{"id":93936,"date":"2022-10-23T11:08:51","date_gmt":"2022-10-23T10:08:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/?p=93936"},"modified":"2022-10-25T06:09:11","modified_gmt":"2022-10-25T05:09:11","slug":"keir-starmer-on-hate-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/2022\/10\/23\/keir-starmer-on-hate-crime\/","title":{"rendered":"Keir Starmer on “hate crime”"},"content":{"rendered":"

While gathering my thoughts for part two of Magic Money Tree<\/strong>\u00a0<\/a>I was alerted by Dave Hansell to an UnHerd post of October 20<\/strong><\/a>. Now as Richard Murphy recently pointed out<\/strong><\/a>, the British Labour Party is fully committed – as is the least outlandish contender for Tory leader and prime minister – to more of the ‘austerity’ which has already devastated the lives of millions of Brits.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/h6>\n

As WSWS put it:<\/p>\n

Truss\u2019s replacement will be expected to restore confidence in the UK economy by savaging the working class. And if the Tories cannot fix their mess to the satisfaction of the financial oligarchy, the Labour Party promises to step in \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Steel city reader bevin<\/strong> goes further:<\/p>\n

The natural political division in the UK right now is between Blairism and Socialism. Truss is not the first Tory PM to dissolve on contact, she is the fourth in less than a decade. The Tory \u2018brand\u2019 is no longer fit for purpose \u2013 Blairism serves the ruling class far better. And when it is opposed by Toryism it is unbeatable because the only alternative is a clumsier version of itself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Social democratic parties aspiring to govern on behalf of a ruling class must satisfy that class – which ultimately controls opinion manufacture<\/strong><\/a> – that they can be trusted with The Economy. For nigh on half a century this has meant being fully onboard with neoliberal economics – and since 2008 with ‘austerity’ – which enrich the few while delivering poverty and insecurity to the many.<\/p>\n

Even the mild socialist reforms offered by Labour under Corbyn and McDonnell were too much. After various attempts – IRA-gate, Shoot-to-kill-gate, Hamas-gate, Virgin-Train-gate and Crap-dresser-gate – had fallen short, the Labour right struck gold with the antisemitism charge. Not only was a leader detested by Britain’s elite, and the powerful Israeli lobby, defenestrated. The Party as a whole was steered away from economics and class, onto the safer terrain of identity politics …<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

.. and once more redeemed and renewed in the City and on Threadneedle Street.<\/p>\n

Never mind that issues like race and gender can never be fully understood without the context of class rule. Never mind that as Caitlin Johnstone once put it:<\/p>\n

In just 200 years we’ve progressed from expecting our leaders to slaughter brown-skinned peoples while saying racist things, to expecting our leaders to slaughter brown-skinned peoples while condemning racism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Never mind either that Party membership plummeted after Corbyn’s removal. As for identity politics being a road to absurdity, confusion and terrible law-making; that,<\/em> for this former head of the Crown Prosecution Service, is nothing to lose sleep over.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

What Keir Starmer told Pink News is a sign of things to come<\/a><\/h3>\n

Joan Smith<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The Labour leader’s remarks revealed how little he has learned<\/span><\/h5>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Sir Keir Starmer strikes again. At the very moment when the government is falling apart, and thousands of women desperately want to vote Labour, he has reminded us that we can\u2019t trust him or his party. It\u2019s not just that he made an<\/span> appearance<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0last night at an awards ceremony organised by\u00a0Pink News<\/em>, an organ despised by many feminists for its relentless promotion of misogynist gender ideology. That was bad enough, but Starmer also took the opportunity to make a series of wild promises to the adoring audience, including one on \u2018hate crime\u2019 that constitutes a direct threat to free expression.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hate crime legislation is already a problem, allowing individuals to make complaints to the police about things that aren\u2019t even crimes \u2014 being \u2018misgendered\u2019, for instance. The fastest-growing area of complaints is \u2018transgender identity\u2019, which<\/span>\u00a0rose<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0by 56% in the year to March 2022. There is ample reason to worry about how the existing law is being used but Starmer wants to double down, saying \u201cit\u2019s time for tougher hate crime laws so every LGBT+ crime is treated as an aggravated offence.\u201d It went down a storm with his audience, but raises the prospect of law-abiding people facing an aggravated sentence for a social media post that uses the \u2018wrong\u2019 pronouns.<\/span><\/p>\n

Starmer made other baleful commitments at the awards. He no longer talks about self-ID because we know exactly what that means \u2014 stripping away safeguards, weak as they are, that make it harder for predatory men to claim to be women. Now the Labour frontbench talks about \u2018modernising\u2019 the Gender Recognition Act, which sounds like a minor technical change. Those of us who recall what Starmer<\/span>\u00a0said in 2021<\/a><\/strong>, when he committed Labour to reforming the GRA \u201cto include self-identification for trans people\u201d, don\u2019t believe it for a moment. Last night he used the new formula without spelling out what it means, but it looks as though Labour intends to allow individuals to get a gender recognition certificate without having a medical diagnosis of dysphoria.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

At the same time, Starmer threw a sop to women, saying he would \u201cuphold the Equality Act,\u201d including its provision for single-sex spaces. Though some Labour supporters have welcomed this part of his speech, they\u2019re clutching at straws. You can\u2019t uphold the right to single-sex spaces while also allowing any sexual predator to acquire a legal document that says he must be treated as a woman, even though he has a male body. Refuges and services that refuse access to trans women might win a case in court, but the prospect of fighting a costly legal action will make it easier to just give in.<\/span><\/p>\n

For some time now, feminists in the Labour Party hoped that Starmer was quietly rowing back on the nonsense he\u2019s come out with in the past, such as<\/span>\u00a0claiming<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0that some women have a penis. Some even thought that \u2018modernisation\u2019 of the GRA might be dropped from the party\u2019s manifesto. We can hope no longer. Last night, Starmer told us who he was and exactly what he intends to do. In a tragedy for Left-leaning women and the country, it is now clear that Labour has been fully captured by gender extremists. A Starmer government will look after the interests of trans activists, not women.<\/span><\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While gathering my thoughts for part two of Magic Money Tree\u00a0I was alerted by Dave Hansell to an UnHerd post of October 20. Now as Richard Murphy recently pointed out, the British Labour Party is fully committed – as is … Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-uk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93936"}],"version-history":[{"count":48,"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94126,"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93936\/revisions\/94126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}