It's an utterly dreadful piece of analysis, Tim - vapid, incurious, lightweight, and with no actual understanding of what drives people to vote the way that they do.

And I haven't even read it.

Did you challenge him on his lying about what Polanski said, Heather, or is that not part of your brief as a journalist?

I think that it's fair to say that this casual smear has not worked out to Joe's advantage.

Ah well.

How's this going, Joe?

You're flat-out lying about Polanski here, Joe.

Not a good start to 2026 - and if this is the best you've got, you're in trouble.

Compare that single instance of suddenly noticing things to, say, the damning evidence uncovered by the cranks at the national equality body in months of free access to the Labour Party’s internal systems, with the power to compel evidence and compliance. It’s comical, isn’t it. It’s a bad joke.

James and his mates will never ever understand that *they* were also the mark, will they?

Ah well. Happy Christmas.

If you’re frightened by the new hateful bullshit but you loudly welcomed the old version because it wasn’t hurled at you personally and helped you to get things you wanted, congratulations! These are the consequences of your self-indulgent idiocy, now right in all of our faces for everyone to enjoy.

Iirc this is the bunch that prompted the EHRC to open the antisemitism enquiry into the Labour Party.

Do you think that our pundits and media will revisit any of their opinions about what was going on in the light of this?

I don't see a reckoning on the horizon...

You absolutely know that, were the focus to move to 'Free Palestine' or 'Boycott Israel', James would write the same column. (Indeed, with the latter phrase, others have already done so.)

There is no viable way for the Palestinians to protest, because it's always about how it is 'heard' by others.

Indeed to all that. The many rich donors who contribute to Labour MPs that also contribute to Labour Friends of Israel should also be included here. And Lisa Nandy, who was Chair of LFPME, ran it down, and receives similar donations...

But I don't think they will be, somehow.

Indeed. Am waiting for an enterprising journo to ask Starmer whether he still 'likes and respects' Trump...

Being charitable, I'd go along with 'don't elevate this work's opinions to the mainstream' as a reason for the silence from Starmer etc.
Less charitably, I think it's more likely to be that 'the Centre - via vacillation, cowardice and political calculation - always ends up enabling the Right'.

Lucy, whose Deputy role she campaigned for on 'representing the members', is here to tell them all that - despite said members thinking Starmer is useless - they just have to get behind him, no matter what.

Utterly dismal.

A shame really, that questioning our cast-iron to NATO - as Polanski did recently - is seen as treasonous, student politics...