Starmer stabs anothe Black female Labour candidate in the back

[IwantToRetire]

“I think the Labour Party… needs to be a broad church - from what I can see that’s happening, that’s becoming more difficult”

Faiza Shaheen, who was set to stand for Labour, says her candidacy was pulled over liking a series of Tweets which she claims Labour said would frustrate its campaign

Interview on newsnight shorty after learning she has been deselected.https://x.com/BBCNewsnight/status/1795942561258889318

It seems someone has been going through candidates tweet accounts going back years, even before they were officially part of Labour.

If these tweets were so awful how come they were ever chosen as candidates in the first place.

She had spend the afternoon canvassing with the support of the local party. https://www.faizashaheen.co.uk/

And then suddenly a tweet from however many years ago becomes this big issue just now, in time to dump her and like DA not give her enough time to consider standing as an independent. And yet wasn't important enough on two other occassions.

The antisemitic tweet they read out on Newsnight was from last week.

For your information: I am Jewish and I am relieved to see Keir Starmer taking a stand on antisemitism, which those tweets very much were. This is not "whipping up hysteria" and for you to say so is somewhat offensive. And most Jewish people view Jewish Voice for Labour as an absolute joke.

So many other things are wrong and offensive in your post but I can't be bothered with a line by line critique. I'll just leave you with this - please don't presume to speak for Jewish people and to decide what is and is not antisemitism.

Also - the comparisons with Rosie Duffield are ridiculous. She said biological sex is real, which is very much NOT the same thing as being racist as any idiot can tell.

Why is support for Palestine divisive @IdaPrentice ? Many Jewish people, including Israelis, support a state for Palestinians. World leaders have voiced support for Palestinians, even Zionists like Biden.

Yet Labour candidates are not allowed to . Who or what are they allowed to support then ? David Hare wrote a TV play called Abscence of War about this very problem. The fictional Labour leader - played brilliantly by John Thaw - explodes with exasperation because he is ' only allowed to talk about bloody hospitals!'

The weird thing is there is a broader range of opinions in the Conservative Party. David Cameron said Israel will never have peace while settlers are killing people in the West Bank for example. You could be deselected for that in Starmers party. You certainly wouldn't remain in the cabinet. Where are the screeching headlines calling him a toxic antisemite? When does Big Dave's re-education course begin. I don't recall his letter of apology. We'll just have to live with the mystery.

She wasn't just expressing support for Palestine. She was expressing it while denegrating her opponent for being 'pro-Israel'. That's divisive.

Just in general, not just politics, I don't like this practice for employers policing the SM use of their employees when it isn't affecting their ability to do their jobs, and also of prospective employers trawling though the same before interview. And yes, I know being an MP isn't being an employee, but I see the parallels. How many of us couldn't look back at old Facebook posts and find something, shall we say, unwise?

We are living in very strange times. The labour party has history of expunging people it didn't approve of. It's about political expediency and not about democracy. Starmer, Tory lite, Blair prototype/clone/facsimile no. 2, who can't define what a woman is and isn't interested, wants to get into power. In order to get into power one has to be Machiavellian. Destroy your enemy.

Using propaganda as a weapon to destroy your enemy is also an old trick. But when all else fails, just have them killed. Metaphorically speaking. For now.
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/democracy-and-the-labour-party-the-case-of-stroud/

She's not black... for a start?

@StandingMyGround888 no. That's true. Sorry. I felt it was relevant to the discussion, though because of the ruthless nature of the Party purges.

The ruthlessness applies to all the parties, and the divisive and oppositional type of politics we have in this country is very bad for everybody.

Whilst I think this is a massive shame it’s a bit 6 of one and half a dozen of the other. Labour can’t win here and will end up pleasing no one, except the very centre ground which is what they’re going for. They are simply preempting what was bound to happen anyway once the RW press started their trawling tweets. They would have had another Azhar Ali scenario on their hands which would have become a massive distraction. I think people need to remember that they are running to be the central government, not the opposition or some fringe party that shouts from the sidelines.

I don’t personally think someone should be deselected for liking tweets from years ago. However her recent comments about a vote for Palestine were incredibly unwise. I completely agree that whatever people’s personal view points on Israel/Gaza the focus in the U.K. in areas with large Muslim and Jewish populations definitely needs to be on decreasing tensions and not inflaming them.

I think she definitely has room to feel aggrieved by the process - given that many of the objectionable Tweets were quite old it's hard to justify the decision being so last minute.

But this is what she has had to say about her successor - who is also a woman of colour - and it's kind of easy to see from this why there were qualms about her.

https://x.com/faizashaheen/status/1796279989828206862

And this is a sentence from the Tweet that she liked that seems to be the main bone of contention.

“you can’t easily ignore” the Israel lobby because they “tend to be your friends or people who move in the same circles as you”.

Anyone here need help interpreting a statement that basically says "members of the Israel lobby are all around you?"

Racism is a whole different ball game.

Has it set OJ off on a tantrum?*

If so, it's probably a good thing

*I'm aware that most things do.

It did! I heard the little runt yesterday on LBC.

The worst bit of the tweet she liked, just last week so not that old, went on the say that the Israel lobby was being controlled by powerful organisations. Which is straight out of the nazi antisemitism propaganda playbook.

Is it?

Because a lot of the time it seems that what counts as "racism" is not toeing the line on id pol bs.

Possibly what you mean is "heresy".

She's also said that you can vote for her as pro-Palestine or Ian Duncan Smith as pro-Israel which pretty clearly states that she doesn't think it's possible to be both. How on earth is that not divisive.

It's always "oh you can't criticise Israel" but when it comes down to what they actually said it's invariably "the Israel lobby" or the "Zionist lobby". It's never someone saying "The Israeli government's actions are wrong because......

I think the fact that you see a broader range in the Conservative Party is pretty much why it's less of a problem for people.

There are differences of opinion, and emphasis, within the party. Individuals have their own views, and when the CP forms a government, they have to work out what their actual responses will be to concrete issues. But there is room for real differences of opinion about what's best and also an understanding that it's complicated, maybe with no good answers.

Many of the people making a big deal of this stuff on the left however are doing it through a lens of oppression hierarchies, they see it as an ideological freedom fight that they need to be on the right side of, and they seem to think it's as, or more important, than addressing many boring domestic issues. There is a strong sense of one right answer.

I personally would not call blatant anti-semitism 'heresy'. I call it racism.

I live in this constituency and I am so relieved she's gone. She was on tv a couple of years ago saying that the Munich massacres weren't antisemitism. Frankly, if it walks like an antisemite and quacks like an antisemite....

However the person they've now parachuted in has no connection to the area, we've never heard of her and apparently is responsible for introducing tower blocks and low traffic neighbourhoods in Brent, no thanks!

He is and he has ditched the unspeakable Russel Lloyd Moles.

He should ditch Angela Rayner too.

She deserved to be kicked out for that alone.

I definitely feel the decision shouldn't have been so last minute.

But her behaviour since just shows why the decision was ultimately correct, if badly handled. Even though it could well hand the seat to Ian Duncan Smith.

And then this happens this morning:

https://x.com/estwebber/status/1796863927302680878

introducing tower blocks

Was this social housing? I imagine that's desperately needed in this constituency as well as the rest of the country. What's the objection?

Sounds like she should have been deselected a long time ago. That would have given Labour time to get a local candidate who could campaign properly.