McDonnell For Labour Leader

The Labour Party is almost dead, poisoned by the venom of progeny of the marriage, made in hell, of Blue Labour and New Labour, in order to defeat Corbyn and a resurgent Left, after 2015. But, the biter has been bit. Mandelson, aka, the Prince of Darkness has been exposed to the light, and begins to disintegrate before our eyes, whilst his disciples rush to rescue his church, all the while being slowly dragged into the light themselves. One of the original apostles, Blair, is silent, whilst the other Brown, has sought to disown his master and all his works, particularly from the time of the 2008 global financial crisis. At the same time, Brown has sought to offer some solace to Starmer, who will be offered up as the sacrifice.

The revelation setting out the way the Prince of Darkness, riding a pale horse, acted in 2008, to pass information to Epstein, whose global financial connections with other members of the elite, enabled them to feather their own nest, only begs further questions to be asked, including some that were asked at the time about how and why the global ruling class were bailed out, by bailing out the banks, and why central banks and governments pumped literally trillions of dollars into stock and bond markets in the years that followed, whilst simultaneously draining trillions of dollars from the global economy, via financial austerity.

My novel, 2017, is a work of fiction, but draws on some historical events during the period after 1999. One such event is the strange behaviour of the UK, under the Chancellorship of Gordon Brown, in selling large amounts of gold from its reserves, just at the point when the price of gold had reached a nadir of around $250 an ounce, and was about to embark on a long period of secular rise that took it to nearly $2000 in 2011, and, after a period of consolidation, has now seen its price rise to over $5,000 an ounce. In my novel, I also discussed other suggestions on the sale of the gold at a time when many financial institutions had been shorting it, and when, a sharp rise in its price could have cost them billions of dollars.

Brown proclaims that Starmer is an honourable man, and that, although appointing Mandelson was a mistake, he believes that it was only a mistake. But, there is no grounds for claiming that Starmer is in any way honourable. Like Trump and Mandelson, he lies as easily as he breathes. We know that he was chosen by the unholy cabal of New Labour and Blue Labour to act as their vicar on Earth, the bland face they presented to the Labour Party, as they sought to seize control from Corbyn and the mass of the members. In that role, he presented himself as continuing the mildly progressive, and electorally popular, social-democratic agenda of Corbyn, but, it was simply a lie to get elected leader, and as soon as he had done so, every single element of that programme, no matter how electorally popular, was ditched.

For the conservative, social-democrats of New Labour, Starmer's commitment to the petty-bourgeois nationalist agenda of Blue Labour, symbolised by his support for Brexit, is anathema, but the Blairites of New Labour could not defeat the Corbynite majority in the party on their own. They needed an alliance with Blue Labour, and the cover of the need to win in the so called Red Wall seats. The ground had already been seeded. The idiotic and unprincipled position of Labour of refusing to oppose Brexit, under Corbyn, on the grounds that it had been voted for in the 2016 Referendum, and the false claims about needing to “win back” Labour voters in Red Wall, constituencies, fed into it. The use of the “anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism” lie, to oust Corbyn, and attack the Left, also provided the New Labour/Blue Labour alliance with a shared trope that could be used.

But, it is the conservative social-democrats (neo-liberals) of New Labour that have been used by Blue Labour, just as, in the past, the liberal politicians in Italy and Germany thought they could utilise the Fascists but found that they had themselves been used. The Prince of Darkness has fallen, but Beelzebub, in the form of Maurice Glassman, is ready to seize his throne, and to instruct his minions. The spawn of the marriage made in hell, has stepped forward to sacrifice himself in what appears a vain attempt to keep in place Starmer. McSweeney has gone, but Mandelson himself showed that such actions are far from being terminal.

By the end of the week, Starmer may well be gone too. The main thing saving him at the moment is that, neither New nor Blue Labour have a credible candidate to replace him. Streeting is himself a progeny of Mandelson's New Labour venture, and closely tied to Mandelson himself. He is also closely tied to all of those private healthcare vultures set to swoop on a collapsing NHS, and so bringing with it all the echoes of those relations between Mandelson, New Labour and big business. Burnham could have been an acceptable candidate for them, but is not in parliament, blocked by Starmer. Rayner is touted by sections of the media, but is also recently tainted by all the same kinds of sleaze and grasping. For the Left, despite what the media try to portray she has no credentials, and sat passively as Starmer's Deputy as he steadily decimated the party membership, and pushed ever Rightwards.

More significantly, none of those alternatives can save Labour, at this stage, from its inevitable demise, just as the repeated changes of leader of the Tories was unable to save them. For all the glaring deficiencies of Corbyn's Labour, it still turned Labour into a truly mass party, the largest in Europe, and, in 2017, secured the biggest increase in votes and seats since 1945. Even in 2019, having suffered 4 years of constant attack from the Right inside the party, and from the media, it still won more votes than did Starmer's Labour in 2024. Despite the deficiencies of Corbyn's politics, and of the Stalinoid elements behind him, the very prospect of a new Left Party, quickly attracted 800,000 people towards it.

The continued failure of Your Party to resolve its internal squabbles, has simply driven a large portion of those seeking such an alternative into the arms of the Greens. The fact that the Greens, despite their own petty-bourgeois agenda, have attracted over 150,000 members, and have surged in the polls to an extent that, in many seats, it will be they and not Labour that represents the credible alternative to Reform, shows that, the idea of Labour offering up just the same stale and failed politics of the last 30 years, will not fly. Only if the Blair-Rights could form an alliance/party with the Liberals and Left of the Conservatives, would they be able to appeal to any sizeable electoral base within the ranks of the progressive middle-class.

If Labour is to offer any real alternative on its own, its only hope, at this point, is to outflank the Greens on their Left, and, in doing so, to also appeal to those same sections of the progressive middle-class, in particular, by committing to reverse Brexit, as a precondition for growth. The only credible candidate to do that is John McDonnell. McDonnell could bring back large numbers of those that supported Corbyn's Labour. But, he would suffer the same problem as Corbyn with the hostile PLP, unless, to save their own skins, they were forced to acquiesce in his return. Either way, the mistake made by Corbyn cannot be repeated. The party must be thoroughly democratised, including instituting mandatory reselection of all MP's and councillors.