Right, so this weekend has been full of news about another Tory defection to Labour, Keir Starmer once again throwing his arms wide open to welcome another rancid right wing Tory to his Labour Party, they do seem to be such a good fit these days after all. No checks, no nothing, just straight no matter what they might have said or what they might have done or indeed what they’ve voted on in the past. Where left wingers fail to get selected for liking the Foo fighters, or liking a tweet once upon a time by the Green Party, being a Tory apparently doesn’t preclude you in any way of joining his Labour Party as an MP, but there’s another less spoken about angle to this, and that is the Israeli ties that this Tory MP has, that perhaps earned him his free pass in the Party of Zionist with out qualification Keir Starmer, so by all means lets talk about newly minted Labour MP, the Tory defector Dr Dan Poulter, who’s politics in no small part make him a good fit for what is now a Tory B Team, but also a Party likely more pro Israel than the one he just left.
Right, so Tory MP for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich MP Dr Dan Poulter has defected to Starmer’s Labour, and exactly as happened when Christian Wakeford defected to Labour from the Tories a couple of years ago, Keir Starmer opened his arms, crowed to high heaven about such a coup, that even Tories are now choosing Labour as if this is some kind of great win, when actually it should horrify naturally Labour voting members of the public, not to mention those members of the party who actually care what the party stand for and not just about winning for the sake of winning as seems to be Starmer’s strategy, not quite knowing what he’ll do when he gets there, but his ambition as we already know far surpasses any political ability he might have. If Tories are welcome in the Labour Party, then it is no longer the Labour Party. End of, find someone else to vote for. Starmer even went as far as issuing a statement saying:
‘It’s fantastic to welcome Dr Dan Poulter to today’s changed Labour Party.
My Party is back in the service of working people. Our mission is to grow the economy and rebuild our public services. I’m delighted that Dan will be helping us get the NHS back on it’s feet.
Across the country more and more people are switching to Labour because they know only this changed Labour Party can deliver the change Britain needs.
It’s time to end the Conservatives chaos, turn the page and get Britain’s future back. I’m delighted that Dan has decided to join us on this journey.’
Now I appreciate that might get some people’s blood pressure boiling, the immediate response to that being one of, you’ve written about Tory chaos, when you’ve literally just welcomed one of them into your ranks, no ifs, no buts, no equivocation, not to mention the changed party has been changed into the Tory Party B team, the plan to grow the economy is built on zero investment it seems and the NHS getting back on its feet apparently means more privatisation!
Making this even more pointless and vapid, the brazen politicisation of this move, is the fact that Poulter, despite defecting, is still going to stand down at the next General Election, it’s not like he’s jumped ship because he thinks he’s losing his seat, though this is the natural conclusion many people will jump to, such is what most people think of the Tories, but it shows Starmer has damaged his reputation in the eyes of Labour voters, for a one day headline. What is the point? Well he continues to chase Tory voters, they seem to be the only voters that matter to him, his natural long time supporting voters he expects to stay whatever he does, not necessarily true in favour of pulling in disaffected Tories who might back him now, but won’t in future. There’s also the small matter of Poulter being subject to a misconduct probe into inappropriate behaviour with women 6 years ago, but that hasn’t precluded him being auto welcomed into the parliamentary Labour Party. Meanwhile of course Diane Abbott remains suspended after a year, for sending the wrong copy of a letter to a newspaper. Starmer is a political pygmy, but that’s nothing most of us don’t already know either. But actually there could be more to this as I alluded to in my intro, which I’ll come onto in a moment.
Now Dan Poulter has of course made his excuses for leaving the Tories and he’s citing the NHS for this and what they are doing to it. He’s been an MP since 2010, 14 years, he therefore saw the Lansley Health Reforms introduced, the single most damaging assault on our NHS ever, as competition on steroids got introduced, already had been going on under the previous Labour government as we know and the Major government before that when stuff like PFI got introduced, which Blair ran with, Andrew Lansley picked up the baton when the Tories got back into power and saw even more health services outsourced to private companies and this is why we have a poorer health service despite so much more money being put into it as right wing media mouthpieces love to point out, but when more of it is going into the pockets of shareholders of outsourcing companies, it doesn’t tell the story of how much money is actually getting used as we might believe it is. This is a guy who resigned from the British Medical Association, the Doctors Trade Union in 2012, when they voted to strike over reforms because he didn’t believe doctors should ever go on strike. They should have to Dan, that’s the truth, yet you were part of the government at that point that drove them to it.
But now, after 14 years as an MP seeing the damage to the NHS his now former party had done throughout all of that time, he has now decided that NOW the Tories are a danger to the NHS and thinks Labour would be better, therefore he’s joined them for however long is left before the general Election. Has he ever met Wes Streeting? Streeting is of course Starmer’s weasel of a shadow Health Secretary and he has been creaming his pants at the thought of more outsourcing, more involvement of the private health sector, even though it has no capacity to do so. Everything Poulter has previously supported. In fact Streeting’s tweeted out response to Poulter’s defection makes me wonder if he had ever met Dr Dan, as he said:
‘Proud to welcome Dr Dan Poulter MP to the Labour Party. As a frontline clinician, he’s seen the damage that 14 years of Conservative government have done to our NHS. Delighted to have his support and look forward to working with him, especially on mental health reform.’
You might want to look at his voting record you absolute weapon.
But then there’s couple of reasons that actually roll into one concerning Dr Dan Poulter and why Wes Streeting might be fanboying him a bit at this point and with Labour wanting more private sector investment, that might pay off for Dr Dan too, so is this more the reason he’s defected?
Back in 2021 Poulter became a non executive director of a company group called Kanabo. Now Poulter as it happens, is a psychiatrist, that is his field of medicine, so joining Kanabo, which is a medicinal cannabis company, knowing the psychological effects of cannabis use, be this a medicinal company or not is an interesting one, but even more interesting is the fact that Kanabo are based in Israel, so is this as much part of the reason he has been welcomed into Labour, as vociferously pro Israel as they are then?
Well, Poulter resigned from Kanabo just over a year ago now according to Companies House, however combined with alleged links to the likes of the Jewish Chronicle, who’s funding is disturbingly mysterious and lobbying for Israeli interests – certainly for a good two years he had business links in that regard too, during which time he may have been lobbying, why else do politicians take up directorships, be they executive or non-executive after all? So there might be even more to his pro Israel proclivities than at first look. The question this brings to my mind is given how pro Israel Keir Starmer’s Labour is, did this preclude any skeletons in in Poulter’s closet, from the NHS policy he was part of, former health minister as he has been, to those Israel links and again it begs questions about what sort of government this changed for anything but the better Labour Party has for government going forwards? We know Poulter won’t be part of it, at least not in parliament, behind the scenes who knows? So this story right now is one of embarrassment for the Tories, but it should worry those backing Labour too, it should be making you think.
And if the NHS and Labour potentially continuing the destruction of it where the Tories leave off hasn’t got you thinking, perhaps U-turning on cleaning up our water and rivers will as instead of cleaning up, Starmer’s changed Labour just voted with the Tories to weaken the powers of our already weak water company watchdog OFWAT, so that they have to allow these polluters to prioritise profits over handing out fines. That economic growth Labour keeps bleating about? Seem there’s no limit to what they’ll do to deliver, including stink up our rivers even more and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.