Andrew Feinstein WILL stand against Starmer at the General Election!

Right, Keir Starmer will now officially be having a very, very bad day as Jewish former African National Congress politician under Nelson Mandela, turned global arms sales campaigner Andrew Feinstein IS going to stand against Keir Starmer at the next General Election. He has now formally announced his decision to stand after much consultation amongst local groups and his fellow residents of Holborn and St Pancras and the response has clearly been a positive one, meaning a guy who could be described as Keir Starmer’s worst nightmare, a candidate who is everything he isn’t, will be taking him on at the General Election and the people of Holborn will actually have a decent socialist, not to mention honest candidate to vote for.
Right, so this is amazingly good news, a good news story, I seem to so rarely offer up these days, news of a positive nature but Andrew Feinstein, after weeks of will he or won’t he conjecture, following an endorsement from the anti Starmer campaign group OCISA, Andrew Feinstein is going to stand at the General Election as an Independent candidate against Keir Starmer.
For those unfamiliar with him, Andrew Feinstein is the Jewish son of Holocaust survivors and is a massive longtime critic of Keir Starmer. He is a self described proud leftie Jew. He is an activist, film maker and author and also a former politician in his native South Africa, however he now lives in Holborn and St Pancras.
In South Africa, he was elected to stand for the African National Congress under the then leadership of Nelson Mandela in the very first democratic elections held there in 1994, his time as a South African MP largely spent working as an advisor on economics and finance and served on the finance committee there.
Notably, Feinstein introduced the first ever motion on the Holocaust in South African history, stating that previous suffering by the Afrikaners at the hands of the British, or of the Jews by the Nazis in no way justified the brutal oppression suffered by black South Africans or Palestinians. This was back in the 1990’s now. Feinstein stood down from South African politics in 2001, resigning in objection to the failure to investigate the corrupt South African Arms Deal, which was notable in its corruption due to procurement. Think Covid VIP lanes but with guns. Feinstein wrote a book on the subject called The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade.
He moved to London after his political career in South Africa ended and has been no less busy here albeit in a less legislative manner. He’s the director of Shadow World Investigations, formerly Corruption Watch UK, specialising in the global arms trade, but also investigates other forms of corruption. He’s also a board member of one of my favourite alternative news outlets Declassified UK. He’s a staunch opponent of apartheid in all it’s a forms, a lifelong supporter of the plight of the Palestinian people, which his native South Africa have shown too by taking Israel to the International Court of Justice.
So, we have standing against Starmer, who supports the state of Israel unequivocally, a guy who has drawn direct comparisons between what Israel continues to do against Palestinians, with the apartheid he saw in South Africa committed by whites against blacks.
We have a guy who has written extensively on the global arms trade, and is director of an organisation which investigates this, standing against Starmer, who still backs arms sales to the Israeli regime.
We have Starmer, who claims to stand against those critical of the so-called Jewish state and claims to have eradicated antisemitism from his party, standing against the Jewish son of Holocaust survivors, who has called out Israeli atrocity, like many other Jews have, who declare action abhorrent and not in their name and not in the name of their faith.
We have a guy standing against Starmer who walked away from his life as a politician in South Africa, because he put his own principles first, standing against Keir Starmer, a guy who’s principles seemingly change depending on the weather.
Andrew Feinstein is everything Starmer isn’t, he is his worst nightmare, which makes Feinstein absolutely the candidate to back. When the outlook of British politics has been so poor, and certainly not helped by Starmer and the party he leads no longer offering anything like hope or change, Feinstein’s candidacy, now made official offers that. If anyone is capable of toppling Starmer, despite the massive majority he has, Feinstein I believe is the guy to do it and without his seat, Starmer cannot become Prime Minister.
Feinstein has penned a piece in Declassified UK, all of which is a blazing piece, a brilliant article and I absolutely recommend going to their website and reading all of it, but here’s an excerpt:
‘Our democracy is in crisis. The two main parties are virtually indistinguishable in their offers of permanent austerity, forever wars and environmental degradation.
Keir Starmer, the MP for Holborn and St. Pancras where my family and I have lived for around 22 years, is emblematic of this crisis. His politics are mendacious, unprincipled and in the interests of his billionaire donors rather than the constituents he was elected to serve.
I have seen real leadership in action: I was privileged to serve under Nelson Mandela as an MP in South Africa. His leadership was selfless, principled, accountable, transparent and honest. Everything that Keir Starmer is not.
His almost immediate abandonment of many of the ten progressive pledges on which he was elected to lead the Labour Party is a clear sign he cannot be trusted.
Starmer has now gone a step too far by refusing to support an unqualified ceasefire and a halt to arms sales to Israel amid the greatest human tragedy since World War Two: the genocide being committed in Gaza.
How is it possible that a former human rights lawyer, who must see the horrific images that we all view on our screens every day, has not even commented on the highest court in the world’s interim ruling that Israel is likely committing genocide and ethnic cleansing?
The ICC’s decision to seek an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes, including “starvation of civilians, wilfully causing great suffering and cruel treatment”, casts Starmer’s support for a siege of Gaza – cutting off water and power – in an even more appalling light.
His attempts to deny such support, despite video evidence confirming it, smacks of a remarkable lack of honesty or contrition.
He has backed the Conservative government’s indefensible position on the crisis, rather than demanding an end to the carnage, to occupation and to apartheid – the only route to a just peace in the region.
The Labour Party’s appalling stance on Gaza has fuelled a concern, enunciated most explicitly in a report written by Martin Forde KC, that the party operates a ‘hierarchy of racism’.
It oxymoronically expels life-long anti-racist Jews, supposedly to combat antisemitism, while taking little if any action against Islamophobia and anti-black racism.
As Nelson Mandela opined: “You are either against all forms of racism and discrimination, or you are part of the racism problem.”’
Can you imagine that guy going toe to toe in a local hustings against Starmer? Laying all of that out and demanding answers from him over these and more to his face? Heck, you could sell tickets and people would queue! Also, in light of those arrest warrant requests now having come from the International Criminal Court, will complicity charges be making their way to Starmer in the near future along with others?
But also there is the matter of Holborn needing a good local MP again. Starmer has caused division and introduced the same authoritarianism to local politics there as he has sown nationally in the Labour Party across the country and no doubt everywhere, should he reach power.
The response on social media to this announcement today has been swift and overwhelmingly positive.
Sarah J Packwood tweeted out:
‘"It is time for politics to serve the people" - Andrew Feinstein. I so want to see Andrew Feinstein defeat Keir Starmer in the GE. He is standing against him in Holborn and St Pancras. Calling on all socialists & other progressives to get behind him & support his campaign!’
Frank Owen’s Legendary Paintbrush echoed my sentiments in his tweet, saying:
‘Andrew Feinstein is a pro-Corbyn/pro-Palestine Jew whose ancestors were killed in the Holocaust. As a politician in South Africa, he opposed Apartheid and worked alongside Nelson Mandela. And he's standing against Starmer in Holborn & St Pancras. He's Starmer's worst nightmare.’
And the Liverpool Community Independents have written:
‘Good to see former ANC MP and advisor to Nelson Mandela Andrew Feinstein standing against Starmer.’
It is good to see, incredibly good to see and many others have tweeted out how they’ve already donated to Feinstein’s crowdfunder, also opened today on Go Fund Me, the Andrew Feinstein Campaign, so let’s see how quickly that target can be achieved.
Campaigners and volunteers for Andrew’s campaign will be out in force across Holborn and St Pancras from around 4:30pm today at the train stations, armed with leaflets so if you live there make sure you don’t miss out on them, campaign groups having given Feinstein their endorsement already include We Are Collective, For the Many and OCISA, so this is campaign is out of the starting blocks and already flying, if that doesn’t underline just how much appetite there is to see change, for hope and to see the back of a dishonest overly ambitious, self serving charlatan like Keir Starmer, who the media have given far too easy a ride, and needs to be held to account for his conduct, I don’t know what does. This is one election campaign all eyes should be on, one of the most important contests of the General Election. This is the one that could send shockwaves to establishment interests, that we’ve all had enough.