Solidarity 510, 12 June 2019

Boris Johnson and most other candidates want to have Britain out by 31 October, even if that means a no-deal Brexit and a new hard border in Ireland. Dominic Raab says he might “prorogue” Parliament — send the MPs home — to prevent MPs stopping no-deal. Michael Gove says he might consider a “short” delay, but that would be to finalise a supposed “alternative to the Irish backstop” which May’s efforts over many months have shown to be illusory. The basic Tory-Brexiter aim is to “complete” the “Thatcher revolution”, to cut the UK free of EU pressures for social “levelling-up”, and to reorient it...

David Friedman, Trump’s US ambassador to Israel, told the New York Times on 8 June: “I think Israel has the right to retain some, but unlikely all, of the West Bank”. His declaration boosts Israel’s right-wing prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu — or, looking at it another way, puts him on the spot — in the run-up to new elections in Israel on 17 September. Although Netanyahu came top in the 9 April poll, he was unable after it to put together a right-wing government coalition. The Israeli parliament voted on 30 May to dissolve itself. Netanyahu will be running a caretaker government until...

Despite the rain and it being a weekday, roughly 100 people gathered at Leicester’s clock tower to protest the ridiculous state visit laid on for Donald Trump. There was a buoyant atmosphere and a diverse crowd — much like the previous Trump actions in Leicester, just a little smaller. Leicester was an early starter on the anti-Trump circuit due to the rather odd invitation from the Director of the Richard III Centre to Trump, who predictably believes he is descended from the controversial monarch. Leicester against Trump, a coalition of Greens, regular folk, and supporters of Workers’ Liberty...

Destroy Israel? The 2 June AGM of Jewish Voice for Labour — a group campaigning to dismiss or discredit concerns about antisemitism in the Labour Party — discussed the question. JVL “political officer” Graham Bash said: “I am sometimes asked if I support the destruction of the state of Israel. I always answer no, provided the Israeli state — like almost every other state — becomes a state of its citizens, rather than a Jewish state that gives me, a British Jew who has been to Israel once, over 50 years ago, a greater right to live in Israel/Palestine than a dispossessed, ethnically cleansed...

The ascent of Matteo Salvini’s Lega in Italy has no equal in Europe in its astonishing progress — from 17% in Italy’s March 2018 election to 34% in the May 2019 Euro-election. In May 2019, the Lega got three million more votes than in March 2018, though seven million fewer votes were cast overall. It advanced further on its already historic mass base in the North. It advanced significantly in the hitherto “red” centre. It quadrupled its presence in the South and the Islands. Its social bloc has now extended vastly beyond its historic hegemony among the small and medium producers of the...

Labour-left commentators have been stumbling over each other to congratulate Rebecca Long-Bailey on her strong words for climate change in Prime Minister’s Questions and in her video on the “green industrial revolution”. Strong words on climate change are welcome, as are bolder visions. But what does it boil down to, and is it bold enough? In PMQs, the scale of her vision is seen in her claim that “to safeguard our future, we will need to mobilise all of our resources, just like we did when we rebuilt Britain after the second world war.” We certainly do need to take climate change seriously...

Seven soldiers jailed for killing 10 Rohingya men and boys in 2017 have been released by the Myanmar government, under pressure from the military. The soldiers spent less time in prison then the two Reuters journalists that exposed the massacre in the first place. Since 2017 more than 730,000 Rohingya, Muslims living in the border area of Rakhine, have been driven from Myanmar and into Bangladesh. The UN said that the expulsions were done with “genocidal intent” and included mass killings, widespread arson of Rohingya villages and property as well as the frequent use of rape. Amnesty...

On 7 June, a lesbian pride march in Washington DC, the “DC Dyke March” banned marchers who had Stars of David on their rainbow flags. The organisers said that anti-Zionist Jews were welcome, and that they banned flags with Stars of David because they wanted to exclude all “nationalist” symbols. Lots of people are nationalists of different shades. Why should they be banned from lesbian pride marches? And Palestinian flags weren’t banned. A similar ban was imposed at a pride march in Chicago in 2017. Root-and-branch anti-Israel politics inevitably spills over into antisemitism.

Two women travelling on the N31 night bus in Camden, north London, on 30 May were attacked and left injured in a homophobic and misogynist attack. Melania Geymonat and her partner Chris were harassed by a group of men who noticed they were a couple. The men demanded that they kiss for their entertainment, described sexual positions, and threw coins at them. When the couple did not go along with their demands the men beat them up, leaving Melania and Chris with facial injuries and covered in blood. The sort of verbal abuse in this case will be far too familiar to queer women. In a press...

From the Morning Star (07/06/2019) it seems that their people had a wonderful time on a recent visit to what they describe as “the world’s socialist super-power.” “Earlier this year”, reported the Morning Star, “Communist Party of Britain (CPB) representatives took part in a joint delegation of Communist parties from northern Europe and North America following an invitation from the International Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC)”. CPB Executive member Jonathan Havard told the Morning Star: “Their utilising capitalism to move forward to a modern First World society is entirely...