Labour abused women's safety to win child poverty vote.

Right, so the party whipping system, the single largest reason why MPs vote as they do, the party whips deployed to make sure any MPs who may be considering rebelling, think twice about that and vote exactly as the leadership wishes MPs to vote. This is functionally doing the total opposite of what Keir Starmer said he would do in power, it puts party before country and when the most recent vote concerning a whipping operation was over child poverty, this meant backing the party leadership or else, versus standing up for kids going hungry. That’s the sick choice Starmer put before his MPs and 7 of them found the courage to defy that and do the right and decent thing, actually putting country before party at that. Now for as much as the fallout from that vote still rages, that Starmer instigated a 3 line whip on this vote so vehemently opposed to doing right by the nations children – literally the ‘vote my way or else’ option as that is - an interview by one of the 7 MPs who defied Starmer and has subsequently lost the party whip, has revealed just how low Starmer and his whips were prepared to stoop, in order to secure their vote and it’s pretty much as bad as voting to keep starving kids is.
Right, so that was Apsana Begum, the currently Independent MP for Poplar & Limehouse speaking to Sky News in the aftermath of having the Labour whip pulled from her as a result of being one of the 7 Labour MPs to vote for the SNP amendment to the King’s Speech demanding the scrapping of the two child benefit cap. This interview has garnered the attention of a lot of people, as well it should, especially people who are unfamiliar with Apsana and her background, because as she stated, she is a survivor of domestic violence, she had a difficult election as a result of Keir Starmer constantly apeing the Tories and even though she was one of the handful of left wing MPs surviving Starmer’s attempted purges, she still struggled because Labour were very much looking likely to be no different from the Tories and so it seems to be when they go to such lengths as they have to not lift out of poverty, the poorest kids going, kids discriminated against, for not being the first or second born. Apsana Begum was re-elected, in an election, where she also had to face her abuser, her ex-husband, Entashamul Haque, who was standing against her. The abuse Begum has endured over the years at the hands of both Labour under Starmer and her ex husband and his supporters has been incredulous. We know the kind of things victims of domestic violence within marriages endure, but even after the marriage it did not end. From vexatious accusations of housing benefit fraud, which she was cleared of, but still ended up going to court and during which she was offered no support from the Labour Party over, in fact they were waiting outside, hoping for a guilty verdict, so they could expel her. Another instance was her being subject to a trigger ballot – the process whereby an incumbent MP could be replaced with someone else - which it turned out had been allegedly run by people close to her ex husband, still a key figure in local Labour as he was at that time, people who had also been involved in that housing benefit fraud case, and other allegations surrounding the trigger ballot process included the Labour official being appointed to oversee the trigger ballot process was the subject of complaints defaming Begum, bullying and intimidation at branch meetings where intimidation was particularly aimed at ethnic minority women, so again, Labour’s hierarchy of racism plays a part and Apsana Begum being Muslim herself, that inherent Islamophobia in Starmer’s Labour can’t be ignored as a factor too.
Things got so bad for Apsana, affected her health so much, she ended up being hospitalised over all of this, and even when she was in hospital, Labour continued to pursue her deselection and replacement. Despite Labour having safeguarding measures in place to protest their MPs from such abuse, Labour itself ignored this. An Independent Domestic Violence Advocate, told Labour to abandon the corrupt trigger ballot process because of the affect it was having on Begum and they just ploughed on regardless. Over all of this, due to it’s conduct in relation to Apsana Begum, the Labour Party was condemned by a domestic violence expert as conducting itself in a manner that their actions were an extension of the abuse Apsana Begum had already faced in her life. She’s endured all of this and she’s only 34. Ultimately this bid by Starmer’s Labour to rid itself of Begum was unsuccessful, she was re-selected in May of this year and subsequently re-elected.
So in light of all of that background now, Labour’s offer to her, to support her work on domestic violence, hinged on her voting to keep kids in poverty. That was the stunning claim she made at the end there, that amounted to bribery towards an individual who was literally hospitalised over abuse from her ex husband and his faction and her own party trying to get rid of her. Given what Keir Starmer’s word is worth, I can’t say I’m surprised at Begum’s rejection of such an offer, but what an amoral thing to do – dangle domestic violence policy in front of a domestic violence survivor, in exchange for her assistance in continuing to starve kids, her vote to do that, which of course is and of itself profoundly immoral and certainly not what people expect from Labour, let alone whipping MPs to vote accordingly to do so, as most obediently did, making that question of morality and even bigger one. Keir Starmer’s Labour do not have a moral compass which might not surprise some, but a great many more are opening their eyes to this basic truth, or do so once the obviousness of this point gets pointed out to them.
Ultimately though, all of this is an extension of the whipping system itself, which bars MPs from being able to vote freely for what they believe in, for what is right for the country and it’s people by holding the threat of punishment over their heads. Not all parties have a whipping system, the Green Party for example, don’t use it, their MPs will be able to vote in the interests of the country at all times, it’s also why there is no point in the wealthy picking them to donate to in any large part, except for altruistic reasons, because you can’t buy a party that doesn’t coerce it's MPs to vote a certain way to deliver desired results. To fund the solution to child poverty, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves would have to make different choices they don’t want to in what they do choose to fund, more money to Ukraine, more defence spending, or they’d have to raise taxes to free themselves up to spend more money without raising inflation and when we can’t be taxed more and they don’t want to tax the wealthy party donor class more, they simply will not deliver. Functionally the morality of the party is tied up in 7 MPs who voted to take kids out of poverty and the immorality of the party was exposed when it chose to suspend them all for doing that. That immorality gets doubled down on when it decides to use issues like domestic violence to coerce MPs to act in an immoral way on another subject, that is subject to a vote and it becomes tripled down on when the person they are trying this on with is a victim of domestic violence herself. It is utterly depraved, completely sickening and for people who have heard this story and seen Apsana Begum’s interview on Sky, I don’t think many realise just how debauched an act by Labour this is without knowing more of the story and more of the context behind it, especially when it comes to Apsana Begum. If this is the direction we can expect Labour to go in more and more, it may end up being true to say the Tories were voted out only to let something that turns out to be even worse in instead.
I hope this video helps open up some more eyes to Starmer’s immorality and I hope for those people who deluded themselves into thinking Starmer was only pretending to be right wing before he turned left realise how badly they were kidding themselves now. This action towards these 7 MP’s on the subject of child poverty and no domestic violence and women’s safety really can’t possibly be defended, or are there still those prepared to do so? Find out more on this story in this video recommendation here and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.