Who Is Andrew Feinstein?

(And why should the people of North Kent hear what he has to say?)

by

Christopher James Stone

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Andrew Feinstein is a Jewish South African politician, currently resident in Holborn and St. Pancras, Keir Starmer’s constituency. He stood against Starmer at the last election, gaining 7,312 votes (18.9%) and coming second, making Starmer, according to Feinstein, “the first British Prime Minister in electoral history to enter 10 Downing Street having seen his majority reduced”. In fact he got less votes in 2024 (18,884) than he did when Jeremy Corbyn was leader in 2017 (30,509) and 2019 (36,641). Despite the overwhelming parliamentary majority that the Labour Party now enjoys – due entirely to the vicissitudes of the grossly skewed First Past the Post electoral system – it too scored less votes under Starmer than it did under his predecessor, making the current Labour government a fraud.

But why should that matter to the people of Canterbury, Whitstable and Herne Bay?

Firstly because it shows that Starmer got into power under false pretences. He did not gain power because he was popular, but merely because he was marginally less unpopular than the previous government, which had 14 years of power, and which is generally understood to be the most venal, the most corrupt in British political history. It was the Conservative Party who lost the confidence of the British people, not the Labour Party who gained it. Remember this every time Starmer passes an unpopular law and cites his majority as his mandate. It is a false majority. It is a false mandate.

Secondly because Feinstein represents everything that Starmer is not. Feinstein is honest. Starmer is not. Feinstein is incorruptible. Starmer is corrupt. Feinstein tells the truth. Starmer is a serial liar. Feinstein is an anti-apartheid activist. He sat in the South African parliament under his mentor, Nelson Mandela. Starmer is a supporter of the vicious apartheid regime of Israel, and continues to supply it with vital logistical support, allowing the British air force base in Cyprus to be used to fly surveillance flights over Gaza, so that the Israelis can pick out their latest child victims.

If anyone knows what apartheid is, it is Feinstein, not only because he was brought up in South Africa, and saw with his own eyes what a racist government looks like, but also because he is the son of holocaust survivors, who experienced first hand the horrors of the Nazi genocide. Many members of his mother’s family were murdered in Auschwitz concentration camp and Theresienstadt, whilst she herself hid in Vienna. In South Africa she became an anti-apartheid activist, and young Andrew followed in her footsteps. He joined the then-outlawed African National Congress (ANC) in his late teens, finally becoming an MP in 1994.

Meanwhile Starmer has blocked Nelson Mandela’s grandson from entering Britain because of his pro-Palestinian stance.

Feinstein introduced the first ever motion on the Holocaust in South African parliamentary history. He stated that previous suffering – by Afrikaners at the hands of the British, or of Jews by the Nazis – in no way justified the brutal oppression of Black South Africans by Afrikaners or Palestinians by Israeli Jews.

In 2001 Feinstein resigned his seat in protest at the ANC’s refusal to investigate corruption and bribery allegations regarding the South African Arms Deal – a major defence procurement programme undertaken to re-equip the South African armed forces for the post-apartheid era. After this Feinstein moved to London where he became the Executive Director of the not-for-profit Shadow World Investigations, whose stated purpose is to investigate “cases of grand corruption, corporate malfeasance and militarism, predominantly but not exclusively in the global arms trade.”

Compare this to Starmer, whose virtual first act on becoming Prime Minister was to promise £3 billion a year to Ukraine in military support “for as long as it takes”. As long as it takes for what, exactly? As long as it takes to win an unwinnable war, which is killing Ukrainians in unprecedented numbers, while funnelling British taxpayers money to the arms industry: the only winner in this corrupt game of Military Snakes and Ladders, where the snakes are the war-profiteers, taking money from pensioners pockets, and the ladders are the corrupt politicians like Starmer, taking bungs from billionaires to pay for smart suits and accessories so that they can look the part in their summit meetings with the trans-global mafia that calls itself “the International Community”.

There is a precedent, for all of this, of course. Tony Blair entered parliament as a merely wealthy young lawyer, but left it to become the richest ex-Prime Minister in history, with a network of consultancies, properties and secret investments in dictatorships and authoritarian regimes around the world. Starmer is Blair’s acolyte, no doubt hoping to follow in his footsteps, but while Blair was clever, and could read the public mood, Starmer is just plain stupid and puts one wrong foot after another (and both of them in his mouth). Coincidentally, that £3 billion a year, which he has promised to Ukraine – every year, for as long as it takes – is the same amount as the Winter fuel allowance would have cost, which means we are killing people in two parts of the world at the same time: Ukrainian kids press-ganged into the army to serve as canon-fodder for the war-industry, and British pensioners, freezing to death in unheated homes while fuel prices reach unprecedented levels due to that exact same war.

The Shadow World

Feinstein’s book The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade, is an investigation into the global arms industry. It was published in the UK by Penguin in 2011 and 2012. The Washington Post described the book as “A comprehensive treatment of the arms trade, possibly the most complete account ever written.” Paul Rogers in The Independent said: “one thing that has been missing has been a comprehensive book for the more general reader, along the lines of Anthony Sampson’s The Arms Bazaar, back in the late 1970s. Andrew Feinstein’s The Shadow World does just this, and in some ways it is even better than Sampson’s influential volume. What is particularly useful is the very unusual combination of a thoroughly readable book that also provides a quite extraordinary range of sources – some 2,500 footnotes in all.” Feinstein states “that the trade in weapons accounts for around 40% of all corruption in all world trade The…trade in weapons is extremely closely tied into the mechanics of government. The defence manufacturers, those who make the weapons, are closely tied in to governments, to militaries, to intelligence agencies and crucially to political parties.”

So Feinstein is a campaigner against the arms trade, while Starmer is an enabler of it. Feinstein resigned because of corruption, while Starmer wallows in it. Feinstein risked imprisonment and torture to oppose apartheid, while Starmer offers it logistical and material support. Feinstein knows Starmer deeply, being his nemesis as well as his constituent. If anyone can bring Starmer down it is Feinstein. I can’t wait till the next election.

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Meeting

Hybrid meeting: Tuesday 29^th October at 7.30pm at Friend’s Meeting House, 6 The Friar’s, Canterbury, CT1 2AS. The title is ‘Fighting for Peace’. To get Zoom link, and for all other information, please contact us on:

stopthewarcanterbury@gmail.com

Also speaking: Shabbir Lakha:

While studying at the University of Kent, Shabbir Lakha was active in the Palestine Society and was a member of its committee. He was a co-organiser of the first Israeli Apartheid Week at the University and he organised the first demo for Palestine in Canterbury. Currently he is a leading member of Stop the War, a member of ‘Counterfire’ and an activist in the ‘The People’s Assembly’. Shabbir has spoken at previous local Stop the War meetings with great success.

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Canterbury and Whitstable Stop the War Public Meeting

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About CJ Stone

CJ Stone is an author, columnist and feature writer. He has written seven books, and columns and articles for many newspapers and magazines.

Read more of CJ Stone’s work here, here and here.

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