BREAKING NEWS Thread: 1/6

From a very reliable source in the 'Tunnel... there will be a UK-EU trade deal agreed next week. I quote:

"Britain has CAVED. Unless someone in Westminster does something really stupid between now and then a deal will be signed."

If anyone's thinking to spend the weekend fantasising about a left split from Labour, here's an updated summary of why it's crazy ... 1/ Labour is the only route to a left government in Britain. Even Podemos ended up in power as junior partners to PSOE...

2/ 56% support for Scottish independence and Labour on 13% in Holyrood polls mean 2024 is the last chance saloon. If Scotland is out of the UK there'll have to be something akin to the US Democrats, or Popular Front in 36 - until the demographics change

3/ The culture/values conflict is unavoidable and will be intensified inside any left party. Trans rights, migration, Brexit - all the issues that divide the Labour left would divide anything to the left of it: so then there'd be two left alternatives...

4/ What we need is an organised left alliance in the Labour Party - bigger than the SCG and Momentum and based around policy and activism... instead we get the self-defeating project of disaffiliating Unite slice by slice...

5/ The scale of the Covid and climate crises mean even traditional social-democrats are having to re-think - just as French liberals did in the 1930s. That means an anti-capitalist left in Labour has to engage constructively...

SNP thread

1. Scotland's independence rested on the UK staying in the single market - that is why we saw repeated Brexit related litigation in the Scottish courts.

2. If an independent Scotland wished to join the EU, a hard border between Scotland & England would be required to protect the single market & prevent migrants using Scotland as a route into England.

3. Then there are the issues re currency & debt which would need to be settled before EU membership became a serious proposal.

Many in the SNP realise this, hence the divisions we're witnessing.

4. Just as the Brexit Party popularity waned after mission accomplished, the SNP's popularity rests on campaigning, rather than achieving what they're campaigning for.

Polls show that a hard border isn't popular in a country that relies heavily on tourism.

5. The SNP would have been better placed to set their sights lower & supported an Efta/EEA Brexit, but they went all out to stop the UK exiting the EU and ultimately lost.

A hollowed out cause is all that remains for the SNP, with no realistic prospect of success.

A short personal reflection on what happened yesterday.

I wanted to wait a bit before saying this as I think yesterday was for those who experienced the sharpest end of the disastrous breakdown between the Labour Party and Jewish people during the past 5 years.

I started talking about Labour antisemitism here in 2017 I think. My key aim was to try and act as a bridge between the left of the Jewish community and the left of the Labour Party. I used my platform on social media to do it and quite quickly I developed some back channels...

... to who I thought were sensible people in Jeremy Corbyn's office and Momentum. I kept those channels going for quite a long time. I found this paragraph from emails I exchanged in Spring 2018 with Laura Murray in Corbyn's office. It now seems quite prescient.

As I delved more into the issues and heard, privately, what was going on in the movement itself, I slowly and regrettably came to the conclusion that the issue was so serious it needed an "independent body" to come in. It was in Autumn 2018 that @antisemitism approached me...

... to assist in making a submission to the @EHRC to try and persuade them to enter the fray. I was skeptical, given the the UK's human rights organisations had stayed almost entirely silent (to this day, to their shame) on the issue, though I knew it was utterly necessary...