The Labour Party has become so polarised it’s lost not only its way but its very reason to exist.
The greatest threats Corbyn’s leadership posed to the British state was the possibility that he would appeal to common anti-war and pro-Palestine sentiments, and cohere them by articulating a kind of popular anti-imperialism. A western leader that would put people first, using the country’s vast resources for the common good.
This was a tantalisingly real possibility: we glimpsed it during the 2017 general election, when Corbyn responded to a terrorist attack in Manchester with a speech arguing that Britain’s illegal wars fed insecurity at home. Polling showed that a majority of the public agreed.
And in those few sentences lays the truth of the matter, Jeremy Corbyn threatened the establishment not only here in the UK but across the globe. The very idea that a leader of a western democracy and not just any democracy but that of the united kingdom, one of the oldest and most respected in the world, notwithstanding the fact it is also a G7 nation that could put its vast resources to use for the common good of all the people. Rebalancing the distribution of the nation’s wealth for the many, not the few, setting a precedence people in other democracies would then demand of their own leaders.
Corbyn’s plan to break the monopoly of capitalism over public ownership caused panic Public ownership of gas and electricity were destined to become a cherished aim of the Labour Party under any left wing leader. For years under privatisation, the swindling of the consumer has gone hand-in-hand with outrageous profit-taking by the corporate giants, to the loss of the public purse. Far from helping customers through keen competition, the main effect of energy privatisation has been – like austerity – a redistribution of wealth from the have-nots to the well-to-do.
Imagine, a leader of a modern western country who would turn round and say: “oppression is wrong, war is wrong, there is another way”, and mean it, that would scare them all to death.
This could never happen the establishment would not allow it and certainly the Labour Party would rather die fighting itself than allow a Left wing leader to become Prime minister.
This Leader of her majesty’s opposition is not there to challenge the establishment but to uphold the status quo.
Unfortunately, to stop this tide of change, the rigged system pushed back and released the weapons of mass division, just like a Pandora’s box all the evils of the political world have been realised but this time it’s too late to close the box, all hope for Labour has gone.
“Sometimes I regret being nice, apologizing when I didn’t do anything wrong, and for making unworthy people a priority in my life.” ― Nitya Prakash
Jeremy Corbyn had too much of a regard for people he was far too magnanimous to the coup plotters and its participants in 2016. His readiness to forgive the intentions of others and move on for the sake of the party was his downfall.
No one ever sees the dagger that strikes from behind. Only with hindsight can the victim understand how at every turn they were thwarted. In Jeremy Corbyn’s case, those right-wingers on his own front bench like Starmer played the long game, undermining Corbyn just a little at a time until eventually the Labour Party was placed into an unelectable position.
Sir Keir Starmer used using Brexit as both a vehicle to stop Corbyn and make Labour unelectable with is silly six tests spoken like some commandments from the mountain top along with the vote losing the second referendum designed to lose the democratic argument.
It was an effective strategy, simultaneously carrying Starmer to the leadership with his overtures to Remain camp giving them a Fallon hope of remaining within the EU. A position in which Starmer soon turned his back on once achieving the Leadership making an announcement of ‘Get Brexit done‘ therefore betraying the Remainers that rejoiced at his ascension, he also declared himself a Zionist placing himself firmly to the right of the party saying:
“I said it loud and clear — and meant it — that I support Zionism without qualification.”
Far from inheriting a political Party waiting to be unified Starmer’s authoritarian style of leadership is creating a division worthy of the reformation, the Labour movement Broadchurch for better or worst is about to split and its been a long time coming. Sir Keir Starmer now presides over the zombie corpse of a once great movement built on the sweat blood and tears of the working class only to die at the hands of a knight of the realm on a hill of deceit.
The Labour Party is a Zombie Party, it just does not know it.
The Labour Party have become so caught up in their civil war they offer no resistance to anyone least of all the Tories who have been left to dominate the political landscape. Starmer’s only response has been “I support the government”
The censorship imposed on members of the Labour Party is counter to everything the party once stood for: Micheal Foot once stated:
“Is the Labour Party to remain a democratic party in which the right of free criticism and free debate is not merely tolerated but encouraged?
Or are the rank and file of the party to be bludgeoned or cowed into an uncritical subservience towards the leadership?”
It seems that path has now been taken.
Labour no longer oppose either domestic or foreign oppression its only fight is internal and those that would use would fear and violence to obtain what they want are left free without condemnation. Its back to normal the establishment is upheld in accordance with the illusion, we call democracy.
This civil war conducted within the Labour Party has failed not only the oppressed Palestinians it so vehemently claimed to defend but the oppressed people of the united kingdom. The people it was founded to represent and defend to bring out from under the iron heel so heavily placed on the working class.
The truth is while I care deeply for all oppressed people around the world my solidarity and empathy does little good while we cannot provide and help those within our own community and the wider community of our nation. It is Labour’s outward-looking self that has failed the very people it was created to represent. The working class people of Britain.
Its core supporters no matter what race, creed or colour have been left with a half-hearted opposition, so caught up in its own failings and internal conflicts that it represents no one. The Labour Party of Keir Hardie has been killed by its polar opposite of Sir Keir Starmer.
Food banks are forgotten, the findings from the UN Special Rapporteur’s on extreme poverty and human rights has not gone away. Does Labour think universal credit is no longer a concern? Are evictions and poverty now solely the fight of local groups and councillors?
Families still struggle to pay the rent to place food in the bellies of their children but Starmer’s only promise is to root out anti-Semitism as if his words offer hope or full bellies. The Labour Party has become a toxic institution with cares for its self and the middle class that make it up. The millionaire grifters, barristers and lawyers living outside the lives of the people they claim to represent.
While writing this I am reminded it was at this point eighteen months ago I found my self suspended from the Labour Party after creating a similar article in 2018 daring to suggest that British politics was heading into a Rabbit hole of antisemitism and islamophobia that would see it neglecting the working-class struggle. My suspension is still ongoing and like all Labour Party members with administrative suspensions, we are forbidden to talk about or relate the facts to others but let’s face it, at this point I’ve crossed the Rubicon and the civil war is in full swing and the overwhelming feeling I have for the party that under Corbyn gave me so much hope is one of utter disappointment.
The fact is my predictions and warnings have transpired. The Labour Party is not only ripping itself apart over Brexit but continues to do so over religion. Today SqwarkBox published the report by the Labour Muslim Network (LMN) it has exposed the hideous extent of Islamophobia in the Labour party – and it is clear the problem is generated by the right of the party.
While Jeremy Corbyn was hugely popular among Muslim communities, the report shows that Muslim members have little faith in Sir Keir Starmer to set things right, with well over half saying they don’t trust him to tackle the issue.
The divide is so pronounced it’s show in the result of the NCE elections
The NEC elections placed Luke Akehurst polling highest. A self proclaimed Zionist and Iraq war apologist who once tweeted his pride at the Iraqi war.
In the 2018 Labour NEC elections, 293,000 votes were cast. In this year’s it was 135,000. You suspect a lot of members have cancelled direct debits and this is yet to really feed through. It’s down by more than half.
The ‘Labour to Win’ ticket consisted of candidates who pledged loyalty to Sir Keir Starmer, and who want to see the party move further from the Corbyn era.
They won three seats in the NEC election.
Their most prominent candidate, Luke Akehurst, topped the NEC poll overall.
He runs Labour First, a group of “moderate” Labour members whose aim is to ensure “the party is kept safe from the organised hard left”.
A further seat was taken by Ann Black, who was backed by the “soft-left” Open Labour group.
She had previously fallen foul of some on the Left who felt she hadn’t been sufficiently loyal to Jeremy Corbyn, though she disputes this.
No one faction gained a clean sweep of seats because the voting system changed from the traditional ‘first past the post’ winner-takes-all method to a more proportional system.
Starmer ally Carwyn Jones – the former first minister of Wales – won election as the Welsh representative.
A Left candidate – Ellen Morrison – won the seat elected by members with a disability by a very narrow majority.
The two representatives of Labour councillors – who are largely supportive of Starmer – retained their seats.
I feel it is a crying shame that most people use the Palestinian cause to make a statement about themselves rather than help the people of Palestine. Fundraising for ventilators and PPE would go a long way. Gaza’s struggle against the coronavirus pandemic has been decimated by Israel’s 13-year blockade that has caused severe shortages of medicine and equipment a little real help here would go a long way. Help here LINK
Do we have an alternative?
Of course, there are always other party’s or movements ready to fill the vacuum George Galloways workers Party is still accelerating, picking up the socialist and the Left as they leave the Labour party. However, unfortunately, where Chris Williamson is a true socialist and his intentions are noble the so-called Resistance Movement seems to be even more caught up in the continued fight over Antisemitism with every other show on Resistance TV or tweet about the subject. It seems like a talking shop trapped in the ever-decreasing spiral of talk of Labour AS. It has become a political waiting room, rather than a meaningful push aginst the rigged system the Labour movement was created to fight.
Until there is a real Left alternative the fact is people will always fall back on their basic instincts and like the primates we once were they will not let go of one branch till they firm hold of another. At this point, that other branch is not within reach for the many.
Personally, I want to see a party prepared to break monopoly capitalism and reclaim what is ours, a party to give everyone an equal opportunity in life through education and resources publicly owned we can fall back on at any time in our lives to retrain and learn vocationally as well as academically. A Party that is prepared to make real changes not just poll for sound bites. Michael Foot may well have lost his election chances but sometimes what he had to say resonates within the core of every Lefty within the movement.
“We are not here in this world to find elegant solutions, pregnant with initiative, or to serve the ways and modes of profitable progress.
No, we are here to provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and crippled than ourselves.
That is our only certain good and great purpose on earth, and if you ask me about those insoluble economic problems that may arise if the top is deprived of their initiative, I would answer ‘To hell with them.’ The top is greedy and mean and will always find a way to take care of themselves. They always do. -Michael Foot.
While we are in the midst of this attack on our society with the coronavirus pandemic we must remember that during the midst of the second world war The Beveridge Report, officially entitled Social Insurance and Allied Services was a government report, published in November 1942, influential in the founding of the welfare state in the United Kingdom. There is no excuse to sideline the working class struggle and the fight for the liberation of all people out of poverty.
It was drafted by the Liberal economist William Beveridge, who proposed widespread reforms to the system of social welfare to address what he identified as “five giants on the road of reconstruction”: “Want… Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness”. Published in the midst of World War II, the report promised rewards for everyone’s sacrifices. Overwhelmingly popular with the public, it formed the basis for the post-war reforms known as the Welfare State, which include the expansion of National Insurance and the creation of the National Health Service.
“The British Welfare State was founded in 1945, to provide people with a safety net ‘from the cradle to the grave.’ Dickens identified the reality of Poverty many years before that. He acknowledged that Poverty was not the fault of the people who endured it, but rather, the responsibility of the establishment, including the government. Indeed, I daresay that he would be of the same view today – that Poverty is the fault of the government.” Jennifer Johnstone on Charles Dickens. How can we fail to agree?
We need to replace capitalism with a true human community.
Two flames burning in the human heart: Now we must take those flames and rebuild within the unions
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