Notes
🇬🇧🗳️🇮🇱 An unprecedented travesty of British politics this week in favour of the pro-Israeli lobby - who here in Australia try to somehow twist into an antisemitic issue!!! Shameful.
What actually happened:
A UK opposition party is given a few days per year to table a motion vote in the UK Parliament, which the Government can propose amendment to - but never other opposition parties who also have their days to lead motions.
In November last year the SNP called a Gaza ceasefire vote using this power, voted down but pro-Israeli Keir Starmer had a MASSIVE rebellion in his party, and shadow cabinet resignations over his pro-Israeli stance - see article here for Starmer’s pro-Israeli backers and how the vote panned out (section “15 November London: UK Parliament Vote 🇬🇧🗳️❌”) ℹ️ 👉 sleekitscotsman.substack.com/p/the-road…
As an aside after the UK Parliament ceasefire motion voted down - in the devolved Scottish Parliament 21 Nov the Scottish Government voted for an immediate ceasefire in a balanced and principled motion. 🏴✅
The SNP called another immediate ceasefire vote on Wed last week, to which the Government tabled an amendment BUT Labour also unusually tabled an amendment watering down the language from “immediate” to “humanitarian”.
In the background Keir Starmer pressurised the “independent” Parliamentary Speak Lindsay Hoyle (also Labour Party, who noted proudly his father founded The Labour Party Friends of Israel, and visited Israel himself in November) to break with precedent and accept the Labour amendment. The reason was that the Labour Party would face another destructive rebellion again over essentially the right thing to do with respect to Gaza. This tme with the full horror of what has unfolded a few months later being even more apparent the rebellion would be huge.
The Speaker scandalously ALLOWED the Labour amendment breaking centuries of tradition, causing a watered down motion to be voted on, avoiding showing the real ceasefire sentiment under Keir Starmer in his own party…
SNP and Government MPs horrified by this twisting of British democracy (driven by the pro-Israeli lobby) marched out the chamber.
The Speaker came up with some BS later that he felt if MPs felt compelled to vote either way they would face a backlash and danger from the public (not just an antisemitic backlash). Even if this were true and widespread - it is a POLICE matter and NOT a Parliamentary matter.
Pro-Israeli organisations are latching onto (8) above to try to twist this travesty of UK Parliamentary procedure as some sort of antisemitic prevention extra special measure out of necessity. Utterly sickening rhetoric and they should be ASHAMED.
Bloody angry at this and even angrier at the misrepresentation of what is a blatant pro-Israeli stitch-up of UK democracy..
(In the interests of making a general point seen across multiple groups rather than calling out individual, I’ve chosen not to name this one, but it’s surprisingly mainstream).
