For months, Starmer, and other leading Labour MP's, have been asked what was happening about the disciplinary procedure against Diane Abbot. She was suspended after a rather ill-conceived letter sent to The Observer, in which she noted that whilst black people face racism every day of their lives, because of the colour of their skin, Jewish people, as with travellers and others, who are not so visibly identifiable, whilst suffering discrimination, do not suffer this same kind of incessant racism. The letter was not anti-Semitic, but especially given the climate of opinion, was crude, and inevitably invited Starmer and the Right to seize upon it as an opportunity to move against another "Left" MP.
Of course, whilst Abbot, immediately apologised and recanted, the inevitable charges of anti-Semitism came forward, and she was suspended, with a disciplinary procedure initiated. In the meantime, a string of Right-wing MP's, supporters of Starmer, were also found to have made actually anti-Semitic comments, whilst their similar apology, resulted not in them being suspended, or facing disciplinary procedure, but in them being restored to the fold, almost immediately.
A quick search of the Internet will provide a list of all those Right-wing Labour MP's that made anti-Semitic comments, but who were not subject to any action, so I will not waste time on that, here. Suffice it to say, however, that in recent months, we also saw the right-wing Labour candidate in the Rochdale By-Election, Azhar Ali, found to have made a series of anti-Semitic comments, all of which were excused, and apologised for by the party leadership, up until the point they could no longer sustain that position. Its interesting to note that the fact that a former right-wing Labour MP, Simon Danczuk, stood in that by-election, as a candidate for the rebranded Brexit Party, Reform, showing just how close Starmer's Blue Labour is, now, to the politics of the far right.
But, that convergence with the reactionary, nationalist politics of the far right was even more evidenced when Starmer, welcomed into the party with open arms, the far right Tory MP, Natalie Elphicke. He did so at the same time as Diane Abbot was still being suspended, and as Starmer was preparing to engineer the expulsion of Jeremy Corbyn. It inevitably prompted further questions from journalists about the fate of Abbot, to which Starmer and his epigones replied that it was out of their hands, and all being dealt with by an independent disciplinary procedure. Except, we now know that that was a lie.
In fact, we now know that the independent disciplinary procedure against Abbot had concluded months ago, and that as a result she had had to undergo an online anti-Semitism awareness programme, which she completed back in February. All of that was then passed to the NEC, on which Starmer sits, and was placed in the hands of the Chief Whip who is accountable directly to Starmer! So, the independent procedure had ended, and the fate of Abbot, now rested, as far back as February, with Starmer alone. Of course, in the case of Jeremy Corbyn, he was found to have no case to answer, and yet, Starmer, contrary to his claims about an independent procedure, still suspended him from the PLP.
So, in all of those press comments when Starmer said, when asked about the fate of Abbot, that it was out of his hands, and going though an independent disciplinary procedure, that was a lie. As late as last Friday, Starmer appeared in a TV interview and repeated that lie. We don't know whether he also lied to the other senior Labour MP and Shadow Ministers, sent into TV studios to repeat it, as with Jonathan Reynolds, or Louise Haig, but they repeated this line on weekend politics programmes, even when the interviewers gave them the hint, by asking, as Sophy Ridge did, "It would be a serious thing, wouldn't it if you were saying that a disciplinary procedure was still taking place, when in fact it wasn't"!
But, the fact is that Starmer lies with alacrity, and that ethos now pervade the whole of Blue Labour.
As the storm has engulfed Starmer and Blue Labour, they have again responded with lies and duplicity, claiming that Abbot has not been blocked, that it is down to her whether she stands or not. But, it seems clear that the intention of the leadership was to try to bully Abbot into standing down, in return for notionally having the whip restored in the dying days of this parliament. It is not only tupical of the authoritarian Bonpartist nature of Starmer's regime in the party, which bodes ill for the approach such a party would adopt as the government, but is also typical of the rampant racism that pervades Blue Labour, consistent with its reactionary, petit-bourgeois nationalism, and jingoism. It is seen in the approach to those like Abbot, as well as its previous expulsion of Mark Wadsworth on the basis of trumped up charges of anti-Semitism, by the right-winger Ruth Smeeth.
Yet, this reactionary, petty-bourgeois, nationalist Blue Labour, which is pervaded with racism and jingoism, and closer to the BNP than to the social-democratic Labour Parties of the past, is likely to win a large majority, and form the next government. As each day passes, the contradictions that rack it, will be further exposed, as the lies come home to roost. Socialists need to utilise that to warn the working-class of what it implies for the attacks on them the day after Starmer enters Downing Street, and to built the response to it, now.
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