The ‘hierarchy of racism’ in Keir Starmer’s Labour Party
I spent six years serving as a councillor in my home city of Oxford, where I was born and raised. I was a council cabinet member for close to three years before I resigned from the Labour party, over what I saw as a horrifying endorsement by Keir Starmer of the collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza, in a now infamous LBC interview. I and another British Muslim, the Oxonian councillor Dr Amar Latif, were the first two Labour councillors in the country to resign over this – supported by the four mosques in our city and the communities in which we are rooted.
In my resignation letter, I stated my belief that the party continuing to preside over a hierarchy of racism comes at the expense of the real “red wall” that Labour should want in its coalition: the multiracial working class, who built this country and keep it going. [Continue reading…]
Seven Slough Labour councillors have resigned citing the party’s treatment of candidate Faiza Shaheen and MP Diane Abbott and the leadership’s stance on Gaza.
In an open letter to the party leader Keir Starmer on Monday, councillors Zaffar Ajaib, Sabia Akram, Haqeeq Dar, Mohammed Nazir, Naveeda Qaseem, Waqas Sabah and Jamilia Sabah expressed “disillusionment and anger” at the Labour leadership.
The councillors pointed to the deselection of Faiza Shaheen as the candidate of Chingford and Woodford Green and the tussle over Diane Abbott’s candidacy as examples of the party’s “institutional racism”. [Continue reading…]
Political commentators are today expressing shock and bemusement at Keir Starmer’s brutal targeting of the Labour left on the eve of a UK general election.
That’s because they haven’t been paying attention. It’s been obvious for a long time that the Labour leader is in charge of an inhuman, pitiless political machine.
Two years ago, Al Jazeera’s Labour Files exposed the bleak truth about Starmer’s party. The five-part investigation was a staggering feat of reporting, based on the biggest leak of confidential documents in British political history.
It provided a wealth of documentary evidence and personal testimony to show that the Labour machine bullied party members and shamelessly manipulated internal democracy.
More shocking still, Al Jazeera brought to light a hidden story of anti-Black racism and naked Islamophobia inside Labour HQ. [Continue reading…]