This evening, along with my partner Owen Lewis (independent candidate for Monmouthshire), I attended an online talk by the Transform Party regarding the various independent candidates standing against establishment politicians at the coming UK General Election. The meeting was really just to bounce ideas for campaigning, fundraising and getting decent media coverage. I think it's probably better if I don't say who else was there as I don't know if every attendee would be happy with that being on record, but I will say that it was a really interesting meeting and actually reassured me about a lot of the things we're doing in Owen's campaign.
Shortly afterwards, I caught the end of the televised debate between the various political parties, around about the time the representatives were giving their closing statements. Deputy Labour Leader Angela Rayner asserted the oft-repeated line that 'Keir Starmer has changed the Labour Party' (they never seem to want to go into detail about exactly how, do they?) Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer aptly responded, 'Angela's right, he has. He's changed it into the Conservative Party.' I've worked with Carla on political campaigns in the past, I have a lot of respect for her and I think she's right - this is exactly what Keir Starmer has done (I wrote in my previous blog about how similar the Labour Party's campaign feels to the Conservative one from 2017.)
This is why there are so many left-wing independents planning to stand at this election, and why they're all keen to link up and support one another. It was acknowledged at the meeting that because of the First-Past-The-Post system we aren't particularly expecting that many to win, although we are cautiously optimistic that at least some will, and hopefully that will lead to more coming in at the following election. But something has occurred to me about these independents that I think is significant in a way that is separate to their likelihood of getting the seat. For the Labour Party, the specific kinds of people who are challenging it as independents should be one of the greatest embarrassments they've ever seen.
Here are some examples of who is standing.
Jody McIntyre in Birmingham Yardley, challenging Labour's Jess Phillips
I'm starting with this one because it really excited me when I found out about it. Jody McIntyre was one of my earliest political inspirations - I remember, from back in the early days of the Con-Dem coalition, the way that Ben Brown on the BBC tried to humiliate him when a police officer violently pulled him out of his wheelchair at an anti-austerity demonstration. During the interview, Jody conducted himself with great decorum, revealed that he actually wasn't capable of moving the wheelchair by himself, and asked quite reasonably how in those circumstances he could possibly have been believed by the police to be a threat.
Since then, I've often wondered what happened to Jody McIntyre and what he went on to do, as I hadn't seen his name mentioned anywhere - until now. Jess Phillips is a member of Labour Friends of Israel, although she's quite good at talking the talk about Palestine and appealing to the significant number of Muslim voters in her constituency. Personally, I've always found her to be quite problematic as a politician - I will always remember how, on the night of the 2019 General Election, she appeared on TV laughing and joking and clearly delighted with the result, before realising the cameras were on her and quickly shifting her facial expression into one of sadness.
The fact that a severely disabled human rights activist, someone who has been abused for his disability in the past, and someone who has campaigned for the human rights of Palestinians for fifteen years, is standing against one of the most well-known Labour MPs, should shame the party.
Andrew Feinstein in Holborn and St Pancras, challenging Labour leader Keir Starmer
Andrew Feinstein is from South Africa, and is from a Jewish background - he's actually the son of a Holocaust survivor.
Having been persecuted for his anti-apartheid politics throughout the 1980s, Andrew served as a member of the South African National Assembly from 1997-2001, under President Nelson Mandela. In 2001, he resigned in protest against corruption from within his party, moved to the UK and has since fought corruption in various areas from the heart of London.
I've written a fair bit about Andrew's campaign on this blog, because it's been one of the few things that I've really felt motivated by in politics over the last few years. I'm not the only one either - I think his decision to challenge Keir Starmer for his seat is one of the main things that has prompted other independents to stand. I've also met Andrew personally - he came to do a talk near where I live in Abergavenny earlier this year, I found him so inspirational and he was one of the earliest people who encouraged Owen to stand.
I said earlier that Labour never wants to go into detail about how it has changed - but if pressed on the matter, politicians will trot out that they've done an amazing job dealing with anti-Semitism. I don't think this is true at all. On the contrary, I think Labour has made anti-Semitism far worse. Labour's attitude makes anti-Semitism inextricable from opposition to the state of Israel - and when the state of Israel is committing war crimes on the scale that it is, that has serious consequences for any and all Jewish people. Jewish people have also regularly been suspended and expelled from the Labour Party on the grounds of anti-Semitism. To be clear, I don't believe it's impossible for Jews to be anti-Semitic, just as I don't believe it's impossible for women to be misogynistic, gay people to be homophobic or black people to support white supremacy. These are offensive and unacceptable views, and should be called out irrespective of who expresses them. But if people in these groups were regularly and consistently accused of these things, that would concern me greatly, and it concerns me greatly how hard it is to be a Jewish socialist in the Labour Party - far harder, from what I've seen, than being a non-Jewish socialist.
I don't know how well the campaign for Andrew is going, although I've been advised by friends working on it that there are a lot of people in the constituency who are very interested, and that the kind of voter Keir Starmer is trying to target with Labour aren't the types of people who generally live in Holborn and St Pancras. But in some ways, I think that isn't really the point. For the son of a Holocaust survivor, and a personal friend of Nelson Mandela, to be challenging the Leader of the Labour Party for his seat - a leader who has built a major part of his campaign on tackling anti-Semitism - is probably the greatest humiliation the Labour Party could experience right now. This is the case irrespective of how well Andrew Feinstein actually does.
Owen Lewis in Monmouthshire, challenging Conservative Secretary of State for Wales David TC Davies (marginal constituency, Labour putting a lot of resources into it)
This last example I've shamelessly chosen just because Owen Lewis is my partner, and I therefore know the details of this one inside out. Owen is a popular local campaigner, particularly on disability rights. Before I knew Owen, he worked for many years at Tudor Street Day Centre, helping adults with learning difficulties and mental health problems get the best out of life and achieve as much independence as possible.
The campaigns started when Owen learned that after closing its doors in 2020 due to the pandemic, Tudor Street Day Centre had not re-opened, leaving the local disabled community without their much-needed services. This campaign is still ongoing; it's been hugely successful so far, with great support from the local community (I think the Day Centre would have been knocked down for housing by now were it not for Owen's efforts). Nevertheless, it has still not re-opened. Owen set up a local community group, run by volunteers, to replace the services Tudor Street Day Centre used to offer - this project has proven to be a real lifeline for some of the most vulnerable people in town. Nevertheless, it could be better. The building it runs from, whilst good in some respects, is not equipped for people with some of the most severe disabilities. The continuing goal, which keeps getting kicked down the road, is to get Tudor Street Day Centre re-opened.
On this campaign, Owen has dealt with MPs, prospective MPs and councillors of all descriptions and political persuasions. Some have been more helpful than others, but the end result is the same - Tudor Street Day Centre has still not re-opened, and the message is sent out to the local disabled community that their needs are not the priority for local politicians. Owen has therefore built his election campaign around the rights of people who are disabled, elderly, unwell or vulnerable in some other way. Sometimes people interpret this as being a single issue campaign, but it is not. In every political decision that is made, some people are affected more than others, and those who are affected more tend to be in more vulnerable groups. Owen's work is aimed at redressing this balance - making sure that on every policy the next Government enacts, from climate policies to addressing the ongoing situation in Palestine, the rights of every single person are considered, right down to those with the quietest voices.
This one is slightly different from the other examples I've given because it's a Conservative MP Owen is challenging, rather than a Labour one. Nevertheless, the local council is Labour-run and it's a seat the Labour Party is particularly keen to get. Owen (and I) would love to be able to support Labour in this election. But we don't feel that their values will cause the most vulnerable people in the community to get their building back. To be fair to the local Labour candidate Catherine Fookes, she was actually very kind and encouraging when Owen told her he was planning on standing against her. We have nothing against her personally as a candidate. But we do have a lot of things against the Labour Party's position on disability rights - not just because of the Tudor Street Day Centre campaign, but because of Labour's track record, how in the past people who couldn't work due to disability or illness were vilified, how when she was Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Yvette Cooper (now the Shadow Home Secretary) decided that disabled people were fit to work if on a single day they could lift an empty cardboard box and put it back down again.
As Owen's partner, I can testify to the fact that he has no personal political ambitions. He is doing this purely for the local community, because he does not believe that disabled people will be safe under any of the other candidates. For a party that is meant to be for the people to have one of its most marginal seats challenged by someone who does not trust that they'll protect the most vulnerable people in our societies is an absolute disgrace.
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The candidates I've mentioned aren't the only independents standing. But it points to a general point about how Labour doesn't know what it actually stands for. It doesn't have any concrete ideology that is different from the Tory one. I wish it did - I wish we didn't need all these independents standing and had a party we could trust to get behind. Nothing summarises this more than the party's current slogan. In 2017 and 2019, the slogan was 'For the many, not the few' - this was something we could actually get behind, a recognition that for too long politics had only served the super-rich. This has now been replaced with the single word 'Change'. To be clear, this does not mean a change in anything to do with the current political status quo. It only means a change in the people doing it. The Labour Party motto may as well be 'It's our turn now' - it would mean exactly the same thing.
These independents, whether or not they win any seats, are the opposition now. We have to recognise that, because Reform and Nigel Farage are out to position themselves as the opposition. They are not the opposition. They are merely capable of framing themselves in anti-establishment rhetoric. In reality, they come from elitist backgrounds and in power would behave in exactly the same way as the Conservative Party, and unfortunately now, the Labour Party.
One interesting thing I have observed is that of the independents that I'm aware of, Owen is the only one standing for a constituency that isn't in England (if anyone knows of any others, please do tell me!) Naturally, left-wing voters in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland tend to have their own parties to support - but these parties still have flaws, and I'm very interested to see how this movement will extend to the devolved nations. Hopefully, Owen will play a part in that.
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