by KENNETH SURIN
The so-called “mother of parliaments” in London is currently in over-drive generating a plethora of responses to widespread dysfunction, ranging from side-splitting guffaws to a weary cynicism to tears and a deep sadness (depending on who you are).
The context for these responses is the total collapse of the Conservative Party as potential winner of the forthcoming general election. Beset by factional infighting, the Tories have for months been around a consistent 20 points behind the opposition Labour Party in the opinion polls.
Every move by the Tory government seems to emerge from a crisis while precipitating another crisis in turn. It is no exaggeration to say that the Tories are a government in name only.
One parliamentary farce centered on the vote for a motion calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza conflict. The motion was proposed by the Scottish National Party (SNP), with the clear aim of making even more prominent the split between Labour’s pro-Zionist leader Keir Starmer (who had refused steadfastly to call for a ceasefire) and Labour MPs and town and city councilors in areas with significant Muslim electorates overwhelmingly in favor of a ceasefire.
In Walsall, 8 councilors who resigned from Labour over the issue in November are threatening to up their own candidate against Labour at the general election.
Eleven Labour councillors in Burnley resigned from the party in November, 10 resigned in Oxford, and 8 quit in Blackburn. This month two Labour councilors resigned in Kirklees, Yorkshire, and there has been a steady stream of others.
Starmer, a technocratic opportunist with no visible political convictions while entirely reliant on focus groups for his declared (pro tem) positions– “misspoke” initially when he said Israel had the right to turn off water and electricity for Gazans after the October 7 Hamas attack, and took his time before shifting his position to a call for meaningless “humanitarian pauses” in Israel’s relentless slaughter.
The SNP ceasefire motion created an obvious problem for Starmer, now faced with splits at every level of his party.
Parliamentary procedure decreed that the original motion would be debated, as well as a Tory government motion designed to water down the SNP motion by calling for a “humanitarian pause”.
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