WHILE STARMER FLASHES HIS MORAL VOID AND FARAGE GETS A BBC FLUFF JOB, THE PEOPLE CARRY ON FIGHTING ~ Tabitha Troughton ~ For UK comedy, these days one has to depend on the promotional videos still scuttling out from the Prime Minister’s office, like perky little cockroaches. In the recent attempt to launch “Phase 2” of the government, together with “a more powerful Number 10”, the feet of Downing Street staff trudge upstairs (“don’t show our faces!”); the Prime Minister tries to place papers neatly into a folder, and fails; the Prime Minister tries to enthuse his team with “good spirits, confidence and conviction”; someone’s hand fiddles, too menacingly, with a ballpoint. A final close-up shows the Prime Minister clicking, with great concentration, followed by a smirk of triumph, on a mouse. There isn’t, curiously, an England flag in sight—not even a Union Jack; just a sizeable painting of a large, vaguely human-shaped, melting, black blob, directly behind the prime-ministerial chair. It’s not, of course, a depiction of a lost soul, but still the country flails, trapped in Starmer’s moral dissolution. Racists waving flags menace asylum seekers, people of colour, and their allies: Starmer says he loves flags. People swallow vicious, hate-filled lies, egged on by billionaires and supremacists: Starmer “gets” the lies; Great Yarmouth faces a weekend of “the UK’s biggest white power gig for a decade”: Yvette Cooper is wheeled forward to confirm that her house is permanently tricked out like a mini-roundabout. Since then, we’ve had a Cabinet reshuffle which resembles nothing more than the Cups and Balls trick. “You thought David Lammy was under here? No, he’s miraculously turned up here! Oooh, where’s Yvette Cooper gone?”—except that nobody cares where the balls are, and there’s already far too much bollocks to cope with. Assisted suicide! Badgers! Farm tax! Water shit! Cost of living! Welfare cuts! Peter Mandelson! The British public, welded to the rails, stares down the barrel of a train tunnel, from which a puffing, jeering, farting, purplish monstrosity lurches towards them. But worry not, Parliament has been back at work since 1 September and is carrying on as usual. A peaceful young woman in prison is on hunger strike, and in critical condition, detained for 9 months so far without trial. Police are holding back tears as they arrest peaceful protestors for terrorism. Meanwhile the Israeli government continues to starve Gaza and erase it, and increase the conquest of the West Bank. More IDF soldiers have kill themselves. Presumably in later years Starmer will think back fondly to the time he united opposite poles at asylum demos, with the chants of “Keir Starmer’s a wanker” coming heartily from both sides. That’s the cost of holding the centre, say the grown-ups, shaking their heads, but the centre has not held, even if “being a bit murdery” could exist, and, sadly, anarchy has yet to be loosed upon the world. Instead, Labour’s backroom boys are now “fighting like rats in a pack” over the leadership succession, which, again, no-one else cares about—unless perhaps someone is busy trying to reanimate Margaret Thatcher’s corpse. What’s to say about Reform UK, except that the large majority of the country seriously do not want them, despite continuing, slavishly fawning publicity from the mainstream media? Almost every time the mobile group of flag-wavers appear in front of what everyone persists in calling “hotels”, they’re outnumbered. Reform are losing councillor after councillor. Their four MPs, and the leadership, already fight like venal politicians in a sack. The Great Yarmouth white power gig turned out to have sold around 500 tickets, about the size of a bowls club, and has now, thanks to locals and campaign groups, been cancelled. Nigel Farage, who, as Il Duce-elect, still needs to retain his parliamentary seat, has come out as hating his own constituency. Fail not the BBC, which can make Uriah Heep look like a man of principle on a Sunday. Never mind what the people want: Reform, with its lies and racists and fear-mongering and riot-stoking and threats and long-held desire to make handguns freely available is what, we’re being told, they are going to get. “Unless Starmer is able to meet this moment”, falters the Guardian hopefully, like someone trying to insert a metal key into an electronic lock. And lo! Into this horrible scenario gallops Zack Polanski, the new leader of the Green Party, his stallion of truth for once charging down the media bull, meriting not only more coverage in 5 minutes than the Green Party has had in a decade, but a picture in the understandably conflicted Guardian which made him look like a vampiric Shrek. And yea! Looming in the background are Corbyn and Sultana’s “Not Your Party” which manages to be far more attractive than Reform, despite not having a leader, or leaders, or even a manifesto—by golly it’s the Paris Commune! Or maybe State and Revolution. All the while, the people carry on, fighting against this genocidal black pall. From the heart of the Cotswolds to the centre of Edinburgh, from the doubling of numbers queuing for arrest in London’s Parliament Square, to the thousands on the streets of Belfast, the last few days alone are bursting with increased opposition. It’s astonishing. We should do all we can to make it effective, too. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photo: Peter Marshall The post Farts, flags, and the melting black blob of UK politics appeared first on Freedom News.

AS REFORM UK SPLITS OVER A STALE DEBATE, MUSLIM WOMEN’S VOICES REMAIN CONSPICUOUSLY ABSENT ~ James Horton ~ Many had thought very little about Sarah Pochin upon her tight win in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election on May 1st. They know what they think of her now. Upon her first ever question in PMQs on June 4th, the new Reform UK MP seems to have split her party’s small collective of big-names, for the second time this year. And whilst the tiresome tumult of high-politics squabbling and fallouts have ensnared media attention, a much more important point has gone unnoticed: discussions about banning the headscarf used by some Muslim women is now swirling in even “respectable” right-wing circles.  Not even 24 hours passed and the Daily Express released a poll to their readership on the issue of a Burqa ban. Other outlets sent their swarm of reporters after Richard Tice to get a firmer grasp on Reform’s stance on the Burqa just a day following.  Since the question was posed, Zia Yusuf, party Chairman of Reform UK, has resigned and then rejoined, choosing not to explicitly state the reason for his momentary departure. Following PMQs, he called the choice to ask the question “dumb” because it “wasn’t policy”. Yusuf’s choice to dump and rekindle Reform has entirely swallowed the British media, as article after article is milked from a situation which has been largely kept close to Reform’s chest.  Actually, it is a wonder the topic of Burkas hasn’t had this much traction earlier, given how malignant it’s been on the European continent. One is made aware, as Pochin pointed out in her question, that in France the ban on full-face coverings was implemented in April of 2011, with Belgium and Denmark following suit in 2011 and 2018 respectively. Muslim women’s clothing has been an issue on which the liberal and conservative centre has frequently aligned with the far right. The political furor it caused amongst Labour cabinet members in the mid-2000s is a landmark in the history of British social policy, whereas Boris Johnson’s now-infamous Daily Telegraph article comparing Muslim women wearing the Burqa to “letterboxes” and “bank robbers” did not seem to hinder his ascension to Number 10 one year later. The argument put forward by advocates of a ban is multi-pronged. On the one hand, these commentators and politicians raise “security concerns” about the Burqa’s potential to conceal identity—implying the constant threat of the Muslim person in British society. This was indeed the line of questioning that Pochin chose in PMQs, proposing the ban “in the interest of public safety”. On the other hand, they attribute to Muslim women a lack of agency in their own homes and communities regarding the decision what to wear, alleging their subservience to tyrannical men who govern their lives. This line of argument was seen in Reform UK depute leader Richard Tice’s comment yesterday: “Let’s ask women who wear the burka, is that genuinely their choice?”—implying, of course, that it was not. It seems Tice is willing to discuss patriarchy only when it is a marginalised community that is subject to scrutiny. In “A Dying Colonialism” Frantz Fanon discusses the European mindset and attitude towards the Muslim community and women’s place within it: “It described the immense possibilities of woman, unfortunately transformed by the Algerian man into an inert, demonetized, indeed dehumanized object. The behavior of the Algerian was very firmly denounced and described as medieval and barbaric”. This notion, that the Muslim man is not only an external threat to the non-Muslim world but is an internal oppressor of Muslim women, is rife at moments like this. Far from a discussion about the nature of religious institutions and their role in female oppression, this is a blatant attack on the Muslim community, given a liberal lick of paint.  Notably absent from the conversation is the voice of Muslim women. There is no point denying that feminist movements in predominantly-Muslim parts of the world are facing more setbacks than those in much of contemporary Europe. But no current discussion in Britain seems to account for the agency of those individuals who for religion and/or social reasons choose to wear the Burqa, or another type of veil, or just a head covering. It seems evident from recent events in Iran and Kurdistan that Muslim women are very well capable of speaking for themselves on the issue. They certainly do not need posh white people in positions of exalted power and privilege to speak for them.  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Image: VintageKat on Flickr The post Not again with the Burqa Ban? appeared first on Freedom News.