Diane Abbott on This Week: The Mauling After The Night Before
This is painful but important to watch, Diane Abbott struggles to answer very tough questions from Andrew Neil on the “This Week” sofa last night.
It was indeed very harsh and caught Diane unaware which has led some to claim foul play. I can’t say it is unfair for legitimate political questions to be asked on a topical political programme.
Watch:
Beyond Resistance: Coalition Government has declared Class War
From The Commune
With its first cuts plans the Conservative-LibDem coalition has declared war on the working class.
Day by day we hear fresh appeals to accept mass redundancies, tighten our belts and heap blame on the ‘work-shy’ who are somehow meant to find jobs.
A New Hope for the Centre Left?
By Tim Caswell
Labour leadership candidates Andy Burnham, Ed Balls, David Miliband, Ed Miliband and Diane Abbott. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty, David Levene, Toby Melville/Reuters, John Stillwell/PA, Martin Godwin
For the ninety-nine percent of the population who are not interested in party politics, people who are must seem like a religious sect. A dwindling band of brothers and sisters who think that their leader will lead them to the Promised Land – or at least a small majority in the House of commons.
Can Diane Abbott be Leader of the Labour Party?
A guest post by Kwaw Nelson
So at the eleventh hour, Diane Abbott MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington squeaked through the nominations process and made it on to the final short list of contenders for the leadership of the Labour Party. But did she do it on merit and she is capable of being leader of the Labour Party?
These are provocative questions and especially so because Diane Abbott is black. But they are also legitimate questions given Diane Abbott’s record as a parliamentarian over some 23 years.
Migrant women hunger striking against UK Border Agency sponsored racism
The 8th March is International Women’s Day. To celebrate this TMP (The Multicultural Progressive) is putting a spotlight on Womens’ rights and liberation, throughout this week. As part of this, TMP has commissioned a special report into the state of women in the UK and internationally.
The London based Black Women’s Rape Action Project has produced this report exclusively for TMPOnline.
In response to Rod Liddle
TMPOnline Editor, Justin Baidoo responds to Rod Liddle’s infamous Spectator blog on Multi-culturalism and claims of Liddle’s racism.
Rod Liddle’s blog post entitled “Benefits of a multi-cultural Britain” attributes most of the high profile social ills (knife and gun crime, violent sexual crimes) to African Caribbean males. Aside from this being factually incorrect, he goes on the next day in response to a post on Diane Abbott’s blog to state that he hates racism and in an attempt to appear non-racist quotes Diane Abbott and Trevor “segregate black boys” Phillips which he portrays that they make similar points to his argument which he says is based on cultural rather than racist values.
Here he is being disingenuous, by deriding and highlighting the only contributions an ethnic group has brought to society as “rap music, goat curry”and laden “us” (read: indigenous whites) with an “alien” culture, it cannot be viewed by the impartial reader that he is giving an honest though brutal critique with problems in a community. He is denigrating the African-Caribbean community and suggesting that London would be better off without them.
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Why I’m backing Diane Abbott for leader
By Alex Hilton / @alexhilton
But none of them is an Obama waiting to bloom and that’s really the problem.
It comes down to this, if you are a special adviser who has been parachuted or “helped” into a safe Labour seat, then you have been bought and paid for by a powerful patron. Your accountability is to the person who got you the seat, not to the local members or voters. This isn’t black and white, there is a balance of accountabilities at play, but the parachuted MP’s accountability is heavily weighted in favour of their patron or faction. This isn’t particularly healthy for a party with pretensions to equality and democracy.
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