INDEX	January 20, 2024
U turn if you want to...
David Lammy, Labour's Shadow Foreign Secretary, pivoting or as we used to say doing a U turn, on Israel's genocide of the Palestinians in the Gaza strip, this morning on Radio 4's Today programme. Lammy was fortunate in that the BBC gave him a particularly gormless interviewer who did not ask any of the obvious questions (would a Labour government stop the Americans using the British base on Cyprus to supply munitions to Israel? would Labour refuse to join the Americans bombing the Houthis?). All the same it was a remarkable turn around from Labour's former slavishly zionist policy. Is this because Labour knows something the pollsters don't? Up to now Labour has held something like a 20 point lead in the polls, suggesting no great revulsion for Labour by the Islamic community in Britain. With about 3 million people identifying as Islamic and therefore perhaps 2 million potential voters, perhaps 3.5 million (very probably Tory) voters living abroad added to the electoral registers under new rules, and untold millions possibly being denied the vote because they do not have a passport or similar proof of identity, a 20 per cent poll lead may not be enough for Labour. At the last election in 2019 the Tories got almost 14m votes compared to Labour's 10.25 million.
INDEX Jonathan Brind		January 20, 2024