When the Government holds a vote on vaccine passports, the support of the Labour benches will be vital for a victory (presuming that a decent number of Conservative MPs vote “no”). But Keir Starmer has yet to decide whether to back the Government over the introduction of such certification and was “really angry” that an interview he gave to the Telegraph last week foregrounded his criticism of the idea. The Guardian has the story.
Keir Starmer is weighing up whether to support Covid status certificates in a vote within weeks for which he could lend the Government crucial support to pass one of its most controversial coronavirus policies.
The Labour leader has been hesitant to endorse a proposal that would mean people would have to prove they had been vaccinated, had a recent negative test or antibodies from prior infection in order to access venues such as theatres and sports stadiums. …
Labour is trying to keep its options open given that details about the plan are scarce, and will hope that attention remains on the splits within the Conservative party, where more than 40 of Boris Johnson’s backbenchers have branded the idea “divisive and discriminatory” and vowed to oppose it.
But after dozens of prominent Labour backbenchers, including the former party leader Jeremy Corbyn, also pledged to vote against the certificates, Starmer is being forced to decide whether he should give the Government the support it may need.
A Labour source said Starmer’s team was “worried that this issue splits the PLP [parliamentary Labour party] just like it splits the Tory party” and was “really angry” that an interview he gave to the Telegraph last week was headlined on his criticism of the Covid status certificates.
They admitted: “There isn’t really a consensus yet” within the party, though they predicted Labour would probably end up supporting the certificates “but probably not make much of a song and dance about it”.
The “reservations are real”, says another Labour source – but mainly around the “digital infrastructure” of Covid passports, rather than about their implication on liberty.
That’s about as much “opposition” as we can expect from the notional Leader of the Opposition.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Labour has called vaccine passports “discriminatory” and appears to be leaning towards opposing the Government on a Covid ID card scheme. The Guardian has the story.
The Shadow Health Secretary, Jon Ashworth, accused the Government of “creating confusion” by not explaining clearly where the documents may be needed, after Boris Johnson confirmed they were being investigated but would not be introduced earlier than mid-May.
“I’m not going to support a policy that, here in my Leicester constituency, if someone wants to go into Next or H&M, they have to produce a vaccination certificate on their phone, on an app,” Ashworth told BBC Breakfast. “I think that’s discriminatory.”
He added it made sense to ask people to get tested before going to events such as a football game, but warned that forcing everyone to carry an “ID card” proving they had been jabbed was not fair.
Worth reading in full.
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This is good news. The vast majority of the population are utterly sick and fed up with the alphabet menacers so this announcement should lose votes for the Liebour party.
Trebles all round.
I think they’ll still win, sadly.
Quite so. The reason being that most people are bored by politics in the first place; they draw conclusions from headlines and the headlines are written by the left. The comforting illusion that Labour’s extremism will prevent it from gaining power, therefore, is to be avoided.
It is little use, I know, advocating a Tory vote on the pragmatic grounds that wind is preferable to dysentery, but those grounds – notwithstanding all the objections which might plausibly be mustered – remain the only hope of mitigating disaster. Note that I say “mitigating” – I offer no pretence that the current Tory party offers anything more than a stay of execution. But that is all we can hope for; and what is the proposed alternative?
Wherever I find people advocating abstention or “Reform” or even direct vengeance upon the Tory party by means of a Labour vote, I discern two illusions.
First, that with massive Labour incompetence will come sufficient unrest to usher in a truly right of centre party in five years’ time. This is to underestimate the control of society which Labour plans to take; to underestimate the demographic transformation to which we are already being subjected and the sheer age of the right wing population. Let Labour in now and it’s curtains. Sternly confronted with this argument, the purists and the vengeance takers often reveal their despair, by confessing that they no longer care, they just want to kick something.
The second illusion of the purists is that even supposing a properly right wing government is ever elected again, it will have to spend years and years undoing – to the extent that it can – the damage inflicted by an all powerful left. And this is to say nothing of the conclusions which many will draw from a Labour victory, which – of course – will be that the public actually wants, desires and wishes for hard left policy.
Yes, there is a lack of hope in this message but it differs from vengeful despair. Because by holding off the very worst of disaster, it will remain possible to gather an anti-left coalition within and outside the Tory party which might then produce a sustainable form of resistance. That, I respectfully suggest, is the way – the only way which remains to us – to avert a final slide towards the total eclipse of freedom. Now, to all those who oppose this message, rather than simply downvoting it, or offering abuse, or lazily pouring scorn on our easily condemned Tory party, why not confront the argumentative heart of this case? I would be genuinely interested to read a reasoned objection.
“wind is preferable to dysentery”
God made it more sociable.
In a crowded lift even the deaf can enloy it.
So at the next election, vote wind.
In order to begin any recovery of power from the elites and accountability by them, in order to get a proper conservative, patriotic party, we first need to break the Conservative Party. If they were to regain power they would deliver five more years of the same: poor economic management, unaffordable vanity infrastructure, high taxes and decline.
If Labour rule with LibDem support it will be even more left wing and woke than on iots own.
There is no choice – we are going to have to suffer and it is all the Tories fault.
“There is no choice – we are going to have to suffer and it is all the Tories fault.”.
Yes – absolutely agree. The Conservative Party has shafted all of us since Mrs Thatcher was pushed out of the party. Unfortunately, I’ve no confidence that current Tories will offer a light touch, low tax alternative to the uniparty shit show we have now.
We can swap the cover on the phone all we want, it will offer the same functionality until it breaks.
Identify as whatever you like. Just don’t expect me to accept as true your belief that a peach is actually a cucumber, or vice versa.
And certainly don’t expect me to design my life (or that of my children, for that matter) around your crackpot beliefs.
Can’t help but think of the short, but oft screened interplay on GB News between Lee Anderson and Michelle Dewberry. She’d joked about self identifying as a cat, so playing along, Anderson tried feeding her from an unmarked tin with a spoon. Dewb’s response was “I’m not eating that, it’s bloody cat-food. Have you gone mental?”
Will labour also criminalise maths teachers who teach their pupils that 2 + 2 is 4?
Misinformation must be criminalised.
My kids in a progressive school were taught how to choose an accountant.
“Now children, when you are starting up your net-zero carbon and gender neutral green LGBTQI+++ not-for profit enterprise you will need an accountant.
To decide who to appoint, make a shortlist and ask this question ‘what is two plus two?’
Then choose the one who says ‘what figure have you got in mind?’“
To my mind, this is the ultimate demonstration of what it is to be on the Left (with some honourable exceptions): Anneliese Dodds believes that it’s her role to interfere in the most harmful way imaginable in the lives of private individuals. And not just any old individuals: she means to criminalise people who are concerned that children should be allowed to grow up before being influenced, in the most intimate and private area of their lives, by political ideologues. Anneliese Dodds and the army of meddlesome, nannying, intrusive, delusional authoritarians she represents, are the quintessence of Woke. I believe they are the greatest evil faced by mankind. An adult man feels better wearing women’s clothes? Fine by me. And adult woman wants to wear men’s clothes? Fine by me. A confused pre-pubescent child should be encouraged to undergo grotesque chemical and surgical interventions? This is not fine by me.
Blimey – deja vu
“If only we had a democracy here too and had some say.
We give all the power to a handful of political activists – Con or Lab – who have never done anything useful but jabber about ideology to get elected and get power.
The worst possible outcome of our next big election is a landslide for any party.”
This “rising tide of hate” I keep hearing about, other than people getting pissed off that trans women keep winning sporting events, is there actually any evidence for this? Do people really think it’s worse to be gay or trans in 2023 than it was, say, 50 years ago??
They just redefine hate until they get what they want.
Fascinating, and illuminating, stat turned up during the recent coverage of the autistic girl arrested for saying the short haired female police office looked like her lesbian nana.
Turns out that nearly 50% of reported ‘hate incidents’ are being reported by police officers regards comments made to them.
My word … how pathetic they are … and it reminds us to keep in mind lies, damned lies and statistics etc.
I heard Analise Dodds on the radio the other day – I was just embarrassed at her use of English. Everything was about “solidarity”. If I hear that word again from a politician (or journalist) I swear, I will burst a blood vessel.