Keir Starmer urged to defend lawyers after Tories’ ‘targeted campaign’
Keir Starmer urged to defend lawyers after Tories’ ‘targeted campaign’
Exclusive: Martin Forde KC says fellow professionals are ‘bewildered’ at silence over case of Jacqueline McKenzie
Liberals ushering in fascism. Again.
"Martin Forde KC, the senior lawyer commissioned by Starmer to investigate the Labour party’s culture, said legal professionals from across the political spectrum had expressed their bewilderment that the Labour leader had not said anything after such personal attacks, even after former Conservative law officers criticised the political rhetoric aimed at “lefty lawyers” on Friday.
"Jacqueline McKenzie has received a torrent of abuse since CCHQ circulated a dossier last week. She told the Guardian people had threatened to drown her “like an asylum seeker” and leave corpses at her property.
"The dossier prompted Nick Vineall KC, the chair of the Bar Council, and Lubna Shuja, the president of the Law Society, to make a rare joint statement condemning the Tories’ behaviour in sending out the document titled “Revealed: senior Labour adviser is lefty lawyer blocking Rwanda deportations”."
This guy won't say anything if it risks irking the reactionary xenophobes. Completely spineless. This country can't undo the damage caused by the Tories if Labour are too nervous to call them out on their bullshit.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Keir Starmer is facing calls to defend the legal profession against government attacks on “lefty lawyers”, amid further concerns for the safety of an immigration solicitor subjected to a “targeted campaign” by the Conservative party.
The dossier prompted Nick Vineall KC, the chair of the Bar Council, and Lubna Shuja, the president of the Law Society, to make a rare joint statement condemning the Tories’ behaviour in sending out the document titled “Revealed: senior Labour adviser is lefty lawyer blocking Rwanda deportations”.
The Labour leader worked as the director of public prosecutions before he won a selection battle for the Holborn and St Pancras seat that was vacated by Frank Dobson after 34 years.
He added: “Alex Chalk’s failure to denounce this clearly shows the problem of judges and lawyers not having an independent lord chancellor rather than subsuming the role into the Ministry of Justice.”
Two days after the attacks went public I received a message from the party chair and [the] shadow women and equalities minister, Anneliese Dodds, who was apologetic as she’d been on holiday.”
He said: “It’s also depressing that the Conservatives’ false rhetoric around asylum seekers’ requirement to stay in France instead of seeking safety in this country, and people being economic migrants is being adopted by the public when the former is not the law and the latter is mainly untrue.
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
You're a very good bot but this summary jumps between sources a bit confusingly. The penultimate paragraph is a quote from Jacqueline McKenzie, the targeted lawyer, sandwiched between two quotes from Martin Forde.
But you are a very good bot and I'm only trying to help you be an even better bot, should you wish to expand your horizons.
Fuck Keith. I'm not going to vote next GE because I genuinely believe this scrote will somehow be worse than the tories.
Could you expand on that?
I mean… I get the frustration with Keir Starmer and how hard it is when you can’t find a party or person who properly represents those with left or more socialist view… but worse than the Tories? Really? I mean I just can’t see how that’s possible.
The only people who win when we don’t vote is the Tories… and we can all see what damage that has done.
I think we are well past the point that any socialist policies will ever pass. Our democracy has been completely captured by corporations and elite interests. I'd rather the population hates the government than to mistakenly think we can get any kind of meaningful concessions from a Starmer-led labour government. Frankly I think the whole thing needs to be torn down to the foundations.