Stop Tory Brexit!

This week, more than most, I felt like I was drowning in a cesspit of Tory generated excrement. Just when you think a new low is not possible, the Tories reached new depths of depravity.

By Wednesday, they had blocked upskirting legislation, lied about NHS funding, claiming it would come from a fictionalised “Brexit dividend,” and made sick and pregnant women cross the lobby in wheelchairs, in a bid to force through the doomed EU withdrawal bill. The Tory/DUP democratic heist has put us in the hands of the three musketeers. What could possibly go wrong?

Theresa May called a snap election last year to get a mandate for a hard Brexit. The people’s answer? “Not on your Nellie”! Yet, here we are, a year later, with the Brexit time bomb strapped to our collective chests. This is a Tory suicide mission and they’re bent on taking us all down with them.

Elsewhere, in the real world, the EU rejected Theresa May’s Northern Ireland back stop. The subject that no-body talked about in the referendum campaign, is now the circle that just can’t be squared. And still May carries on like a demented despot in charge of a runaway train.

The pundits got Brexit wrong. They got the outcome of the 2017 General Election wrong and they are doing it again. In their bubble of groupthink and incompetence, they have completely misjudged the anger out there on the streets. It is palpable for anyone who engages with real people in the real world. Far from getting £350 million a week for the NHS, Brexit is driving the final nail into the coffin. Closures to A&Es and hospital services are being predicated on staff shortages – brought about by the hostile immigration culture and fear generated by Brexit. When we need them most, foreign nurses and doctors are fleeing this country in their droves.

Who’s to blame for Brexit? The Tories and the right wing of the Labour party who, for years, threw immigrants under the bus, accusing us of stealing British people’s jobs, blaming us for the housing shortage and admonishing us for not assimilating into the British way of life, whatever that is.

Having scapegoated immigrants for years, Chuka Umunna, was a bad choice to be the poster boy of the Labour Remain campaign. It’s a bit like putting Trump in charge of UNICEF. Labour’s rhetoric had moved so far to the right, under New Labour (in a bid to woo UKIP voters), that there was a vacuum in political discourse - promoting the benefits of immigration.

As chair of the Labour In campaign, Alan Johnson’s line up of pale, male and stale spokespeople, failed to inspire. Producing the toxic trio (Blair, Brown and Campbell) was a serious strategic error. The idea that the men who presided over the global financial crash could boost trust and credibility to the Remain camp signals the extent to which Alan Johnson, like his Blairite plotters, was in denial about the incendiary legacy of New Labour.

New Labour was part of the problem. Progressive Labour can be part of the solution. That’s why I’ve signed Momentum’s Stop Tory Brexit petition 

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/stop-tory-brexit-momentum-petition which calls for the many to have the final say.

For anyone who hasn't read my angry Independent Brexit articles (there are many), here's one to get you going: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-referendum-alternative-facts-brexit-bill-white-paper-european-union-a7558886.html

One year on from Grenfell, survivors remain traumatised & homeless. Deprived of justice & peace

I wrote the blog below shortly after the preventable inferno at Grenfell tower that killed 72 people. Twelve months on, survivors remain traumatised, homeless and without justice. The raw feelings captured in this blog haven't diminished with time so, to mark the one year anniversary, I'm re-telling the story. Undiluted, unedited and unapologetic. 💚💚

The acrid stench infused the air. The landscape, adorned with messages and memorials, struggled to reconcile the veneration of dignified grief and irreverent, visceral anger.

I oscillated between both. Grief hung in the ether like a flammable fume. Volatile, toxic, debilitating. The photos of those whose lives were lost. The prayers, the pleas, the eulogies. The human faces behind the headlines.

Days before, some of the dead and feared dead would have taken the train journey I just took, walked the route I just walked to get there, sat in the park around the corner that I just sat in and exchanged perfunctory pleasantries with the local shop keeper like I just did.

The photo of Isaac caught my eye. He left school at the same time as my little boy that day. He will have had his tea, maybe smearing ketchup on his school jumper, like mine did and went to bed, forgetting to brush his teeth, like mine did. Wrapped in a blanket of love he may have told the spiders lurking in a corner of his room a story, like mine did, before drifting off to sleep clutching his threadbare teddy, like mine did.

The difference between Isaac and my child is, Isaac lived in a tower block with no fire sprinklers, exposed gas pipes, combustible cladding (cheaper than the non-combustible yet aesthetically pleasing variety) and dodgy electrics prone to potentially lethal surges. Illegal? You’d think so, but Tory cuts to legal aid means rights are now only available to those who can afford to buy them. That ruled Grenfell Tower residents out.

Five weeks on and survivors are still homeless and dependent on sporadic, demeaning state handouts. A hundred quid here and a voucher for a hotel there isn’t good enough. Survivors need certainty, security and dignity. That starts with a secure, safe home. Some children don’t know if they’ll be returning to the same school in September because they don’t know where their new home will be. Some survivors say they’ve been told to accept homes without being allowed to see them first. Others say they fear being forcibly rehoused outside the borough. I’ve been told of survivors who’ve been threatened that declining housing they’re offered, however inappropriate, would be deemed as elected homelessness, and would incur benefit penalties.

Even now, survivors are being excluded from key decisions that will impact their future. Security firms were employed, at tax payers expense, to “keep them out” of Kensington and Chelsea’s council meeting on Thursday. Scenes of survivors being kettled into a public gallery, side-lined and silenced, prevented from participating in decisions about their own lives, were a national disgrace. The footage of Tory councillor, Mathew Palmer, mouthing “Don’t let them in” spoke volumes about the Tories’ contempt for humanity, decency and democracy.

Making my way back to the tube, I was stopped in my tracks by a child. She was surveying the messages pinned to the street railings and was transfixed by an elaborate picture of a dove. She asked her Dad what the text around it said. “I don’t know love, it’s written in a foreign language”.  I squinted to read it, “It says, Suaimhneas stíoraí da anam, which is Irish for, may your souls rest in peace”.

If the souls that perished in Grenfell are ever to find peace, they must first be afforded truth and then justice. We owe Isaac, and all those who died with him, that much.