Jess Phillips

[uneffingbelievable]

What a brave lady.

Whilst I am not an ardent Labour supporter, I completely support you and how you have stood up to the bullying, racism, violence and hatred sent your way.

Sad that your family could not be there to see your victory but under the circumstances you made the right choice.

That this country is allowing this type of intimidation and behaviour - we should be ashamed of ourselves.

Just remembered when Jess Philips said, talking about when she was elected as an MP "I thought I'd met posh people before- but I'd just met people who eat olives."

👏🏽👏🏽
I wish more Muslims would speak up against this section of our society there's too much silence.

@Galadriel9 "Anybody who didn't have an issue with men (as many 'feminists' do) would have just said "yes, great, let's give men the same opportunity as women to discuss their issues". "

Anybody who didn't have a problem with women wouldn't have put those nasty little quotation marks round the word feminists. And anyone who understood the issue would know that the whole narrative about IMD in general and Phillip Davies in particular is not about suicide rates among men or men's health-both important issues that deserve more attention than they get. It's about a particular type of man being triggered by the idea of International Women's Day and resenting any attention being given to the manifest injustices that women still labour under across the world. There are many things that men like Davies could do, in Parliament and out of it, about men's issues. They just do not want to. They just want an IMD to make it fair.

Jess actually resigned her shadow cabinet position to vote against the party on Gaza. But even if she hadn't, she should not have been subjected to that behaviour during the campaign or the count. Galloway and his crew are disgusting.

She knew she was in trouble, electorally, and actually thought she'd lost. She talks about it on Electoral Dysfunction- the episode from Friday/Saturday.

Is that not just a reflection of the percentage of Muslims in those particular constituencies though? It would be interesting to know how many Muslims who would usually vote for Labour actually did so, rather than voting for independent candidates, other parties, or choosing abstention.

And I'm not sure people are suggesting that all Muslims are extremists. It's more that many Muslims don't seem to accept or understand that their feelings on the Gaza issue should not take priority over the business of serving the needs and wants of constituents at a local level in this country.

Of course. But the pp had said the relationship with Labour was 'over'. Clearly that's not true in the majority of constituencies where Muslims account for 30%+ of the population
.https://hyphenonline.com/2024/07/06/the-impact-of-muslim-voters-at-the-2024-election-was-even-bigger-than-you-think-apsana-begum-shabana-mahmood-birmingham-perry-barr-blackburn-leicester-dewsbury-uk-election/

https://x.com/sundersays/status/1809935554294980781?t=89sLJpkygiwrBytg4yAvDg&s=19

The article I linked to above suggests that the loss of these votes is linked to wider/deeper issues. My take is that in communities that already feel ignored the Gaza issue was a galvanising one. Obviously the (Tory) government is responsible for much of what they are unhappy about but if they feel that in safe Labour seats Labour don't listen to them this was a breakthrough issue. Combined with the fact that extremist Islamist forces are organising around this issue in communities.

The minority of headcases have the country in fear of them. Nobody wants to end up like the schoolteacher living in hiding over nothing.

Gaza has no place in local politics here.

At a national level it can and Jess resigned from the cabinet.

Lots of silly false equivalences on this thread.

1. Shouting about the (long dead) British Empire and making a false equivalence between what was probably, and relatively, the most benign expansionary empire in history, with a female politician being horribly harrassed and intimidated by a bunch of aggressive men, is sixth form politics.
2. Intimating that JP 'deserves' what she got because she voted 'the wrong way' on Israel-Gaza, is not even sixth form politics - it's the politics of a badly brought up 8 year old.

The facts as I see it:

1. We have a parliamentary democracy. That means the peaceful handover of power at every election, and proper behaviour by candidates, as Sunak said in his resignation speech.
2. Palestine should NOT be the primary issue on which a candidate stands, in a British region which has many severe social and eocnomic problems of its own.
3. It is NOT Islamophobic to observe that intimidation, threats and property damage by groups of men to an experienced female politician of an established party, making her afraid to be present at her own election, is against British democratic values. It should be fought at every turn.
4. the fact that some people here are twisting themselves in knots trying to somehow excuse the behavious of these thugs, is merely an indication of the supreme privilege and complacancy of these posters. They clearly don't live in areas of the UK which are fast becoming blighted by Islamic sectarianism and so they can afford to espouse cool and contrarian viewpoints. This is a mistake.

Sectarianism is what we saw in Birmingham last week and it destroys communities and countries. We must all unite against it.

Much of what you say is reasonable but noone will be listening of you kick off saying the British Empire was 'benign'. What a silly thing to say.

Good thing I didn't say that then! I took care to use the caveats 'probably' and 'relatively'.

Relativity is so key in analysing human power structures. Pace socialist idealists, you cannot concieve of any human organisation structure in a utopian form: you can only view it in comparison with other structures.

So, compare the British Empire (economically, socially and politically) with the empires of the Ottomans, the Persians, the Soviets, the Mughals, the Third Reich, the incas, the Romans, the Han, and Britain ranks very well against these.

The exceptions would be POSSIBLY the Athenian naval empire and definitely the Byzantine empire but those are different and harder to compare.

My fmaily's from Uttar Pradesh and we'd be the first to admit the benefits the British Empire brought us as well as the downsides. The worst crime was Partition.

Come along, @CantDealwithChristmas , you can't go writing sensible things and putting stuff in a historical context! That will never do.

(Taking my tongue out of my cheek, that's an excellent post.)

Very well said @CantDealwithChristmas

Yes, agreed, I have lived in many ex colonies & know many people from ex colonies,many of whom are the first to admit the benefits of some aspects of the British Empire. But its such an unhelpful thing to introduce into a conversation, especially if it has to be caveated with 'probably' & 'relatively', about a knotty problem that is facing us now. I mean comparing different empires (the Athenians!?) is a bit of academic rabbit hole.

And I said that the rest of your post was sensible.

So MPs don't vote on aide budgets or declarations of war then?

Sometimes I think extremists (of most religions) hate the more moderate/less orthodox among us as much if not more than non-believers 😐

I'm not sure why such a focus on change through empire building, there are far more recent examples of the British going overseas and failing spectacularly to integrate or behave within the parameters of local norms. Expecting immigrants to seamlessly integrate within the UK, while simultaneously thousands upon thousands of Brits are eating a full English in Benidorm, booze cruising in Kavos, buying up a couple of gites in France or a farm or two in Portugal. We don't have to go back centuries to find examples of the British expecting their way of life to be accommodated when abroad, it literally happens every day. The absolute arrogance of expecting visitors/immigrants to this country, to forgo their own beliefs and culture, when we don’t even come close to this as a standard of behaviour. Mind boggling.

Yes but Terry and Sandra - who have bought a little gaff in Fuengirola - aren't so inclined to blow kids up at concerts are they?

This is appaling behaviour but it is not subverting democracy or abusing and harassing women. It's a totally different situation.
I dont understand why people make these false equivalence. Most Muslims live perfectly fine lives, manage to observe their religion and integrate fine into jobs, social lives etc. These headbangers are making their lives intolerable first. Intimidating their own women, taking their votes, subjecting them to Sharia Law, disrupting their education, but White Hard Left liberals like Jeremy Corbyn and his comrades flock to excusing and feting them. Ignoring the voices of the majority of Muslim women and men who want nothing to do with them.

You don’t think making it unsafe for representatives of a candidate to campaign is undemocratic?

You have misunderstood my comment. Going on booze cruises and shputing at Portuguese waiters in loud English on the Algarve is poor behaviour but is in no way equivalent to subverting democracy. It was @domino20 who excused the behaviour of thosexat Jess Phillips' account by saying Brits abroad behave badly too.