 Welcome everybody. My name is Jamil and I'll be introducing today's event. The title and subject of today's webinar hosted by author and activist Miko Pellet is the targeted campaign to topple Jeremy Corbin. So a little bit of background. In September 2018, the UK Labour Party adopted a controversial guideline on antisemitism issued by the IHRA, which is the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. This definition folds criticism of Israel's treatment of Palestinians into the actual definition. So this establishes, establishes potentially a powerful apparatus of censorship, which would punish and silence Palestinian rights advocates within the party. So pro-Israel groups, along with UK's neoliberal establishment, you really work tirelessly to tarnish the character of Jeremy Corbin, Chris Williamson, Tony Greenstein and several other members of Labour. And this sophisticated disinformation and smear campaign, you know, culminated in Corbin's recent and shocking ousting from UK Labour just what, you know, a week and a half ago or so. So today we are really fortunate to have an excellent panel with us to not only analyze this historical event in UK politics, but also to really understand the forces responsible for it, in addition to what might lie ahead for UK Labour under this very new dangerous standard. It should be said that we also have a panel with us today who have some, let's call it lived experience being in the crosshairs of these relentless smear campaigns. So on today's panel, we are fortunate enough to have Chris Williamson, a second time guest with us, former Labour MP for Derby North, city council leader and activist. We also have Asa Winstanley, journalist, associate editor at the Electronic Intifada, also second time Miko Pellet alum, and new to the Miko Pellet webinar world. We have Tony Greenstein, activist, founding member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods, an author of A History of Fighting Fascism in Brighton. So welcome to each of you and thank you so much for your time and for your insights today. And I believe we are ready to start here so I'm going to hand it over to Miko. Thank you, Jameel. And thank you, everybody. That's all the participants. I see the numbers are growing very rapidly. Chris, Asa and Tony, thank you so much for your valuable time and for your willingness to participate in this. Like Jameel said, you've all been, you've all experienced this, the accusations of anti-Semitism and what has been going on within the Labour Party. And so I think your input here is invaluable. I don't think there's any doubt that the ousting or, you know, what seems like the ousting of Jeremy Corbyn from Labour Party, UK Labour Party, was planned in advance, meticulously planned. You could see over the last three, four years how the ring around him, the people who supported him, the people who were fighting with him against racism and for social justice and progressive values, were taken down bit by bit up to the point where he was really left alone and now he himself has been taken down. And it seems that he made, even though there's no question that he's not a racist, there's no question that either he or any of you, of course, are anti-Semitic in any way, shape or form. There was a big strategic mistake in the way he handled this and the way the Labour Party perhaps handled this, the accusations of anti-Semitism. And it could go back, I think, to the big mistake of accepting this new definition, the IHRA, what's the IHRA working definition of anti-Semitism, which basically shields Israel from criticism and binds all the organizations that have accepted it, whether they're governmental or non-governmental organizations, that have accepted and adopted this definition. And it binds them in a way that now they cannot say anything about Israel, cannot criticize Israel without being accused as being anti-Semitic. So it's a very well thought out shield, very well thought out strategy. I'd like to start by going around and just maybe briefly, you guys can each tell the story of your own experience within the Labour Party in this relation. And perhaps, Tony, we'll start with you. What was your experience in this regard? Well, I'm fairly unique in that 20 years ago, 1992, I was suspended from the Labour Party, not for anti-Semitism, I hasten to add, but part of the kind of anti-Poltax campaigners and general left-wing troublemakers during the old Kinect, which I was suspended for just one year and I didn't rejoin. And then I rejoined, it was shortly after Jeremy was elected, about October 2015. And then out of the blue in March 2016, I received a letter from John Stollarday of the Compliance Unit telling me I had been suspended for comments I was alleged to have made. They gave me no clue as to what those comments were. I only discovered later what they were. It was things like I compared Israel's law return and its marriage laws to Nazi Germany, and that was, of course, held to be anti-Semitic. And so I pointed out to my investigator that Hannah Arendt, who was a refugee from Nazi Germany, had made just such comments in her book Eiffman in Jerusalem, The Banality of Evil. So I mean, that was, for me, was the beginning. But actually the anti-Semitism campaign had been going on even before Corbyn was elected. So this was a carefully thought out strategy by people whose identity we can speculate about. So I mean, that was my experience in the very beginning anyway. And I think, you know, you were one of about half a million people who joined the Labour Party when Jeremy Corbyn became leader. I'm not sure it was that high, but it was a considerable number, yes. And so this was his leadership, his leadership in the Labour Party was a great promise, really, and a lot of people decided to join. Absolutely, yes. Yes, it's enthused hundreds of thousands, millions even, with the potential promise of change. And the tragedy is that Corbyn never, ever understood the nature of the attack on him. From the very start he sought to appease his enemies. You know, when it comes to Zionists, you can't appease them because they know no reason. Yes, and sadly we were learning this lesson too late. It would be nice if we all sat here as this was happening earlier on and perhaps some of you actually did and warned that this is what's happening. Asa, your story is a little bit different. Yeah, I didn't join the Labour Party initially, because in 2015 I didn't join, despite, you know, I could see that Corbyn was something different from the awfulness of the Labour Party, basically. I mean, to me, I started becoming an activist in a campaigner in 2001, really, after 9-11, and so to me the Labour Party was the war party, basically. So, and then there was always sort of one or two MPs who were good, essentially, and Corbyn was one of them who would go to the demonstrations and so forth. There were four demonstrations, and it was, so when he became the leader, it was a massive change, but I still didn't join, and it was because I knew something like this would happen. And then the guys foresaw the extent to which it became a real kind of national crisis, manufactured crisis. But, you know, I knew I would probably be purged at some point if I joined the Labour Party, so I didn't. I didn't join until 2016 when there was the coup, when the Labour, when I believe it was three quarters of Labour MPs voted to no confidence in Jeremy Corbyn. So, I, you know, I was basically persuaded by others to join, to kind of just resist the coup, basically. So, I joined from 2015, 2016, and I wasn't really vocal about it, it was just my own sort of private, you know, resistance I suppose. I, you know, give, I did a little bit of campaigning in the 2017 election, but not very much, you know, I'm more of a writer than an activist these days, and I was eventually pushed out. So, yeah, I mean, I was suspended and I was suspended in, I think, February 2019. And then I was, I'll put articles in the chat, but essentially I was, like a lot of others, I was suspended for saying factually accurate things about pro-resilient groups in the Labour Party. And then eventually I saw no choice, I saw that it was sort of the process was being rigged. And it was against Tony. Didn't they reject your request to cover the Labour Party conference last year? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So while I was still suspended, they, you know, I applied in the normal way to cover. For a press pass for Labour Party conference and it was first approved. And then it, I didn't actually get the pass but I got the approval in the email so it was saying that the pass was about to come. And then it's somebody at some point made a political decision to roll that approval back. Yeah. And thank you for that. And then, and Chris, you, you, you, I mean, you were the first time I met you in 2017. Like I said earlier, I don't know if this was on your mind, but the people that introduced me to you and the people in the audience as you were speaking were whispering to me that the hope is and the expectation is that you will become deputy leader. Clearly, your position in the party was an important one, particularly in the context of a Jeremy Corbyn type of Labour Party. And then you were targeted and you fought it and you really fought it and you proved that the accusations against you were, were, were false. And yet here we are. So can you talk a little bit about your story, but also what in the world happened here? How did this, how were they able to really bring down, you know, someone like yourself who was really a pillar within the, you were not just an activist from the outside who joined, you were part of the party in this campaign to bring down Jeremy Corbyn and to bring down this the progressive part of the party. Thanks, Mika. Thanks for inviting us on again. It's a pleasure to be here. And yeah, no, you're absolutely right. I mean, I've been a member of the Labour Party had been for 44 years. I devoted my life to the party as a dedicated activist was active in every election from the mid 1970s and active in between elections as well. And one of the things I was always trying to do is encourage people to join the Labour Party to make it a more progressive and more socialist organized institution as it were. And I felt that, you know, if we could get more people on side like me who shared my worldview, shared the worldview of people like Jeremy Corbyn that we would be in a much better place to be able to shape the agenda going forward. I never saw myself on the first join the party as being an elected official, a councillor or indeed a member of parliament, but, you know, life has a funny way of sort of twisting and turning and ultimately I did find myself with the privilege of being elected to represent my home town. But I mean, you mentioned about, you know, if we'd have been having this conversation, you know, perhaps a while ago, maybe we could have avoided it. People like myself were warning about what was happening. I'd said repeatedly that, look, the chase that after me, but I'm merely collateral damage, you know, they've already taken out people like Ken Livingston and Jackie Walker, etc. So ultimately they're after Jeremy Corbyn, because they want to smash this socialist project, this project which actually is committed to an ethical foreign policy, a foreign policy which would have put peace and disarmament as a top priority, and obviously solidarity with the Palestinian people and holding the Israeli regimes a feat to the fire. Which is absolutely right from the outset really of being elected to re-elected to parliament. I was a member of parliament from 2010 to 2015 and lost my seat, got re-elected in 2017. But when Jeremy put his name on the ballot paper, I immediately got behind him. And really from that point in time I was targeted, obviously it's a lower level, but was nevertheless targeted all the same. And when I came back with re-elected in 2017, I gave an interview to the Guardian, got an extended interview. And one of the points I was making is that the accusations against Jeremy Corbyn were essentially bullshit. It was the term I used, and we're just smears. And I specifically cited a number of different accusations which was being targeted at, which would be, he was being targeted with things like he was an IRA sympathiser, or he supported despotic regimes around the world that he was sexist. All these absurd remarks. And of course this thing that was getting a little bit traction that he was an anti-Semite. So I was kind of targeted, but what I therefore felt I needed to do was to really get behind a democratization agenda in the party. And that made me, is doubly targeted because the members of parliament didn't want to be subject to any democratic accountability of the membership. And the point I was making both to the socialist campaign group and to Jeremy and his team of advisors is that we have to win this civil war inside the Labour Party. Because if we get elected with the current parliamentary Labour Party, which are out of control, I mean you just go to the parliamentary Labour Party meetings, they would heckle Jeremy Corbyn, they would absolutely howl me down. It wasn't just heckles, they would absolutely howl me down, if ever I spoke, even when I was talking about urging people to come together and find common cause that there's more than unites us and divides us. And I was absolutely, incredibly shattered out for having the temerity to say such a thing. And this was just two days before I was actually suspended. And they made it their business to target me with these absurd invented smears. And where we went wrong was, well one in not actually the leadership not confronting this but where we particularly went wrong I think as a leadership if you like of the movement. The campaign group or you would like to think of MPs that you would like to think are, or they sort of portray themselves as leadership of the movement would have actually shown some solidarity with comrades who were being thrown under the bus with these invented accusations. I mean Tony Greenstein was was I think one of the first victims of the witch hunt. The son of a rabbi whose father fought the Oswald Moses fascist at the battle of cable street in 1936. Ken Livingston, who's probably done more than anybody, in my opinion, to fight the cause of anti racism. He got the subricades a loony lefty in the 1980s for his role in the as leader of the GLC the Greater London Council in actually putting this issue, you know center stage work, believe it or not, with the board of deputies in terms of what could the GLC do what could he do as the mayor of London when he subsequently came back in that role to deal with bigotry and anti semitism. So his record is unimpeachable. They didn't support him. They didn't support Ken. They didn't support Tony. They didn't support Jackie, a black Jewish woman. It was the vice chair of momentum. They said nothing. I was literally the only one Miko, the only MP. I'm not saying this to blow my own trumpet or anything, but I was only MP prepared to speak out and stand up for people who are being falsely accused. I mean, to me, it just was, in my opinion, as a socialist solidarity should be, you know, a cornerstone of your belief system. And if you fail to show solidarity to people who are being thrown under the bus on an industrial scale, I mean, what, what are you doing? Why are you, why are you claiming to be a socialist MP if you're not prepared to speak out? I mean, you know, it just, to me, was an obvious and common sense thing and an obligation really on me to speak out. Even though people urging me not to, people were saying, you know, keep your distance from from Jackie Walker. I was even advised ahead of the 2017 election to distance myself from Jeremy Corbyn because I was told by people who are sympathetic, who had a catastrophic idea about, you know, political strategy. They, they advised me to keep your distance from Jeremy Corbyn because the most important thing is that we get you elected, that we can regroup. Jeremy needs supporters in the house, but you know, he's politically toxic. And I said, I'm not prepared to do that for two reasons. One, it's a dishonorable thing to do. And secondly, I disagree with you. That the, that the agenda is toxic in any way, shape or form. I think this is an electorally attractive proposition. And so I've issued a press release, my team issued a press release saying that I am the most courbing friendly candidate standing anywhere in the country in the most marginal seat in England. And obviously that wetted the appetite of the corporate media and we had, you know, we got descended on by a number of the media hacks who were writing articles in a very sarcastic tone suggesting that, oh, this guy who's, you know, turbocharged Corbyn is going to fall flat on his face because, you know, the whole Corbyn project is electorally disastrous. And we secured the biggest increase in votes since 1945 I won my seat comfortably in that election. And the only reason in my opinion we didn't actually secure an outright majority was that we were being sabotaged from the inside. I mean this has been now a matter of public record with the leaked report but I was fighting the most marginal seat in England as I say, And we got no support whatsoever from our headquarters from from head office. So that was part of the problem and I think it was a failure, a catastrophic failure to, you know, recognize what our, you know, political enemies were doing, and a lack of any real kind of the I suppose to speak up for what you kind of believed in and they felt that their strategy of appeasement and and capitulation would be the way to deal with this. And every time it's almost they never learned from the light of experience every time they would say, just up the IHRA for example and that will, that will draw a line under it or, you know, just, let's look let's just, let's just, you know, throw Ken to the wolves and that will draw a line under it you know, Jeremy just go and apologize to the board of deputies and the Jewish leadership council go and prostrate yourself before this bunch of Zionists and that will draw a line under it you know, let Chris Williamson get to suspended you know don't speak out on it because that will draw a line under it. I'm just reminded I've got to say you've passed a neomolist poem first they came Miko, you know, first they came for the communist and it didn't speak out because it wasn't a communist then they came for the trade unionist I didn't speak out because there wasn't a trade unionist then they came for the Jews and it didn't speak out because it wasn't a Jew, and then they came for me and there's nobody left. Well isn't that what's happening now. You know, Jeremy in my opinion, I love the guy but I just think he listened to the wrong advice, if he'd have stood his ground, if he'd spoken up for his reputation, spoken up for the party's reputation, spoken up for comrades like Ken Livingston, Jackie Walker, Tony Greenstein, Mark Wildworth and others. We wouldn't be in this situation, and his advisors have a hell of a lot to answer for, because we had a moment in history where we could have we could have elected a socialist government that was committed to a ethical, a genuine ethical foreign policy, a foreign policy that would have seen the UK spreading peace and disarmaments around the world. We've even had a minister for peace and dis, a shadow minister for peace and disarmament. Imagine that, the UK, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, promoting peace and disarmament rather than, you know, arms sales and wars, which is what we do at the moment. And they squandered that opportunity, squandered it. I mean, it's a betrayal and it's a disgrace and these people should hang their heads in the champagne for the, the, the object in which they, they sort of advised Jeremy to deal with this clearly politically motivated smear campaign. Well, that's exactly the risk. I mean, that was exactly what they saw and what they're afraid of a progressive prime minister with a progressive backing with an agenda that talks about peace and, you know, peace and social justice and so on. That's precisely what they're afraid of because Zionism is on the opposite side of all of these issues. I mean, it's racist, it's violent, it promotes violence, it promotes war. And of course, the sale, the, the state of Israel pedals weapons to all the darkest regimes. So I mean that's precisely what they saw as a threat and that's precisely why they came after you even though, and then when I say you I mean you and kind of Livingston and Tony and the others. Because that's precisely what they were, what they were afraid of. I want to talk a little bit about the IHRA. And, Aisa, you've got that poster behind you, it says oppose the IHRA. Can you talk a little bit about the IHRA, what it is and how it came to be accepted or adopted by the Labour Party? Yeah, I can talk a little bit about it but just, first of all, to just second what Chris said about him being the only MP. Yeah, I think I think this is a really vital point because he was, Chris was, it's true, Chris was the, I mean I followed this, this story, you know, for five and a half years now, and it's still going on. And there were many people who saw from the beginning how, you know, just tragically wrong. This whole campaign was and how, how ridiculous it was to say that Jeremy Corbyn was anti-Semitic, you know, and how dangerous it was to just let it be said without any kind of pushback. But no MPs, not even Jeremy Corbyn, said anything along those lines that it was a smear, except for Chris. And that's why they, they gunned for him straight away, you know, the, the, the Israel lobby groups. They went straight for him. He was, he was there, you know, public enemy number one in a lot of ways. And so, yeah, another key important, another key thing was the IHRA document was the acceptance of the IHRA document. So, I mean, there was some argument in the party, wasn't there, there was some debate, I think, whether or not to accept it in whole or make some changes, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, so it's essentially an intensely politicized so-called working definition of anti-Semitism, which contains a confusing definition of anti-Semitism, along with 11 examples of what it states are anti-Semitism. And the majority of those examples actually address the state of Israel. And a few of them are actually are incredibly dangerous because they potentially outlaw criticism of Israel, potentially certainly chill free speech on criticism of Israel and Zionism, the state of Israel's ruling ideology. So there was, there was kind, there was debate in the sense of it was discussed whether to adopt the whole thing. So Jeremy Corbyn, the people around him, he tried to do this overly clever thing of what they thought was overly clever. They thought was clever of just adopting the definition and not the examples. And they thought like nobody would notice that, but of course then the Zionist then use that more as a wedge issue. And then, you know, it resulted in this whole, really the peak of the witch hunt in the summer of 2018, where it was, there was the Labour leaders, the left-wing Labour leaders were saying, ah, well, we have adopted the definition. And then the Linus would come back and say, oh, well, we haven't adopted, you know, but you haven't adopted the example. So therefore you haven't adopted the whole thing. It was, it is part of much longer campaign by Israel lobby groups and the state of Israel itself to change the definition of anti-Semitism, which goes back decades, really. Then Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban in 1972, I believe it was, pushed this phrase, the new anti-Semitism. And essentially what the new anti-Semitism is, is it's kind of like a rebranding exercise to change the definition of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism away from discrimination against Jews to criticism of Israel and its ideology, Zionism of having a Jewish state in a country, Palestine, which is overwhelmingly historically not Jewish. So, you know, it was, it was a part of a long running battle because I mean, the archery definition originated only in 2016, but it was almost identical to an earlier definition. So the, which was basically dropped by an EU body. Asa, have you ever been able to find out because I couldn't, who in the world is the IHRA and who's behind them and who makes them an authority to suddenly redefine what anti-Semitism is. I mean, and why are people listening to them? Well, that's a good question. I was not able to find any answers and with my, you know, with my limited, you know, resources to, you know, what's behind them and why are people listening to them? Yeah, I mean, it's a good question. Like it's been treated as almost holy writ, you know, and it's just essentially it's because just because it's something that's being pushed by the Israel lobby and the state of Israel. It's becoming a useful document. It's part of this, of the Zionist movements, quite long history of taking sometimes obscure documents and bodies and then just utilizing them to their advantage, essentially to try and continue the colonization of Palestine and push for support for their project from Western governments. Yeah, it's really quite incredible. Tony, your history with this goes back quite a ways as you were saying earlier. What's your take on the IHRA and how it was handled and what it says? Well, you don't need to be a genius to understand what antisemitism is. I mean, the analogy I always give is when my dad went into battle in the Battle of Cable Street in 1936 against Salf or Mosley's fascists, 100,000 Jews and non-Jewish dockers and workers did. And he knew what antisemitism was. It was someone who attacks you because you're a Jew. It's hatred or hostility of Jews as Jews. I mean, it's simple. You don't need a 500 word definition, which isn't even a definition. I mean, the problem the Zionists faced was they made all these accusations of antisemitism, but people were still thinking about antisemitism in terms of hatred or hostility to Jews. The purpose of the IHRA was to redefine antisemitism as anti-Zionism in essence. I mean, that's what it comes down to. And who are the IHRA? Well, they're just an intergovernmental body which was set up 20 odd years ago to commemorate the Holocaust. And it was seen as a suitable vehicle with which to take up the old working definition of antisemitism, which had been written specifically to equate hostility to Zionism with hostility to Jews. It was called, I mean, Israel was the new Jew amongst the nations. Yeah. So they redefine antisemitism, not as hatred of Jews, but as hatred of Israel or Zionism. Except of course, what you can't, racism is about people. It's not about states. It's not about objects, inanimate constructs, if you like. So, I mean, that was what it was about. But the problem with Jeremy Corbyn is he never understood what it was he was being faced with. He never understood the attack on him. He had a strategy, which I'm sure he worked out with Seamus Mellon and others, of appeasing the right, because the right was an overwhelming majority in the PLP, of trying to win them over to his project. But you know, the PLP is the elementary Labour Party. Sorry, yes. The problem was that their hard-bitten right-wingers, Blair rights in the main, who were not going to subscribe to the Corbyn project in any shape or form. Couple that with, I mean, the first newspaper to take up the antisemitism cause was a Daily Mail. It was at the beginning of August when they alleged he was associating with a Holocaust denier called Paul Eisen. Now, the Daily Mail is notorious for its hatred and hostility to refugees. It's a racist newspaper. Before the war, it supported Hitler. It used to campaign against the admission of bogus Jewish refugees and Nazi Germany. They were only coming here because he wanted a better lifestyle. You know, that was what the Daily Mail was about. So why should the Mail and the Express and the rest of the tabloid, including the Guardian, be suddenly so concerned with antisemitism? I mean, the Daily Mail and the Sun employed Katie Hopkins, who described refugees coming from North Africa as cockroaches, you know, which is a Nazi-style term, vermin. That's what Hitler said about the Jews, back of us. So why should they be concerned about antisemitism? Clearly they're not. Antisemitism was the convenient flag under which they could attack Corbyn. And that makes sense. You know, if they attack Corbyn because he didn't want austerity or cuts to children's school meals or anything else, they wouldn't get much support. If you pose in terms of a moral question like antisemitism, it suddenly makes you feel righteous. That's what antisemitism did. It's a virtue of identity, not simply for Israel, but actually the West. The West has incorporated Zionism into itself and appropriated the memory of the Holocaust. And in doing that, it thinks it can have right on its side. So you have the observed situation in Vienna. When Ronnie Casserie was a Jewish ex-commander of the ANC's military wing, you know, a man who's anti-racist credentials, no one can question. It's hard for local authority premises to speak. A unanimous vote of Vienna Council. And who voted, not only the Social Democrats and the Greens, but the neo-Nazi Freedom Party. And the same in the Bundestag, the most hostile party to BDS. What wasn't even the Christian Democrats or the Social Democrats, it was the neo-Nazi alternative for Germany. So we have this situation today. The most ardent supporters of Israel or some people don't really like Jews very much. It's always been the case, but today I think it should be pretty obvious. Yeah, and when you look, looking back, I think, I mean, that's great insight, Tony. You know, looking at the IHRA and some of the examples that they give. Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel. Well, I think when you look at the Board of Deputies, for example, or some of the Zionists in the UK who they clearly are agents of Zionism. In other words, but now you can't say this because if you say this, you can't attack them. You can't criticize them because if you say this, it's anti-Semitism. Denying Jewish people the right to self-determination. The dual loyalty one because that's usually brought out against us, isn't it? Precisely. It's anti-Semitic to say Jews are disloyal. But the whole point of Zionism is to make Jews alienated from their society, to make them loyal to Israel. And I think it was 2014. The Israeli embassy in the ministry, Israeli Ministry of Absorption actually had an opinion poll survey of American Jews as to what would you do in a crisis in relations between the United States and Israel? Who would you support? Who would you be loyal to? Zionism is inherently about dual loyalty. I mean, the number of times I've been accused of being a traitor and I asked, what am I a traitor to? Israel? I don't live there. I'm not a citizen of there. But that is Zionist accusation. Precisely. And having accepted this definition, it's impossible to say exactly what you say, which is absolutely true. Because the whole premise is that Jews should leave where they are and go somewhere else. They should go and serve in the military and so forth. And then you've got denying Jewish people the right to self-determination by claiming the existence of Israel is a racist state. First of all, Israel is not an expression of Jewish self-determination. It's an expression of Israeli and Zionist self-determination. And on and on. But even when we look at these examples, and Chris, I'll go back to you. I don't believe you or Jeremy have ever even said these things. In other words, Jeremy Corbyn's premise was always a two-state solution. It was quite a Zionist premise. He never came out against in any way that I ever heard to express even this level. And yet they came after him. Am I right? Absolutely right. And of course, it has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. I mean, the truth is Jeremy absolutely never did say anything which could be remotely regarded as anti-Semitic, nor did I for that matter. I mean, I was never in fact accused of anti-Semitism by the Labour Party officially. I mean, very many kind of Zionists and right-wing sort of neoliberals who jumped on the anti-Semitism bandwagon would often do so. But the truth is the official charge seat that was leveled against me was a kind of an Orwellian phrase that was used where I was guilty of what they described as a pattern of behavior. And I was alleged to have been a Jew-bater, believe it or not. The reason why I was a Jew-bater, for example, was because I'd responded to a request from Jewish members of the Labour Party to show a film about the attacks on anti-Zionist Jews in the House of Commons, in a room in the House of Commons. A film that I think all but one of the participants in which were themselves Jewish. That was one of the charges that was leveled against me and so it went on. I mean, another one was because I'd referred someone to a video by Norman Finkelstein who was taking Margaret Hodge to task for trying to draw an equivalence between the horrors of the Holocaust and her receiving a letter from the Labour Party, chiding her for saying that Jeremy Corbyn, excuse my language now, is a racist fucking anti-Semite. And in the House of Commons chamber, believe it or not, behind the Speaker's chair, in front of a load of Tories, understandably she got a letter reminding her of her obligations as a member of Parliament and certain decorum should be applied. She should have got far worse than that. She should have been expelled from the party for such a transgression in my view. And of course that never, never happened. But no, you're absolutely right. No, I was never accused of directly of anti-Semite, the range of bogus charges. And in fact, I had a meeting with the General Secretary of the Labour Party two weeks before I was actually suspended me. And this was somebody who was brought in, it was allegedly, on the side, allegedly a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, allegedly a socialist and yet she accelerated the witch hunt. I mean, I think more people were suspended and expelled under Jenny Formie's watch than under Ian Nichols. But she was asking me why I was attending so many meetings around the country because I'd been invited, I was promoting democracy, promoting the Corbyn project. And, you know, she told me that she would be, you know, pissed off if I went into her constituency if she was an MP. You know, she very clearly was, you know, not happy with the sort of activities that I was engaged in. And she said to me, I get more complaints about you, Chris, than every other member of the Labour Party put together. And I said that sounds fairly implausible. But if it's true, Jenny, surely that indicates to you, does it not, that that's a concerted, a confected campaign. And you need to just simply, you know, treat it with a contempt it deserves, throw it in a waste bin, to which she was very, you know, animated and annoyed at my response. She said, well, what do you think we've done? We haven't taken any complaints against you, have we? I said, well, why would you? You've just acknowledged, because she accepted that they were confected. It was a confected, you know, pilot nonsense. She kind of accepted that point. I said, well, why would you Jenny? You've just accepted that they don't really amount to any real genuine complaints about me. It's a confected campaign. And this is faux outrage, which is being shown here. And, you know, you need to, we need to stand up to this, because it's, you know, it's just an end badly if we don't. Anyway, the meeting ended. And as I said, four night later, I was suspended by her. I made the mistake, I've got to say as well, Miko, of issuing a qualified statement on the day. That was as a favor to Jeremy's team in the leader's office. It was the day of the Parliament Prime Minister's questions and they were saying, oh, this is going to come up in the house because there was lots of headlines about me speaking at a meeting, a big rally in Sheffield, where I'd said that Labour had been too apologetic about the way it's responded to the issue of anti-semitism. And my record, I was saying, stands any examination. We've been leading the charge on attacking anti-semitism in all forms of obligatory. And we've invited these criticism because of the way in which we've responded. I said we backed off for too much. That was being misrepresented in the media. And I made the mistake of issuing a qualified apology on that day. That was then weaponized against me. And I was, before I've left that meeting, and I'd said to the people in there that, you know, the reason we're in this situation because you've handled this whole question of anti-semitism, these anti-semitism smears very badly from start to finish, to which they agreed but said, oh, but we are where we are now. And I issued this statement that was supposed to be the end of the matter. But before I'd left that meeting room, I was told that I was going to be subject to an official investigation by the party. And before the end of the afternoon, I was elevated to a full suspension. And to add insult to injury, they notified the press before they notified me. As I was receiving the telephone call, I was outside Parliament to the parliamentary estate on the Parliament Street in Whitehall. And as I was taking the call to say I was being suspended, a Sky News TV crew came down the street filming me taking the telephone call to tell me I was suspended. And then as they came off the call, they were asking me what my reaction was to being suspended from the Labour Party and had I spoken to Jeremy Corbyn, etc., etc. I was absolutely despicable, disreputable behaviour from start to finish. The bureaucracy is broken inside the Labour Party, not just under the nickel regime but under the form of the regime as well. I regret to say that but that is the fact of the matter. And sadly these characters had Jeremy's ear and they were given in catastrophic advice. And this is where it's ended, Jeremy's suspension. And I think ultimately expulsion from the Labour Party. A man who's given his life to the Labour Party, a man who's given his life to fighting racism is produced in this way. But of course he's not the only one. As I've already said, Ken Livingston, Mark Wadsworth, Jackie Walker, Tony Greenstein, myself and many, many other grassroots activists who've experienced incredible many of them at bouts of severe mental ill health. This is really affected people. I know at least one person who's attempted to take her own life as a consequence of it. I know many other people who've lost their employment as the direct consequence of these despicable outrageous smears. And the Labour Party, when they suspend people now in order to cover themselves, believe it or not, they give them the telephone number of the Samaritans, a helpline for people who are experiencing suicidal thoughts. It's just, you know, if you'd have said this to me 10 years ago, this is where the Labour Party went in. I'd have said it seemed, no, don't be ridiculous. The Labour Party is a party that stands up for people, that defends people, that looks out for vulnerable people. It would never do that to people. And yet, here we are. Absolutely despicable and outrageous behaviour. These people, I mean, they should hang their heads in shame. They're a bloody disgrace, Mika. They really are. And as you can tell, I feel quite passionate about it. Outrageous behaviour. You're absolutely right. You gave your life to the party. You gave your life to the cause, to an important cause of helping people and being on the right side of these issues and fighting anti-Semitism and fighting racism, which is why so many other people join the Labour Party because they believe in Jeremy and the things that you stand for. And I remember also when I was over the years, several Labour Party conventions, you know, just talking to people and just, you know, normal like, you know, rank and file members who would tell me stories of how they were suddenly suspended as well because of a post they shared on Facebook, which was never actually explained to them. In other words, they never really were told what the post was, but the context was somehow, I don't know, something vague, similar to what you were describing. And they were suddenly suspended and they've been members also for a very long time. And almost exclusively, Miko, they were socialists, they were pro-Palestinian activists, and certainly Jeremy Corbyn supporters. It was Jeremy's Praetorian Guard in the grassroots that was being systematically attacked. And it's completely unacceptable in my view for people who, as I was saying earlier, who aspire to be the leaders of a socialist movement in the socialist campaign group of Labour MPs, who did not speak up for a solitary soul. And they're just, I mean, now grudgingly some of them, you know, getting behind Jeremy. But a lot of them haven't even supported Jeremy. They do not deserve to describe themselves as socialists. And they certainly shouldn't be described by others as socialists. It's possible to be. They're a bloody disgrace. And you know, I'm sorry, who is this? It's like you said, towards the beginning, Miko, it was an attempt to divide and rule, basically. It was an attempt to bring slowly the supporters of Corbyn were getting less and less and less until we see now that there's, you know, even the so-called left-wing MPs in the Labour Party, some of them are not supporting him, you know, don't feel able to support him. And it was one by one, you know, and it was, it started really from Ken Livingston, you know. Yeah, there was too many people who called themselves left-wing who had some kind of platform or national profile who really threw Ken Livingston under the bus because they saw him. You know, maybe they had some sort of grudge with him, you know, and they just sort of thought, well, well, it'll just be this person. We'll just sort of let this one go and it will be all right. And, you know, it'll be kind of sacrificed for the... It wasn't just a person. Ken Livingston was a pillar in the Labour Party. I mean, I'm not a Brit, but I even know about Ken Livingston. I live in London for a while. I remember the GLC. I mean, Ken Livingston, he's not just anybody who they threw under the bus. They threw some serious, and perhaps that was a test case to see. Well, if nobody comes to in his defence, then we can just keep going. Yeah, and also he was really the only, at that time, because that was before Chris was back in the Labour Party, you know, back in Parliament, he was really the only person who had in the Labour Party, Corbyn's only defender in the Labour Party, who had a national standing, who had a national profile, you know, and who could get access to mainstream media, you know, and who was somebody who was defending Corbyn and saying, yeah, look, this is rubbish. These are smears, you know. So he was really targeted in that way, you know, by... I want to segue to the United States. Right now, all morning, you know, there's been... We're talking about the Democratic Party, and there's a progressive wing now, the Democratic Party, which grew by several members who are just elected, newly members of Congress, who are very progressive, and part of this squad, as they call AOC and some of the others, you know, they are all, they're true fighters. I mean, God forbid, they won't describe themselves as socialists. In America, socialism is, you know, a bad word. But they are progressives, and they also, their progressive stance includes support of a call for boycott, divestment and sanctions, and so solidarity with Palestinians, because these are people who are activists before they became, you know, they got into real life politics. And I'm wondering if there are any lessons there for them right now, because, I mean, they were elected. The squad just got re-elected, which is good, you know, after two years, it was... It was questionable whether or not they would be able to overcome the opposition and get re-elected, and they got re-elected, and again, they were strengthened now with at least two other members of Congress, like General Bauman and Corey Bush. Is there a lesson here for the progressives in the Democratic Party, Asa, I wanted to go ahead and would you talk about that? The lesson is don't give an inch, because you can't. And it's not about ideological purity or anything like that. It's simply you cannot win. You won't be able to win. You won't be able to win any kind of electoral victory for your party if you give in on this issue. If you give in to the Israel lobby and you give in to Zionists in this way, you won't be able... If you give in to the idea that... Unfortunately, we did see AOC do that, you know, to an extent. Like when she criticised Ilhan Omar, when she made Ilhan Omar made an accurate comment about the Israel lobby being fuelled by money, which it is, it's just a fact, you know. And then saying, oh, well, you know, it was the way she phrased it was offensive and all this kind of thing. Then, of course, she made up for it by refusing to go or cancelling her appearance at an event commemorating, it's Hakrabeen. So she kind of knows which side she's on a little bit more perhaps right now. But still, you know, you think this would be easy because certainly the four of us and many, if not all of the people, hundreds of people participating and people around the world, explaining why Israel, demonstrating why and how Israel is a racist endeavour is the easiest thing in the world. Its own citizens who are Palestinians are denied rights, water, electricity, roads and medical care. Its own citizens because they're Palestinians. Never mind two million people in the Gaza Strip and five million languishing in refugee camps that's not allowed to return because they're Palestinians. Had they been Jewish. So I mean, it's very easy conversation to have and it's very easy to explain yet here we are, you know, barely holding on. And of course, like we saw in the UK with Jeremy Corbyn, this was really a serious blow and really just a final blow in a vicious campaign. Why do you suppose this is so difficult? Why do you suppose this is so complicated? Maybe Tony, you want to say something about that? It's obvious, it's apparent, it's clear. The other side is clearly supporting racism and violence and oppression. Of course, that's true. Of course, that's true. Why are they. Go ahead. Well, I mean, you can take Tom Watson as a good example. He had Tom Watson and vowed that he wouldn't rest until the last anti-Semite was expelled from the Labour Party. But this was a man who abstained on the 2014 Immigration Act, which led to the Windrush scandal whereby hundreds if not thousands of black British citizens were illegally deported to the Caribbean. This was a man who stood up for the racist Labour MP Phil Wallace, who openly campaigned to make the white folks angry in his constituency in 2010, and was thrown out of Parliament by the High Court for egregious lying about his opponent. Tom Watson wrote, he had lost sleep thinking about poor Phil. So the idea that these people were in any way concerned about racism, you know, is for the birds. Of course, they weren't. They were the ones who demonised asylum seekers under new Labour. So it's, they clothe themselves in the bogus, the false anti-racism in order to give themselves moral legitimacy. What it's really about. And the problem with the anti-Semitism thing is it cuts into the fault line in the left, which is identity politics, because Jews are a separate identity, aren't they? The fact that Jewish identity has transformed itself in the last 70, 80 years, you know, Jews used to be synonymous with being on the left, not on the right, trade union, and the most militant trade unionists were Jewish trade unionists. That's how they broke down the barriers with the doggers, for instance, who had been quite anti-Semitic in the East End. But identity politics says any identity, however reactionary it is, is equally valid with another identity. So you can posit Jews living in the suburbs of London who identify with Israel. It's equally valid with a Palestinian village, which is suffering from a lack of water on the West Bank and these crops being burnt down by settlers. And therefore the IHRA makes the Palestinians anti-Semitic from protesting against the racism that they suffer from. I mean, that is the absurdity. Now, of course, we have intersectionality, which takes this on board and that's a single identity is not enough because it has a number of different strands to it. That I think is one of the main problems. That's why I'm a socialist. I believe class politics, Marxism, enables you to understand society in a way that otherwise it's very difficult to. So you can see, for instance, when Corbyn came into power, the alarm bells rang. I mean, from Langley, Virginia, where the CIA is based, to MI5, to Tel Aviv and the military headquarters. The idea of a guy who's anti-nato, anti-war, is identified with the opponents of America becoming possibly even Prime Minister of America's closest ally. I mean, they must have been, you know, terror stricken in some cases. That's where all of this originated. The problem with Corbyn is, I don't want to call him stupid, but he didn't get it. I mean, if I can quote, and I'm going to quote from the Labour League's report, he actually believed that getting rid of me and Jackie Walker and Mark Wadsworth and Ken Livingston would improve his chances. And this is what it says on page 306 of the report. It says, Jeremy Corbyn himself and members of his staff team requested to GLU, that's a compliance unit, the governance and legal unit, that particular anti-semitism cases be dealt with. In 2017, Lotto, that's the leader of the opposition staff, chased for action on high-profile anti-semitism cases, Ken Livingston, Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker and Mark Wadsworth, stressing that these cases were of great concern to Jewish stakeholders and that resolving them was essential to, and they quote, rebuilding trust between the Labour Party and the Jewish community. Well, we were expelled, but it didn't rebuild trust because they went on to demand a whole lot more expulsion. And so it went on. The more people they expelled, the more people they demanded were expelled. And of course, the more people you expelled, the greater proof there was that there was a real anti-semitism problem. So Corbyn really was left with nothing to do. He was running on a, what is it, a treadmill. The faster he ran, the faster the treadmill was. So he went nowhere. He was just expelling people. And so, yes, Formby was far more effective at expelling people than McNichol. McNichol was extremely incompetent than the previous. So they were extremely efficient. They didn't do them much good in the end. And it's interesting because none of this has anything to do with anti-semitism. Oh, of course not. And the Ministry of Strategic Affairs in Jerusalem, these were really the powers that had to bring him down. For all the reasons that you stated clearly, of course, this man was an activist who talked about Palestinian rights. And so imagine him becoming, and Chris, you described the vision that Jeremy Corbyn and the promise that he had. And imagine this man sitting going into Downing Street 10. That was a nightmare. And they were going to do everything and everything they possibly could to make that an impossibility. And it's interesting what you said also, talking about the idea, this Jewish identity and the idea of a Jewish community. Because one of the claims that's being made by, that I see by the board of deputies of the Jewish, what do we call the Jewish community of the UK news and so forth, is that something like 98% of UK Jews are Zionists. Well, that's a lie because... It's impossible because out of 260,000 Jews in the UK, at least 60,000 live in Stamford Hill and are ultra-Orthodox Jews and are absolutely anti-Zionists. Well, some of them are, but Yachad, which is a liberal Zionist group, conducted a survey with City University in 2015. And they asked exactly that question of British Jews. Are you a Zionist? 59%, which was down 12% in five years, said yes. 31%, which is nearly a third, said no. And 10% didn't know whether they were Zionists. So where they get a 98% figure from? I simply don't know. Well, they're Zionists, so they don't need to... I think those are often interpretations when they say, isn't that high, when they reinterpret certain responses to questions about... Yes, they do. They say, if you identify with Israel, I identify with Israel, but not in the way they expect. I think Tony's point about identity politics is a good one because this is a part of the... One of the main reasons I would say why this has been such a successful campaign for the Israel's Ministry of Strategic Affairs against the left in this country and for the Labour right against Jeremy Corbyn is this Israeli government led attempt to redefine Zionism, to redefine it into an identity, like just a personal identity of my own, you know, how I feel about myself and away from what it actually is, which is a concrete political ideology, which has very real negative effects on Palestinians, you know, from everything from expelling them, from expelling 800,000 of them in the Nakhbar in 1948 up until the present day, where their villages are being demolished because of what? Because of Zionism, you know. So it's a rebranding exercise. It's been a rebranding exercise. When you put it in those terms and say, I'm anti-Zionist because we don't want Palestinians to be expelled from their homes, to be discriminated against and to be killed, that's why we're anti-Zionist. When you say in those terms, then that's going to get a lot of support. But if you can ignore that and spin that and say, well, Zionism is just an expression of Jewishness, then if someone says, oh, well, I'm an anti-Zionist, then if you believe that false definition, then it becomes anti-Semitism. So this is why this kind of exploitation of identity, the particular type of exploitation of identity politics that Tony described has been quite successful within the Labour Party left in dividing the left against itself. Yes, and I think I would point out as well that you cannot be claimed to hold progressive values and at the same time be a Zionist, because Zionism is an inherently racist, violent ideology that puts one people as superior to another. That's basically what Zionism is, and it doesn't matter how they try to color it to pink and yellow, and God knows what other colors. It is basically a racist ideology that says that Tony and I have more rights in Palestine than the Palestinians do. And I want to segue back to the United States just before we open it up for questions. They've been interviewing Jamal Bauman who's one of the incoming members of Congress and Ilhan Omar and yesterday AOC about this news, what's going to happen within the Democratic Party, and thankfully so far, their statements are very, very clear. And like you said, Asa, they're standing strong. I mean, Palestine was not the issue. Other issues came up like God forbid everybody should have health care and things like that or the environment. But they're standing strong. They're saying, you know, we were elected because of these values, these are what we're going to represent within the party. And now it all depends on, we'll see what happens. Hopefully Palestine will be able to push its way in there as well. And the fight against these accusations, you know, something that I think we need to take on as opposed to wait for them to come after us, which seems like that's what's been happening all around. And I think we need to take a close look at what happened in the later party in the UK and realize how close we were to something really fantastic and how it all came tumbling down. Just to re-emphasize that the lesson, to answer your earlier question again, the lesson to learn is don't give an inch. You cannot give an inch. Absolutely right. I don't think anybody would think about bullies would say that. I mean, you don't give an inch to a bully because they're going to keep pushing you around. And I absolutely agree with everything that you that you've all said so far. So let's see, Jamil, should we open it up to the questions? We've got a lot of questions, a lot of people chatting and asking questions. So let's go. Sure thing. Yeah. And we also received questions via email prior to the event. So I'm going to I'm going to read one of those now this one is from Gerald. And the question is, I was wondering how with Seamus Milne as his communications director, Jeremy Corbyn direct developed no strategy to deal with the anti semitism smears. After all, Seamus had written the book, The Enemy Within, which detailed the smear attacks on the NUM, and particularly Arthur Skargill during the minor strikes, and would therefore be familiar with the types of the tax where the state and other actors come together in a concerted campaign to blacken the reputation of anyone representing a threat to the status quo. Do you want to take that on? Yeah, I mean, I think Seamus never never applied his own advice, really, I guess. And I think, you know, Seamus Seamus, in my opinion, would have been better if he'd have stayed at the Guardian writing opeds. But he really, he didn't really step up to the role of the sort of strategic PR advisor that he was appointed to do and the strategy that they employed as we've already said without repeating ourselves was utterly catastrophic and actually led directly to the problem that we're in today, because the approach that they applied only gave ammunition to and emboldened those who were making these bad veth actors who were making these lurid and extreme accusations which had no basis in fact, and the response was to lean into them and to take it on the chin and apologize. And they just never learned a lesson. I mean, it was disastrous, catastrophic. And I don't know, I mean, somebody said, somebody suggested that the film The Invasion of the Archers was in the Labour Party's case, a question of science fact rather than science fiction because all these great figures that we previously looked to seem to be completely at odds with where we thought they were in terms of the positions that they took up. And Seamus is a case in point, sadly. There's no explanation for it. It's just, it's like, yeah, it does make you a bit speechless. I think you're right. You've seen Gobsmack there at Miko with my response, but I mean, what else can you say? I mean, he just, he just, he was not up to what he was appointed to do in my opinion. Corbyn never really understood the campaign against him. But the remarkable thing is neither did his office. He had all these people around him like Seamus. And they never once devised a strategy and it was, I think, quite simple. All Corbyn had to do was make a major speech on the anti-semitism issue saying, I oppose anti-semitism, but I also oppose and condemn the weaponisation of anti-semitism against people who are supporters of Palestine. After all, anyone, I mean, everyone has been involved and is involved in Palestine solidarity. It's accused of anti-semitism. I doubt if there's a single person who has been campaigning around it who has not been accused of anti-semitism. We all know this. So why, why the pretence, this nonsense about if you deny your anti-semitism, then you are anti-semitic. This is the on sale of witch trials, wasn't it? You denied you were a witch. That was proof you were a witch. It has the same logic to it. Yeah, I think clearly attack is the best form, is the only form of defiance here. They need to be reminded that supporting Zionism is supporting racism, clear and simple. There's no anti-semitism in Palestine solidarity and it's impossible to be anti-racist if you are a Zionist. Of course. Although people individually can think they are, and sometimes they are in some ways but not other ways, because people have divided consciousness, fragmented consciousness, as Marxist might say. Go ahead, Jamil. What's next? The next question is from Joe. The question is, some people are staying in the party to fight and keep a left-wing presence and hope Jeremy and Chris too will be back in. Others are hoping for a new party. What do the panel think is the way forward for the left? Whoever wants to jump in, go ahead. That's the good one. In my opinion, Mika, the Labour Party is dead as a vehicle for delivering socialism. It's dead as a vehicle to deliver a ethical foreign policy. It's dead as a vehicle to stand up for the Palestinian people. And in many ways, Jeremy Corbyn was an aberration and the right wing of the Labour Party will not allow that scenario to arise again. And in my opinion, I think our best effort should be devoted now to building an alternative. And what we need in my opinion is a two-prong strategy. We need to build a social movement as well as an alternative electoral vehicle. I think if we put all our eggs in one or all the basket, if we just focus exclusively on an electoral strategy, this is where I think the Labour Party has gone wrong, to be honest, because there's no kind of real base to it in that sense. It's always been focused around winning elections rather than building a movement. And this was one of the things I was hopeful with Jeremy's leadership because he did talk about building a social movement. We were on the way to doing just that. But then we never really followed through. And I just think now what we should be focused on, because look, where is the support for Jeremy? I mean, it's been very muted, as I've already said, from the people like the Socialist Campaign Group, from the trade union movement. It looked like UNITE might take a stronger stand than they did, but they haven't in the end. In reality, they've called their bluff and I think what they should be doing, and I've been urging now and will be launching a campaign in the not too distant future for a defund and disaffiliate campaign for the trade union movement. This is what they should be doing. I mean, just before we came onto the programme today, I had a message from somebody on social media saying that we should be occupying, in terms of standing up for Jeremy. So when occupied, the Labour Party's head office, you know, make life difficult for them. The trade unions should be really following through on their threat. This is unacceptable what you're doing to our leader or our former leader. This is a man, as I've already said, who's devoted his life to the labour movement to fighting racism and socialism and the cause of socialism. Unless you reinstate him, we are going to completely defund you. You go off to your rich benefactors if you wish, but we won't fund you anymore. This is the party that was born out of the trade union, but they're not doing it. So Starmer and company, Sir Keir Starmer, the pillar of the establishment and the right-wingers and the Zionist lobby, they've called the bluff and the left, once again, the left in parliament that is in the kind of upper echelons, not the grass roots, because many of the grass roots have been very, very supportive. They've been left wanting and they've just been, you know, not up to the, not up to the required standard that's needed to really, you know, fight this battle out because what we know is that our opponents are incredibly ruthless. And unless we match that ruthlessness, we're just going to get swallowed. We're just going to get eaten alive as this happened. I mean, just look at what's happened. I would say to people watching this program now thinking of staying inside the Labour Party. And if you are going to stay, for God's sake, don't be silent. Speak out because if you don't, you're complicit in this whole disreputable affair that we've seen played out before us. And Chris, you started a new movement anyway, haven't you? Well, we have, yes, I mean, and I've got to be honest, we're slightly in the doldrums because of the impact of the COVID-19 crisis, but we have a movement, yes, and we've got thousands of members, but difficult to kind of organize activities on the ground. And this is part of what I believe we need in terms of trying to kind of create a social movement and trying to do politics with people, not to people, bring people into our movement, sort of raise political consciousness, raise political expectations in that sense. And we've also been very clear in this movement will not just be one that's merely focused on the UK as important as that is, because there's many problems confronting people in the UK. But we want to be very much as a high priority, top priority, an equal priority with fighting for a better deal for people in Britain is to fight for an anti-imperialist strategy to express solidarity with liberation struggles around the world. And obviously, right at the top of that list would be the struggle of the Palestinian people. We have to, in my opinion, be internationalist in our approach, be anti-imperialist as well as having a kind of a socialist economic agenda at home, and raising political consciousness, raising political expectations, in my opinion, as a way to go. And from that I'm hoping that we can kind of, you know, as it were build a desire for a new political vehicle, because I honestly just think the Labour Party is so broken now, it's really impossible to repair it. And if you think about it, the Labour Party has always been a tool of the establishment really since its foundation or certainly since the end of the First World War. You know, in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and so on to feel like quell revolutionary fervor in the, in the working class. And I think we just need to recognize that be real about it and I think there was, you know, we used to be able to get some crumbs on the table we saw what happened in the 1551 Labour government made some significant improvements, built a sort of post-war consensus for, you know, domestic policy was still very imperialist though in its foreign policy. But now the left has been utterly crushed. I mean, there is just no, we've now got, as you have in the United States of America, two establishment parties, and it doesn't really matter which party gets in, the kind of neoliberal war machine will continue, you know, the military industrial complex will still be, you know, centre stage. And that's if we're serious about railing against that, I think we have to build and grow a new movement and potentially a new electoral vehicle because I can just can't see how the Labour Party can see what the mechanisms are to actually make that Labour Party a vehicle again to that might embrace the sort of agenda that Jeremy Corbyn was promoting when he became the leader. That's anathema to Sir Keir Starmer and the parliamentary Labour Party with no means of replacing these people inside the parliamentary Labour Party now we haven't got any there's no open selection process and no process of calling them to the party. So, you know, it wasn't the open selection was a big struggle. It was a big struggle and we lost it and again that you know the the left so called left leaders of the movement let us down. I mean, let look, let me closkey, it was the unite general secretaries policy of unite is to support democracy in terms of open selections they pass that motion at their own conference in I think 2016 and the aftermath of the queue against Jeremy Corbyn. In the 2018 conference when the democracy reforms have been debated. Let me closkey led his delegation to oppose it and the votes as you may know me go or split between the grass roots activists have 50% of the votes. The trade union delegates, delegations have 50% of the votes. 90 plus percent of the grass roots activists supported these democratic reforms supported open selections. All the trade union delegations apart from the fiber gauge union oppose them had unite supported them because they are a big affiliate trade union. Those reforms would have sailed through and the course of history would have been totally different. I think Jeremy Corbyn would have been 10 would have been 10 down the street now. We would still be a labor MP and we'd be in the process of implementing socialism at home and an ethical foreign policy abroad and and having a government that is absolutely committed to the cause of the Palestinian people would be in office now. All of that has been squandered. All of that has been lost because of the other. I don't know what it was I mean a failure and never don't know why but I mean because there's a overwhelming support for it from the grass roots for those democratic reforms. I mean, you know, that was the beginning of the end of the Corbyn project. The antisemitism smears ramped up after that, you know, and the rest is history and that's why I think we need to start again. I mean others make a different view but I just can't see there's any future for the Labor Party. I regret to say that. I mean I gave 44 years of my life Miko to the Labor Party. It can't be easy. It can't be an easy thing to say for you Chris. Jamil, you want to go on next one. Sure. This one is from Kathy. The question is, none of this would have worked without a hostile press. What to do about the press. One of the reasons just quickly why I think Jeremy was targeted because he was very committed to implementing the the leveson inquiry recommendations. And he also gave a really important speech at the Edinburgh Festival. I think it was in 2018 where he talks about democratising the media, breaking up the big, you know, media conglomerates which are, you know, owned by sort of tax-exiled billionaires who exert a huge amount of power and he wanted to sort of democratise that, democratise the BBC. He talked about creating local journalistic sort of collective cooperatives to do investigative journalism at a local level and so on. It was a really important speech and that was yet another reason why, you know, he was deemed as persona non grata. And you know, we did a panel a few weeks ago with John Pilger and Ray McGovern and Roger Waters about Julian Assange and why the press is not standing. I think the journalists would stand over the first one. That's right. I mean, what it proves, what this has shown over the last five years is that the garden is as much as part of the corporate media. It's a daily mail and the daily express and the times and so on. It's been abysmal. And of course over Julian Assange, I mean, five filters have reproduced 44 hostile articles dating back and that's 18 months ago. It's absolutely abysmal and atrocious and despicable. You know, here's a guy who was imprisoned for revealing war crimes. You know, I mean, what greater injustice can there be and get the British press with two or three notable exceptions, people like Pete Robor and a Tory journalist. Hitchens, Peter Hitchens, another Tory journalist. And who is it? Patrick Coburn or the independent. They're the only three journalists who've actually stood out. It's been absolutely atrocious. And then they talk about freedom of the press. So I think we need to establish a labour movement press. I mean, we have the Morningstar, but we need really something that's bigger circulation than it is maybe wider politically, but Well, I'm working with some people. I mean, as you know, Tony, it just in terms of our grassroots movement and there is now an effort to launch a new Sunday newspaper, which I think is called the word. That will be, I think in January, that's the plan to try and supplement, you know, the Morningstar, which is the only daily newspaper we've got. Is there any newspaper reviews on the BBC? I mean, it's a daily paper. Why? I mean, this is just clear discrimination is clear political bias that they're not actually giving them a, I mean, I think that would help in terms of their circulation. But I think what we need to do, Miko, is more of these types of things that you're hosting this evening. And, you know, we've got our own resistance YouTube broadcast channel, we've got outlets like obviously the Fantastic Electronic Interfader that the Acer writes for and the Canary. So there are these alternative platforms that are springing up and I think we need to promote them as much as we can. And I think particularly the younger generation of people are increasingly turning away from the corporate media and looking for alternative sources of information and really a duty. And that's where I think what the trade unions ought to be doing. I mean, you know, there was an attempt, I think, in the 1980s to create an alternative paper. And I think the trade unions were involved in that. But what's it called? The News on Sunday, I believe. Yes. Why are the trade unions? The trade unions should be doing this because they are being, as we know, absolutely demonised and pilloried in the disgusting corporate gutter media. And Tony's right, we need to find a way of building an alternative to that. And that's beginning to start. But I mean, you know, the trade unions can make a really big contribution to that. And in fact, actually, it would be a better use of their resources than continuing to fund a political party, the Labour Party, that essentially doesn't speak for the organised working class in this country. It speaks for corporate capitalism. That's what it does. It's, you know, it is a defender of the neoliberal status quo. And if it's about challenging that, then, then, you know, the trade unions need to step up. I think most of the many of their active members anyway, their grassroots members would probably agree with that. It's just unfortunately the leadership, you know, in these institutions often doesn't necessarily reflect the, you know, the views of their active membership base. Support independent journalism, support, don't subscribe to the Guardian, don't fund the Guardian, don't fund Owen Jones. No, absolutely. You know, give, give money to the Electronic Interfader, you know, subscribe to the Morningstar, the Canary, you know, these, these support media that supports us. You know, instead of, you know, giving, giving money away to the Guardian, which is just doing its best to sabotage us. And when that works well, sir, I think whether you would agree, I mean, in the 2017 election campaign, as we know the corporate media was lined up against us and everybody was kind of, you know, they were all predicting disaster and corbing was, you know, terrible individuals who's going to lead labour to catastrophe. And, you know, thanks to that kind of alternative media, those alternative media platforms, thanks to the kind of, you know, social media platforms. And this was when momentum was working properly, as it were, focused instead of, you know, becoming the useful idiot for the Zionist, the lobby, as it did. We were able to mobilize in a millions of people. So it can be done. It just needs, you know. The CST, Community Security Trust, very a Zionist lobby group, essentially. A, you know, an Israel lobby group, which it put out a report, you know, attacking me, but it did. And others and activists within, left-wing activists within the Labour Party. For ridiculous things like they said that using the hashtag Sack Tom Watson was evidence of anti-Semitism. Totally ridiculous. You know, the former, then the, who was Tom Watson, who was then the deputy leader of the Labour Party who spent all his time attacking Jeremy Corbyn. And saying Corbyn with, you know, implying Corbyn's anti-Semitic and so on and so forth. Well, it's absurd. It gets to an absurd level. I mean, I was accused, I was on the Andrew Neil radio program the other day about the aftermath of the Equality and Human Rights Commission report. And just before I was interviewed, Margaret Hodge was on there and I, before I answered the first question that he put to me, said that, let me just deal with some of the comments that your previous spoke about there. Because it sounds to me, I don't know where you was interviewing or where she was, where you were interviewing, but it sounds to me that she was residing on Planet Zog. That, I was accused of that, apparently referring to somebody as residing on Planet Zog is apparently an anti-Semitic reference. The Zionist occupied government, that's why. It's the same acronym, but it's obviously a different. Yes, exactly. Really, I'd do the next question. The absurdity it gets to, though, you know. It is, yeah. Just to finish my point about the CST, they stated that in that report, from last year, they stated that, you know, in the attack on me, they stated that I had achieved narrative dominance, that the electronic party had achieved narrative dominance online. So they, you know, they are clearly afraid of alternative media. Of course, they are, yes. What does that mean? What does that even mean? They were saying that on the issue of Labour Party, Israel slash Palestine, as they put it, and of Labour anti-Semitism. The electronic interfader had achieved narrative dominance online. So that they, they were basically saying that they were basically complaining that if you went online and you went on social media and people were passing around electronic interfader articles, not Guardian articles. And that, you know, they were reading, you know, they were getting an alternative take where we were saying, look, this is a smear campaign, essentially. And they weren't getting so like the image that's out there. I think we, yes, mainstream media has a lot of power, but we underestimate our own power sometimes. Yeah. No, I think that's a good thing, then, if I'm trying to get any kind of narrative dominance on these issues, that's a good thing. Go ahead, Jimmy. Let's see if we can squeeze in one last, one last question before we let everybody go. Sure. This one is from John. The question is, do you think Jeremy has a legitimate case to sue, to sue Starmer and the party for a suspension or a possible expulsion? Oh, boy. There's a lot of question. Let's go around. We'll go Tony Asa and then Chris, you give us the final world. Go ahead, Tony. What do you think? Well, I'm not sure what he would sue him for, apart from defamation. I've just lost a case against the campaign against anti-Semitism, which is quite interesting because there are two defences in the library. One is defences in libel. Either what you said is true or what you said was an honest opinion. And when it came to it, they didn't want to have to defend what they said was true. So they said, well, it's our honest opinion. It doesn't matter if it's true. And that's the reality of all these accusations. There's no substance behind them. I think the thing about Starmer is he came in to the leadership, determined to drive the left out of the leadership. So Canary and others reported that, and it was a leak from Starmer's office that Corbyn would be suspended when the HRC report was issued. I have no doubt at all that if Corbyn had said nothing, he would still have been suspended. The fact that he made a statement was just a pretext. I mean, that's what he wants to eradicate all traces of what they call Corbynism. And people have to see Starmer is the main enemy. He's been useless against Boris Johnson's handling of the COVID-19 crisis. He said nothing about the privatisation of track and trace systems. Anything to do with the social questions, which are the bread and butter issues for working class people. He has nothing to say. He's a bipartisan approach. He supports Johnson in the national interest, whatever that is. So I mean, Starmer is the person we have to target. He is a Zionist. He said it in times of Israel. I'm a Zionist without qualification. Support Zionism without qualification. That's right. There's no doubt where he stands. And unfortunately, the campaign group have these illusions. You can somehow unite with him. It's an absurdity. It's like uniting with a wild animal. It's about to tear you to pieces. You can't do it. Exactly. You know, there's a question here. I got to throw it in there just because I think it's a really good question in the Q&A window here. I'll combine it because it's two questions that I think are really good. And they apply, I think, across the board, certainly in the UK, but in the US and beyond. Do you think the topics like Islamophobia will ever be treated like anti-Semitism in the UK? Or is it a privilege that only Zionists love to get to acquire? And do you think that British politics in general, and I think this applies to US and as well, do you think there'll be a day where politicians and the media will actually differentiate between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism? And basically, I would add to that realize that anti-Zionism is anti-racism. I don't see that happening in any way, shape, or form, either in the UK or here or in the US. What do you think, Asa? Yes, but not for a long time. I think, well, I don't know. I don't want to be too... What do you think would happen? It would take a big cultural shift, cultural and political shift, really. I mean, things have been really set back by this. The pendulum all the way at the end, but now it might shift back so that we can see these things, do you think? Things can change really quickly. Things can change really quickly. Right now, it looks pretty much impossible. But things can... We're in unprecedented times in a lot of ways. So I think things could change very quickly. This is why it's so frustrating, because there's a mass base of Labour Party members waiting to be led. So it goes towards Chris's point earlier about people... There's a big desire for change. I'm not just among the activists, but among ordinary people. There's a big desire for change for people's lives to improve. But as well, it's opening up the question of Palestine and people are getting kind of a crash course in... I've got over the last years a crash course in political education of what's the dirtiness of the Israel lobby, I suppose, in a lot of ways. Chris, you've seen a lot of changes over the years, things going in different directions. Do you think there's embracing the idea, number one, that Islamophobia is a problem and should be treated like anti-Semitism? And also that anti-Zionism is a struggle against racism? Do you think this is something that... I mean, as a socialist, I'm an eternal optimist. And I think to be a member of the Labour Party for as long as I was, you kind of have to be an optimist. So I think, as they were saying, things can change quickly. And in my opinion, the Zionist lobbies overplayed their hand. Every, as we've already said, every concession that they've been given, they've wanted more. I mean, now they're going for Jeremy Corbyn. And I just think, I mean, I was saying this anyway, I mean, several years ago that many people have kind of sort of tuning out of the accusations. The kind of chattering classes and the sorts of people sort of close to the Labour Party, I think, who really kind of took this that seriously. Although, having said that, of course, it was so intense. I think there was a perception, whether people were that bothered about it, of course, remained. I mean, I'm not absolutely certain they were, but I think there was a perception that Labour was considerably more anti-Semitic as a party than the reality. I mean, the reality was, I mean, I had 44 years. I had never met anybody who was anti-Semitic in the party. And I think even the figures that Jenny Formid produced demonstrated it was something in the order of 0.03% of people. And even then, I think it was more ignorance rather than necessarily malice. So the point that Ken Livingstone... What do you say? You asked people who were anti-Semitic. I mean, how would you even know? Well, indeed. I mean, Ken Livingstone makes a point. You know, if you're raging anti-Semite or racist or bigger, you know, why would you join the Labour Party? It just makes no sense at all. So, you know, so I think they've overplayed their hand. And I think what we need to do is hold on there, be strong, be clear, speak the truth. Speak the truth as you were outlining Miko in relation to the situation in Palestine and the abuse that the Israeli regime is meeting out. Be clear about that. Be clear about what's happening. Stick to your guns. Never apologize. I made that mistake. Do not apologize for telling the truth. And I mean, in terms of Jeremy's legal case, the original question that you were asking us to answer, maybe not a legal case directly against Kier Starmer, but I think he could have a strong case against the party. I took the party on in the High Court when they suspended me and won. I took the EHRC on when they sought to name me and won. And I, in the aftermath of the High Court case against me, where I was awarded all my costs against the Labour Party, 100% of them, which we'd raised anyway through a crowdfunding exercise, was then used to create a left legal fighting fund. And we've been busily helping many activists who have been smeared and framed, you know, by the Lasinist lobby. And, you know, we'll continue to do that. And they're engaged in a process of lawfare. And we're going to meet them with lawfare tactics as well. They apply a maximalist strategy. We, in turn, are applying a maximalist strategy in response. And I'm confident we'll win. We are not going to back down. The days of retreating, the days of capitulation are over. We have to stand strong. And our solidarity is what will carry us through. I remember the words of the Percy Shelley poem, I would say, to people where he talked about the final verse of the Basque of Anarchy, to rise like lions after slumber in a vanquishable number, shake your chains to earth like dew which in sleep have fallen on you, because ye are many and they are for you. I mean, there's millions of people who support the programme that, you know, we wanted to bring about. And, you know, there are hundreds of thousands of people of activists who were inspired by that programme that Jeremy Corbyn put forward at that time. So there are more of us than them. I mean, they might have lots of resources, you know, they may have powerful friends in the media and so on, as we know they have. And, you know, they can exert that and do exert that influence and they have done over the years. I mean, against all labour administrations. But I mean, if we stick together, we will defeat them. And I'm confident they are going to defeat them. So I'm optimistic. If we stand together and recognise the power of our collective solidarity, we are undefeatable. Yeah, I think that's a great message, Chris. Your optimism is something that I've been inspired by since I've known you. And I just want to add to that your quote and you talk about ending the capitulation reminds me of a quote by Rasan Kanafani, the Palestinian writer who was assassinated by the Israelis in Beirut in 1972. He was asked about negotiating with Israel and he said, you don't really negotiating, you mean capitulation. Because negotiating with Zionists, negotiating with races, negotiating with people who are coming to kill you is Israeli capitulation. So in that spirit of optimism and standing up and standing firm, I think we should end this wonderful conversation. I want to thank you so much, Tony and Asa and Chris. It's always a pleasure to speak to you and see you. And everyone that's participating. We've had a solid close to 300 people participating in over 300. So yeah. And so thank you all again. And we'll see you soon. I hope take care. Thank you. Good luck. Bye bye.