This week, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan announced London will be welcoming 150 families from Afghanistan. To each and every family coming to Tooting - you are so welcome here. Want to help those arriving from Afghanistan? Here is what you can do: Little Village: Urgently in need of warm baby clothes, 9 months - 2 years and 4 - 6 years (specifically pyjamas, snow suits, jumpers and coats). Moses baskets, muslins, small toys and activity packs also needed. Regular collections are being held at Chancery Mews, SW17 7TD and Chillerton Road, SW17 9BE. Please do check their Facebook page for more information. Tooting Community Kitchen: Urgently in need of jogging bottoms and jeans in sizes 26-34 waist, jumpers, t-shirts, coats and trainers in sizes 38-45. Donations can be dropped off Friday 9-1pm and Saturday 3-5pm at Price Close (entrance at 104 Upper Tooting Road). I was also pleased to write to the Leader of Wandsworth Council alongside my colleagues, Fleur Anderson, MP for Putney, and Marshsa De Cordova, MP for Battersea, to call on Wandsworth Council to welcome in refugees from Afghanistan and provide them with a safe place to live. The situation which has unfolded in Afghanistan is shocking and terribly regrettable. It is simply not good enough for world leaders to say the speed of the Taliban advance took them by surprise, when many have been warning of this for months. There has either been a monumental failing of our intelligence services or an unacceptable lack of transparency. Either way the Government has reacted too late. In 2010, I worked (pictured) as a Humanitarian Aid Doctor in the North West Frontier Province, on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, following the flood crisis. I met many people who had suffered unimaginable pain at the hands of the Taliban. I am continuing to receive a high volume of emails from local residents concerned about loved ones in Afghanistan. Myself and my team are working to respond as quickly as possible. If you are worried about someone, please do not hesitate to get in touch by emailing their details to rosena@drrosena.co.uk. Please include the following information so I can take action quickly:
We must not allow history to repeat itself. Careless leadership from the Prime Minister enabled this tragedy to happen on his watch, while he had taken his eye off the ball. The world must not turn its back on the Afghan people. Following the recall of Parliament on Wednesday, I remain in close contact with my colleagues in the Shadow Foreign Team and will continue to be on hand to support local residents through this. Former Labour MEP SEB DANCE explains why he is supporting Rosena Allin-Khan in the Labour deputy leadership race.
Britain has left the EU. As a former Labour Member of the European Parliament, as a Remainer, and as a proud pro-European, that’s still not an easy thing for me to say – but it’s the reality. There is no longer a campaign to remain. That doesn’t mean that Boris Johnson’s famous lie of “get Brexit done” has suddenly come true. The ongoing negotiations with the EU will continue to define our country’s future for years to come. Perhaps one day the fight to join the EU will come. How soon that time comes depends on what we do next. Pro-Europeans must now fight for a close relationship between the UK and our friends in the EU and ongoing rights for UK citizens. The Labour Party must play a crucial role in that fight. That’s why I’m supporting Doctor Rosena Allin-Khan to become the next deputy leader of Labour. Rosena was elected as the MP for Tooting the week before the EU referendum in 2016. Despite holding a shadow frontbench position, she refused to compromise on her principles or on the promises she’d made to her community, so she broke the whip and voted against triggering Article 50. Considering the shambles that followed Theresa May’s early triggering of Article 50, this has been conclusively demonstrated as the right decision. Rosena was also the first shadow frontbench minister to come out publicly and call for a People’s Vote. This was an incredibly brave thing to do, at a time when Labour MPs and shadow ministers were being pressured not to speak out against the leadership’s position on Brexit. At a time when the leadership of Labour needed a firm push in the right direction, Rosena was the one brave enough to stand up and do it. There are some voices in the Labour Party, who’ll try to convince you that Brexit was the only reason for Labour’s failure at the last general election – that backing a public vote cost us seats in the so-called ‘Red Wall’. But this analysis is deeply misleading, and is simply not supported by the facts. Yes, of course Brexit was a divisive issue, for Labour as much as for anyone else. The reality however, is that the overwhelming majority of Labour voters, members and supporters voted Remain, wanted us to stay in the EU and wanted a public vote on Brexit. That fact is as true of Labour voters in Redcar, Grimsby or Wakefield as it is of Labour voters in Oxford, Islington or Bristol – Labour’s share of the vote went down in 98% of all seats. Labour’s position on Brexit was fatally undermined not because supporting a public vote was the wrong position for our voters, but because the leadership of the party took so long to get to that position. We sat in the middle of the road on the biggest issue of our time and neither side trusted us. We lost trust among all our communities. Rosena knows this – she won’t stop standing up for our internationalist values. I joined the Labour Party because I believe in internationalism and solidarity across borders. So does Rosena. That’s why she’s worked across the world in conflict and disaster zones as a humanitarian doctor, and why she still does shifts in her local hospital as an A&E doctor alongside her work as an MP. So if you are like me – a proud pro-European, an internationalist and a Labour supporter – and if you want someone as deputy leader who’ll stand up for those values, and who’ll fight for our country to maintain the closest possible relationship with the EU, protecting our workers’ rights, our environmental protections, our food standards, our NHS, and most importantly the rights of EU citizens living in the UK – then vote for Doctor Rosena. Together, let’s take Labour forward. Rosena Allin-Khan kicks off Labour deputy leader campaign in Putney with ‘fire in her belly’
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan launched her deputy Labour leadership campaign in Putney last night. The campaign, held in the ballroom of the Star & Garter pub, brought together an eclectic crowd, including some young first-time voters. Tooting MP Dr Allin-Khan, who is running with the slogan ‘Taking Labour Forward’, is a qualified A&E front-line doctor and has provided humanitarian aid to refugees in Syria. Describing her determination to be the next deputy leader, she said: “Expertise in building trust in communities and shared life experience has put fire in my belly to achieve for others.” She set out her ‘internationalist’ vision of Britain’s future after Brexit and brought attention to the importance of social care reform, the significance of a grassroots revival and updating technology within the Labour Party. Labour’s Putney MP Fleur Anderson said that Dr Allin-Khan would be a ‘campaigner-in-chief’ and not a ‘leader-in-waiting’ if elected as deputy leader in a PoliticsHome article last week. The Musician’s Union has given their endorsement to Dr Allin-Khan and to Sir Keir Starmer for leader. Voting takes place from February 24 to April 2 and results will be announced on the April 4. Labour needs to become a party of progressive internationalism once againLast Tuesday, a boat capsized and sank in the Bay of Bengal. There were 138 Rohingya refugees crammed on the boat, fleeing from camps in Bangladesh. At least 15 bodies were found, including four children, with 50 more missing.
I’ve been campaigning for the rights of the Rohingya since the recent crisis unfolded in 2017. I’ve been involved in humanitarian matters long before entering politics and standing to be Labour deputy leader. Stories such as those of the Rohingya do not often have a light shined upon them here in the UK. They happen far away and it feels as if they’re outside of our control. The UK has a proud history of humanitarian assistance and we must ensure that this continues. We must never allow ourselves to turn a blind eye. Every single human life has equal value, no matter where that person was born, what language they speak or what they look like. Humanity has no borders. This isn’t just something I believe in principle — I act on it. My work as a humanitarian doctor has taken me to the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, where grieving mothers told me accounts of their babies being ripped from their arms and murdered before their eyes. The guilt of coming home to my own three- and five-year-olds left me unable to sleep at night. Why should their lives be of more value to the world than those of the Rohingya children who are slaughtered without a dignified burial? I have seen how human life is not valued equally around the world. It lit a fire in my belly to continue fighting such injustice, no matter where it takes place. At the very heart of my Labour principles is internationalism. I believe this spirit of internationalism must drive everything we do as a party. We must always stand in unwavering opposition to any effort to restrict freedoms, whether here or globally. We’ve seen where this mentality leads — whether it is the tragedy of Windrush, the cruelty of detention centres like Yarl’s Wood, or the inhumanity of a government that votes against protection for vulnerable child refugees. Now is the time for all of us who believe in progressive, internationalist values to fight back. It is our duty to ensure that the Rohingya and other victims are not forgotten by the world. One of the reasons I decided to stand to become the next deputy leader of Labour is because I believe our party has a unique chance to become a global beacon of internationalism, as it has been before. We have arguably the largest grassroots membership of any political party in Europe. If we are able to unite behind a truly internationalist vision for our party and our country, we could be a force for change on a global scale. We have a wonderful society, which has welcomed so many people from across the world, but this government’s hostile environment is diminishing hope — hope for a brighter future, hope for a tolerant society. I first entered politics in order to shed light on humanitarian efforts around the world and give a voice to the voiceless. I still believe we can, and I want to help rebuild the Labour Party so that it becomes a powerful force for good. As a party we need to rebuild trust with our communities, with the British people and the international community. Let’s do this together. Rosena Allin-Khan is Labour MP for Tooting and candidate for the deputy leadership Brexit Might Be Done But The Fight Against Boris Johnson's Destruction Must ContinueAlthough the Labour party is in a difficult place right now, we must make sure it is at the forefront of the fightback.
When the UK leaves the EU this Friday, 31 January 2020, after 47 years of membership, it will be a sombre day for many of us. For others, it will be a day of celebration. For most people, I suspect they will simply hope we can now move on from talking about Brexit at the expense of everything else. As someone who campaigned with all my heart to stay in the EU, and as the first person on Labour’s front bench to publicly call for a People’s Vote on the final Brexit deal, I am desperately sad to see us leaving our friends and allies in Europe. But we are leaving. The disastrous result of the General Election has settled that. This is no longer an argument about Leave or Remain, it’s about what kind of future we want for our country and for our children. That’s where the new fight begins. Boris Johnson wants to pretend he’s now “Got Brexit Done”, and we no longer need to worry about the details. He wants us to simply trust him to sort it all out. Well, I don’t trust him. Neither should you. He talks about “Global Britain” whilst turning his back on vulnerable child refugees. He talks about “Taking Back Control” while reducing parliament’s ability to scrutinise his decisions. He talks about attracting “Global Talent” to the UK while creating huge distress and uncertainty for EU citizens, many of whom have been here for years and who have made their lives in this country. The fight for our internationalist values starts now. It will be long, and it will be difficult, because Boris Johnson has a large majority – but that’s why it’s so important. When it feels like hope is lost, that’s when those of us who believe in progressive values and internationalism need to stand up and fight. If we don’t, no-one else is going to do it for us. We need to stand up and fight for our hard-won workers’ rights. We need to stand up and fight for our environmental protections. Most importantly, we need to stand up and fight for the rights of EU citizens living in this country. They are our friends, our neighbours, our colleagues, our family. I work side-by-side with many of them in the NHS, when I work shifts as a doctor in my local A&E department. Under the draconian new immigration laws being bandied around by this government, my own Polish mother might not have been able to move to this country and make a life for herself. Although the Labour party is in a difficult place right now, we must make sure it is at the forefront of the fightback. That’s one of the main reasons I am running to become the next Deputy Leader. We have huge organisational strength through our membership, through our links with the trade unions and through our MPs and councillors embedded in their local communities. Now is the time to deploy those strengths to maximum effect, to hold the Government to account and ensure that we fight back against every attempt to undercut our rights and freedoms at work, every attempt to weaken our environmental safeguards, every attempt to inject privatisation into our National Health Service. The slogan “Get Brexit Done” might have helped win the election for Boris Johnson, but for those of us who stand against his destructive vision for the future of our country, this fight isn’t done. It’s just getting started. |
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