General British politics discussion thread

What do you think either of these people has said that is untrue and problematic?

Well I don't know Cenk (bar he seems one of an increasing number of social media edgelords we can all do without) but Hasan Piker has

• Expressed support for Hamas (a proscribed organisation)
• Expressed support for Hezbollah (a proscribed organisation)
• Expressed support for the Russian invasion of Crimea

Those alone seem justifiable reason for not providing him a visa, much like the UK did to the 11 people who wanted to attend to Tommy Robinson rally

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8r8vgnn655o

The UK has never had outright free speech, and whether you agree with that or not, that restriction falls upon both the right and the left when they stray into extremism.

Lebanon is under attack from Hezbollah as well as Israel. They are an evil terrorist organisation (who, lest we forget, recently murdered an Irish soldier), that the Lebanese govt and the vast majority of people want nothing to do with, and you don't get to give them a free pass cause Israel don't like them. Hezbollah are not "Lebanon defending themselves" anymore than the IRA were Ireland doing so.

The lengths people will go to defend utterly abominable people just cause they are enemies of Israel will never cease to amaze me, but they are legitimately classed as terrorists and those supporting them can very fairly not be allowed access to the country.

Huge numbers of people vocally critical of Israel are allowed into the UK every day. Not everything is about your little pet peeve (or conspiracy theory).

Also

United Kingdom: Prime Minister Keir Starmer's spokesperson said that the British government respects the independence of the International Criminal Court and indicated that Netanyahu would face arrest if he entered the United Kingdom.

I note you didn't answer the questions.

Because they were irrelevant.

I have never defended Israel and have no problem with people taking geopolitical action against them. I take issue with someone who supports terrorist organisations who quite clearly, beyond anything else, also repress and murder their own people (and, again, our own soldiers) just cause they also try to kill Israelis as well.

And them exerting influence on participants within foreign governments, is not a conspiracy but a demonstrable fact. Another thing that some people refuse to acknowledge.

Every single country on the planet exerts influence on foreign governments (we do it with abandon). The Conspiracy theory is that they control foreign governments.

Your problem is that you consider anybody who is on the side of the Palestinians (or who at least professes to be so) to be beyond reproach and that any action taken against them must be for no other reason than malign influence of Israel. Piker is not being let in cause he is a pretty **** person with a plethora of questionable to downright awful views. You can argue that the UK should not block people from entering because of this, but then you should have an issue with the 11 people denied entry who wanted to attend the Robinson rally.

And again, your conspiracy theory just wildly fails to take account of measures such as this:

Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich will both be banned from entering the UK and will have any assets in the UK frozen as part of the measures announced by the foreign secretary.

They absolutely are not. You cant just deem something irrelevant because you don't like what answering it would cause you to think about. '

Lebanon would be justified and righteous to defend itself against Israel. That has nothing to do with Hezbollah being a terrorist organisation who murder, among others, young Irish soldiers. Hezbollah are every bit as much the enemy of Lebanon as Israel. So yes, it is irrelevant.

You can keep calling it a conspiracy theory, it makes me laugh because we both know that we're both around these topics long enough to understand what is really happening. The UK banning the odd participant from Israel is not much more than a goalkeeper who has been paid to throw a game making the odd save so it doesn't look too obvious.

This is utterly deluded. The number of "critics" of Israel who have been banned is miniscule and overlaps entirely with those who also support proscribed terrorist organisations (and not even all of them).

Every time this comes up people just completely ignore the frequent people on the far right who are also subject to the same thing. It is extremism that is being rejected. Is it completely consistent? No, but that will come with the vagaries of these things being decided by elected officials.

The idea that Hasan Piker is a poor innocent podcaster whose only "crime" is criticising Israel is utter nonsense.

He has shown support for multiple proscribed organisations as I already said - though not a crime perfectly reasonable to deny a visa. Are you equally as outraged with the 11 people banned from coming to support Robinson?