the Tory fairy story that slashing the police force back to 1970s levels of per capita policing has had absolutely no effect whatever on rates of serious crime!

3. In 2010 you lot said you'd eliminate the deficit by 2015 but you failed, what is your projection now?

When the Lib-Dems enabled the Tories back into power in 2010 they endlessly promised that their hard-right austerity project would eliminate the budget deficit by 2015. They obviously missed that target by miles because it's mid-2018 and the deficit is still there.

Again the Tory canvasser at your doorstep is likely to try to bluff and bluster their way out of answering the question, because they either don't know, or they know that the answer is awful. Maybe allow them bluster away for a while before you burst their bubble by informing them that the latest projection is 2031, and asking them if they think it's acceptable to take 21 years to achieve what they promised to do in less than 5.

4. Are you aware that the Tory party has a problem with bigotry?

The Tory canvasser on your doorstep will almost certainly try to deflect onto Labour and the charges of anti-Semitism, but you can nip this kind of evasion in the bud by pointing out that YouGov surveys have found that rates of anti-Semitism are way higher in the Tory party than in the Labour Party, and asking why they're so keen to deflect away from the problem of anti-Semitism in their own ranks by criticising a party that has lower levels of anti-Semitism than their own.

Then you can ask them subsidiary questions about things like Theresa May's vile UKIP-pandering anti-immigrant legislation that has been used to dehumanise and discriminate against the Windrush Generation, Jacob Rees-Mogg promoting the German far-right on Twitter, the fact the Tories put up an extreme-right white-supremacist as a local election candidate in Watford, or the fact that they simply wait for the public fuss to die down and then let their racists and bigots slide back into the party later on.

5. Why did your party defeat Amendment 58?

The Tory probably won't even know what you're talking about because the mainstream media barely touched this incredibly important parliamentary vote, so you'll have to explain it to them.

When the Tories put their EU Withdrawal Bill before parliament in January 2018 the opposition parties all supported a Labour Party amendment to stop the government from using Brexit as a Trojan horse to scrap our workers' rights, environmental laws, food standards, consumer protections, and equality legislation.

The Tories (including CUK squatter hero Anna Soubry) and their sectarian DUP mates voted the amendment down, presumably because they wanted to reserve the right to trash our workers' rights, environmental laws, food standards, consumer protections, and equality legislation.

This absolute Tory refusal to build parliamentary consensus on Brexit in order to run the whole thing as a closed Tory shop is the main reason that Brexit has turned into such a humiliating deadline-missing farce under Theresa May's rule.

6. Which was the first local council to go insolvent?

The answer is that Tory run Northamptonshire was the first council to declare de facto insolvency in February 2018. This is incredible because the Tories have loaded all of their worst local government funding cuts onto non-Tory councils in northern England for the last nine years.

So despite having a massive artificial financial advantage over Labour run councils that have suffered much deeper austerity cuts, the Tories in Northamptonshire did such a woeful job that they were the first to break under the pressure.

7. How much are you Tories going to slash from the budget of my local school?

Since 2010 the Tories have implemented an unprecedented 8% per pupil funding cut to the schools budget, and they've also transferred ownership of literally thousands of schools to private profiteers who use bloated executive salaries and financial trickery to siphon as much cash as possible out of the education system into their own pockets.

Use this school cuts calculator to find out how much they're planning to slash from the budget of your local school (or the school your kids/grandchildren attend), make a note of it, then ask the question.

They won't know the answer so expect more bluff, bluster and misdirection tactics from them. Let them bluster away as much as they like, then tell them the figure and ask them whether they think it's acceptable that they're making children pay the cost of the 2007-08 bankers' crisis.

8. Are you proud of what you've done to our wages?

Ask the Tory canvasser if they're aware that since 2010 British workers have suffered the longest sustained collapse in the value of their wages since records began, and ask them if they're proud of having imposed this record breaking level of wage repression.

9. Why has housing become so unaffordable since 2010?

Ask the Tory canvasser whether they are aware that UK housing is more unaffordable than it's ever been before.

Then ask them whether they think that home ownership souring out of the reach of millions of ordinary people has anything to do with their wage repression policies, and the fact that between 2010 and 2017 the Tories oversaw the lowest levels of house building since the early 1920s.

10. How many more children are growing up in poverty since you lot came to power in 2010?

The answer is 400,000.

11. Why do you expect me to pay compensation for the consequences of your horrible policies?

The Tory government have announced a compensation scheme for the Windrush Brits who have been denied housing, employment, social security, pensions, and NHS treatment, and been made to live in fear of imprisonment and deportation as a result of Theresa May's brutal and unlawful "Hostile Environment" legislation.

What she hasn't been clear about is that the Windrush scandal came about because of her own vile UKIP-pandering anti-immigrant legislation in 2014.

So what she's actually saying by promising compensation is that she's going to completely evade responsibility for her own actions by not resigning, then compound matters by using public money to pay off the victims of her own malicious legislation.

See if you can get the Tory canvasser to admit that it's wrong for Theresa May to make the general public to pay the cost of her own horrible mistake, while she suffers no negative consequences at all.

12. Which political party has imposed the biggest armed forces cuts since the end of the Cold War?

The answer is the Tory party who have dramatically slashed the size of the armed forces since 2010.

They've reduced the army by over 20,000, the RAF by 8,500, and the navy by 5,500. 

General advice

Don't be afraid to print this article off and leave it by your front door so you can use it as a guide (I absolutely don't give a damn about copyright issues). These Tory canvassers will be speaking from a script, so it's totally fair for you to refer to notes too.

Feel free to compile other questions you can stump them with too. If there's some local issue or controversy you can hit them with use that, or take a scroll through this list of 50 disgraceful Tory controversies to find other issues that you're particularly concerned with and make note of them.

Remember that the information in this article doesn't specifically have to be presented in the form of questions, it can also be used to rebut several of the set talking points the Tory canvasser will try to raise.

Also remember that the longer you can keep the Tory canvasser engaged in discussion, the less time they'll have to try to convince other less well-informed people into voting Tory through their bombardment of lies and deceptions. It's actually much better for you to keep them occupied by asking them questions like these and watching their absurd displays of mental gymnastics, than just angrily telling them to get off your doorstep.

 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.

OR

Ultra-cynical Tories are blaming Labour for the consequences of their own party's actions

Ultra-cynical Tories in Southampton are so desperate for power that they're blaming Labour for the consequences of their own party's actions in government.

The reason council tax bills are going up while services are worse than ever is that the austerity fixated Tories in government have cut the local government budget by a whopping 67% since 2010. 
In Southampton the result of this hard-right ideologically driven Tory madness is a £485 per household cut to the council's budget.

It's not just Southampton either, these brutal hard-right Tory cuts have left councils up and down the country with no choice but to ruthlessly slash back local services (bin collections, libraries, leisure centres, social care, highways maintenance, children's services, planning departments, street cleaning ...) to save money, whilst raising Council Tax as much as they can get away with in order to plug the gaps in the most critical services (domestic abuse shelters, children's services, care services for the elderly and infirm) in order to prevent the most damaging outcomes (domestic abuse, child abuse, deaths).

And make no mistake, these Tory cuts weren't driven by necessity, they were driven by the Tory desperation to ensure the upwards redistribution of wealth via massive tax breaks and handouts to corporations and the mega-rich.

Just imagine the cynicism of knowing that your own party's ideological fixation with hard-right austerity dogma has caused this dreadful situation, but deciding to print up a load of propaganda to blame your political opponents for it.

That's the cynicism of the Tories in a nutshell. Deliberately and systematically wrecking local government services up and down the country for eight ruinous years, then trying to actually take over local councils that have been gutted by this strategic wrecking by blaming the local councils themselves for the appalling financial position that Westminster Tories have left them in.

The really sad thing is that because of the mainstream media refusal to critique Tory austerity dogma as the disastrous hard-right fanaticism it so obviously is, a lot of people will be unaware of the massive cuts the austerity obsessed Tories have imposed on their own local council, and will actually believe this kind of outrageous Tory propaganda when it gets shoved through their door.

 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.

OR

12 questions to ask local Tories who turn up on your doorstep pretending to be your friend

As the May 3rd local elections approach many of us will have the uncomfortable experience of Tory canvassers knocking on our doors to pretend to be our friends. In this article I'm going to provide 12 questions you can use to blast them off their feet.

1. How much have your party cut the local government budget since 2010?

They will try to bluster and blunder their way around this question because they know the answer is not good for them at all. The Institute for government say that they've cut support for communities and local government by 67% since 2010. 

These ideologically driven Tory cuts are the reason your Council Tax bill is going up, while your local services are worse than they've ever been before.

2. Do you think that there is a link between rising violent crime and you lot the police force by 20,000+?

There is obviously a link between the Tories slashing 20,000+ police jobs and the soaring rates of violent crime, but the Tories will try to deny it because to admit it would be extremely damaging.

So instead of admitting the truth they assume that the general public are so thick that we'd actually reject our own common sense understanding of cause and effect, and mindlessly accept the Tory fairy story that slashing the police force back to 1970s levels of per capita policing has had absolutely no effect whatever on rates of serious crime!

3. In 2010 you lot said you'd eliminate the deficit by 2015 but you failed, what is your projection now?

When the Lib-Dems enabled the Tories back into power in 2010 they endlessly promised that their hard-right austerity project would eliminate the budget deficit by 2015. They obviously missed that target by miles because it's mid-2018 and the deficit is still there.

Again the Tory canvasser at your doorstep is likely to try to bluff and bluster their way out of answering the question, because they either don't know, or they know that the answer is awful. Maybe allow them bluster away for a while before you burst their bubble by informing them that the latest projection is 2031, and asking them if they think it's acceptable to take 21 years to achieve what they promised to do in less than 5.

4. Does the Tory party have a problem with bigotry?

The Tory canvasser on your doorstep will almost certainly try to deflect onto Labour and the charges of anti-Semitism, but you can nip this kind of evasion in the bud by pointing out that YouGov surveys have found that rates of anti-Semitism are way higher in the Tory party than in the Labour Party, and asking why they're so keen to deflect away from the problem of anti-Semitism in their own ranks by criticising a party that has lower levels of anti-Semitism than their own.

Then you can ask them subsidiary questions about things like Theresa May's vile UKIP-pandering anti-immigrant legislation that has been used to dehumanise and discriminate against the Windrush Generation, the fact the Tories put up an extreme-right white-supremacist as a local election candidate in Watford, or the fact that they simply wait for the public fuss to die down and then let their racists and bigots slide back into the party later on.

5. Why did your party defeat Amendment 58?

The Tory probably won't even know what you're talking about because the mainstream media barely touched this incredibly important parliamentary vote, so you'll have to explain it to them.

When the Tories put their EU Withdrawal Bill before parliament the opposition parties all supported a Labour Party amendment to stop the government from using Brexit as a Trojan horse to scrap our workers' rights, environmental laws, food standards, consumer protections, and equality legislation.

The Tories and their sectarian DUP mates voted the amendment down.

What possible reason is there for the Tory party to have voted down this amendment to prevent them from using Brexit to attack our rights and protections unless they intend to use Brexit to attack our rights and protections?

6. Which was the first local council to go insolvent?

The answer is that Tory run Northamptonshire was the first council to declare de facto insolvency in February 2018. This is incredible because the Tories have loaded their worst local government funding cuts onto non-Tory councils for the last eight years. So despite having a massive artificial advantage over Labour run councils that have suffered much deeper austerity cuts, the Tories in Northamptonshire did such a woeful job that they were the first to break under the pressure.

7. How much are you Tories going to slash from the budget of my local school?

Use this school cuts calculator to find out how much they're planning to slash from the budget of your local school (or the school your kids/grandchildren attend), make a note of it, then ask the question.

They won't know the answer so expect more bluff, bluster and misdirection tactics from them. Let them bluster away as much as they like, then tell them the figure and ask them whether they think it's acceptable that they're making children pay the cost of the 2007-08 bankers' crisis.

8. Are you proud of what you've done to our wages?

Ask the Tory canvasser if they're aware that since 2010 British workers have suffered the longest sustained collapse in the value of their wages since records began, and ask them if they're proud of having imposed this record breaking level of wage repression.

9. Why has housing become so unaffordable since 2010?

Ask the Tory canvasser whether they are aware that UK housing is more unaffordable than it's ever been before.

Then ask them whether they think that home ownership souring out of the reach of millions of ordinary people has anything to do with their wage repression policies, and the fact that between 2010 and 2017 the Tories oversaw the lowest levels of house building since the early 1920s.

10. How many more children are growing up in poverty since you lot came to power in 2010?

The answer is 400,000.

11. Why do you expect me to pay compensation for the consequences of your horrible policies?

Theresa May has announced that she's considering compensation for the Windrush Brits who have been denied housing, employment, social security, pensions, and NHS treatment, and been made to live in fear of imprisonment and deportation.

What she hasn't been clear about is that the Windrush scandal came about because of her own vile UKIP-pandering anti-immigrant legislation in 2014.

So what she's actually saying by promising compensation is that she's going to completely evade responsibility for her own actions by not resigning, then compound matters by using taxpayers' money to pay off the victims of her own malicious legislation.

See if you can get the Tory canvasser to admit that it's wrong for Theresa May to make the general public to pay the cost of her own horrible mistake, while she suffers no negative consequences at all.

12. Which political party has imposed the biggest armed forces cuts since the end of the Cold War?

The answer is the Tory party who have dramatically slashed the size of the armed forces since 2010.

They've reduced the army by over 20,000, the RAF by 8,500, and the navy by 5,500. 

General advice

Don't be afraid to print this article off and leave it by your front door so you can use it as a guide (I absolutely don't give a damn about copyright issues). These Tory canvassers will be speaking from a script, so it's totally fair for you to refer to notes too.

Feel free to compile other questions you can stump them with too. If there's some local issue or controversy you can hit them with use that, or take a scroll through this list of 50 disgraceful Tory controversies to find other issues that you're particularly concerned with and make note of them.

Remember that the information in this article doesn't specifically have to be presented in the form of questions, it can also be used to rebut several of the set talking points the Tory canvasser will try to raise.

Also remember that the longer you can keep the Tory canvasser engaged in discussion, the less time they'll have to try to convince other less well-informed people into voting Tory through their bombardment of lies and deceptions. It's actually much better for you to keep them occupied by asking them questions like these and watching their absurd displays of mental gymnastics, than just angrily telling them to get off your doorstep.

 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.

OR

Conservative councils deliver failure

The Tory party social media presence is absolutely repulsive. It's not jest the fact that they spread so many misrepresentations, smears, and outright lies, it's the disgusting way that they do it, and the sick elitist mentality of the Tory strategists who believe they can lie like this with total impunity because the general public are too thick and gullible to see through their deceptions, even when they've resorted to reality-reversing Orwellian propaganda tactics.

In this article I'm going to critique one Tweet from the @Conservatives Twitter account, but the problem is obviously wider than just a single Tweet. The @Conservatives account continually pushes misleading and downright dishonest political propaganda alongside multiple other misinformation accounts such as the vile @CCHQ account, and dozens of others.

Local elections are about local issues

The most convincing lies always have a kernel of truth about them, and in this case it's the perfectly valid assertion that "local elections on May 3 will decide how your local services are run and how much you pay for them. Things like street cleaning, rubbish collection, road repairs and helping the elderly".

This is actually true. So as the local election campaign heats up and the Tories and the right-wing media focus ever more effort on smearing Jeremy Corbyn in the hope of frightening people away from voting Labour at the local level, just remember that the Tories have admitted the truth here, and that local elections are actually about local government and local services, not about Jeremy Corbyn's personality and national level policies.

Austerity dogma

Noting that local elections are principally about local issues does not mean that central government policy has no influence on local government and local services, in fact central government polcy can have a devastating impact on your local community.

Since 2010 the Tories have slashed the Department of Communities and Local Government by an astounding 67% meaning disastrous consequences for local services up and down the country.

The Tory obsession with ruinous hard-right austerity fanaticism is the principal reason that your Council Tax bill is going up again despite your local government services being in a worse state than they've ever been.

Just think about the things the Tories listed in the tweet.

• Street cleaning and other maintenance services like grass cutting have been slashed.

• Bin collections have been scaled back from weekly to fortnightly, or even 3-weekly collections across the country.

• Surely everyone who drives has noticed the deterioration in the state of the roads over the last eight years?

• And surely everyone is aware that social care services for the frail and elderly have been massively reduced which not only leaves vulnerable people with inadequate care, it also increases pressure on already over-stretched NHS facilities when the victims of these cuts are left with nowhere else to turn but their local hospital. 

All of this is a direct consequence of the Tory fixation with hard-right austerity dogma, and the reason your Council Tax bill is going up again despite this collapse in the standard of your local services is that your local council desperately needs more cash to plug the worst and most dangerous of the shortfalls.

Delivery

The text of the Tweet claims that "Conservative councillors deliver better services in your area & lower taxes for you". The first part of the claim is dubious and the second part is an outright lie.

Better services?

Even if we skip over the fact that Tory austerity dogma is the cause of collapsing local services up and down the country, the first claim that Tory councils "deliver better services in your area" is dubious because even at the local level Tories believe in the same hard-right austerity ideology.

This fixation with austerity dogma that exists at every level of the Tory party means that they cut local services with an ideological zeal, believing that they're actually doing something wonderful by shutting down children's services, gutting social care, trashing local services, closing public facilities and flogging off publicly owned assets to their wealthy property speculator mates.

Councils that are controlled by other parties are also suffering the ruinous consequences of the Tory austerity cuts, but at least they're generally being run by people who actually believe in stuff like public services and looking after the vulnerable. This means that at least they're more inclined to prioritise and protect public services to the best of their abilities, rather than gleefully slashing away out of adherence to the crazed hard-right austerity doctrine.

Lower taxes?

Last year the Tory government's own figures admitted that the average Council Tax bill in Labour council areas is £336 cheaper than the average in Tory council areas.

The claim that the Tories deliver "lower taxes" is an outright lie.

Conservative councils deliver failure

If anyone wants to see an example of what Tory councils actually deliver, just take a look into the state of Tory run Northamptonshire Council which announced that they're essentially insolvent just a couple of months ago.

If you want your local government to be run so badly its at risk of collapsing into insolvency like Northamptonshire then vote Tory, because Conservative councils deliver failure.

Worse services Higher Taxes

Whether you vote Tory at the national level, or at the local level you're actually voting for worse services and higher taxes.

People voting Tory at the national level caused the 67% cut to the local government budget, which has resulted in wrecked local services and rising Council tax bills.

People voting Tory at the local lever results in people with the same hard-right austerity mentality gleefully gutting local services out of some deranged belief that systematically destroying local government services is a means of improving the nation!

Tory arrogance

Perhaps the most shocking thing of all about this Tweet is the sheer arrogance of the people who devised it. 

They know as well as anyone that their own austerity fanaticism is the primary reason that people are paying higher Council Tax bills despite their local services being worse than ever. But they're so full of contempt for the "lower orders" that they see us as gullible enough to simply believe them when they feed us this kind of Orwellian "black is white" propaganda.

All a person actually needs do to see through this brazen Tory propaganda is to look at their Council Tax bill and then observe the dreadful state of local services and public infrastructure in their local communities. But the people who devised these "Better Services Lower Taxes" and "Conservative councils deliver" slogans clearly assume people like us to be so thick, and so gullible, that we're incapable of doing even that.

 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.

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Why every single Labour member should be aghast at the cynical scheming of right-wing Labour MPs

The sheer cynicism of the Labour right-wingers never ceases to amaze. The timing of their latest manoeuvres just before the local election campaign doesn't just give their game away, it shows what a ruthlessly self-serving bunch they really are.

Remember Jeremy Corbyn's first set of local elections in 2016 when the right-wing Progress mob planned to use a poor set of results to instigate a leadership challenge, but their plot was foiled when Corbyn managed to hold onto Miliband's best ever set of local election results?

Remember when the coup plotters briefed the Daily Telegraph that they were going to use the Brexit result to get rid of Corbyn whichever side won, then they were stumped when he refused to bow to their anti-democratic plot by resigning, forcing them to run the hapless Owen Smith to stand as the Anyone But Corbyn candidate.

Well this time it's obvious what they're up to. They're going to create as much internal mess as possible in the run up to the 2018 local elections in the hope of creating a poor result for Labour, with the aim of using these poor results as another excuse to oust Corbyn.

Owen Smith coming out and defying the party line (which is that Labour will vote against Tory Brexit if it fails to meet the six conditions laid out by Kier Starmer) is the first blow in a internal wrecking campaign designed to reduce the Labour vote.

They know that in order for this strategy to work hundreds of Labour councillors will have to lose their jobs, and multiple local authorities will need to be ceded to the austerity fixated Tories. But they see these disastrous outcomes as a price worth paying in order to have another stab at getting rid of Corbyn and turning Labour back into a centre-right, pro-austerity, orthodox neoliberal party they want it to be, so that they can hover ever so slightly to the left of the barkingly right-wing Tories and deny the electorate any real economic choice.

The thing that makes this strategy of the right-wing Labour MPs so damned cynical is that that they definitely didn't want to try this kind of electoral own goal tactic at the General Election last year, because they knew that they'd be in danger of losing their own jobs if they conducted an internal wrecking campaign during a General Election.

Pure self-interest was the reason they gave up their coup-plotting for a while, backed Corbyn's fantastic 2017 election manifesto, and actually showed a bit of unity during the election campaign.

Instead of taking the hit themselves, they're brazenly looking to load the consequences of their scheming onto ordinary hard working Labour councillors up and down the country.

The fact is that the victims of this wrecking behaviour won't just be Momentum-backed candidates by a long stretch, it'll be Labour candidates from across the party, including those who support the right-wing Progress "party within a party" too.

Then there are all the innocent members of the public who will have to suffer even more austerity dogma under local Tory rule, because these right-wing MPs want to throw away the chance for Labour to win big because they're far too fixated on their own myopic agenda of getting rid of Corbyn at any cost.

Even Labour members who have serious doubts about Jeremy Corbyn must be able to see how cynical the timing of these moves are. Is anyone gullible enough to believe that Owen Smith only just realised his objections to Keir Starmer's six tests policy now, right when it would do the most harm to Labour's local election chances? 

The reality is that Smith sat in the Labour shadow cabinet and cynically waited for the most damaging moment to attack the party line, safe in the knowledge it would be other people within the Labour Party who pay the price, not him and the right-wing Progress MPs.

Every single Labour Councillor up for re-election,and every one of the tens of thousands of Labour activists who are gearing up to fight for Labour to win in their local area needs to understand that as far as the Labour right-wingers are concerned, you people are just pathetic disposable little pawns in their power game.

They don't care if you lose your job, or miss your best ever opportunity to serve your local community, or have to suffer another five years of catastrophic Tory rule in your local area. Their priority is having another crack at deposing Jeremy Corbyn, so "fuck you".

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