Gordon Brown/Susan Boyle. Has anyone seen them in the same room?
Tribal politics won the day again in the mother(fucker) of all Parliaments as 59 Labour MPs voted yesterday to defeat the Tory motion to stop the extradition of Gary McKinnon to the US (Thus passim). 84 Labour MPs had signed the motion to review the 2003 Extradition Treaty but under pressure from the whips (read Mandelson’s Blairite Stasi) 15 abstained, 59 touched their toes and only 10 backed the Opposition Motion. It was a glaring display of everything that is deeply wrong with the UK Parliamentary system, and should be added to the list of things that make it impossible for any right minded person to vote Labour at the next election.
Gordon Brown/the Incredible Hulk. Has anyone seen them in the same room?
Why are we not surprised? Gordon Brown is hoping for payback with a US foundation after his sorry arse is kicked out of Downing Street next year. May I suggest the ‘Neverland Foundation,’ housed in Michael Jackson’s hacienda? He can partner with Mike’s old friends Uri Geller and Lou Ferrigno, lecturing on the fine arts of deception and the transformative power of uncontrolled rage. Mandelson, rumoured to be seriously considering taking over the reins as Labour leader BEFORE the election (Thus passim), is a paid-up member of the Blairite 51st State Society and minces in mysterious ways. Alan Johnson, Home Secretary – the fifth in as many years – like his predecessors, is simply not up to the job.
Gary McKinnon, and others facing extradition under this obscene one-sided treaty, are victims of Labour’s bizarre obsession with a ‘special relationship’ which is only special to the extent that it condones and glorifies abuse. The Conservatives, whatever their ulterior motive may or may not have been, were right to call for a review and should have won the vote. Though it pains me to say it, the Daily Mail is right to campaign hard on Gary McKinnon’s behalf and give this iniquitous betrayal of civil liberties its front page headline, calling the Labour MPs ‘spineless.’ The Guardian meanwhile, spineless as ever and fantasising about its US liberal audience, condescendingly got round to the McKinnon case and pontificated that while it might be a tad unfair to extradite McKinnon, it was good of Labour to defend the Extradition Treaty. Even for Michael White, this was a prodigious feat of toe-touching. Thank goodness nobody takes him seriously any more, if they ever did.
I hope for the sake of Gary McKinnon that the US authorities will come to the aid of their Labour bitches and decide to overturn the extradition request. Meanwhile, everyone in the UK who cares about their freedom should make a point of registering their displeasure by voting out every one of the lickspittle cowards who condemned an Asberger’s sufferer in this way, whether or not you believe in Labour values. Make that ESPECIALLY if you believe in Labour Values. I’ll give you their names as soon as I collate a full list.
John J Kelly
6 Comments
they work for you . com will list out how each MP voted.
The whole thing is stupid, they should just offer the guy a really well paid job at the Pentagon, upgrading their security.
This seems to me to be about wounded pride and humiliation. Lose two wars and an economic model? Take it out on the funny looking kid.
Hey ho. India is full of rain and oddities and people struggling to survive, but still manages to be less depressing than the UK, even with 70% of its people basically malnourished.
Funny old world.
Voting record here:
http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/division.php?date=2009-07-15&number=202&display=allpossible
Laour MPs absent just as bad as voting ‘aye’?
Thanks, Daniel. It’s not really about McKinnon, however poignant his individual circumstances. The moot point is erosion of civil liberties and the implicit barbarism of subjugating our legal processes to a country which executes people with extreme learning difficulties and vindictively imprisons dissidents in the name of freedom while slaughtering thousands abroad under the same pretext. That’s why it’s even more depressing that Labour have become the party of oppression. Maybe they always were – they just didn’t have a big enough majority to impose their authoritarianism on a gullible liberal society.
Thanks, Serapis. I was about to put the voting record up. It’s perhaps more important to look at the debate in full, which you can read here:http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2009-07-15a.317.1
The voting list clearly shows that this was a partisan political vote. Even though Chris Grayling (tory) Keith Vaz and Kate Hooey (Labour) Menzies Campbell and Chris huhne (Lib Dem) tried to keep the argument on reasonable and rational grounds, Alan Johnson blustered and possibly mis-stated his authority to intervene, while Denis McShane’s comments, in particular, are contemptible.
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘Labour MPs absent JUST AS BAD as voting aye’. The Labour abstentions acted to defeat the ‘aye’ side of the motion, so whether their actions were good or bad depends on whether you approve of the outcome. I couldn’t speculate as to whether they abstained deliberately – maybe they genuinely couldn’t form a view, but the rest of the tribe, with the exception of Vaz, Hoey, Corbyn etc. most certainly toadied the party line.
“That’s why it’s even more depressing that Labour have become the party of oppression. Maybe they always were – they just didn’t have a big enough majority to impose their authoritarianism on a gullible liberal society.”
No, I think this is a more global process, where a certain sort of penal approach has been exported with a certain sense of disciplining the polity to make it ready for investment.
See: Punishing the Poor, The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity, By Loïc Wacquant, University of California, Berkeley
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Punishing-Poor-Neoliberal-Government-Insecurity/dp/0822344041
This process is observed in India, with the Human Rights Law Network observing that liberalisation politics has affected the workings of the Supreme Court, to make it and the Indian legal regime more investment friendly.
http://www.hrln.org/hrln/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=513:national-consultation-critiquing-the-current-judicial-trends-on-environment-law&catid=62:events&Itemid=57
This is through rolling back labour laws, refusal to fully implement environmental legislation, putting in place a fast-track form of justice and increasing incarceration rates, as well as putting in place all sorts of investment friendly legislation and sets of incentives, such as environmental self-certification, and tax breaks for Foreign Money coming in.
Does any of this sound familiar?
As Zizeck put it, we are all Banana Republics now.
Sorry, Yes, Daniel, these bastards are neoliberals, for the most part, but this extradition row is a very British form of lickspittle mixed with New Labour push me, pull you authoritarianism. It is about the ‘special relationship’ and has little to do with Globalisation or, with respect, India or the world’s poor. Although painful for liberals, our civil liberties have been eroded beyond repair by the party of the Guardianistas. I can’t and won’t defend them on tribal grounds. I agree with the rest of your argument and with Zizek, though.