They triggered an Islamophobic panic to save their own skins

Keir Starmer and Lindsay Hoyle stitched up the SNP ceasefire debate and created an absolute farce in parliament, then they whipped up an Islamophobic panic to save their own skins.

The whole farcical situation in parliament came about because the so-called 'human rights lawyer' Keir Starmer outright refuses to acknowledge Israeli collective punishment of Palestinian civilians.

In the hours before the SNP ceasefire motion was to be debated in parliament Starmer consulted with Israeli President Isaac Herzog (a man who described marriage between Jews and non-Jews as a "plague" and said there’s no such thing as innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza) and had a secretive meeting with the Speaker Lindsay Hoyle to figure out how to stitch up the debate and stave off what was looking like becoming the biggest Labour rebellion of his leadership so far.

After his meeting with Starmer, Hoyle decided to rip up parliamentary procedure to effectively hand the SNP’s opposition day over to Labour so they could debate a watered down version of the SNP ceasefire motion that made no mention of Israel’s genocidal collective punishment of civilians.

When Hoyle announced what he was up to he was met with jeers and consternation when he claimed the established way of doing things "reflects an outdated approach".

The Tories (who have belligerently defied public opinion to keep backing Israeli atrocities throughout) walked out, the SNP were outraged that a supposedly impartial Speaker would act in such a biased manner to sabotage their opposition day purely to favour his Labour mates, then the ceasefire debate descended into absolute farce.

The following day Lindsay Hoyle, Labour MPs, and Starmer’s horrible gaggle of media outriders all started pushing the same ludicrous justification narrative. They didn’t sabotage the ceasefire debate to diffuse a looming Labour Party rebellion, they did it because Labour MPs could die at the hands of violent Palestinian solidarity protesters if they voted on a ceasefire motion that referenced Israeli atrocities, rather than a watered down one that didn’t.

They made out that overwhelmingly peaceful and multicultural Palestine solidarity protesters were a dangerous Islamist mob, and insinuated that the first Muslim leader of a Western government, Humza Yousaf, was guilty of pandering to Islamist extremists, rather than reflecting the majority public opinion that Israel’s atrocities should be stopped.

Hoyle refused to detail any of the threats, but a couple of Labour MPs helpfully illustrated the extreme exaggerations at play. Labour MP John Sweeney accused a completely peaceful Palestine solidarity protest at his office of being "terrifying and threatening" and the Labour chair of the Home Affairs committee Diana Johnson cried "abuse" when someone emailed them to ask "how do you sleep at night?"

We have zero examples of actual threats and abuse, but two absolutely clearcut examples of Labour MPs cynically pretending that peaceful protest and accountability are "threats" and "abuse".

Hoyle’s skin-saving conspiracy theory pandered to the extreme-right by blaming Muslims for his cynical sabotage of proper parliamentary procedures, and the consequences of Labour resorting to far-right Islamophobic fear-mongering were extremely predictable.

Former Tory Home Secretary Suella Braverman used Hoyle’s excuse to claim that “Islamists are in charge of Britain" in a vile Daily Telegraph screed, former Tory deputy chairman Lee Anderson claimed that Islamists have "taken over London" in a racist GB News rant, and capitalist media hacks from the Guardian to the Daily Mail wilfully amplified this absurd conspiracy theory that parliamentary process was abandoned because of threatening Muslims, rather than to stave off a looming Labour Party rebellion against Keir Starmer’s belligerent refusal to acknowledge Israeli genocide and war crimes.

In reality the most violent scenes that have occurred in relation to overwhelmingly peaceful Palestinian solidarity protests happened when Suella Braverman incited an extreme-right mob into attacking police near a statue that the ceasefire protest was never even going to go near!

Lindsay Hoyle and Keir Stamer are entirely responsible for triggering this tsunami of anti-Muslim abuse and conspiracy theories, but their acolytes will never admit that they even did anything wrong by sabotaging the ceasefire vote and then deliberately whipping up an Islamophobic panic to stave off criticism.

Just try to imagine the absolute uproar if Jeremy Corbyn had ever abused parliamentary processes for his own personal advantage, then tried to whip up an Antisemitic hate-fest to provide cover for himself.

But Starmer’s Labour can deliberately throw British Muslims to the baying right-wing mob to save their own skins, and their outriders see absolutely no problem with it.

This is what people mean when they say there’s a hierarchy of racism in British society, and in Starmer’s Labour Party.

Debate over Labour’s internal disciplinary processes for dealing with the tiny minority of members who said Antisemetic things was turned into a years-long headline-dominating scandal, but Keir Starmer and Lindsay Hoyle deliberately concocting a disgraceful and dangerous Islamophobic panic to hide their own corruption gets a free pass!