The ban was a result of the action of a few fans of an Israeli football club, not something the Jewish people as a whole did, and therefore it is not Jewish people as a whole who have been banned from the game, but specifically Maccabi Tel Aviv fans. Yet Starmer is conflating that select group of people with the larger Jewish diaspora…
Starmer should not be involved in this. He is making a mistake.
Decision making should be devolved to those on the ground. If the police recommendation is to keep Tel Aviv fans out, go with the recommendation! There are good grounds, reasonable grounds that are not anti semitic, for their stance.
Honestly, this sounds like some kind of conspiracy theory rubbish.
It’s probably far more likely that those organisations/people chose to work with him or donate to his campaigns based on the positions that he already held.
Starmer has inherited a difficult situation after the Tory idiots ruined the country, but still, come on… in order to be a good PM, you need a bit of common sense. Unfortunately, he seems totally devoid of it.
Looking at how he behaves, one would have to think that he’s either an idiot, or a secret Reform agent. As it stands, he’s opening up a royal avenue for them for the next elections. Such a shame!
It would help massively if people who are concerned/impacted by the effects of immigration on the scale the UK has seen over the last 20 years weren’t immediately dismissed as racists, bigots, stupid, uneducated, ill-informed or any of the other slurs that are thrown their way the minute they open their mouths.
It basically stops any discussion in it’s tracks. People just stay out of it.
A prime example is a football forum like this one. I have noticed the same thing on other clubs’ forums. The over-riding opinion on this forum is that all immigrants should be welcomed regardless of how they arrived here, regardless of whether we actually know who they are and where they are from, regardless of the effect it has on the local community in terms of housing, education, healthcare, schooling, crime, poverty etc. Anyone going against the grain is immediately labelled ignorant, brainwashed and of course racist.
And yet Reform would romp home if a general election was called tomorrow. The vast majority of people I speak to are seriously unhappy with immigration levels. These are everyday, normal, tolerant, law-abiding and hard-working people. But it seems pretty obvious to me these people choose to stay out of discussions on sites like this because they know how they’ll be treated. I don’t believe for a minute that football fans are some sort of closed-shop with everyone singing from the same hymnbook but that’s how it comes across.
I’ve said many times on here I’m all for immigration in the right areas and in the right numbers and that remains the same. However, you only have to walk around certain areas of Liverpool, including the city centre, to see that it is totally out of control. The whole demographic of parts of the city is changing at a rapid rate and people have had enough. They didn’t get consulted on it and they didn’t vote for it, it has been imposed on them.
And please, anyone seeing fit to reply to this just keep any labels out of it. Address the issues raised. Accept there are people who are being affected in ways you are not. Accept there are people who quite simply don’t want change on the level we are seeing. It is the intolerance of the left towards people who have a differing viewpoint that is fuelling the division more than anything else.
My take on immigration is perspective and inertia. It happens. It is not new. It was always a thing and will always be a thing. The solution would be to have greater equality across the globe - it will not happen anytime soon. However, it is the key differential to resolve.
The West/developed world is embracing keeping the imbalance - it is not possible.
The irony of the shift to “right”/“my reality first” is to exacerbate the differential and feed the process.
As for Germany the absolute strongholds for the AfD are in regions with by far the lowest percentage of immigrants, numbers we would laugh at where I live.
There’s a big difference between being able to argue a legal case and dealing with political optics. I find Starmer rather politically naïve on that count.
The point I believe is more about letting the asylum & immigration system do its thing. Identify the merits of the individual’s case, supporting them while it is considered. Sending them on their way if they don’t have the right to be here.
The secondary points about the impact on the local community are more to do with resourcing decisions by the government (past and present). The two should be discussed separately.
This is more the result of Labour’s vote fracturing across a broader split of parties for a variety of reasons, while Reform cannibalises the conservative/ ‘right wing’ vote.
Again, this I think is linked with my first point above - the issue of immigration should be considered separately to the other points you immediately link with it. We’ve had labour shortages in key industries and an ageing population. Taking in people fleeing war and disasters as part of a global campaign so that other countries nearer the affected countries aren’t overwhelmed is necessary to keep those other countries doing what they do to support people needing it.
Liverpool is a draw in part I think because it has offices that are involved in making the asylum decisions. Those applying or waiting for decisions will often want to be nearby to interact with that. Furthermore, there is the cost issue where placing people in areas where the living costs are low have been prioritised. One reason for that is obviously to save money, but a secondary one is political.
There are perhaps two answers here - one is that this is how modern democracies work, you cant simply have a vote on everything. The second answer is that people more or less did have a say when voting on other issues such as Brexit or when choosing who to vote for at the general elections over the last 15 or so years.
I think that is the case for some of the areas in the UK - certainly was reported as such when the brexit vote was being analysed if I remember correctly.
The good faith aspect goes both ways though. And a lot of people show an absolute unwillingness to move their opinions in the face of facts, and where people instinctively go on immigration is really hard to have a good conversation about.
I’ve had conversations with people who stubbornly continue referring to people awaiting their asylum claims processed as ‘illegals’. It’s just simply untrue.
People believe that people should have claimed asylum in the first safe country they entered and it isn’t true. People believe that millions are entering the country on small boats and it isn’t true. People believe that immigrants are raping British women on an industrial scale, and it isn’t fucking true. People believe the NHS is on its knees because of immigrants, and it’s not only untrue, it’s actually the opposite. Immigrants are eating our swans? For fucks sake.
If we’re going to have a debate about immigration, I can’t just nod and smile at people just getting basic facts wrong and repeating the most awful, racist disinformation. There comes a point where you have to ask ‘why do you believe this’ and ‘why do you want to believe this’?
I don’t want to believe people are racist, but people’s opinions are being shaped, legitimised and dragged into the gutter by people who undoubtedly are.
Which steamed from the Maccabi fans attacking the Pro-Palestine protest and ripping down and burning Palestinian flags - the local aggression was merely defending their city from a bunch of hooligans looking to act a bunch of cunts. The Maccabi fans brought this on themselves.
If the Mersyside Police had intelligence recommend the banning of Roma fans, then I would back them as they work with police forces form across Europe to identify potential security risks - if the intelligence gained from that network said Roma travelling to Anfield was a very high risk - then I would be totally fine with them being banned if the evidence supported that decision.
This is a pickle the over application of this definition gets Jews and Zionists into quite a lot. I was listening to an argument the other week that made a really compelling case that by his own standards Netanyahu is anti-semitic
