Posts Tagged ‘Emily Thornberry’
What Anti-Semitism? Corbyn wants second EU referendum; Labour betrays working class voters; Thornberry removes Labour Brexit from ballot
“The last Party leader to do exactly the opposite to his manifesto promise was Nick Clegg. Remind me, where is he now?” wonders John Mann, although the question might be rhetorical. Clegg is earning shedloads of money doing PR at Facebook. Mann is using Clegg to aim a barb at Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn who’s now campaigning for a second EU referendum.
Corbyn wants us to vote on the soft “Tory Brexit” guffed out by Theresa May or his “Labour Brexit”, details of which remains vague. Trouble is that members of Corbyn’s front Cabinet want it to be a choice between May’s deal and Remain. So are Labour campaigning for Remain or Brexit? Why would Labour want a referendum without its own ideas on the ballot?
“If we can’t get our deal through,” says shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry, “…then anything else would be a disastrous Tory Brexit and we would ask for the public to be able to have a vote on that. We would have a referendum on whatever deal may or may not pass through parliament, and we would be saying to people, ‘Do you want this? Or do you want to Remain?’”
Labour MP Caroline Flint is confused. She tweets: “Labour in danger of overturning an election promise to respect the 2016 Referendum result. We can’t ignore millions of Labour Leave voters. There are Labour MPs like me who will not support a second ref. @jeremycorbyn give us a free vote so Labour MPs can keep their promises.”
Is this about preventing more deserters to The Independent Group (TIG) which supports a second referendum? MPs who resigned from Labour to join TIG also condemned the party as “institutionally racist”. Labour is making it all about Brexit in an effort to bury the racism rife in its ranks. Shameful stuff.
Ian Austin, one of the Labour MPS who quit to join TIG, tells the Times: “The thing that I find really upsetting is that there are people who would never have thought about this stuff… for whom it would never be an issue, but because they think Jeremy is this wonderful decent guy, fought racism all his life or whatever, they can’t believe it’s true. So they end up defending the indefensible and some of them get sucked into this poison out of a desire to defend him.”
And on Corbyn’s attitude towards Jews, the people he others, Austin adds: “I can’t look into his heart and see what’s in there. But I know he has definitely done and said things that are antisemitic. What do we normally call people who say or do things that are racist?”
As for what it means for Labour, the single word answer is “goodbye”. Research shows us that 61 per cent of Labour constituencies voted Leave. Less well off voters – ‘those in social housing, those with no formal education and those earning below £1,200 a month’ – were the three groups most likely to back Brexit. But no matter. The daughter of an international lawyer and Assistant-Secretary-General of the United Nations (Emily Thornberry) knows what’s best for you.
Vote now and vote often. Well, so they used to say. If MPs deny Brexit, why bother voting at all?
Posted: 26th, February 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment
Jews laugh at claims Jeremy Corbyn isn’t an anti-Semite – but not in the Guardian
Jeremy Corbyn is upset by people calling him an anti-Semite. Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, told Jewish charity Limmud at a meeting in Birmingham that Corbyn finds it “difficult to deal with the problem”. Jewish News reports: “Interviewed by Momentum founder Jon Lansman at one of the last Limmud sessions on Thursday, the Islington South MP also drew laughter when she repeated the claim that ‘there isn’t a racist or antisemitic bone in Jeremy’s body’.” The Islington South MP said of the Islington North MP: “When people accused Jeremy of being an antisemite, he was so upset, and as a result he has found it difficult to deal with the problem.”
Asked by an audience member how, given her comments about such “lazy, undisciplined thinking”, could she serve in a shadow cabinet “under a Labour leader who would surely fail under your own definition?” Thornberry dodged the question, saying: “It is my core belief that only the Labour Party can improve this country and make it more socially just. And it is for that and many other reasons that I am committed to my party and believe it’s my duty to serve my party and make my leader the best leader he can be, and for us to be part of a leadership team.”
The Daily Telegraph reports the story (“Jeremy Corbyn failed to tackle anti-Semitism because he was too ‘upset’, Emily Thornberry says). The Daily Mail bills it as: “Jeremy Corbyn was TOO UPSET to address Labour’s antisemitism crisis: Emily Thornberry is jeered at Jewish charity as she says Labour leader was ‘so upset, he found it difficult to deal with the problem’.” The Sun told us: “JEZ TOO BAD Jeremy Corbyn failed to tackle anti-Semitism because he was ‘so upset’ by racism claims, top ally says.” The Times: notes “Jeremy Corbyn was ‘too upset’ to tackle antisemitism.”
And in the Labour supporting Mirror and Guardian nothing. Not a word. Maybe the papers’ hacks were too upset to type?
Posted: 11th, January 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment
Jeremy Corbyn celebrates by high fiving Emily Thornberry’s breasts
A jubilant Jeremy Corbyn appears to high-five Emily Thornberry’s breast as Labour score biggest slice of the vote in decades. Theresa May’s not the only one who feels like a right tit.
Labour surely delighted the polls closed before that.
Posted: 9th, June 2017 | In: Gifs, Politicians | Comment
Local Elections make Labour elite choke on their quinoa
Why has the Labour vote evaporated? Maybe it’s because Labour stopped representing the people it was created to represent. It is a party not fit for purpose.
Aditya Chakrabortty looks at Labour’s Welsh problem in the Guardian. In the recent local council elections Labour lost its Welsh heartland council of Blaenau Gwent to independents.
For decades, Labour took this area and its other heartlands for granted – while it flirted with Mondeo Man and Worcester Woman. It parachuted in its plastic professional politicians – just think of the way Tristram Hunt was airlifted into Stoke – and ignored the need to nurture local talent. Now in Wales and elsewhere, it is paying the price of decades of ingrained arrogance.
No. It’s worse than that. Labour is utterly disconnected.
It’s Brexit, says Mick Hume:
Brexit has brought to a head the divorce between Labour and millions of working-class voters. Some 90-odd per cent of Labour MPs backed the establishment’s Remain campaign – including Corbyn, the ‘man of principle’ who shelved his longstanding Bennite principle of opposing the EU for the duration of the referendum campaign. More than 70 per cent of Labour MPs, however, represented seats where the majority of voters backed Leave.
As the newly elected Tory mayor of Tees Valley said after his victory in that supposed Labour stronghold last week, locals had ‘voted strongly for Leave but our local Labour opponents were all for Remain, making them completely unconnected’.
If you want to find individuals who epitomise Labour’s aloofness from the proles, their detachment and otherworldliness from people who don’t know how to pronounce quinoa (tip, it’s pronounced “Eugh!”) you could cop a load of pretty much any of Jeremy Cobyn’s shadow Cabinet but my pick has to be knowing anti-sexist Emily Thornberry.
When not mocking the working classes, the Islington MP is patronising. Speaking on Peston on Sunday Thornberry revealed her low opinion voters: “There is no alternative vision that the Tories are offering. It is not good enough for people to simply say ‘I like Theresa May’s hair’ or ‘I like that shade of blue’. Politics is not about that, politics is about how you change people’s lives.”
Next week, Emily will use her Missionary Masterclass to tell voters how to hold a pencil and that tobacco, although a leaf, is not one of their five a day.
Posted: 9th, May 2017 | In: Politicians | Comment
Emily Thornberry: ‘There are people who poo who create a lot of jobs’
Emily Thornberry, Labour MP and shadow Foreign Secretary in Jeremy Corbyn’s Cabinet of anyone who lives within walking distance of his Islington home, is on Radio 4. She says: “There are people who poo who create a lot of jobs.”
Emily Thornberry: ‘There are people who poo who create a lot of jobs’ pic.twitter.com/nIAxEoLPd0
— Liam Taggart (@LiamMTaggart) April 21, 2017
That’s the jobbies sorted.
Posted: 22nd, April 2017 | In: Politicians, TV & Radio | Comment
Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry says knowledge is sexist
Did you see Emily Thornberry on Sky News? No? The Press Gazette explains what you missed:
Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry tells Sky News it is ‘sexist’ to ask her to name the South Korean president
Says Thornberry: “I’ve seen delegations of French and I’ve seen quite a lot of the Norwegians … but not their foreign ministers. We are in the process of arranging for me to go to France and Germany.”
Presenter Dermot Murnaghan asked her who the French foreign minister is. Thornberry didn’t know. So she blathered and attacked the questioner.
“Don’t start pub quizzing me, Dermot. Do you know what, what really upsets me about your attitude to me is that you do this with me. I don’t remember you doing it with anybody else you know.
“Have you done it to David Davis? Have you asked these questions? Do Sky journalists have a go at Boris Johnson on this basis? How about Liam Fox? Do you do pub quizzes with them?”
The Guardian says it matters not that Thornberry is rubbish at pub quizzes:
Is it important that Thornberry should know, off the top of her head, who the French foreign minister is – or, for that matter, the answer to Dermot Murnaghan’s next question, the name of the president of South Korea? I don’t know.
On the one hand, she’ll obviously be given the relevant information before she meets either party, and since she is unlikely to ever be in government anyway, the question is more or less moot.
The Indy spots the real sexist:
When Thornberry complained to Murnaghan about the high bar imposed on women in politics, a more compelling example than her own foundering on basic facts would have been that of Angela Eagle, whose leadership challenge stumbled and ultimately faltered under a hail of abuse that included homophobic jibes and actual bricks through window. Invoking this toxic environment as cover for her own lack of preparation was an unsisterly act from Thornberry.
Remember when you were worried about Boris Johnson being Foreign Secretary?
Posted: 13th, September 2016 | In: Politicians, Reviews | Comment
‘Send Them Back’: Emily Thornberry And White Van Dan Confound The Sneering Stereotypes
Labour MP Emily Thornberry’s tweet from Rochester made a the story of the by-election about Labour’s attitude to the working class.
Thornberry resigned her post in the shadow cabinet, thus setting the bar horrible low for future departures.
The Sun then did what it does best. It introduced us to White Van Dan, whose home Thornberry had presented to her twitter followers in the manner of a Victorian prude showing off a cultural artefact from darkest Africa.
White Van Dan – Dan Ware – was invited to share his vision for the United Kingdom with the paper’s readership:
As @MichaelPDeacon tweeted:
White Van Man confounds the sneering stereotypes. By writing a manifesto containing the phrase “send them back”
Posted: 22nd, November 2014 | In: Politicians | Comment
Emily Thornberry And Labour Hate ‘White Man’s Gulch’
Poor old Emily Thornberry. She’s the Labour MP who mocked Dan Ware’s home in Rochester. Dan lives in home that displays flags supporting his country and West Ham United FC. He drives a white van. Intrepid Emily, who had journeyed from Islington to a neat road in Kent where working people live, thought it a hoot to show this cultural oddity to her Twitter followers.
We say poor Emily becuase having resigned her job in the shadow cabinet, Emily could argue she was only giving Labour suppoters what they wanted.
Mocking the white working class is ok, you see. Sure, the Daily Mirror today asks:
What does shadow Labour minister Emily Thornberry mean by this photo?
The Mirror quotes other Labour MPs, keen to show that not all the Party’s MPs are possess the Victorian colonial spirit:
Labour MP Simon Danczuk saying: “We all know what she was trying to imply. I’ve talked about this previously. It’s like the Labour party has been hijacked by the North London liberal elite and it’s comments like that which reinforce that view.”
Labour colleague Chris Bryant said: “The Labour Party was founded on the basis that everybody should be treated equally and that’s why Emily herself has said it’s a bit of an own goal.”
But Anorak readers will recall that its not just the London Labour elite who think white van man is a national embarrassment.
Mirror columnsit Brian Reade, a Liverpudlian, once journeyed to south-east London. In light of the murder of black teeanger Stephen Lawrence by a gang of white racists, Eltham was in the news. What he wrote was truly appalling:
Welcome to the Brook Estate in Eltham, south east London. The breeding ground of four of the five men accused of stabbing Stephen Lawrence to death as he waited for a bus a short walk away on the eve of St George’s Day six years ago.
Five products of a twisted philosophy drummed into them from birth. “If they’re black, stab ‘em in the back.”…
A way of life passed down from father to son. You see the link emerge in the fading white graffiti sprayed 30 years ago on the walls of the old railway bridges around the estate, written by the last generation of Eltham Boyz. In three feet high letters: “SKINHEADS.”…
Give me the father and I’ll give you the son who will give you the son who will abuse, persecute and even kill another human being for committing the heinous crime of not being born white.
Racism was inherited. Get the killers and purge the land.
This is White Man’s Gulch… This is E-reg Escort-land.
So much for anti-discrimination, eh. When did the entire white working class become pariahs?
GK Chesterton put it well:
“We are always ready to make a saint or prophet of the educated man who goes into cottages to give a little kindly advice to the uneducated,’ he wrote. But the real saints and prophets – those of the middle ages – were uneducated men ‘who walked into grand houses to give a little kindly advice to the educated.’ The wisdom of the poor was once deployed to moralise the rich; now that of the rich is used to demoralise the poor.”
Kicking the white working class is acceptable. What began with targeting football fans with new forms of control now extends to what car you drive and your home decor.
Emily Thornberry is not a rarity. She’s typical.
Posted: 21st, November 2014 | In: Key Posts, Politicians, Reviews | Comment
White Van Dan Invites Emily Thornberry Over To His Castle
THE Sun has snared White Van Dan – whose home became a sensation when snotty Labour MP Emily Thornberry mocked it. Says Dan Ware:
“To me it just proves Labour is full of the upper classes. I would never vote Labour now. I think they need to get out of their mansions and visit the working class. Her and Ed should come and say sorry to me…”
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The Mask Slips: Emily Thornberry Shows How Elitist Labour Is
EMILY Thornberry MP (Islington South) played her hand. To use the language of the anti-UKippers, the mask slipped.
Thornberry portrayed Rochester locals as working class morons, the kind of dolts who drive white vans, love football and England. On Planet Thornberry, the home she photographed and tweeted was a cultural curiosity.
Would she have pictured the home of a Pakistani mini-cab driver with a Pakistan cricket flag hanging outside in the same fashion? Of course not. She was mocking the white working class. That’s allowed.
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Posted: 21st, November 2014 | In: Politicians | Comment
