Anti War Activists

"[The Maastricht Treaty] takes away from national parliaments the power to set economic policy and hands it over to an unelected set of bankers who will impose the economic policies of price stability, deflation and high unemployment throughout the European Community"

"Julian Assange has paid a very, very, very high price for his lifelong determination to expose the truth. Why? Is it because he has... the belief that by exposing the truth, you can save lives, you can stop wars, and you can make sure that democracies function properly by holding all public officials, elected or unelected, to public account?... His information exposed the dishonesty surrounding the claims on Iraq. His information exposed the dishonesty of the continuing reporting of Iraq after 2003 with hidden information about the numbers of people that had died from "friendly fire" in Iraq, but also the dangers to all journalists, to everyone who believes in free speech, of the concept of the embedded journalist, embedded on an aircraft carrier, sent into a barracks or whatever else, to produce reports... to the liking of the military... Those of us who want to live in a peaceful world,... are here because we want to support Julian Assange in the bravery that he’s shown and the price that he’s already paid for that bravery of ensuring that the whole world knows the truth about it."

"Labour is clear that we should remain in the EU. But we too want to see reform,"

"[Palestinians in the West Bank live] under occupation of the very sort that would be recognised by many people in Europe who suffered occupation during the Second World War."

"[Linking criticism over antisemitism to his stance on the Middle East] I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that my clearly stated support for the right of Palestinian people to be able to live in peace free from occupation, free from being under siege as in Gaza, and for those living in refugee camps … played a factor in all this. Benjamin Netanyahu couldn't wait to condemn me for my support for the Palestinian people."

"The stain and shame of antisemitism has coursed through her majesty’s opposition since Jeremy Corbyn became leader in 2015."

"The Salisbury attack is something we got wrong. When it happened, I thought, "Well, probably there’s Russians behind this, because of the use of novichok." I just thought it was Russian gangsters — some business interests, and so forth. I didn't think the Russian state was behind it. And we were wrong. The evidence that's emerged since is overwhelming. We misread that. I still think that the line Jeremy was trying to follow, which is, "Get the evidence first and then state sanctions, and so on, rather than the other way around," is a defensible position. You don't run into saying "This is Putin’s responsibility" when you haven't produced the evidence of it. In fact, this evidence has now been produced. Had we known then what we know now, we'd have taken a different view, I think. We just didn't think the Russian state would be so stupid and brazen as to do something like that — to carry out a poisoning attack on British soil. I know, given the Litvinenko precedent perhaps we should have done but that never really got sorted out so clearly . . . Up until then we'd still ha[d] a quiescent PLP. We were doing all right in the polls. That started bringing all the doubts about Jeremy and the leader’s office to the surface again."

"Corbyn's Labour Party did not lose the 2019 general election because of the Salisbury poisonings alone—but they were a critical moment that embedded the image of Corbyn as weak and foolish. This was driven almost entirely by Corbyn and his team, not by the Labour Party as a whole. Throughout the affair, Corbyn seemed more determined to protect Putin's reputation than British citizens. The most humiliating moment for the Labour Party would come at Corbyn’s hands, as he stood in Parliament and demanded the prime minister explain whether she had complied with Moscow’s ludicrous request to be sent a sample of the Novichok nerve agent used to poison the Skripals, so that, as he later clarified, "they can say categorically one way or the other" whether the Russian state-manufactured nerve agent used in the attempted assassination of a Russian ex-spy belonged to them. The response from Labour’s own backbenchers to this staggering naiveté was so brutal that the deputy speaker was forced to intervene to ask them to stop shouting at their own leader."

"We can't have both sides of the House shouting at the leader of the opposition!"

"[P]ressed in a BBC interview to condemn IRA terrorism, Mr Corbyn five times evaded the question."

"He has long lived in a milieu where it is de rigueur to acclaim the Irish Republican Army as freedom fighters (not a popular view in much of working-class England and Scotland, where many families have sons and cousins who served in the army in Northern Ireland)."

"[O]n he goes, glibly, hearing nothing he does not want to hear, and seeing nothing he does not want to see: a god in tiny rooms."

"The way in which the leadership has dealt with anti-Jewish racism is incompatible with the British values of which we are so proud — of dignity and respect for all people. It has left many decent Labour members both Jewish and non-Jewish, ashamed of what has transpired. The claims that the party is "doing everything" it reasonably can to tackle anti-Jewish racism and that it has "investigated every single case", are a mendacious fiction."

"At this moment of grave danger, we simply cannot allow the party to flounder, become utterly irrelevant to the political debate and disintegrate into a second-rate pressure group. Make no mistake — unless we listen to our voters, our party faces political oblivion."

"Corbyn is not antisemitic. Not a fibre, not an atom, not a molecule of his mind or body could be so described. That is the Goebellian lie."

"Word of advice to #JeremyCorbyn - if #BorisJohnson delivers #Brexit, Labour will be crushed anyway. If the Tories flunk it, you'll be in power anyway. So just expel all these pro-Zionist traitors and at least have a clean, radical party."

"The problem with Jeremy is — it's not as if he's a maniac, it's not as if he's a nasty person. It's that he literally has no idea in the 21st century how to conduct himself as a leader of a party putting itself forward in a democratic election to become the government of our country."

"Jewish organisations know full well that vilifying Corbyn as an antisemite would drastically reduce his appeal, as antisemitism resonates only among assorted antediluvians, troglodytes, and fruitcakes. In other words, the irrefutable proof that Corbyn’s pursuers don't believe a word they're saying is that by labelling him an antisemite they hope and expect to isolate him. However, as the accusation is manifestly a red herring, it's also possible that the current hysteria will pass most people by entirely, not because they are unconcerned by antisemitism but because it hardly occurs to them as an issue at all. If the controversy has an effect it will be restricted to exacerbating divisions in the Labour leadership and perhaps also adding to a more general perception that the stories promoted by mainstream media are fake news."

"[Our joint editorial results from] the existential threat to Jewish life in this country that would be posed by a Jeremy Corbyn-led government."

"Jeremy Corbyn is leading the Labour Party into a dark place of ugly conspiracy theories and it has become a home for overt antisemites and antisemitism. In 2018, Labour is not only a party with extravagant levels of tolerance for antisemitism but one which deliberately obstructs measures to counter hatred and punishes those who speak out against it. Jeremy Corbyn needs to lead Labour out of this deep abyss and urgently demonstrate to the world Labour can return to being an anti-racist Party."

"They wouldn't set up camps or anything like that. But the tenor of public life would be unbearable because the very people who are the enemy of Jews, as it were, the anti-Semites, will be empowered by having their allies in government. There is a fear, a real fear of that."

"I'm furious with people who respond to these points by huffing that criticism of Israel, by Corbyn or anyone on the left, does not make one antisemitic, even though Israel had nothing to do with any of Corbyn's antisemitic encounters; and I'm furious with people who imply a little antisemitism is a price worth paying to achieve Corbyn’s socialist society. I'm furious with people who spent all of last week reading Russian runes into an image of Corbyn's hat on Newsnight, and this week insist they can't see anything antisemitic about a blatantly antisemitic mural. Most of all, I am furious with people for insisting there is nothing to see here, when we all know that if a Tory or Ukip politician had done half of the things Corbyn has done, these same people would be insisting they be put in the stocks. The hypocrisy takes the breath away."

"Mr Corbyn and his supporters treat as a triumph the fact that he lost a general election by less than was expected by us pundits."

"Boris Johnson's pursuit of a no-deal Brexit will be a disaster for the whole country. He is putting at risk Scottish jobs in manufacturing, food processing and service industries. His intention to suspend Parliament shows he is also a threat to our democracy. The best way to defeat Johnson is sticking together, electing a Labour government and allowing it to get on with sorting the Tory Brexit nightmare and introducing policies that will see transformative investment in Scotland's people, communities and public services. Scottish independence is not the answer to Johnson. Independence will only further prolong and intensify austerity and create more instability and chaos."

"Suspending Parliament is not acceptable, it is not on. What the prime minister is doing is a smash and grab on our democracy to force through a no deal,"

"No way do you take us out without a deal."

"I don't support any attacks, therefore I criticise them all."

"There was a strange aftertaste to many of the calls for grand social reform in 2020. As the coronavirus crisis overtook us, the left wing on both sides of the Atlantic, at least that part that had been fired up Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, was going down to defeat. The promise of a radicalized and reenergized left, organized around the idea of the Green New Deal, seemed to dissipate amidst the pandemic. It fell to governments mainly of the center and the right to meet the crisis. They were a strange assortment. Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Donald Trump in the United States experimented with denial. For them climate skepticism and virus skepticism went hand in hand. In Mexico, the notionally left-wing government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador also pursued a maverick path, refusing to take drastic action. Nationalist strongmen like Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Narendra Modi in India, Vladimir Putin in Russia, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey did not deny the virus, but relied on their patriotic appeal and bullying tactics to see them through. It was the managerial centrist types who were under most pressure. Figures like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in the United States, or Sebastián Piñera in Chile, or Cyril Ramaphosa in South Africa, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, Ursula von der Leyen, and their ilk in Europe. They accepted the science. Denial was not an option. They were desperate to demonstrate that they were better than the 'populists.' To meet the crisis, very middle-of-the-road politicians ended up doing very radical things. Most of it was improvisation and compromise, but insofar as they managed to put a programmatic gloss on their responses—whether in the form of the EU's Next Generation program or Biden's Build Back Better program in 2020—it came from the repertoire of green modernization, sustainable development, and the Green New Deal."

"The four black MPs were inundated with casework from all over the country. Issues of racism, of discrimination, all the issues the black community faced."

"Hizbollah commits terrorist atrocities against Jews, but Corbyn calls them his friends and attends pro-Hizbollah rallies in London. Exactly the same goes for Hamas. Raed Salah says Jews kill Christian children to drink their blood. Corbyn opposes his extradition and invites him for tea at the House of Commons. These are not the only cases. He is repeatedly found alongside people with blatantly antisemitic views, but claims never to hear or read them."

"I like Corbyn’s foreign policy, above all. I know he’s elected for some other reasons, for like giving free bingo games or what – I don’t know, in England, you’re crazy – but talking about foreign policy, he understands more than any other western politician what it takes now to save the world, including the changes in the world."

"If we understand terrorism to describe the indiscriminate killing of civilians, in breach of international law, then of course Hamas is a terrorist group. The targeting of hospitals, refugee camps and so-called safe zones by the Israeli army are acts of terror too; and the killing of more than 11,000 people, half of whom are children, cannot possibly be understood as acts of self-defence. We should not entertain questions from those who have no interest in applying this basic consistency."

"This government's shambolic handling of Brexit is compounding years of damaging austerity."

"One way or another, we will do everything in our power to prevent no deal and oppose a damaging Tory Brexit based on Theresa May's overwhelmingly rejected deal. That's why, in line with our conference policy, we are committed to also putting forward or supporting an amendment in favour of a public vote to prevent a damaging Tory Brexit being forced on the country."

"I am reaching out to all groups in Parliament to try and prevent a no-deal Brexit which I think would be very damaging"

"Take no-deal off the table now please prime minister."

"[I will] work with MPs across the Commons to prevent no deal, break the deadlock and build support for our alternative plan"

"Theresa May should not be rolling out the red carpet for a state visit to honour a president who rips up vital international treaties, backs climate change denial and uses racist and misogynist rhetoric. Maintaining an important relationship with the United States does not require the pomp and ceremony of a state visit. It is disappointing that the prime minister has again opted to kowtow to this US administration. I would welcome a meeting with President Trump to discuss all matters of interest."

"Crashing out of Europe with no deal risks being a national disaster."

"I described those pro-Israel activists as Zionists, in the accurate political sense and not as a euphemism for Jewish people - and that is made clear in the rest of my speech that day. I am now more careful with how I might use the term 'Zionist' because a once self-identifying political term has been increasingly hijacked by anti-Semites as code for Jews."

"The government is trying to run down the clock in an attempt to blackmail this House and the country into supporting a botched deal"

"Equal pay for equal work is hardly a controversial idea, so why are we discriminating against young people? You don't get a discount at the shops for being under 18. But if the person serving you on the other side of the counter is young, they could be on half the wage of their colleagues. It's time to end this discrimination. Young people's work should be properly valued, not exploited by employers to cut their wage bill. If they're doing the job, pay them the wage - the real living wage."

"The government must remove clearly, once and for all, the prospect of the catastrophe of a no-deal exit from the EU and all the chaos that would come as a result of that"

"[the leaked report made it] crystal clear how bad things will get [if the UK leaves without a deal on 31 October]."

"people who dish out anti-Semitic poison need to understand: you do not do it in my name"

"For the last 40 years... we've been told that it's good - advanced even - for our country to manufacture less and less and rely instead on cheap labour abroad to produce imports, while we focus on the City of London and the finance sector. A lack of support for manufacturing industry is sucking the dynamism out of our economy, pay from the pockets of our workers and any hope of secure, well-paid jobs from a generation of young people."

"I was present when it was laid. I don't think I was actually involved in it. I was there because I wanted to see a fitting memorial to everyone who has died in every terrorist incident everywhere because we have to end it. You cannot pursue peace by a cycle of violence. The only way you pursue peace is a cycle of dialogue."

"When it comes to Brexit, this government has delivered more delays and more cancellations than Northern Rail."

"An open border is a symbol of peace, two communities living and working together after years of conflict, communities who no longer feel that their traditions are under threat,"

"He did withdraw it later on, he has been suspended from membership, there will be an independent investigation - independent of me that is - so I can't comment any further. There's no place whatsoever for anti-Semitisim in our party or anywhere in our society and our whole process is to ensure it doesn't happen."