UK Politics

Britain’s Liberal Democrat party passed a motion in favour of suspending arms exports to Israel and backing an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip on Monday at its annual conference in Brighton.

The motion, which was tabled by British-Palestinian MP Layla Moran, passed with an overwhelming majority and also called for Hamas to be ousted from Gaza "through diplomacy".

It also recognised Iran as an “existential threat” to western democracies and asked for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to be proscribed as a terrorist organisation.

Moran said she had worked with both pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian groups to formulate the motion, which may explain its mixture of positions.

Prime minister Sir Keir Starmer is expected to give some £4 million to the far-right Italian government to tackle irregular migration.

The funding for the initiative, called the Rome Process, comes following the meeting of the two leaders.

Sir Keir met with his Italian counterpart in Rome today to discuss plans to tackle illegal migration.

The populist Italian government, led by Giorgia Meloni, has seen a 60 per cent drop in illegal migration in the past year and recently signed a controversial deal with Albania.

Sir Keir said he is “very interested” in Italy’s policies leading to “dramatic reductions” in irregular migration.

“You’ve made remarkable progress working with countries across migration routes as equals, to address the drivers of migration at source and tackle gangs,” Sir Keir told the press conference.

Ms Meloni added she and Sir Keir had signed a joint communique including “very tangible, important points, and is evidence of the deep relation between our two countries.”

Sir Keir has signalled he is open to pursuing an arrangement similar to Italy’s migration deal with Albania, whereby asylum seekers will be held in the Balkan state while their claims are processed.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/20363678

By MEE staff

Published date: 16 September 2024 13:39 BST

McSweeney made clear his mission to those gathered in [the Labour Croydon North MP Steve] Reed’s parliamentary office: “to move the Labour party from the hard left when JC steps down as leader and to reconnect the Labour party with the country [and] build a sustainable winning electoral coalition…” He then pointed to a slide of soldiers holding up huge shields, completely covering their bodies. “Operation Red Shield,” he said. The first job, he argued, was to protect supportive MPs from accusations of disloyalty. The next slide zoomed in on a Greenpeace logo. This would be their model, McSweeney told the gathered MPs: soft branding that made them seem warm and cuddly.

After a few months working from a park bench, the group funded a small office in Vauxhall, and soon it reached out to former Labour advisers to work alongside them with a focus on online antisemitism. In an early review, they identified problem posts in hundreds of Facebook groups with links to either the party or leftwing politics. Some of these were aimed at Labour’s female Jewish MPs. They then farmed out the posts they uncovered to journalists who were themselves reporting on rising evidence of antisemitism on the left. Together with a row over whether the party would adopt all the examples linked to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, the scandal was becoming increasingly destabilising for Corbyn.

As for the Guardian schmoozing, I witnessed that first-hand. At the time, I was the joint political editor at the newspaper and found myself invited with colleagues to a dinner in a private dining room in the basement of Browns in Covent Garden. We sat on red chairs with gold trimming, set around a long, thin table covered with a white tablecloth, listening to McSweeney, Cruddas, Reed, [Wigan MP Lisa] Nandy and [Birmingham Ladywood MP Shabana] Mahmood tell us about Labour Together’s plans for renewal.

They had brought with them another MP who was just starting to do more with the group – Keir Starmer. The project was pitched, as planned, with the soft, cuddly Greenpeace framing. They neatly side-stepped our more cynical questions about their plans for a future leadership. Alongside me that night was Guardian news editor Dan Sabbagh, who has since told me he immediately wondered if Starmer was their candidate. Even if McSweeney was wondering about Starmer as a possible leader as early as 2017, it was not spoken about and another hopeful also later emerged from the same group. Back then, the mere prospect of an opportunity to either take control of Labour’s leadership or win a general election still felt very distant.

The launch of a major humanitarian appeal for Gaza by the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) is being delayed by the BBC, it has emerged.

The corporation said the appeal did not meet all the established criteria for a national appeal, but the possibility of broadcasting an appeal was “under review”. Other channels have agreed to broadcast an appeal.

Insiders at the DEC, the BBC and aid agencies said they were dismayed at the delay. Some have accused the BBC of “blocking” the appeal because the corporation fears a backlash from supporters of Israel in its war with Hamas. One senior NGO figure said that staff were “furious” at the BBC’s position.

Keir Starmer is alleged to have broken parliamentary rules by failing to declare donations of clothing for his wife from the Labour donor Waheed Alli.

The gifts to Victoria Starmer were not initially declared in the register of MPs’ interests, the Sunday Times reported.

Starmer approached the parliamentary authorities on Tuesday to make a late declaration after being given updated advice on what needed to be registered.

The donations reportedly covered the cost of a personal shopper, clothes and alterations for Lady Starmer before and after Labour’s election win in July.

MPs are required to register gifts and donations within 28 days.

The Tories have demanded a full investigation into the Starmers’ links with Lord Alli, who has donated £500,000 to Labour since 2020.
[…]
Last weekend it emerged that Alli had been given a Downing Street security pass temporarily without apparently having a government role.

The row was dubbed the “passes for glasses” affair because the television mogul had previously donated tens of thousands of pounds worth of clothing, accommodation and “multiple pairs” of spectacles to the Labour leader. There is no suggestion that the peer has broken any rules.

Alli, 59, was the youngest member of the House of Lords when he was ennobled in 1998.

The UK government is justifying the continued sale of F-35 fighter jet parts which could end up in Israel through a legal provision that “has never been formally relied on” and one which likely requires parliamentary oversight, 37 MPs said on Friday.

“The government has admitted it cannot licence the direct transfer of F-35 components to Israel because of the clear risk of serious international humanitarian law violations,” they write.

“But it has not suspended licences to export UK-made F-35 components to Israel as an end user via third-party countries including the United States. There are serious questions that we demand answers to about the legality and practical necessity of such an exemption.”

It’s ridiculous. I know the MSM is pretty right wing in general but like really? Maybe they are and I’ve just missed it but I would think it would be big news.

Ukrainians getting slaughtered on the daily basically on behalf of us (NATO) in order to hold the border between NATO and Russia.

Yet we take months to agree to give them the things they need, making them ineffective, while giving Israel everything they could possibly dream of to genocide the Palestinians.

I’ve gotta believe that history won’t look back on this kindly… if we even have much more of a future as a race…

I think at this point, we either need to absolutely swamp Ukraine with weapons or we need to be pushing for “peace” which will involve at least pieces of Ukraine being handed over to Russia.

I swear NATO is basically using the Ukrainians as cannon fodder right now. Or like suicide bombers: we don’t care if they die, as long as they take some Russians with them.

I think unfortunately it’s gonna have to be piece at this point. Had we really thrown everything to Ukraine at the start, I think there’s a good a chance they could have kept Russia back. I don’t think we have that same opportunity now. We are about to start entering a cold period again. How many Ukrainians will freeze to death over this coming winter? And for what? For them to surrender next year?

Meanwhile we continue to give Israel all the tools they need to completely wipe out the Palestinians. If the UK could make a stand, it would put a lot of pressure on America. We need our government to be brave and not repeat the failures of following America as we did with the Iraq war.

We need to be brave on both issues. In both cases, the pressure from probably their closest ally, should make a difference. We should do it now, because it will be easier to do before hopefully Harris is elected. Then she will just be continuing with what she was left with rather than having to make the big changes herself. Like ideally she should be able to succumb to some pressure from us if it comes to it too. But it would just be easier to have this awkward moment with an outgoing president, who we won’t have to speak to in a couple of months.

If Trump gets elected then we are just fucked all round really. Again it would make sense for us to have made our move before he gets in, but realistically we are probably all fucked anyway if Trump the Dictator gets in.

That’s my rant over anyway… am I wrong? Am I missing something here? Apart from the obvious that we tend to treat country’s with nukes better than those countries without, even the ones we persuaded to get rid of their nukes and swore we would protect cough Ukraine cough.

A court has found a woman not guilty of a racially aggravated public order offence for holding a placard depicting politicians Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman as “coconuts” during a pro-Palestine march in central London.

Speaking in Westminster Magistrates' Court on Friday, Hussain said the placard was not “meant to be offensive” but an example of political commentary and “satirical". “[Calling the placard] hate-speech is far-fetched in my opinion.”

"The only qualified expert the police could find in 10 months of searching was Professor Kehinde Andrews. And he told them that coconut was not racist. And he additionally told the police to share his advice with the CPS so they could stop wasting everyone's time.

Archive link for when your finances have been sucked off by a black hole.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/17357147

Junk food TV advertisements are to be banned from airing before the 9pm watershed as part of the government’s drive to improve public health.

In addition, online ads for products that are high in fat, salt and sugar will be banned altogether, Andrew Gwynne, the public health minister, told the Commons on Thursday. Both measures will come into force on 1 October 2025.

Health campaigners welcomed the move as an overdue restriction on firms’ ability to bombard children with ads for their unhealthy food and drink products.

...

The previous, Conservative government pledged to bring in the TV watershed ban from January 2023. But a month before its introduction, Rishi Sunak decided to delay it until 2025, prompting a wave of criticism that he had put the interests of big business ahead of improving children’s health.