I am anti-Zionist. I say that without a second thought, or without a single shit given for who I may or may not offend. I mean, if *that* offends you, just you wait until you see what’s been happening in Gaza.

No, Jeremy Corbyn did not have to say he is an anti-Zionist

But I’m not a public figure. I do not hold any office of responsibility beyond the permanent Secretary of State for dog feeding. There are very few, if any, ramifications for my declaration of intolerance and disdain towards to the cancerous ideology of Zionism.

If I was a public figure, seeking to bring together a broad church of the left to take the fight to Nigel and the roundabout botherers, I would be considerably more careful with what I said, when I said it, and who I said it to.

When you are like me, merely a tiny droplet of water in a seemingly endless ocean, or one of those egotistical ‘in the know’ left types that seem to know somewhere between nothing and fuck all, but love to say things like “my sources tell me” — and call everyone a raging Zionist for not agreeing with them — it doesn’t really matter what we say, regardless of how many likes you might get on a post.

When all is said and done, how many of the electorate are going to look at the index in the back pages of a political manifesto for the letter “Z”, apart from a handful of Reform voters with a bizarre zebra fetish?

Political reality

An acceptance of political reality — however distasteful it may be — doesn’t make an individual a Zionist asset. We on the left should know this as well as we know anti-Zionism isn’t antisemitism.

I understand why someone would feel disappointed in Jeremy Corbyn for not standing on a soap box and reeling off numerous anti-Zionist slogans, but that understanding needs to extend both ways.

An activist will always think about the here and now. We react to events and we organise to challenge the false narrative of the political establishment on a daily basis. But a leader has to think about the next day, the next week, the next month, the next year, and the next generation.

Ultimately, we do have a choice. Do we put the purity test to one side long enough to have a sensible discussion about what the left can do to stop the return of fascism to the UK, or do we paint a fucking great big Z on everyone’s chest and allow Nigel and Tommy to drive the final nail in the coffin of diversity, tolerance and compassion?

The answer is blindingly obvious.

Enter Polanski

The Green Party leadership contest, which seemed to start sometime between the first and second World Wars, finally came to an end this past week.

Congratulations must go to the reinvented Zack Polanski. To come from the soft-left to the new great hope for a socialist democracy is quite an accomplishment, and one that should be applauded.

Within just an hour of Polanski’s thumping landslide victory, Labour let the world know they feel threatened by this new assault from the eco-left.

And so they should be.

I am not a Green Party member, but I have voted for them a couple of times, and I will most probably do so again, based on policy alone.

I don’t particularly care about Polanski’s hypnotherapy past. If that’s the best they have got on the new Green leader I would simply ask how this almost-amusing tale from the last decade compares to the charge of complicity in genocide.

The Labour Party, being the vile little entity that it is, will spend the next few years telling everyone that a vote for the Green Party is a vote for Nigel Farage and the far-right. This is standard establishment fearmongering and it has to be countered with facts.

The greatest recruitment tool for Farage, Robinson, and the lamppost climbers is Keir Starmer and this utterly inept Labour government.

Reform UK picked up just over 14% of the vote share at last year’s general election. Where are they now? 33%? That’s the Keir Starmer effect in full swing.

Rayner off

The inevitable resignation of Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has plunged the permacrisis Labour government into yet another bruising crisis.

What a shame.

I remember I used to regularly write about the Sunak government’s never ending cycle of catastrophes, and I swear on everything I hold dear, I never thought it could possibly get any worse than those terrible, dark days of staggering incompetence.

Hands up, I was absolutely wrong, and it doesn’t matter how many times you reshuffle shit, Mr Starmer, because it will still be shit when you have finished reshuffling it.

Rayner had to go. I don’t think anyone with any common sense is arguing otherwise. But would the McSweeney mafia force out Weasel Streeting, or Liz Kendall, had they made the same faux pas as Ms Rayner?

Ed Miliband aside, the soft left of the Labour Party is dead and buried, and the contest to replace Rayner will only further deepen the gaping rifts within the parliamentary Labour Party.

Rayner’s USP of being a “single mum from a working class council estate in Stockport” was never going to save her from the hard right of the Labour Party.

Where’s Tom Watson when you need him?

You know when Keir Starmer mentions pater was a toolmaker, and you roll your eyes and sigh at his desperate attempt to be seen as an ordinary person, rather than a millionaire establishment lickspittle?

That is how the right-wing of Labour reacts when Rayner’s working class credentials get a mention. They detest anyone from a poorer background that tries to better themselves, and whether you like Rayner or not, she has tried to better herself, despite going completely the wrong way about it.

This only leads to one possible question.

Where is Tom Watson when you need him?

With any luck, as far away from public life as possible.

Featured image via the Canary