Chris Williamson For Leader?

The more I see of the leadership of Corbyn and McDonnell, the more I am coming to the conclusion that they are just not up to the job. They lack the necessary backbone. If they can't stand up to the Labour Right, and the pressure from the Tory media now, they will never stand up to the onslaught that would be inflicted if they formed a government. The only prominent Labour MP, in recent months who has consistently shown any backbone in standing up to the Right and the Tory media has been Chris Williamson. Its perhaps time to draft a new leadership campaign to elect Williamson as Leader, and to begin putting some steel into the backbone of the Party leadership. 

At the weekend, McDonnell appeared on the Marr Show, following the awful, ultra right Jonathan Sacks. Anyone with a brain who watched Sacks could see the obvious duplicitousness in what he said, which, of course, Marr allowed him to get away with. Sacks has hysterically described a statement made by Corbyn in 2013 as the worst statement since Enoch Powell's “Rivers of Blood” speech, fifty years ago. In fact, contrary to what Sacks claims there was nothing anti-Semitic in what Corbyn said, and nor would anyone who knows him expect there would be, because there is not an anti-Semitic bone in his body. But, listen to what Sacks himself says, in describing what Corbyn said. He told Marr, Corbyn had said that Zionists, who Sacks then said meant the vast majority of Jews in Britain, did not understand irony, despite having lived here for a long time. This he said was, therefore, code for two things. Firstly, because according to Sacks, the vast majority of Jews in Britain are Zionists, criticising Zionists or Zionism is the same thing as criticising Jews, and secondly, the statement that these Zionists, for which read Jews, do not understand irony is code for meaning, they are not really British, not really like us. 

Now, note the important thing here, the fundamental basis of Sacks' argument. It is that the vast majority of Jews in Britain are Zionists, and that, therefore, to criticise Zionists/Zionism is to criticise Jews. It directly equates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. It makes it, thereby impossible to be opposed to Zionism without being also an anti-Semite. It then makes it impossible to criticise the basis for the establishment of the state of Israel, which is Zionism, without being defined as an anti-Semite. Herein lies the significance of the IHRA definitions, and the significance of the attached examples. 

Corbyn, in his 2013 comments, attacked as anti-Semitic by Sacks, was criticising not Jews, but specific Zionists, and was careful to distinguish between Zionists and Jews. It is not Corbyn who has equated Zionists with Jews, but quite clearly Sacks! Yet, in the next breath, Sacks attacked Corbyn for equating Zionists with Jews! And, of course, Marr allowed him to get away with it. I say, of course, because the BBC has been one of the worst offenders in this matter. It has presented the issues and events in a totally one sided manner. Its biased reporting led Jewish Labour party members from Jewish Voice for Labour to organise a protest outside the BBC, on 7th August. Needless to say, the BBC has failed to even report that the protest took place. 

In his atrocious, hysterical attack on Corbyn, Sacks, like the three Jewish Tory newspapers accused him of representing an “existential threat” to British Jews, who they claimed were understandably preparing to flee Britain to save their lives, against the danger of a Corbyn government coming to power at the next election. In other words, any comparison of the genocidal attacks by the Israeli State on Palestinian Arabs with the racist policies of Nazi Germany is strictly forbidden, but Sacks and other Zionists are free to basically accuse Corbyn of being the equivalent of Hitler without the least shred of evidence, or even anything that approaches basic rationality! And, of course, the BBC dutifully pump out this garbage as though it was legitimate political discourse. 

So, what are we to think then, when McDonnell appears, on Marr, immediately afterwards, and says that he thinks that sacks is simply “mistaken” in his judgement of Corbyn? Either McDonnell in this statement is showing that politically he is one of the most naïve politicians in the history of British politics, or he is showing that he is simply duplicitous. Neither are a good look for a socialist politician. If McDonnell really is that naïve as to believe that Sacks is simply mistaken about Corbyn, rather than that he is well aware of what he is saying, and that it is designed for a specific political purpose of undermining Corbyn, then, if McDonnell remains in the Labour leadership, we are lost, and were Labour to form a government, it would lead to a terrible disaster. We cannot afford a government made up of such naïve politicians when faced with the ruthless ruling class opponents that will confront us. At best, it would lead to the rapid collapse of such a government, at worst it would lead to a scenario similar to that which faced Allende in Chile. 

But, of course, McDonnell is not that naïve. He knows that Sacks knew exactly what he was saying, and why he was saying it. Sacks does not really believe that Corbyn is an Anti-Semite, other than to the extent that Sacks himself, like all Zionists, is unable to separate out the term Zionist from Jew, and who believe that any Jews – like those of the Jewish Voice for Labour – who are not Zionists, are not really Jews! For Zionists, a Jew can no more be a Jew unless they are also a Zionist, than, if you believe all Scotsmen are defined by wearing a kilt, you can be a Scotsman if you don't wear a kilt. Sacks is not concerned that Corbyn is an Anti-Semite, but only that he is an anti-Zionist. What worries Zionists like Sacks is not that a Corbyn government would represent an “existential threat” to British Jews, but that it would no longer be the fawning supporter of the Israeli State that the current Tory government is, and that the Labour Right represents. 

What Zionists like Sacks oppose is the potential for a Corbyn Labour government to end the process whereby British governments limit themselves to ineffective criticism of the actions of the Israeli State, in the same way that they limit themselves to ineffectual criticisms of the Saudi State, whilst continuing to supply them with billions of pounds of weapons, and military instructors, so as to keep themselves in power, and thereby continue to implement their vile and oppressive policies. The whole of the debate over the IHRA examples, is about this very point, of the extent to which any criticism of the Israeli State can be limited within those same ineffectual bounds. What Zionists like Sacks oppose is that a Corbyn Labour government might take action the next time the Israeli state launches a vicious attack on Palestinians, or that a Corbyn Labour government might actually take seriously Britain's commitment to a Two-State solution, and begin to do something to bring it about, rather than simply sitting back whilst the Israeli State annexes yet more land on the West Bank, and passes racist laws depriving Israeli Arabs of basic human rights! 

McDonnell knows all that, and his response to Sacks is simply a duplicitous attempt to love-bomb his opponent. The same approach was taken in his response to the resignation of Frank Field. If as McDonnell said, the vile Field really is an “old mate” of his, then McDonell has fallen even further in my opinions, because anyone who has a vile creature like Field as a mate, an individual who going back more than thirty years has attempted to undermine socialist politics in the Labour Party, as he did with his campaign against Lol Duffy after he was selected as PPC, is themselves tainted by that relationship. We all know that Field with his extreme right-wing politics did not nominate Corbyn for leadership, because he wanted him to win. He did so, as with other right-wingers, only because their hubris made them believe that Corbyn had absolutely no chance of winning,a nd that he, and the Left with him would be humiliated by the election. For McDonell to suggest otherwise is dishonest, and disarms the left of the party in knowing which way is up. 

The trouble is that, precisely because McDonnell's approach of trying to love-bomb his opponents rather than honestly confront them over the political issues is dishonest, that is precisely how it appears to the public. He is trying to present the image of the jovial, friendly uncle, but the underlying dishonesty simply shines through as smarminess, obfuscation, and duplicity. And, it shines through as a willingness to avoid confrontation over those political issues, and so to capitulate, which simply sows disillusion amongst the rank an file of the party. How can we have faith in a party leadership that time and again simply waffles its response rather than tackle the assaults head-on, which time and again rows back on its positions as soon as the slightest whiff of opposition is presented by the Tory media, and which thereby only encourages our opponents within the Labour Right, and their allies amongst the Tories to press even further, even harder for a complete capitulation? 

The fact is that the Labour leadership over the last three years have done that repeatedly. Whether it was over Corbyn and McDonell's support for the Irish Republican struggle, or their position on the Monarchy, whenever they have faced the slightest pressure they have buckled. And, by buckling whilst trying to appear to be holding the same line, they simply look dishonest. The position that McDonnell and Corbyn held over Ireland is not the position that I held, because I never had such an uncritical attitude as they did to the petit-bourgeois nationalists of Sinn Fein and the PIRA, whose sectarian catholic politics mitigated against a revolutionary socialist solution in Ireland. But, it would be far better for McDonnell and Corbyn to stand in defence of their actual position over Ireland, of being in favour of a defeat of British imperialism, than to waffle and mumble inanities about only being interested in talking to bring about peace! 

By continually, rowing back on their positions they have encouraged the situation that confronts them today whereby their opponents such as the Zionists like Sacks know that if they continue to push, Corbyn and McDonell will capitulate, allowing them to push forward once more on some further line of attack, and that their opponents inside the Labour Party know that they will be able to simply choose the time and place of their attacks, and Corbyn and McDonnell will simply attempt to love-bomb them rather than confront them, or begin to mobilise, and lead the rank and file against them. That process has been further intensified by the debilitating role played by Jon Lansman as the CEO of Momentum, which operates more like a property development company attempting to stake out new properties to take over, by deals and negotiations, than a democratic activist organisation. 

The problem facing Corbyn and McDonnell is he lack of an adequate support base within the PLP, and that is also the problem in trying to find a better alternative to them, leaving us only with Williamson as the obvious alternative, as someone who at least has had the backbone to stand up to the Tory media and the Labour Right. The Labour right, as with Field have picked up the anti-Semitism meme, only because being such an unprincipled, unscrupulous and gutless bunch themselves, having lost the political arguments, having lost the electoral battles, they are happy to pick up any available rock to hurl at Corbyn and the Party, and anti-Semitism is simply such a convenient rock. 

But the party leadership are in this position as a result of their own actions, and failure over the last three years to deal with the Right. The Right themselves would not have made that mistake. In the 1980's the Right under Kinnock's leadership were prepared to close down branches, CLP's and so on wholesale, to eradicate opposition to their rule. They were prepared to destroy the party then in order to promote their control of it, and be under no illusion they will be prepared to destroy it now, so as to prevent the Left having control of it, even if they cannot regain control themselves. The rank and file of the party needs to push ahead with a thorough democratisation of the party; we need to introduce and implement mandatory reselection, so as to clear out all of the dead wood; we need to select and elect a new generation of socialist candidates and MP's, with the necessary backbone to carry the fight forward.