Steve

Hints of cigar boxes, old cupboards and honey.

[Steve @DecoratedWolves]

A nice wee Wednesday night out.

[Paul Holden @pauleholden]

Hi Danny.

Have you read my book? Have you engaged with its content at all? I ask because you don't appear to engage with the substance of my post.

I'd be happy to send you a copy. I'd also be happy to come into Times Radio, again, to explain my position - and maybe you'd like to reflect on why the Labour Party and the likes of Morgan McSweeney were so desperate to kill my book that they went after my friends, colleagues and family - after working with your colleagues at the Sunday Times!

I believe you've misrepresented and misunderstood my argument and my work.

My "preoccupation" is not with the idea that Labour took antisemitism too seriously and dedicated undue resources to it and that Jews are given "special status."

My "preoccupation", throughout my career, which extends long before investigating the Labour Party, is political corruption and the abuse of power.

My "preoccupation" in my book is understanding how the tiny Labour Together faction used unlawful means to capture the Labour Party and then the state, and the damage they've done to democracy as a result.

My "preoccupation" is understanding how that faction achieved power and how they wielded it, which included cynically using antisemitism in contemporaneously undisclosed dark arts campaigns to destroy a political project it could not defeat openly. Your colleagues Pogrund and Maguire called McSweeney's campaign an act of unparalleled sabotage, based on systematic dishonesty, which is incontrovertible on the evidence.

Importantly, the central players in these campaigns were not Jewish. It was people like Steve Reed, Morgan McSweeney, Imran Ahmed. None of the "brave eight" Labour MPs were Jewish - Reed, Philipson, Powell, Cruddas, Mahmood, Streeting, Reeves and McMahon.

My "preoccupation" is understanding the consequences that flowed from the factional uses of antisemitism. Three are notable here.

First, the Party systematically harassed and expelled left-wing Jews. I tell the story, for example, of how the Party investigated Riva Joffe, a lifelong antiracist campaigner, on her literal deathbed - because of a Facebook post advertising an Israel-Apartheid week event at a university.

The second is that the Party adopted a position of prophylactic deference to Israel even as it was clear that Israel was going to commit vast war crimes in Gaza.

The third is that the Party effectively stigmatised pro-Palestinian solidarity as Jew hate, and, in power, used the state to hugely constrain and curtail the rights of protest.

My "preoccupation" with this report is that it's really, really bad. Not "bad" as in unwise, but slapdash. Bad data, basic errors of fact, crazy recommendations that don't even follow from the bad data - all smacking of an effort to reach pre-determimed outcomes for political reasons.

The question is why aren't you angry? Why isn't the scandal that this government has overseen and accepted a report on a profound and serious issue whose drafters took three months to produce slop that can be shot apart in hours? Why aren't you angry that this report is so stupid and so inflammatory that the NEU has already come out against it?

I have a school age child. I am friends with many Jewish parents with kids at the school. Some are Zionist, some are anti-Zionist. Some don't care about Israel and want to talk about Strictly and PS5 games.

As a result of this report, my child's school is going to be pressured into accepting the IHRA Definition, which effectively declares Jewish parents and children antisemitic for their antizionism.

There are Palestinian parents at the school. They will likely be told they can't wear a watermelon pin or the flag of Palestine when they drop their kids at school. I can't see how this isn't going to create serious upset - and real chaos - at the school.

This is going to happen IN EVERY SCHOOL in the country. How can you not see that this is going to make it so much harder to tackle antisemitism?

[Paul Holden @pauleholden]

This whole exchange with Owen Jones really is very poor considering that this is the Chief Political commentator in the FT.

Its particularly insulting if you know the context of how the phrase "hierarchy of racism" gained currency on the broader Labour-ish left in the UK. I think it betrays a real ignorance of a long and storied topic.

So some history...

The term "hierarchy of racism" was most prominently included in the Forde Report. The Report was the result of an investigation headed by Martin Forde KC, a well-respected black barrister with a long history in tackling issues like the Windrush scandal. Forde'sc investigation was supported by a panel of grandee appointed by the Labour Party NEC - the likes of Baroness Ruth Lister, so hardly a bevy of radicals.

Forde was tasked with investigating a series of issues filtering the released of the "Leaked Report." Very very very long story short, Forde was asked to investigate how issues of racism, antisemitism, hyper-factionalism and misconduct intertwined in the vicious battle for the Labour Party in the Corbyn years.

Forde ended his report (endorsed by all the other members of the Forde Committee) by noting that some staff believed that there was a "perception" of a "hierarchy of racism" in the Labour Party, with antisemitism treated more seriously and given more time than other forms of discrimination.

The Party's own response to Forde confirmed, over and over, that Forde was right. Indeed, the Party treated Forde disgracefully.

He was briefed against in the media.

He was blocked from speaking to the Committee convened to consider the report and its recommendations.

When he became concerned his report was not being taken seriously, he gave an interview to the media - and the Party, outrageously, tried to gag him with legal threats.

There are many ugly stories in The Fraud, but it still fills me with fury to think about how atrociously the Starmer and the McSweeney project treated Forde.

Most people think Forde was thrown under the bus because he called out right-wing factionalism. But the real "sin" of the Forde Report was that it criticised the Party's antisemitism training delivered by the (pro-Israel) Jewish Labour Movement for being top-down, didactic and limited (a comment made by another member of his committee who insisted it be included - not Forde himself, although most people don't know that). The Report suggested that an anti-Zionist group, JVL, be allowed to deliver training to complement the JLM training.

And for this Forde was ridiculed. Numerous commentators, including one from JLM, wrote articles attacking the Forde Report, accusing Forde straying into places he was not supposed to go.

By 2025, Forde had changed his tune. He said the there wasn't a "perception" of a hierarchy of racism in Labour - it simply just did operate a hierarchy of racism in how seriously it treated different types of discrimination, and had disgraced itself by how often it had mistreated prominent black and brown politicians like Diane Abbott and Apsama Begum.

Really, the examples of the hierarchy are overwhelming.

I write in the Fraud of how Starmer's team directly intervened in antisemitism complaints handling to kick out members accused - often wrongly - of antisemitism. It brought in new, deeply unfair rules like retrospective proscription as a mechanism to expel individuals like Ken Loach who could never be found guilty of antisemitism but were still unpalatable to Jewish communal organisations. It was through this mechanism that huge numbers of Jewish members were eventually expelled.

Compare that to when the conflict in Gaza begins. Dozens of Muslim councillors resign in fury. An unnamed senior source says Labour is "shaking off the fleas." The Labour Muslim Network (LMN) writes to the leadership asking for a meeting and a way forward to address wide-spread anger. The response? Morgan McSweeney texts a WhatsApp group that LMN are not good faith actors. /1

[Alan MacLeod @AlanRMacLeod]

One of the best parts about Lula's victory in Brazil 🇧🇷 is watching in real time all those Polymarket/Kalshi bros eat shit and lose their money.

[Steve @DecoratedWolves]

@LordWalney Should foreign companies linked to their Governments be allowed to give money to UK members of parliament, John?

[LPC @landpalestine]

macklemore visits a Palestinian restaurant in Ireland

We love Shaku-Macklemore

[Craig Murray @CraigMurrayOrg]

Uncritical support for the state of Israel will now be compulsory teaching in English and Welsh schools.

While Israel commits genocide.

This Labour Friends of Israel govt is truly dangerous.

[Double Down News @DoubleDownNews]

I Just Left the West Bank: What Israel is Planning is TERRIFYING @OborneTweets

[Alan MacLeod @AlanRMacLeod]

The US meddled heavily in the Brazilian elections, and is already paving its way for a possible military intervention in the country.

I wrote this in August. Check it out now:
https://t.co/IUHscLP5fm

[NewsCord @newscord_org]

Just in: IPSO has refused to investigate the Telegraph cartoon of Mothin Ali, the Green Party's Muslim deputy leader, grinning over a knife and fork at the severed head of Zack Polanski, its Jewish leader, who is drawn with a hooked nose. Nearly 1,200 of you complained.

IPSO's reason: the cartoon is about two individuals, so only Mothin and Zack can complain. How racist the drawing is doesn't come into it.

IPSO did not have to do this, and it has done the opposite before.

IPSO's rules let it take up a complaint from people other than the person written about, when the breach is significant, and there is a substantial public interest in looking at it.

In July 2023 it used that power. It ruled that Jeremy Clarkson's Sun column about the Duchess of Sussex was sexist, after complaints from two women's charities, the Fawcett Society and the WILDE Foundation. The Duchess did not complain.

The Telegraph's editor, Chris Evans, chairs the committee that writes the Editors' Code, which is the rulebook IPSO enforces.

The Telegraph is still selling prints of the cartoon today.

IPSO's rule says it may take up a complaint like this, not that it must. So this was a choice.

Picture a school. One boy draws two classmates, a Muslim boy and a Jewish boy. He gives the Jewish boy a hooked nose and puts his head on a plate, and draws the Muslim boy about to eat it. He pins the picture to the noticeboard and sells copies at the gate.

A thousand pupils go to the head teacher. She tells them she can only act if the two boys in the picture come to her themselves.

So the picture stays on the board, and every Muslim and Jewish child in the school walks past it each morning. The boy who drew it learns he can do it again.

And the rulebook the head teacher is reading from was written by a committee his dad chairs.

Nobody would say that head teacher is protecting the children. She is protecting the boy who drew it.

That is what IPSO has done. It says it regulates the Telegraph, and it has just told nearly 1,200 people that a racist cartoon in a paper it regulates is not its business unless the two men drawn in it come and ask.

[Alan MacLeod @AlanRMacLeod]

The minute they lose an election (which they tried to rig), MAGA immediately call for the kidnapping of a foreign head of state and more US intervention.

Remember that.

[Israel Exposed @xIsraelExposedx]

Lula won against all odds with a flood of last minute votes. META's election interference proves that it can have the reverse effect, if the people are united in resisting it.

Congratulations to all Brazilians, and anti-zionists around the world.

https://t.co/lPzPqvNrqh

[John Hughes @yogijunior3]

No Scales, No Justice & No Politics, Unless It Suits! https://t.co/HQaTcpIjcF

[John Hughes @yogijunior3]

I feel utterly lost. Watching this ongoing slaughter in our lifetime, yet being gaslit every day. It’s not happening, but if it was happening it would be justified because…..insert bullshit argument here.

We are absolutely adrift as a community. Bending the knee to a society of sociopaths. Suffused with supremacism. Indoctrinated with imperialism. Replete with racism.

Monsters without borders.

The social contract has been fatally undermined. We exist on the promise of justice & equal rights. Yet we tolerate a genocide in high definition, with nothing more than ineffective, and sublimated outrage.

However, when the moment comes, and I believe it will, the tsunami of rage, frustration, righteousness and indignation, will be the foundations on which revolution is built. An irresistible force.

This poor, anonymous child is one of far too many. The clarion call for me is Hind Rajab. A murder so heinous it defines a genocide. Imagine that such a thing might exist. A murder so outrageously disgusting that it stands as the median for all subsequent and previous slaughter.

Israel & its supporters have made evil three dimensional.
From textbook tales of Auschwitz, that horror has been manipulated into justification for repeating a gleeful, enthusiastic, faux victimhood, unthinkingly, horrifyingly, racist, dehumanising , excuse for despicable slaughter.

By default every IOF member should be considered a war criminal, and if they’re not they should prove why.

They should be forced into the jungles of South America, where they might bend the knee to their moral exemplars. The personification of evil without empathy. A country of cunts.

Let’s hope their demise is slow and painful.

[Saul Staniforth @SaulStaniforth]

"What we see is genocide"

Lula in December 2023.

[Scottish PSC @scottishpsc]

Israelis criticise as 'unfair' Brazil re-electing a harsh critic of Israel’s genocide.
PS Zionists massacred and expelled the native Palestinians before organising 'democratic' elections in their Jewish supremacist system' https://t.co/xBcZB8AFnk

[Steve @DecoratedWolves]

@20MinuteTims 60% of the time, it works every time.

[𝐉𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐀𝐍 @j0_szn]

51 Muslims were killed when Christian terrorist Brenton Tarrant attacked two mosques in Christchurch New Zealand, during Jumu’ah prayers.

He killed 51 Muslims and attempted to murder another 40. His victims included men, women and children who had gathered to worship.

Innocent people were murdered simply because they were Muslims. They were praying, not hurting anyone.

So what you gonna say about that Malama munafuka?

[The Parkhead Faithful @TheParkheadF]

Celta Vigo is playing some serious tunes before their home game against Real Betis this afternoon, and no, this is not AI.

Top-class from Celta. 🍀👏

[Zachary Foster @_ZachFoster]

Today is day 1,114 of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians.

[Simon de Jever @de_jever]

They will certainly act. They will smear and then arrest anyone who objects to Israel's horrific crimes, and will then sell even more weapons to Israel.