Hundreds of Surveilance flights flown by the UK for Israel, only stopped/outsourced when the guardian broke the news on it.
Arms shipments from the US to Israel regularly use UK airports.
F35 parts still exported.
Trade exports of military goods have risen since 2024.
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His personal life is completely irrelevant here.
If he's willing to ignore everything he's learned as a human rights lawyer, then he should be able to ignore the religious biases of his wife.
I still don't buy the anti-semetic Corbyn stuff to be honest.
I think you've been looking at UK media too long, it's so biased.
He's not a great PM, lets be honest, we thought he'd be a safe pair of hands, and less controversial than the Tories.
But nothing is going well for the UK at the moment, and the budget will be a complete bloodbath.
He's been dealt a shit hand, I totally accept that, but I know at this stage that he won't pull the UK out of the hole.
On the parts thing, apparently they go into a global pool that Israel draw from, so stopping supply to Israel requires the US to block their supply from the pool. If the UK cut off supply, then there'd be a risk the US would cut off their supply from the pool, which would be disastrous.
As for the surveillance flights, their purpose is unclear.
Government says it controls what information is shared as critics question the role of intelligence gathering
www.theguardian.com
"The UK government says it takes careful steps to control what it shares with Israel. Asked specifically about the surveillance flights last month, the foreign secretary,
David Lammy, said: “It would be quite wrong for the British government to assist in the prosecution of this war in Gaza. We are not doing that. I would never do that.”"
They hve recognised palestine, so it's not as if they're unequivocally on Israel's side.
The problems with anti-semitism in the labour party were all related to the view that Judaism, Zionism and support for the actions of the Israeli government are all the same thing, which they're not. There were findings by the EHRC that antisemitism was a problem in the Labour party under Corbyn and little was done to remedy it:
Breakdown of watchdog’s 130-page report on party’s handling of antisemitism complaints
www.theguardian.com
I think it was overblown a bit but it was definitely there, in the same way that there's no doubt both the Tories and Reform are heavily Islamophobic.
Starmer has disappointed as PM, but I'd disagree on the point that nothing is going well for the UK at the moment. there's definitely improvement happening but things really were in a pretty shit state when they took over.
They were silly pre-election to not roll back the national insurance cuts the Tories implemented in Jan and April of 2024. There was clearly absolutely no fucking way that was affordable, they cost £10 billion a year, quite a decent chunk of the current tax hole.
I'm more optimistic than you are though, I think they've made plenty positive moves since they came into power, half of all the rail in England is renationalised, the Great British Energy investments should pay off in the long run, the significantly increased money going into military spending will have economic benefits, mostly paid for by interest on seized russian assets.
Then there's the 20% decrease in asylum backlog which if continued will save billions, the EU SPS agreement that'll reverse a lot of damage to agriculture and food, the NHS seems to be performing a bit better. Disposable income is up for the first time in 5 years.
They have implemented some wealth taxes, directly via reforms to inheritance tax and abolishing non-dom status (where they were told there'd be a massive flight of the wealthy, which never happened) and indirectly in areas such as VAT on school fees.
Out of the 86 areas that Full Fact track as part of tracking government promises, only 1 is not kept (they're giving the National Wealth Fund £5.8 billion instead of £7.3 billion), they've delivered 18 and most of the rest are ongoing.
Full Fact is monitoring the government’s delivery on its promises
fullfact.org
Of course, they've done poorly on a bunch of areas, winter fuel, inflation is still too high, waiting lists are still too long, boats are still arriving, house building is down rather than up, growth is mediocre at best. They've pandered to the worst instincts of the electorate on immigration, pandered to Trump, not been clear on Israel and have had a string of idiotic scandals.
It hasn't been the disaster the press paint it as, but their comms have been absolutely terrible, made worse by an amazingly hostile media.
