Independent and socialist candidates who held Labour Party politicians to account in the 2024 general election wrote a joint letter on 30 July addressing the smear campaign against them. And The Canary spoke to several of these candidates individually to hear their thoughts on the issue.
Labour MPs should ‘hang their heads in shame’
Councillor and former MP for Kensington Emma Dent Coad told the Canary:
Anyone breaking the law during campaigning should be held to account.
However the incidents I’ve heard of constitute robust challenges not harassment. Faced with candidates supporting the deliberate extermination by UK backed IDF of Palestinian civilians, it is hardly surprising that those affected are angry.
Smearing those you don’t agree with is despicable, those Labour MPs should hang their heads in shame. ‘
David Lammy’s independent challenger Nandita Lal, meanwhile, told us:
The deliberate omission of context by mainstream media has profound implications for how the public perceives and responds to crises such as the Gaza Genocide and the climate crisis. Currently, we are completely failing in solving either crisis, and the mainstream media is complicit in this.
Client journalism coupled with an out of touch political class
Warrington North independent candidate Maddison Wheeldon insisted that:
This misdirection of labelling democratic scrutiny and accountability as bullying or intimidatory behaviour is a fundamental threat to our democracy, potentially giving further rise to fascism and authoritarianism.
We cannot allow elected officials to diminish the concerns and worries of a significant number of people in this country by demeaning and belittling their voices, instead choosing to self victimise and cry bully than take responsibility. The public deserve far better.
At a time when public trust is so low in the BBC and in politics in general, we need the media to respect and honour its role as an impartial means of understanding governmental policy and decisions to provide necessary and crucial scrutiny to hold power to account.
Instead, we seem to have client journalism at an all time high, simply working on behalf of their clients interests, manipulating and failing the public as a whole.
And Stratford and Bow candidate Fiona Lali pointed out that:
What angers Jonathan Ashworth and the mainstream media most, is not fictitious intimidatory campaigns, but the audacity that those outside of the political establishment and clique dared to stand against him, a would be minster, and win.
To talk of ‘intimidation’ when real violence and suffering is taking place in Gaza and Britain everyday shows how totally out of touch these people are. This contemptuous attitude will push the pendulum towards more left wing Independents at the next election, and less self-entitled Labour MPs.
Featured image via LBC – screengrab
