TRADE DEAL CLEARS COMMONS

The UK-EU trade agreement has cleared the House of Commons by a huge margin as MPs backed it 521-73.  It will now go to the House of Lords for a mammoth debate that could run late into the night.  127 peers are lined up to speak.

Despite speculation that a number of Labour MPs would vote against the bill, including Diane Abbott, only one did so - Abbott's hard left colleague Bell Ribeiro-Addy.  Abbott and twelve of her Socialist Campaign Group comrades abstained, along with a number of centrist Remainers, making 37 Labour rebels in total.  Three fairly minor resignations have been tendered from Starmer's front bench as a result of the abstentions.

Helen Hayes (Dulwich & West Norwood) was the most senior resignation.  The Shadow Cabinet Office Minister released a lengthy statement on her website, saying she couldn't vote for such a 'damaging deal' and called the rushed nature of proceedings a 'national disgrace'.

Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) resigned as an opposition whip and Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) resigned as a Parliamentary Private Secretary, sharing her resignation letter on Twitter.  

The 521 ayes in favour were as follows:

Conservative - 359

Labour - 162

The 73 noes against were as follows:

Labour - 1 (Bell Ribeiro-Addy)

SNP - 44

Lib Dems - 11

DUP - 8

Plaid - 3

SDLP - 2

Alliance - 1

Green - 1

Independents - 2

There were two Conservative abstentions - Owen Paterson and John Redwood.

The full list of 36 Labour abstentions is as follows (SCG denotes member of the Socialist Campaign Group).

Diane Abbott (SCG)

Tonia Antoniazzi

Apsana Begum (SCG)

Olivia Blake (SCG)

Ben Bradshaw

Kevin Brennan

Richard Burgon (SCG)

Dawn Butler

Neil Coyle

Stella Creasy

Janet Daby

Geraint Davies

Peter Dowd

Rosie Duffield

Clive Efford

Florence Eshalomi

Mary Foy (SCG)

Helen Hayes

Meg Hillier

Rupa Huq

Barry Gardiner

Diana Johnson

Darren Jones

Clive Lewis (SCG)

Rebecca Long Bailey (SCG)

Siobhain McDonagh

John McDonnell (SCG)

Catherine McKinnell

Ian Mearns (SCG)

Kate Osamor

Andy Slaughter

Lloyd Russell-Moyle (SCG)

Zarah Sultana (SCG)

Nadia Whittome (SCG)

Beth Winter (SCG)

Mohammad Yasin

Jeremy Corbyn and Claudia Webbe - both currently suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party, but members of the SCG - also abstained.

LABOUR MP'S WILEY HYPOCRISY

Thousands of Twitter users are boycotting the platform from 09:00 on Monday morning for 48 hours in protest at Twitter's response to Wiley's 48 hour anti-Semitic meltdown.  Although Twitter did act to remove some of his more offensive tweets, many remained and those taking part in the boycott want his account taken down altogether.

One of those participating is Labour MP Florence Eshalomi.  This is interesting.

Prior to Wiley's meltdown he was followed by a number of Labour politicians on Twitter, including Corbyn himself.  As of Saturday morning this had dwindled to two and as of Monday morning stood at one.  That person is the member for Vauxhall - Florence Eshalomi.  Oops!

BTLP is not taking part in the boycott - not because we are OK with Wiley's actions, but because silencing individuals because of speech, no matter how abhorrent, sets a dangerous precedent.  Of course it's also incredibly dangerous for an individual to present such horrific views to half a million social media followers, but there are already laws in place to deal with this and his repeated suggestion that Jews should be shot is clearly an incitement to racial hatred.  Twitter has removed these tweets and the matter is now in the hands of the police.

There are also concerns that shutting down such dangerous individuals sends them underground, turns them into martyrs and can lead to far worse actions than words.  It's also reminiscent of the hard left's 'no platform' censorship of individuals they don't like.  In fact the boycott's official hashtag contains the leftist term 'safe space' - #NoSafeSpaceForJewHate.  The boycott also declares that 'silence talks'.  Does it?  Surely walking out of a debate leaves your opponents free to control the debate.  In any case, what does this actually achieve anyway?  It won't cost Twitter a penny and it won't force them to act.

This is a pointless virtue signalling exercise for people to indulge in identity politics, something that has appealed to some on the left.  Dozens of Labour MPs are taking part including Jon Ashworth, Lisa Nandy, Rosena Allin-Khan, Andrew Gwynne and Jess Phillips.  There are even a few in the hard left Socialist Campaign Group who are participating including Rachael Maskell, Sam Tarry and Nadia Whittome.  Of course it goes without saying that Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott, John McDonnell and Richard Burgon have not signed up.

Owen Jones is taking part, although he will probably be climbing the walls by 10am as he normally spends half his life on Twitter.  Ash Sarkar is not.  Arguably the biggest virtue signaller of all - Sadiq Khan - is also not taking part.  That is perhaps the biggest surprise of all.

WILEY'S 48 HOUR RACIST RANT

Richard Cowie aka Wiley

Grime artist Wiley has hit the headlines over an atrocious string of anti-Semitic tweets in the last 24 hours.  It's not clear what triggered him, but for several hours on Friday and again on Saturday he was tweeting incessantly every few minutes and even managed to squeeze in several videos on Instagram, some of which have now been removed.  In several tweets he suggests Jewish people should be shot and in one also suggests that black people who stand with Jews are 'getting bumped'.  He also hit out at Arabs who he accused of having 'Africa in a headlock'.  He also questioned the existence of Covid-19 which he said was 'all bullshit'.  Responding to accusations of racism he declared: "Black people can't be racist they can only be upset about how they have been mistreated".

Wiley's management dropped him on Saturday morning and the Metropolitan Police are investigating his racist meltdown.  There are also calls for him to be stripped of his MBE and a boycott of Twitter is being planned for Monday morning.  While Twitter has removed some of the more offensive tweets, many remain.  Here are a selection of screenshots doing the rounds.  Bear in mind his reference to 'holding the corn' is slang for shooting someone.

At one point yesterday the Brexit Party's Martin Daubney tried to talk some sense into him, but he was having none of it...

Wiley has almost half a million followers on Twitter and until this morning that included a lot of Labour people, including Jeremy Corbyn himself.  Wiley is naturally a big supporter of Corbyn and tweeted support ahead of the 2019 general election, to which Corbyn replied: "Thank you Wiley".  That thank you message disappeared from Twitter this morning and Corbyn is no longer following Wiley's Twitter account.

Corbyn has now deleted his thank you tweet

Despite cutting ties with Wiley, Corbyn has so far failed to condemn his actions.  The Great Leader once tweeted about Theresa May: "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor".  By that logic we know whose side Corbyn is on now.

At the time of writing the only Labour MPs still following Wiley on Twitter are Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) and Sarah Jones (Croydon Central).

PRITI BURNT SULTANA

Some Labour MPs have been unable to contain their hatred of Britain and its history in recent days.  The Black Lives Matter bandwagon appears to have sparked a firestorm of hatred towards British culture and history where no-one is immune, from Winston Churchill to Her Majesty the Queen.  That's right folks, the thugs even turned up outside Buckingham Palace on Sunday chanting, strangely, "Boris is a wanker".

One of the hard left Labour MPs chomping at the bit to lecture us about racist Britain was Zarah Sultana.  On Sunday afternoon she criticised police tactics during the previous night's violence, but naturally failed to mention the 14 injured police officers or any of the missiles that had rained down on them.  That tweet followed on from one the previous day in which she shared legal advice to anyone who might be arrested over the course of the protests.  It's quite astonishing that a serving MP would do such a thing, but then we are talking about one of Corbyn's 2019 intake of loony lefty backbenchers.

On Monday Sultana was clearly anxious to get a question in during the Home Secretary's stint at the despatch box.  Excitedly rolling off her question she demanded a 'yes or no' answer from Priti Patel on the subject of slavers' statues.  What she got was, er, rinsed.  Patel was on top form as she pointed out that it was Labour councils who were responsible for many of the statues Sultana was ranting about.  Sultana's face was a picture, watch below.

Priti was steadfast in her message to the criminals who rioted over the weekend and refused to back down over earlier comments she made about the felling of the Colston statue in Bristol.  Another of the 2019 Labour intake also attempted to take her on and like Sultana was taught a Parliamentary lesson.  Florence Eshalomi asked if the Home Secretary understood the anger felt by the protesters about the 'structural inequality, discrimination and racism' in Britain.  This was the epic response she got...

This response was met with angry tweets from some Labour MPs, including none other than Sultana herself who tweeted: "I'm disgusted to hear the Home Secretary use her own experience of racism to silence criticism of the government".  Expressing similar disgust was Sultana's hard left colleague Nadia Whittome who accused Patel of using her "identity as an Asian person to silence a black person".  And yet Eshalomi was using her own ethnic identity and examples of racism just moments earlier in the very question she put to Priti Patel.  It's almost as if there's one rule for BAME Labour MPs and another rule for BAME Tories.

One of the reasons the left absolutely abhor Priti Patel and want her gone more than any other member of the cabinet is because of the colour of her skin.  The left have long assumed that ethnic minorities 'belong' to them.  It's the key reason the left is so invested in the BLM movement in the first place.  Minorities - in this case black youths - are a tool with which to attack the state.  If that state can be presented as a hideously white structure devoid of BAME representation all the better to drive home that division.  However, what we have now in government is the most diverse cabinet in British history and Labour hate it.  At the forefront is a strong Asian woman and not only that, but a prominent figure in the Leave campaign too, adding to the bitterness on the opposition benches.

Long live Priti Patel.