Lisa Nandy is the chair of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East (LFPME). The Website of the organization www.lfpme.org includes a list of 'Current Members' which is strewn with errors, evidence of gross incompetence. Lisa Nandy has been very negligent as Chair of LFPME, I can easily show, and her failures call into question her fitness to become Leader of the Labour Party, I would claim.
The list begins at
www.lfpme.org/supporters and
extends to 7 pages. It claims that currently, 131 MP's are members. The
figure is false and inflated. The true figure is 93. The list hasn't been
updated for many years. The people of Oldham West would be surprised
to learn that their MP is Michael Meacher. He's listed as the current
MP on the page
www.lfpme.org/supporters/page/
According to the list, Simon Danczuk is the current MP for Rochdale, www.lfpme.org/supporters/page/6 Simon Danczuk was suspended by the Labour Party in 2015 after it was claimed that he'd sent explicit messages to a 17-year-old girl. He was banned by Labour from standing as a candidate, resigned from the party and was replaced as MP for Rochdale by Anthony Lloyd in 2017.
The list claims that Tom Watson is the current MP for West Bromwich East: https://www.lfpme.org/supporters/page/7 The current MP is actually Nicola Richards, Conservative.
Former MPs still on the list include Sadiq Khan, who left parliament in 2016 to become Mayor of London; Steve Rotheram, who left Parliament in 2017 to become Metro Mayor of Liverpool City Region, and Andy Burnham, who left Parliament in 2017 to become Mayor of Manchester.
Six LFPME members who lost their seats in 2016 are still on the list. The December 2019 election results had a massive impact on the Labour Party, of course, but the membership list hasn't been updated to reflect the changes. (The Wikipedia list of members of LFPME has been updated.)
These and all the other failures of the LFPME membership list show discourtesy to the MP's who are the actual constituency MP's, show contempt for the electorate, show lack of attention to detail (although a much stronger term is called for) and, as I've already claimed, are evidence of gross incompetence.
The members of LFPME - actual members - include, apart from Lisa Nandy, these MP's who nominated Lisa Nandy for the Labour Party leadership election: Jon Ashworth, Stephen Kinnock and Vicky Foxcroft. Some other LFPME members: Keir Starmer, Rebecca Long-Bailey, Emily Thornberry, Jess Phillips and Jeremy Corbyn.
It might have been expected that some of the members at least would have looked at the list occasionally to find out about changes – who had joined, who had left. It might have been expected that a good look at the website would be a priority for Lisa Nandy when she became Chair in 2018. Her mind was on other things, it seems, such as Website appearances.
The membership list has a very unusual
organising principle. Instead of listing MPs in alphabetical order by
constituency or surname, the list is in alphabetical order of first name, a
very, very cumbersome, time-wasting system to use.
The problems posed by Palestine and the the Middle East are massive and intractable. They can't be solved by the methods advocated by the members of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East.
Not all members of LFPME would agree with the slogan 'Stop Arming Israel', often used by opponents of Israel, but the platitudes used again and again by LFPME members can conceal the harsh realities to almost the same extent as the slogan. In the dangerous world of the Middle East, what would be the consequences of a weakened Israel? Iran is a dangerous and powerful state which would be all too ready to occupy Israeli territory if it could, as well as Gaza and the West Bank if it could.
There are non-state adversaries who would seize the chance to occupy Israeli territory, and Gaza and the West Bank if they could. The fact is that Israeli power protects Palestinian territory from coming under the control of powers vastly less humane than the Israeli state. Palestinian apologists may claim that Palestine is oppressed and that the worst (or only) oppressors are the Israelis, but they and Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East ignore political and military realities.
Even the name of the organisation, 'Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East', amounts to gross falsification. Israel is presented as the main problem in the Middle East. The vast ambitions of Iran go unrecorded. The barbarities of Iran go unrecorded. Iran executes juveniles and others for a very wide range of offences. Israel has never used the death penalty in its modern history (Adolf Eichmann is an exception). The fact that homosexuality is illegal in Gaza isn't mentioned. Israel is given no credit for the fact that homosexuality is fully legal.
'Less than a month ago, Phillips, Nandy and all the other leadership candidates, were working flat out for a Labour victory and to have Corbyn installed as Prime Minister. They knew what they were doing. They knew that British Jews were frightened of the prospect and that those fears were valid. Yet they kept knocking of doors, taking to the airwaves, pleading, cajoling. Doing all they could to make it happen.' (Harry Phibbs, writing in 'Conservative Home.)
Anti-Semitism in the Labour Party has been widely and rightly publicised. The misguided illusions of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East have not received nearly enough attention. The failures of LFPME reflect badly on Lisa Nandy, other members of LFPME and, I think, the Labour Party as a whole to an extent. They certainly have relevance to the election of the next leader of the Labour Party.
My Website www.linkagenet.com has a page on Israel, www.linkagenet.com/themes/israel.htm My Website does have very high rankings in Google for a very wide range of search terms. To give one example, the current Google ranking for the search term ethical depth is 1 / 129,000,000. I should mention that many of the pages of the site make use of Large Page Design: they are wide as well as long. They can't be viewed adequately on the small screen of a mobile device.
The material here was published very recently in modified form on the site 'Conservative Woman,' https://conservativewoman.co.uk/a-would-be-labour-leader-and-the-shambolic-friends-of-palestine/
It shouldn't be assumed, of course, that I'm in agreement with all the opinions expressed in other articles on the 'Conservative Woman' site or all the comments which follow the article. The current Google ranking for my article for the search term Lisa Nandy Labour Friends of Palestine is 4 / 46,400.
After so many years without a single update, it can be expected that the existing membership list of LFPME will disappear from view soon or fairly soon, to be replaced by an updated list. I've taken copies of the list at various times, including very recently, as evidence of the incompetence of the organization.
As I'm not a constituent of yours, no reply is expected.
Best Wishes,
Paul Hurt
Sheffield