Ed has never threatened the Labour Party with non-cooperation for facilitating and enabling a genocide, arresting pensioners for holding signs, or overseeing new restrictions on the right to peaceful protest... despite being the Party of civil liberties. Why is that? Seems to me the whole political establishment is telling on itself. A motion is a red line, but genocide isn't.

I do find this really quite abhorrent, in the same way that it was disgraceful when Burnham made the same pronouncement that the ZiR motion was antisemitic in Parliament There are many very prominent Jewish and Palestinian people who supported the ZiR motion and have spoken in favour of it. There are very large numbers of British Jews who are anti-Zionist (approx. 38,000, or 12% of all British Jews), a good portion of whom are anti-Zionist because they see Zionism is inextricably and undeniably racist. It is extraordinary that Coburn thinks it's OK to declare them anti-semitic, and for the BBC to repeatedly fail to point out that anti-Zionism is a protected belief that has been declared to be "worthy of respect in a democratic society"; and that includes when anti-Zionism is predicated on the idea that Israel's foundation was a racist endeavor. Really, these people live in a weird bubble. Approximately 50% people in Britain think Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. Only 17% do not. I'd wager that most ordinary people are looking at this furore and thinking to themselves: hold on, are we really saying the country committing genocide, whose leaders are wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity, is not racist?

You can be as insulting (and tacky in your search for clicksn and engagement) as you want, but under Polanski the Greens won 587 local council seats five months ago, took over long-time Labour-dominated Councils, and helped catalyse Starmer's resignation two years after he won a landslide election. That has forced the whole Burnham operation rhetorically left and pushed the government to take (still plainly insufficient) steps to bring in sanctions on Israeli settlements. Now Burnham is trying to collapse local governments in response to a Green Party motion, which undermines his own rhetoric on devolution and undercuts his commitment to electoral reform and cooperative government. Burnham is taking the risk of causing serious upheaval, backlash and turmoil in response to a Green Party MOTION. A motion! That's genuinely insane - and illustration of the Green's power and influence, not the obverse. Seems pretty serious to me.

The cynicism of the Labour Party knows no bounds. They'll draw a "red line" at a motion calling Zionism racism but not at genocide. This is plainly designed to drive a wedge in the Greens. Force some councillors to peel off and create division - effectively using and abusing antisemitism (a profound and important issue) for short- term political goals. We know it's not about any principled stance about antisemitism because Philipson's clique has shown zero concern for the very many Jewish people, mostly anti-Zionist, who were investigated and effectively harassed by the Labour Party for their views on Israel. We also know it's rubbish because Labour has encouraged Councils to adopt the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism, which effectively makes expressing anti-Zionist beliefs an antisemitic offence, despite 12% of all British Jews declaring themselves anti-Zionist. But it is very on-brand for Phillipson, one of the collaborators in the Labour Together project that so irresponsibly, cynically and covertly used the very real and important issue of antisemitism for factional advantage. This is the essence of the McSweeney-ite method that did so much damage to the Labour Party, but also massively inflamed inter-community tensions in the UK. For ordinary people, the message will be: sorry, you can't effective, progressive and collaborative local government (good housing, clean streets, community centres, functional schools) because we draw a "red line" at calling Israel racist three years into a live-streamed genocide. The Greens should respond appropriately, calling out the Labour Party for using this issue as a political football, holding local government to ransom because they simply refuse to accept that they lost power five months ago. Call out the Labour Party for sabotaging good governance and coalition politics because they're sore losers - in the name of Zionism. Proper gutter politics, a crass rerun of Labour under Starmer. Burnham should be better than this; and should know that all this leads to is lots of left-wing people being unable to trust the Labour Party again.