Section:GDN 1J PaGe:4 Edition Date:190730 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 29/7/2019 18:02 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
- The Guardian Tuesday 30 July 2019
4 Opinion
Dear Jeremy,B
ritain is in a moment of peril, the
UK facing an existential crisis, a
combination of Brexit and Boris
Johnson reducing our country to a
global laughing stock. I see no sign that
you and your offi ce have grasped the
seriousness of what is happening, let
alone devised or begun to execute a
strategy to respond and defeat it. Whatever the denials,
Johnson has embarked on a crash and burn strategy
deliberately aimed at creating the circumstances for a
general election – setting up the EU, parliament and the
civil service , in a grotesque perversion of the truth, as
the reasons he has no option but to call one.
He rightly fears that if the people were given a straight
choice in a referendum , “no deal v no Brexit” , no Brexit
would win comfortably. But Johnson is confi dent that
in an election choice between him and you he would
win, and so get the mandate for the hardest form of
Brexit he would otherwise not legitimately be able to
claim. It means we could be weeks from an election in
which, on any current analysis , you are unlikely to be
in a position to win a majority.
The future of the country is a million times more
Alastair
Campbell
was Tony Blair’s
director of
communications;
this is an edited
version of an
article written
for The New
EuropeanKeith Stuart
is the author
of A Boy Made
of Blocksimportant than my membership of the Labour party.
But the above situation has developed at a time this
has been the subject of some public debate, as well as
intense personal refl ection.
Having spent several weeks trying without success
to have explained to me the process under which I was
expelled for voting Liberal Democrat in the European
elections, I fi nally informed the party I felt I had no
option but to start proceedings.
I was recently told that my case had been discussed
with senior members of your team and that they saw
two ways it might be addressed: 1. By a suspension of
my auto-exclusion under cover of the broader possible
review of the whole auto-exclusion system in relation
to anti semitism and other off ences. 2. That I make
some kind of public commitment to voting Labour at
the next election.
On the fi rst, I was not asking for a suspension of
my exclusion, but a reversal. On the second, whil e
with the one exception that led to my expulsion I have
voted Labour in every election in my life and would
prefer to do so for the rest of my days, I did not feel
comfortable about making a blanket commitment
when politics is in such fl ux, and my concern about
your stance on Brexit still acute.
With the distance provided by my being away
from the UK in Australia , I have refl ected deeply on
all of the above. And, with some sadness but absolute
certainty, I have reached the conclusion that I no longer
wish to stay in the party, even if I should be successful
in my appeal or legal challenge.
The culture you have helped to create has made the
party one that I feel no longer truly represents my values,
or the hopes I have for Britain. I see no strategy in place
that remotely meets the electoral or policy challenges
ahead. On the contrary, in so far as I ascertain a strategy
at all, it is one that looks more designed to lose.
I fear the country may already have decided that it
does not intend to make you prime minister. I do not
blame you for Brexit and the mess the UK is in. David
Cameron and Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Michael
Gove, Nigel Farage, and the UK media, they are all ahead
of you in the queue on that one. But I do believe your
half-hearted approach to the referendum campaign
three years ago had a role in leave winning. Your failure
to provide consistent leadership on the issue since then
has been a huge disappointment.I
do not know at this stage how I will vote at the
next election, and I have made this decision after
discussing it with nobody apart from family and
a small number of close personal friends. It is not
part of some bigger plan but a deeply personal
decision. What I do know is that this is indeed
a moment of real peril. To have any chance of
stopping Johnson and stopping a hard Brexit,
you need to step up now, and signal leadership of the
anti-Brexit, anti-populist cause – though it may be that
loss of trust in your approach to Brexit means it is too
late to win back many former supporters.
I have in the past, in various troubled eras for our
party, always argued that it is better to stay and fi ght
from the inside. My fear right now is that without
real change, there will be nothing left to fi ght for, and
that your place in history will be as the leader who
destroyed Labour as a serious political force capable
of winning power. With a government this bad,
pursuing a ruinous form of Brexit that will so damage
our economy, society and standing in the world, Labour
should be poised to win an election.
If the public could see that clear, credible and coherent
alternative across the despatch box, ably led, we would
be. That the country does not see it is, I am afraid, very
substantially down to you. I hope that one day I will
rejoin a party that genuinely appeals to the many not the
few, that can win again the kind of majority needed to
improve the life chances of those who will be damaged by
Brexit. In the meantime, please, for the sake of the party
and especially for the sake of the country, think beyond
the messenger, and think seriously about the message.Yours sincerely,
AlastairO
ver the weekend the best Fortnite
players in the world gathered at
Flushing Meadows in New York
to compete in the video game’s
fi rst World Cup Finals, for $30m
(£2.4m) in prize money. Tens of
thousands of spectators packed the
Arthur Ashe stadium, and many
millions more viewed online. But amid all the hype,
one depressing fact remained unavoidable: not one
of the 100 fi nalists was female.
Despite the growing popularity of professional
gaming throughout the world – the audience fi gures for
competitive gaming have reached 450 million this year- female competitors remain scarce. There are a few
high-profi le female pros, but you could watch a year
of big tournaments and count the number of female
competitors on the fi ngers of one hand.
This isn’t because women and girls aren’t playing
games. The Entertainment Software Association, the
US gaming trade body, has found that almost half of
gamers are women. The female audience for esports
is also growing – at almost a quarter – so why aren’t we
seeing that refl ected in the competitors?
Partly it’s down to the culture of the “hardcore”
game communities, which are dominated by young
men. Trash talk is standard, and it often crosses over
into misogynistic insults. When women do compete,
harassment often follows. In June, a 15-year-old girl
beat a top pro player at Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros:
she was then hounded online by his fans. And earlier
this year, Susie Kim, then manager of the London
Spitfi res team of pro Overwatch players, was asked if
women were good enough to compete. “Absolutely,”
she said. “But they’re just like, ‘It’s a headache. I don’t
want to be part of this at all.’ I don’t blame them.”
Female pros have even faced abuse from team mates.
In some ways the lack of female pro players refl ects
the imbalance in traditional sports. The same issues of
fewer opportunities, safety, social stigma and lack of
positive role models are at play. One solution has been
to set up female-only competitions. But this has been
controversial, with some seeing sex-based partitioning
as a means of sidelining women players: unlike in
traditional sports, there are no physical diff erences at
issue to justify gender segregation.
If things are to improve, the onus is on those
profi ting from the boom in the sector to attract
and employ more female gamers, to challenge the
sometimes sexist culture, and to create pay equality.
Fortnite is in a good position to lead on this. It already
has much larger female participation than most online
games, with women estimated by its creator, Epic
Games, to make up 35% of players.
As esports get bigger and bigger, it would be a tragic
waste to replicate the institutional biases that aff ect
traditional sport. Gaming is supposed to be a modern,
forward-looking industry – it should act like one.
Alastair
Campbell
Keith
Stuart
An open letter
to Corbyn: why
I have to quit
your par t y
For t n ite i s a
pro sport – so
where are all
the women?
Banksy’s 2019 Brexit mural, Dover PHOTOGRAPH: NEIL HALL/EPAРЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS