The British establishment chose Boris Johnson as its weapon to defeat the Left

Boris Johnson’s disastrous time in office has spluttered to an ignominious conclusion. Many of those now deploring his record sided with Johnson when it really mattered because they wanted to block a left-wing government that could transform British society.

by Daniel Finn

Part 2 - Two Lords A-Leaping

Ian Austin and John Woodcock were both elected as MPs for Labour-held seats (Dudley North, 2005, and Barrow & Furness, 2010, respectively) but refused to accept Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of their party after 2015. Media coverage frequently depicted them as courageous dissidents, although their main political concern appeared to be support for Middle Eastern states responsible for gross violations of human rights, including Israel, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. Woodcock backed the Saudi invasion of Yemen and denounced Corbyn’s call for a freeze on arms sales to the Saudi war machine.

Both MPs resigned from the Labour Party after the 2017 general election, having only held on to their seats by a tiny margin thanks to the big increase in support for Labour. In the run-up to the 2019 election, they established an opaquely funded campaigning group called Mainstream UK whose sole purpose was to denounce their former party, as Independent reporter Jon Stone observed:

Despite the non-partisan branding and mission statement under which it solicits cash donations, the group’s entire advertising output is in actual fact targeted at the opposition Labour Party — the bulk of it on issues like taxation and public ownership. Mainstream UK appears to have little organic support and is only “liked” 94 times on Facebook, but its posts have been seen by hundreds of thousands of people because it has spent thousands of pounds promoting them as adverts.

Both men urged voters to support Boris Johnson, and they received life peerages from his government shortly after the election. Since becoming a lord, Austin has kept himself busy denouncing everyone who criticizes Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians, from Amnesty International to Ben & Jerry’s. A tweet last year, suggesting that the ice cream company would now be selling “Hamas Terror Misu” in Gaza, gave us all a taste of Austin’s political worldview.

Source, links:

https://jacobin.com/2022/07/boris-johnson-resignation-labour-media-allies-against-corbyn

[1][3][4][5][6]

Comments

Gaza 2 Years On: Yanis Varoufakis & Katie Halper on the Flotilla, Israel's PR Machine & What’s Next

DiEM25 Two years since October 7, Katie Halper (‪@TheKatieHalperShow‬) and Yanis Varoufakis join host Mehran Khalili to break down Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the latest on the flotilla, Israel’s influencer PR push, and the “peace plan”.

World leaders rebel against US & Israel: to save Gaza, they demand international intervention

Geopolitical Economy Report Leaders from dozens of countries condemned the USA and Israel in their speeches at the UN General Assembly, demanding international intervention to save Gaza. Diplomats staged a mass walkout to protest Netanyahu's speech. Ben Norton shows how Latin American governments are standing in solidarity with Palestine.

Freedom Flotilla Coalition & Thousand Madleens to Gaza sailing to break the siege

Freedom Flotilla Coalition The next wave is already being prepared, help us buy the boats and get them ready to sail!

The Rise of the Thielverse & the Surveillance State

The Chris Hedges YouTube Channel Whitney Webb traces the Thielverse’s rise and the construction of the bipartisan modern surveillance state that Trump and his benefactors are deploying against dissidents and immigrants today.

Capitalism & Genocide - Yanis Varoufakis Speech at the Gaza Tribunal, 23rd October 2025, Istanbul

Yanis Varoufakis On 23rd October, Yanis Varoufakis testified in front of the Jury of Conscience in the context of the Gaza Tribunal. His speech focused on the economic forces underpinning the genocide of the Palestinian people. In particular, he spoke on the manner in which capitalist dynamics have historically fuelled the white settler colonial project and, more recently, how the accumulation of a new form of capital - which he calls cloud capital - has accelerated, deepened and amplified the economic forces powering and propelling the machinery of genocide.

Προβλέψεις ...

GR elections Update (15/9): Αναθεωρημένες προβλέψεις (μετά το δεύτερο debate): ΣΥΡΙΖΑ 28-30% ΛΑΕ + ΣΧΕΔΙΟ Β' κ.λ.π. 20-23% ΝΔ 11-13% ΧΑ 6-8% ΚΚΕ 5-5,5% ΕΝΩΣΗ ΚΕΝΤΡΩΩΝ 2,5-3% ΠΟΤΑΜΙ 2,5-3,5% ΠΑΣΟΚ + ΔΗΜΑΡ 3-4% ΑΝΕΛ 2,5-3,5% Update (11/9): Αναθεωρημένες προβλέψεις (μετά το πρώτο debate): ΣΥΡΙΖΑ 25-28% ΛΑΕ + ΣΧΕΔΙΟ Β' κ.λ.π. 20-23% ΝΔ 11-13% ΧΑ 6-8% ΚΚΕ 5-5,5% ΕΝΩΣΗ ΚΕΝΤΡΩΩΝ 3,5-4% ΠΟΤΑΜΙ 2,5-3,5% ΠΑΣΟΚ + ΔΗΜΑΡ 3-4% ΑΝΕΛ 2,5-3,5% Update (04/9): Αναθεωρημένες προβλέψεις: ΣΥΡΙΖΑ 23-25% ΛΑΕ + ΣΧΕΔΙΟ Β' κ.λ.π. 20-23% ΝΔ 12-15% ΧΑ 6-8% ΚΚΕ 5-5,5% ΕΝΩΣΗ ΚΕΝΤΡΩΩΝ 3,5-4% ΠΟΤΑΜΙ 2,5-3,5% ΠΑΣΟΚ 3-4% ΑΝΕΛ 2,5-3,5% Update (29/8): Αναθεωρημένες προβλέψεις: ΣΥΡΙΖΑ 23-25% ΛΑΕ + ΣΧΕΔΙΟ Β' κ.λ.π. 20-23% ΝΔ 12-15% ΧΑ 6-8% ΚΚΕ 5-5,5% ΕΝΩΣΗ ΚΕΝΤΡΩΩΝ 4-4,5% ΠΟΤΑΜΙ 4-4,5% ΠΑΣΟΚ 3-4% ΑΝΕΛ 2,5-3,5% Update : Αναθεωρημένες προβλέψεις: ΣΥΡΙΖΑ 26-27% ...

WikiLeaks reveals that literally every router in America has been compromised

The latest Wikileaks Vault7 release reveals details of the CIA’s alleged Cherry Blossom project, a scheme that uses wireless devices to access users’ internet activity. globinfo freexchange As cyber security expert John McAfee told to RT and Natasha Sweatte: Virtually, every router that's in use in the American home are accessible to hackers, to the CIA, that they can take over the control of the router, they can monitor all of the traffic, and worse, they can download malware into any device that is connected to that router. I personally, never connect to any Wi-Fi system, I use the LTE on my phone. That's the only way that I can be secure because every router in America has been compromised. We've been warning about it for years, nobody pays attention until something like WikiLeaks comes up and says 'look, this is what's happening'. And it is devastating in terms of the impact on American privacy because once the router...

Confirmed: US imperialists wanted to drag Russia into a war with Ukraine since at least 2019

globinfo freexchange As we wrote in our previous article, after almost eight years, the US imperialists and the NATO criminals got what they wanted. They finally managed to drag Russia into a war with Ukraine. We now have indisputable evidence for that, through a document by the top US think tank, RAND Corporation. In the preface of a 2019 report under the title Extending Russia, Competing from Advantageous Ground we read: [emphasis added] The purpose of the project was to examine a range of possible means to extend Russia. By this, we mean nonviolent measures that could stress Russia’s military or economy or the regime’s political standing at home and abroad. The steps we posit would not have either defense or deterrence as their prime purpose, although they might contribute to both. Rather, these steps ar...

Already happens: Capitalism destroys human labor force and goes to the next phase

by system failure Connecting the dots one can discover the most nightmarish scenarios. Destructive capitalism's next phase is the total substitution of the human labor force with robotic machines, or in other words, the hyper-automatization. There is a process taking place right now, and no one (or nearly no one) knows what would happen after its completion. The true picture behind unemployment From a latest article in PressTV: “ Did you know that there are nearly 102 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now? And 20 percent of all families in the United States do not have a single member that is employed. So how in the world can the government claim that the unemployment rate has “dropped” to '6.3 percent'?” “ Well, it all comes down to how you define who is 'unemployed'. For example, last month the government moved another 988,000 Americans into the 'not in the labor force' category.” http://www.presstv.ir/detail...

A response to misinformation on Nicaragua: it was a coup, not a ‘massacre’

There is so much misinformation in mainstream corporate media about recent events in Nicaragua that it is a pity that Mary Ellsberg’s article for Pulse has added to it with a seemingly leftish critique. Ellsberg claims that recent articles, including from this website, often “ paint a picture of the crisis in Nicaragua that is dangerously misleading. ” Unfortunately, her own article does just that. It looks at the situation entirely from the perspective of those opposing Daniel Ortega’s government while whitewashing their malevolent behavior and downplaying the levels of US support they have relied on. Her piece is an incomplete depiction of what is happening on the ground, ignoring many salient facts that have come to light and which have been outdated by recent events. The following is a brief response to Ellsberg’s main points from someone who lives in Nicaragua and has observed the situation directly and intimately: https://grayzoneproject.com/2018/08/15/a-res...

the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens

Search This Blog