Blair-Rights & Soft Left Carry Out Their Counter Coup

The Blair-Right/Soft Left counter coup against the Blue Labour/Zionist faction that took control of the Labour Party in 2019, has now begun. In 2019, the Blair-Rights were not strong enough to displace Corbyn's supporters inside a massively expanded Labour Party. The soft-left were not going to actively support the kind of actions required to bring about the kind of blood-letting to achieve it, though, as in the past, they could be relied on to simply keep their heads down, and wait until it was over, rather than resist it. The Blair-Rights, allied with the petty-bourgeois nationalists and Zionists of Blue Labour, seizing upon the equation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism as a convenient weapon to first undermine Corbyn, and then launch the witch hunt in the party. They chose Starmer as a cypher for their coup.

At the time Starmer won the Leadership, I noted that, the Blue Labour/Zionist faction would inevitably drag him further and further into the swamp of the petty-bourgeois nationalist Right, and so it has been, with the inevitable disastrous consequences for Labour, leading to the situation, today, and the equally inevitable counter coup by the Blair-Rights and soft Left, who have now chosen their own cypher, in the form of Burnham. Its ironic that the pro-EU Blair, has himself, now, become an apologist for the petty-bourgeois nationalists, and for his rich associates in the Trumpf gang, whilst the once soft Left and anti-EEC Kinnock, has taken over that vacant slot. On Saturday, Kinnock was even heading up the speakers at the Rejoin EU Rally in London, and its no coincidence that as Starmer gave another empty speech announcing his departure, this morning, in Downing Street, the strains of Ode To Joy, the EU Anthem, wafted through the air, almost drowning him out.

The media pundits have talked about the fact that in the last ten years, Britain has had 7 different Prime Ministers. But, they fail to mention that between 1990, and 2005, the Conservative Party went through 6 different Leaders. The reason is the same. Superficially, that reason is Brexit, or the relation between Britain and the EU, but that is itself simply the manifestation of the real underlying cause, which is the division between the interests of the petty-bourgeoisie and those of the bourgeoisie and working-class. Again, the media pundits, at least the better of them, like to present this division, in electoral terms as that between a Left or “progressive” bloc of Green, Liberal and Labour voters, as against a Right or “reactionary” bloc of Restore, Reform and Tory voters, without considering that these divisions are not simply arbitrary alignments of voters within an amorphous electorate, but are themselves a reflection of aggregated class interests.

The media pundits have tried to claim that Makerfield was a classic seat in which Reform should have won, but they based that simply on the fact, of it being a “Red Wall” seat, and on the fact that in the recent local elections, Reform won every council seat. But, that was a typically lazy, and superficial analysis that was inevitably going to be proven wrong, as I pointed out before the by-election.

I noted,

“Its MP, between 1987-2010 was the Blair-right, Iain McCartney. Given Blair's enthusiastic support for the EU, during all that time, when, by contrast, the Tories were torn apart by their support for Brexit, goaded along by the likes of Farage, there was no indication that the voters in the constituency were put off voting for EU supporting Labour candidates, winning around 60% of the vote in each election. In 2010 and 2015, McCartney's successor in the seat, Helen Fovargue, secured around 50% of the vote, whilst the reactionary nationalists of UKIP/BNP and Tories never got more than a combined 42%. In 2017, under Corbyn's Labour, as it won over large numbers of young voters, opposed to Brexit, Fovargue secured an increased 60% of the vote, whilst the Brexit Party stood aside for the Tories, who still could only secure 31% of the vote.”

The idea that Burnham has, somehow, won over working-class Reform or Tory voters, is as ludicrous as the idea that the Tories or Reform won elections by winning over working-class Labour voters. That is only very marginally the case. Burnham won because he managed to get working-class Labour voters to turn out to vote for him, whereas, in the local elections, many of them simply didn't vote, or else have been voting for other progressive parties such as the Greens, Liberals and so on, as they have rejected the reactionary petty-bourgeois nationalism of Keir Starmer's Blue Labour/Zionist agenda.

As I have pointed out many times over the last ten years, the vote for Brexit, even in those “Red Wall” seats, was based, not on working-class, Labour voters voting Leave, but on a the petty-bourgeoisie voting for it, a petty-bourgeoisie that had grown by 50% since the 1980's, and which was also the basis of the internal strife inside the Conservative Party, of which it comprised the vast number of its members and voters. That the media, and the bourgeois political pundits confuse this petty-bourgeois mass of poorly educated, precarious and impoverished with the working-class is simply a feature of their superficial, sociological definition of class. The fact remains that despite having grown by 50% since the 1980's, as a consequence of deindustrialisation, that petty-bourgeois mass still only constitutes around a third of the population/electorate, and it is that which places a cap on its electoral fortunes.

The reality, however, is clear. Burnham will face the same economic realities that Starmer and Blue Labour faced. Starmer has tried to claim that, in the last two years, he has defied those realities. Its nonsense. His claim about stabilising the economy is only a claim that he has stabilised it in the same way a corpse is stabilised in a graveyard. As Kinnock pointed out, the claims about trade deals are hugely exaggerated, and do not come close to the deals the UK already had as a result of being in the EU. Does anyone who has had to use the NHS really believe the claims about its improvement? Likewise, a look at the continued crumbling of the roads, and other infrastructure give the lie to Starmer's claims in that regard to. In the meantime, inflation remains high, and is likely to rise, whilst government borrowing is rising, and interest rates are following suit.

That reality, drives towards the obvious course of action, of a rapid re-joining of the EU. Burnham should be open about that reality, and get it underway. The Labour landslide in 2024 was a fraud, with Labour getting a third fewer votes than Corbyn's Labour secured in 2017. But, it would be ridiculous for Burnham to ignore the fact that he will take over a huge parliamentary majority. The venality of the Blue Labour/Zionist faction is already being shown in their snarling comments, as they are hoist by their own petard. They may seek to undermine a Burnham government, but his majority will be such that they can be dealt with. Beginning the process of negotiation to re-join the EU is the best basis on which a Burnham government can rebuild the economy, and remove the constraints it faces, and on that basis, rebuild the voter base of Labour for the next election in 2028/9. A General Election fought in 2028, with a commitment to formally re-join, would leave the option for the UK holding EU elections in 2029.

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.

Small Change UK

So, the Tiggers, seeing the prospect of imminent European and Westminster elections on the horizon, have registered as a political party in order to stand candidates in those elections.  They are to call themselves Change UK.  It is an appropriate name, because they do indeed represent that small change, or loose change of UK politics.

The reality is that the Tiggers do not represent any change from the failed conservative social-democratic politics of Thatcher/Major/Blair/Brown/Cameron of the previous 40 years.  They could as well have called them the Continuation Blair-right Project.  In the 17th century, the Pilgrim Fathers who cast themselves adrift from Britain, and other European countries, were a bunch of puritanical religious bigots, who could not accept that, in the countries from which they came, a measure of religious freedom and tolerance of other religions, had been instituted.  As I have written elsewhere, these religious bigots erected a similar kind of regime of intolerance in their new homeland in America, though ask most people today, and they will tell you that the Puritans set sail for America to escape religious persecution.

Much the same is true of the Continuation Blair-rights.  They have created a whole narrative around the idea that they have had to set sail for the New World, because they have been persecuted in their native country.  In reality, it is the fact that these MP's have found that the monopoly on acceptable ideas, and control of power, they have enjoyed for the last forty years, has come to an end, which is the real cause of their departure, as they find themselves unable to accept the greater freedom of ideas, and loss of power that has come about in both parties.

For decades, inside the Labour Party, it was only the ideas of conservative social-democracy that were acceptable, with a few token leftists, such as Corbyn himself, allowed to remain in place, as a suggestion that the party was still a "broad church", whilst thousands of left-wing activists, and even whole branches and constituency parties were closed down, where they strayed outside the bounds of what conservative social-democracy deemed acceptable.  And, in the Tory party, whilst the majority of activists were died in the wool reactionaries, when it came to things like immigration and the EU, the inherently undemocratic nature of the Tory Party meant that they could be kept in their box, with the majority of Tory MP's themselves aligning themselves with the ideas of conservative social-democracy, content to making changes at the margin in cutting the welfare state, and so on, but on the whole simply tacking with the wind, so as to meet the needs of large-scale industrial capital.

As I have set out previously, it was the collapse of the material conditions that had existed for thirty years, and upon which conservative social-democracy had rested, which resulted in the financial crisis of 2008, and which has meant that the political centre has collapsed.  It was the politics and policies of that conservative social democracy that created the huge build up of asset price bubbles, and their concomitant, the build up of huge levels of private debt that led to the 2008 financial crisis, and which has resulted in the recreation of those conditions on an even more astronomical scale since 2008, meaning an even larger financial crash is inevitable, at the same time as implementing policies of austerity, so as to restrain economic growth, whilst promoting further speculation that has also led to the hollowing out of the political centre, and the polarisation of politics.  On the one hand, inside the Labour Party, (and something similar can be seen in the US, and across Europe), conservative social-democracy has given way to progressive social-democracy.  In the Tory Party, it is giving way to outright reaction and Bonapartist, counter-revolutionary tendencies that seek to take the economy back from the social-democratic state that arose in the late 19th century, to the kind of liberal-democratic state of the 18th and early 19th century, founded upon a regime of rampant free market competition, geared to the interests of millions of small capitalists. 

As I wrote recently, this means that Brexit amounts to a battle between two great class camps, one comprises the bulk of the advanced working-class, which forms the core of support for Labour, which is on the side of progress, and opposes Brexit, by a margin of around 4:1, the other comprises that phalanx of around 5 million small capitalists, their families and retainers that seeks to turn the clock back to that less mature form of capitalism, and the associated form of polity, and is prepared to adopt increasingly authoritarian, Bonapartist means of achieving that counter-revolution.

The Tiggers are indeed the small change that has fallen out of the pockets of the two great parties that represent the contending forces in this great class battle.  Indeed, as I have said before, compared to the figures that comprised the Gang of Four, in the 1980's that established the SDP, they are indeed just small change.  They are like the penny pieces of political currency, largely a nuisance, and likely to be phased out in the near future.

The fact, that they have been able to come together from both the Labour and Tory parties shows that they are like loose change, a collection of small coins of different denominations.  They are a purely opportunistic bunch whose only real basis for coming together is the fact that they were now out of place, unable to swim in the tide of the dominant ideas in their old parties, unable to reconcile themselves with either having to accept accountability to the members that get them elected, or to standing down as MP's so as to take up the role of being purely a member of their respective parties, unwilling to give up their lucrative jobs in parliament.  The main thing they have in common, besides being likely to have been deselected by their respective parties' members, is that this has manifested itself in relation to Brexit.

The battle between the two great class camps, sees 80% of Labour voters and members on the side of progress, and opposition to Brexit, whilst 80% of the small capitalists, and their representatives in the rank and file membership of the Tory Party, seek a No Deal Brexit, a return to 18th/early 19th century nationalism, based upon a strong state, gun-boat diplomacy, as in the days of Empire, and a bonfire of all rights for workers, consumers and the environment, so as to maximise the rate of surplus value, and the profits of these small capitalists.  The Tory Loose Changers, as conservative social democrats cannot accept that, because they recognise that it will actually be disastrous for the UK economy, and its dominant form of capital - large-scale industrial capital - and thereby for the class fraction they represent, the large-scale shareholders of those companies.  

But, the tragedy is that whilst 80% of the advanced working-class that supports Labour, and 80% of Labour members, oppose Brexit, and these reactionary consequences that naturally flow from it, the Labour Leadership, itself, continues to align with the reactionary nationalists in trying to pursue the policy of Brexit.  As I wrote the other day, the two great class camps have arrived on the battlefield, but on the workers side, despite its much larger numbers, and more disciplined army, it is hampered in its attack by the fact that its Generals have gone AWOL!  A similar situation existed in France, and led to the unenthusiastic support given to Macron, as a lesser evil to Le Pen.

The massed ranks of the advanced workers are ready for battle, but they see their Generals reluctant for battle, and even hobnobbing with the enemy generals.  In desperation, they look for some other flag-bearer who might at least be providing some kind of leadership,a round which to rally, so as at least to prevent their current strongholds and redoubts being overrun by the enemy.  In France they turned to Macron, as the leaders of the workers parties had failed to provide any progressive way forward.  In Britain, as we head into European Parliament elections, and then a General Election, with Labour's Generals, still with their backs to the enemy, rather like Stalin in 1941, still counting on his deal with Hitler to be sustained, there is a great danger that even the small change of the Tiggers, probably in some kind of "progressive alliance" with the Liberals, Greens, SNP, and Plaid will at least appear to be generals offering a lead by facing in the right direction, as Corbyn and Co. continue to echo in less convincing language the reactionary message of support for Brexit as that of the Tories and our class enemies.

That may well in the proportional representation system of the European Parliament elections result in anti-Brexit candidates sweeping the board, as a mobilised force of Remainers, now with the wind behind them flock to the polls in unprecedented numbers.  The media, ever keen to whip up the next hysteria, moral panic, and story to fill their pages, or attract viewers, are spreading the idea that the elections will result in a large rise in the number of populists being elected.  The opposite is true.  Support fort he EU has never been higher either in Europe or in the UK.  The Brexit vote has acted to mobilise the forces of progress that until then had been passive, just as in Europe that together with the success in recent years of right-wing populists has caused the forces of progress to mobilise, a process also seen in the US in response to Trump's election. 

Where, in Britain, more than a million marched, a week ago, to oppose Brexit, the forces of reaction could only manage a demonstration of a few thousand fascists and hard-right thugs from the BNP/EDL.UKIP and Leave Means Leave, to protest on March 29th. that Brexit was not going to happen, and that obviously Leave did not actually mean Leave.  Where more than 6 million have signed the petition calling for Brexit to be scrapped, just 300,000 have signed a petition calling for Britain to leave on No Deal.  The idea that three is going to be some kind of large-scale backlash from Leave supporters is farcical.  The most any of them can usually offer is that they will never vote again.  Given that many of them never bothered to vote in the past anyway that is not much of a statement, but if a few hundred thousand bigots and reactionaries decide they are not going to vote, I'll take that as a bonus!  It will mean fewer right-wing politicians elected in future.

A success for a progressive alliance of anti-Brexit forces in the European elections will undermine both the Tories and Labour, probably causing a few more MP's from both to join them if that occurs ahead of a General Election.  It means Labour will probably get wiped out in Scotland and Wales, and may lose seats in heavily Remain supporting areas in London and other large cities.  The majority of people now identify themselves as Remainers or Leavers, not Labour or Tory.  In Scotland and Wales, Remainers will have credible alternatives to Labour in the SNP and Plaid.  In large cities, the Liberals, in alliance with the Greens and Tiggers may be able to pose a credible challenge to Labour in some seats.  But, as the SDP showed, in the 1980's, even where that is not the case, with Labour under Corbyn appearing to only offer a form of Brexit that differs only in the language used, there will be no reason for Remainers to vote Labour, rather than casting a protest vote against both Brexit supporting parties.  The hope that existed in 2017, that a radical Corbyn Labour Party would come to offer a progressive, internationalist alternative to Brexit has gone, and all those that lent it their vote in 2017, on that basis, no longer have any reason to do so.

In the General Election, therefore, as opposed to the EP elections, the consequence is likely to be that the Brexit vote is hoovered up by the Tories, whilst the larger anti-Brexit vote, will be dissipated between Labour and the other opposition parties, allowing the Tories to win the election.  As with the SDP in the 980's, the Tiggers, having failed to provide any real change, will themselves disappear, like loose change down the back of the sofa.

The Misfortunate 7. A New SDP? Absolutely Not

So, seven Blair-right MP's have left the LP, before they were deselected by their local members. A new SDP this is not. Whatever you thought of the politics of the Gang of Four, and for socialists, it was not much, they at least had the advantage of being political heavyweights, compared to this less than magnificent seven. Of the sorry gaggle, most people will only recognise Chuka Umunna, and he is a nonentity, compared to his 1980's predecessors. As I wrote some time ago, this is not the 1980's, and this splinter, is not going to even have the same fleeting impact as did the SDP, before it had to collapse into the Liberals. This lot did not even have the courage of their convictions to brand themselves as a new party, as the SDP did, preferring instead to follow the thoroughly unprincipled example, of their fellow right-wing MP's Frank Field and John Woodcock, who resigned before they were deselected, and then hung on to their parliamentary salary, rather than put themselves up for re-election. 

The press conference called by the misfortunate seven was a fiasco. They spoke in typically hysterical and unsupported terms about leaving a Labour Party characterised by anti-Semitism and bullying. They spoke a lot about values, but each time one of them stood up to explain what those values were, there was nothing to see other than a belief in motherhood and apple pie, that any politician from UKIP to the Greens could have professed adherence to. When it came to substance, of outlining what any of these vacuous statements actually meant there was no more meat than in their empty accusations about bullying and so on. What they really mean by bullying is that their members disagree with them, and are calling them to account, i.e. they object to being held democratically accountable to the ordinary LP members that get them elected. 

And, it's clear that for those members they have nothing but contempt. Indeed, if their values meant anything, rather than just being a cover for simply wanting to continue in their cushy jobs, they would put their money where their mouth is, and stand down from parliament, putting their claims to the test in a by-election. Then we would see just how much the patronising words of Angela Smith, who talked repeatedly about “her” voters, and knowing what “her” voters – what all 60,000 of them?! - were thinking, have any connection to reality. Of course, they will not do that, because they know they will lose, just as all such independent candidates have lost in the past. They spoke in typically vacuous terms, about “their” voters feeling homeless, with no “sensible” centre ground party for them to vote for. But, of course, that is hogwash. In 2010, those voters rejected Gordon Brown, in 2015, they rejected Ed Miliband, and in the process also rejected and effectively destroyed the epitome of that centre ground, “Motherhood and Apple Pie” politics, the Liberals of Nick Clegg. By contrast, it was the Labour Party of Corbyn, that The Misfortunate 7 despises, that brought the party back from the brink, achieving the largest swing back to Labour since 1945, and as a result of the campaigning work of Momentum supporters, on the ground, even ensured increased majority for some of these hapless Blair-right MP's, who, even during the election campaign, had been going around talking down the party's fortunes. 

They are not declaring a new party, because, unlike even the Gang of Four, they are generals without an army. The only people standing behind them are a bunch of former Blair-right spin doctors, and the media and PR companies they have set up, along with sections of the Tory media, that have choked on the name of Corbyn ever since he was elected, by a massive majority, as party leader in 2015. But, more than that, if they set up a new party, they would come under even more pressure to stand down, and test their support in by-elections. They also hope that by declaring a plague on the houses of the main parties, they will, in coming weeks, pick up other disgruntled MP's, from both Labour and Tory, who face deselection, to sit along with them. Their only hope, is that if such defections occur, they may be able to form some kind of “progressive alliance” with the Liberals, SNP, Plaid and Greens, whose only real basis will be to oppose Brexit. But, at best, the combined votes, in parliament, of such a group would amount to no more than about 90-100. 

But, this episode that has been a long time coming, again shows the weakness of the leadership provided by Corbyn, and those around him. Back in 2015, it was obvious that his position within the PLP was untenable. It's one thing to have a huge majority in the party at large, another to, in practice, be held hostage by a large hostile majority in the PLP. It was obvious back then that the Blair-rights and soft lefts would keep coming back at him, undermining his position using whatever lies, whatever slanders, whatever tactics were necessary to do so. The thing to do, back then, was to have begun the process of democratising the party, and deselecting these right-wing MP's, along with their support layers, in the echelons of right-wing Councillors across the country. Instead of doing that both Corbyn, and his supporters in Momentum, disavowed the idea of mandatory reselection.  In fact, when selection meetings, such as that in Stoke Central came along, in 2016, despite Corbyn having obtained a large majority of support from party members, they still managed to select the anti-Corbyn Gareth Snell, who since then has lined up with other right-wing Labour MP's such as John Mann, and Kate Hoey, when it came to votes on Brexit, and is touted as a potential vote for May's Deal, when push comes to shove, despite the fact that one of the reasons Snell opposed Corbyn, was Snell's opposition to Brexit, prior to his election! 

Had there been a root and branch clear out of all these right-wing MP's, well ahead of the 2017 election, then Labour would not have been faced with the sniping it faced from those right-wing forces, that constituted a party within a party, that continually tried to undermine Corbyn. With candidates that more accurately represented the current party, Labour might well have won in 2017, rather than just seeing the biggest swing to it since 1945. Yet, even after they saw the way the right continued to undermine Corbyn, after 2017, the leadership failed to act against them. In a sense, by then it was too late, because that same right-wing majority in the PLP, had been simply enabled to continue, by failing to deselect them. It was clearly only a matter of time before they renewed their attack, after having been cowed, and their basic argument that Corbyn was unelectable, having been disproved, by Labour's showing in the 2017 election. 

Having lost that leg of their argument against Corbyn, they soon found another. It was the attack on Corbyn, in a typical tactic of guilt by association, over bullying and anti-Semitism. Time and again, simple democratic accountability, by party memberships, was described as “bullying”. In fact, anyone who has been in the party during the period of the 1980's, knows what bullying and intimidation actually looks like, as the Kinnock party machinery threatened to simply close down branches and CLP's, that voted in left-wing candidates, or adopted left-wing policies. On one occasion a right-wing council leader threatened to plaster me against a wall simply for disagreeing with him, about the truth of whether a particular industrial dispute had been won or lost! John Golding, who was not even my MP, continually went into the pages of the local newspaper and on radio to say he was going to get me expelled, but never did. And, when my wife was nine months pregnant another right-wing councillor came banging on our front door, shouting and threatening to sue me, simply because me and other local party members were objecting to the council siting a toxic waste dump near to our houses. 

We heard lots of these reports about bullying, supposedly by Corbyn supporters, but hardly any of the claims have been substantiated. Most of them relate to online abuse, where the Blair-rights are prepared to take at face value that anyone who attacks them is in fact, a LP member, and Corbyn supporter, rather than just the usual collection of sad internet trolls. Today, on TV, one Blair-right MP, talking about the abuse received by Luciana Berger, referred to the fact that some of her abusers are now in gaol, but he failed to make mention of the fact that not only were none of these people, put in gaol, LP members, let alone Corbyn supporters, they are all members or supporters of extreme right-wing groups! 

But, Corbyn and the leadership are themselves to blame for this situation, because they failed to introduce the necessary democracy, and reselection of MP's prior to 2017, and they have shown little enthusiasm for pushing it forward even now. At every step they have appeased the forces of the Right, who then simply push forward yet further. Just as Corbyn and McDonnell backtracked over their republicanism, when they came under pressure from the Tory media over joining the Privy Council, or singing the National Anthem, just as they rowed back from their opposition to British Troops in Ireland, and so on, so they backtracked in opposing the right-wing party within a party that the Blair-rights were building all around them. 

Having isolated Corbyn and McDonnell in parliament, they then began to try to detach Corbyn from his real base of support within the party at large. Having seen the way Corbyn prevaricates and rows back, the Right had an obvious line of attack. They extended the claims over bullying into claims over anti-Semitism, demanding that Corbyn effectively abandoned his long standing positions over Palestine, by equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, demanding that he not only adopt the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, but also that he accept the internationally disputed examples attached to that definition, which effectively makes criticism of Zionism impossible. That opened the door for anyone that criticised Zionism, and the history of the foundation of Israel, as a colonial settler state, to be charged with anti-Semitism, and dragged before a disciplinary hearing. Once again, Corbyn and the party leadership capitulated, enabling the right to launch a witch-hunt against left-wing party members, in the same way the Kinnockites had done in the 1980's. It's no surprise Tom Watson, in similar fashion, called for the Wavertree CLP to be closed down, for having the temerity of putting forward a motion of no confidence in Berger, for her well-known mutterings about setting up a splinter party. But, it is the Wavertree CLP that was proved right, and Watson that was proved wrong, within days of his calls, as Berger was indeed, the lead voice of The Misfortunate 7, as they rode off into the political wilderness. 

The Blair-rights took what was an element of fact, that there are left-wing anti-Semites in the Labour Party, who do not know where the border is between legitimate criticism of Israel, and of Zionism, and anti-Semitism. There are no doubt some out and out anti-Semites too, though far fewer than there are in the Tory Party, and other establishment organisations. And, Corbyn's idiot anti-imperialism, has played into that narrative. But, even with all of the spurious charges submitted to the LP over anti-Semitism, it amounts to only just over 600, which is around 0.1% of party members. Of those, already more than 200 were weeded out as having no evidence to support them. 

But, the right were able to see that Corbyn could be detached from his base within the party, because of his failure to stand up to pressure from the Tory media, and the right inside the party. He has made that worse, by his reactionary policy of economic nationalism in relation to Brexit. That is a gift to the right in detaching him from the 90% of party members, and 75% of party voters that oppose Brexit. Not only, thereby, has Corbyn detached himself from the party rank and file, but he has given the Blair-rights, the Liberals, and the Tory Remainers a perfect pole around which to congregate, leaving Corbyn in alliance with May, and the Tory Right, promoting a thoroughly reactionary policy of Brexit. 

This in many ways is a replay of events in France. Hollande was elected as President promising a turn to the Left. He had the opportunity to have done so, by opposing austerity, and aligning himself with other left wing governments in the EU. Indeed, as I wrote at the time, with interest rates at such historic low levels, there was every opportunity for a progressive social democracy to have challenged austerity, to have implemented a coordinated programme of infrastructure investment across Europe, and turned back the conservative policies that had dominated for more than 20 years. But, Hollande, instead backtracked. When it came to the question of supporting Syriza and its progressive social-democratic programme in Greece, or of lining up with the other peripheral countries being put through the wringer of conservative austerity, he instead sided with Merkel and the other conservative politicians. He undermined progressive social-democracy across Europe, including in France, so that when the French Presidential elections came along, he and the Socialist Party had no chance of winning. 

Worse, whilst voters had no reason to support the Socialists, on the basis of its record, they also had no reason to support the fake Left alternative to the socialists, provided by the Stalinist economic nationalism of Melonchon, which was barely discernible from the economic nationalism of Le Pen. So, it was not surprising that the last Presidential elections were characterised by militant apathy. It meant that Macron was able to cobble together an alliance of “none of the above”, which won not because anyone had the slightest enthusiasm for the old failed policies he was presenting, but solely out of opposition to Le Pen. And, as I predicted at the time, Macron's pursuance of those old failed policies was itself doomed to failure, which would open the door to the far right, a prediction which is being seen every weekend on French city streets, as the reactionary forces of the Gilets Jaunes turn out, and become a symbol of resistance to those failed policies. 

The Misfortunate 7, no doubt hope for some similar development in Britain. But, Britain is not France. It does not have the same electoral system. If they are joined by other disgruntled MP's, and form some kind of anti-Brexit alliance, then given the degree of hostility amongst voters to Corbyn's failure to oppose Brexit, they could well draw enough votes to destroy Labour, probably destroying the Corbyn project in the process, as he will take the blame for the party's reversal of fortune. But, any such alliance cannot win an election. It will inevitably mean that the Tories would win the election with a workable majority. 

As I wrote at the start of the year, May would be mad not to call an election, given the circumstances. The splinter from Labour makes that all the more true, but it has all been made possible by Corbyn's disastrous leadership and tactics, especially now his pursuance of the reactionary nationalist Brexit agenda.

Snowflakes Blown Away By Dogs Wrapped In Suicide Vests

Boris Johnson, whatever else he may be, is a journalist with a colourful turn of phrase. His description of Theresa May's Chequers Plan as being like a suicide vest wrapped around the British constitution, with the detonator handed to Brussels, is a skilful and powerful use of language that does credit to his ability as a wordsmith. It has led to his opponents, and supporters of Theresa May, responding in the way that is often nowadays the case. That is rather than dealing with the substance of his words, as powerfully conveyed by this imagery, they instead feign offence and indignation at the imagery itself. 

The English language of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Orwell draws its power to conjure up vivid imagery because its depth and texture is built upon the use metaphors, similes, idioms, proverbs, allegories, and other such devices. Skilful writers avoid purple prose, but also avoid cliches or well worn metaphors, always being on the look out, therefore, for new variations on those old themes. Bojo's suicide vest metaphor was a skilful use of such techniques to powerfully convey in a few words, the message he was elaborating. The real question is not about the vehicle he used to convey that message, but the message itself. The fact, is that May's supporters have no ability to challenge the central point that Bojo was setting out against the Chequers' Plan, which everyone knows is dead, and so chose to feign offence and attack the metaphor rather than its substance. 

It could be argued that Bojo, thereby failed, in his endeavour, because in his choice of words, he allowed his opponents to divert attention from the substance of his argument on to these irrelevancies. But, then, as I wrote recently, what does that say about the level of politics, indeed the level of culture we have sunk to, if all language, like all politics must be framed in the most bland, the most innocuous, the most banal terms? 

The same is true in relation to Chuka Umunna's use of the well worn metaphor about attack dogs. When I wrote about that on Saturday, I made sure not to criticise his use of that choice of words. In fact, as I wrote, there, what I actually find more offensive is the use by some Labour MP's of the terms such as “rabble” to describe their party members. Umunna clearly was not intending to describe party members as dogs, in the use of that phrase, but those MP's who call their party members rabble, are directly aiming that epithet at a specific target, and with clear intent. What was offensive in Umunna's comment was not the use of a common metaphor, but what is behind his words, as I set out on Saturday. What is offensive is the implication in his comments that MP's have a god given right to their sinecures, that party members should not challenge; that the only reason for a Labour MP being a party member is to be an MP, and that denying them of that right is the same as denying them the right to be a party member; that party members should be nothing more than foot soldiers, and that Jeremy Corbyn should pull them into line, to prevent them challenging MP's. 

What is offensive in Umunna's comments is that, for three years, Corbyn's opponents have done everything they could to undermine him, and the party, throughout, and still sewing division, with their constant attacks, and now they call on Corbyn, and the vast majority of the party membership to desist from fighting back! For three years, the Labour Right, and their supporters amongst the Tory media, Jewish Tory organisations and so on, have used any word, any phrase that could possibly be misconstrued, any comedic statement that could be taken out of context and given sinister interpretation, so as to attack Corbyn, McDonnell and their supporters. So, it's not surprising that John McDonnell felt justified in turning the tables on Umunna, by criticising his use of the term “attack dogs”, to describe party members passing no confidence votes in right-wing MP's. 

But, we should avoid those same kinds of juvenile behaviour of the Right. We are better than that. Instead of playing word games with the likes of Chuka Umunna, it would be better for McDonnell and the party leadership to tackle them head on, in the way Chris Williamson is doing with the Democracy Roadshow. No more pussy footing around over the question of mandatory reselection, and the other democratic reforms required. We should say openly, that the time for the Labour Right is up. We want them out as MP's, and we want new candidates that reflect the party's present membership and ethos. We want mandatory reselection now, and we want to start building the campaign for the next election, immediately on the basis of a new generation of candidates, and policies that can enthuse our voters, and put an end to the constant sniping, and fifth column activities of the PLP.

Chuka Umunna - Incredible Arrogance and Hypocrisy

Chuka Umunna has called on Jeremy Corbyn to "call off the dogs", as, one after another, right-wing Labour MP's, who have spent the last three years attacking Jeremy Corbyn, and his supporters in the party, find themselves being subject to the kind of vote of no confidence that the Labour Right wanted to preserve for themselves to impose on Corbyn.  It demonstrates the incredible arrogance and hypocrisy of the Blair-rights, who have assumed that they have some god-given right to their cushy positions.  That is illustrated by Umunna's comment that those right-wing MP's are being forced out of the party.  Not at all, they are welcome to stay.  Its just that they may not continue to be MP's.  But, of course, the careerist Blair-rights only want to stay if they can have a cushy job for life as an MP, or some other well-paying sinecure.

The arrogance of the Blair-rights means that as soon as they face the possibility of having to justify themselves to their party members, they see it as a gross imposition.  They continually refer to Corbyn's serial rebellions in parliament, but they fail to register the fact that, in nearly all those instances, Corbyn was only rebelling against the right-wing policies of the Labour Leadership in parliament, which were themselves in conflict with the policies and ethos of the party in the country.  They fail to recognise that unlike the right-wing MP's now, Corbyn was never in danger of being out of synch with his own party members.  Umunna's arrogance, and that of the Blair-rights is not only highlighted by the fact that they think that the votes against them are reducible simply to their opposition to Corbyn, rather than the fact that they are out of line with their party members, but that the matter is in the hands of Corbyn, rather than with the members of the party.  They are simply transposing the undemocratic methods of running the party under Kinnock, Blair and Brown on to Corbyn.

Umunna's attitude and that of the Blair-rights is also incredibly hypocritical.  Corbyn was elected leader by a huge majority, but as soon as it became obvious that he was going to win, the Labour Right did everything they could to try to frustrate his election.  Right-wingers like John Mann, having been in the forefront of proposing primary style elections for candidates, suddenly decided that the process was deeply flawed and should be stopped.  One after another, right-wing MP's, and unelected Labour Lords, along with the plethora of unelected, SPAD's, spin doctors and other hangers on, flooded the TV channels, and filled newspaper pages with unsubstantiated, and ridiculous allegations that the half million new members who had joined were all assorted Trotskyists.  Ridiculous given that even at the height of their support, in the 1980's, Trotskyist groups in Britain have never had more than around 20,000 members, and if there really were half a million Trotskyists in Britain, they probably would not have had to have waited all this time to join the Labour Party, but would have already established a significant and influential revolutionary party in their own right!

But, the Right have never had more than a fleeting acquaintance with the truth, or the need to deal in facts, when it comes down to trying to explain why they have so spectacularly failed to mobilise any significant support behind them, which is why they also resort to ridiculous and unsubstantiated claims about bullying and intimidation, and so on.  The truth is that in the last three years, it has been the Right that has been the ones attempting to cling on to their positions by intimidation, using their access to the Tory media, and for a time their continued control of the party apparatus.  When party members took back control of local parties, right-wing MP's ran to the Tory press to claim intimidation, and the party apparatus reversed democratic decisions, putting the defeated candidates back in control, sometimes depriving members of their membership, and so on.  The whole issue of anti-Semitism was whipped up by the Right, as just one of these means to attack party members, and provide spurious grounds on which to suspend them, and via which to purvey the idea that the party had been taken over by alien forces, who were using undemocratic methods.

For three years, we have had right-wing MP's appearing on TV disparaging ordinary party members in the most despicable manner, referring to them as rabble, and so on.  Their totally arrogant attitude to party members was shown by their attempt to overturn the decision of party members in electing Corbyn as leader, by pushing their vote of no confidence in him in parliament.  Now, when they themselves face such votes of no confidence they howl with outrage.  But, the vote of no confidence they passed in Corbyn, was a vote by an insignificant 200 odd MP's, whereas the votes of no confidence those same MP's now face, is a vote by thousands of their party members.

Time and again over the past three years, they have tried to ride roughshod over party members, and Corbyn as their elected leader.  On every possible occasion they have tried to undermine him, and the party for their own personal self-interest.  Now, they are indignant when the party calls them to account.

In the 1980's, the right of the party under Kinnock also rode roughshod over party members.  They used the fact that they had support amongst right-wing trades union leaders, and control of the party bureaucracy to block the election of even mildly left-wing candidates, and to close down branches and CLP's that took up an oppositional position.  They had no compunction about using their attack dogs to cement their position, to oppose left-wing party members, and to put in position as MP's their own placeholders.  In 1989, I was selected as County Council candidate by my Branch, only to find the selection ruled out of order by the party bureaucracy in short order.  My friend John Lockett, who was Branch Chair, told me that the Regional organiser had told him that if they selected me again, in the re-run, they would close down the Branch.  I decided to withdraw, and it was another 8 years, before I actually got to stand, and won the election by a huge majority. 

The right have no qualms when it comes to using any method to hold on to power whether it is using control of the party bureaucracy, utilising their close connections with the Tory media, or spreading ridiculous lies and making outrageous allegations about ordinary party members.  Over the last three years they have done all in their power to not only unseat Corbyn, but to undermine the party's chances in elections, in the belief that a poor performance will legitimise their claims and be a step towards removing Corbyn and the leadership.  As former Blair spin-doctor, Phil Collins, said a couple of days ago, as he beat his drum in The Times, leading Blair-right MP's are hoping for a Tory victory, and a credible Tory leader to save their bacon.  And, make no bones about it, were they to remove Corbyn, and find any way to get one of their own into position, even as with Kinnock in the 1980's, one of their own, who has masqueraded as being mildly left, they would immediately set about regaining control of the party machine, and using every bureaucratic and authoritarian measure to cleanse the party of their opponents.

The last thing they would be doing, as they showed in the 1980's, is calling off the dogs in the name of party unity.  Rather than calling off the dogs, Corbyn and the party leadership should stop trying to love bomb the Blair-rights and their Tory supporters in the media, and wider society.  Now is the time to press ahead and remove the Right before the campaign for the next election begins; now is the time to entrench democracy, so as to make it more difficult for the Right to re-establish themselves via their normal bureaucratic methods; now is the time to begin selecting new candidates for parliament, for local councils, and for party officers who reflect the current party membership, and so we can begin to push forward on a unified basis free of the continual sniping from the Labour Right, as they try to undermine the party for their own personal interests.

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. 

Its Time For Field and The Labour Right To Put Up

The vile, right-wing MP, Frank Field, quit the Labour Party before his own party members kicked him out.  His party members, almost unanimously, from those on the Left to those on the Right, had combined to pass a vote of no confidence in him, after he had lined up with the Tories, and thereby kept Theresa May's government in office, at a time when we had the opportunity to kick them out.  It's not the first time that his members have done so.  They voted to deselect him 20 years ago, but in typically undemocratic fashion, the party leadership of the time overrode the democratic decision of the party, and bureaucratically reinstated Field, as the party candidate.  Yet, those same Blair-rights, today, have the nerve to talk about the party being controlled by small undemocratic cliques!

Field is just the latest of these right-wing MP's, and Councillors who have been rejected by their party members, and who have jumped ship, to try to save face, and who have then thrown out ridiculous allegations, to try to give some kind of cover to their decision.  As I wrote a month ago, we saw a similar thing with John Woodcock, and with various council leaders.  The use of the charge of anti-Semitism is clearly just a convenient means of justifying their decision to leave, whilst enabling them to implement their scorched Earth policy, of trying to throw as much dirt at Corbyn and Labour as possible, in the hope that, no matter how ridiculous the charges, some of them might stick.

Field has followed the well trod path, after it was pointed out that he has resigned, now, only after his party passed the no confidence vote in him, and was about to ditch him, of claiming that the vote against him was based on thuggery, and small undemocratic cliques.  But, the vote against him was near unanimous, combining opposition from left and right within his local party!  But, this ridiculous charge of thuggery and intimidation is one that the Labour Right have thrown out willy-nilly as standard fare.

When Angela Eagle had the window of her office broken, at the time she was challenging Corbyn for the Labour leadership, the charge was made that it was Corbyn supporters that were responsible.  No evidence was provided for that claim, and, as far as I am aware, no one has ever been charged with the offence.  No one doubts that some Jewish Labour MP's have faced vile anti-Semitic attacks on social media, and they are quite right to demand that the party support them against such attacks.  But, again, the impression was given that these attacks were being made by Labour Party members who support Corbyn.  In fact, all of the cases that have come to court, where people have been apprehended by the police, for having made such attacks, have been not Labour Party members, but supporters of right-wing groups, as with the killer of Jo Cox.

What about the charges made by John Mann and others that "Marxists", or members of Momentum, or Corbyn supporters, sent his wife a dead bird in the post, when, according to Daily Mirror Associate Editor, Kevin McGuire, on Twitter, that incident happened in 2012, long before Corbyn was Leader, long before Momentum ever existed! And, McGuire points out, Mann has form in making such unsubstantiated claims in the past.  As I pointed out in April, decent Labour Party members, like Marc Wadsworth, who have a proud record of fighting racism, are facing disciplinary action, whilst the Labour Right throw out unsubstantiated accusations.

Field claims that he has faced "thuggery" in his party.  In that case, he presumably knows who these "thugs" are.  So, presumably he has reported them to the party, for action to be taken.  Indeed, if what he has faced is actual thuggery, then he will no doubt have reported those thugs to the police, won't he, for them to take action?  But, of course, no such thing has happened, because what Field calls thuggery is actually only the fact that the majority of his party members oppose him, and his vile politics, which have led even Bishop Peter Selby to describe him as a racist, whose views are as bad as those of Enoch Powell.  What Field and the other right-wing Labour MP's and councillors describe as thuggery, is only the fact that the majority of the party disagrees with them, and is calling time on them, and they no longer have Blair, and a bureaucratic right-wing party machine to override the wishes of party members and keep them in their cushy jobs.

If these right-wing MP's actually are facing real thuggery from party members they should report it to the party, and indeed to the police, rather than simply throwing out these unsubstantiated accusations.  Its time for them to put up or shut up.  Field claims that he has the backing of tens of thousands of Labour voters in his Birkenhead constituency, and that that is more important than the opposition to him from party members.  If he actually believes that, and the same goes for all those other right-wing MP's that have come out to support him, over the last 24 hours, they should again put up, and show they have the courage of their convictions.

Now would be an excellent time for Field and the Labour Right to test their argument.  Field, like Woodcock, having resigned the Labour Whip should immediately stand down as MP's, and stand for election on their own ticket.  If their argument is correct that it is their own wonderful personal qualities that is responsible for them being elected, and not the fact that they simply stand as the Labour candidate, with the backing of thousands of Labour Party members who go out to get them elected, then they should be eager to prove that point, and set an example for all of those other right-wing Labour MP's who claim the same thing.

So, is Field and Woodcock rushing to resign their seats, so as to stand in a parliamentary contest in their own name?  Not likely, because they know the truth that throughout history all such endeavours have seen such candidates disappear from view, once they no longer stand under the Labour banner.  Even when they split from Labour to form the SDP in 1981, in far more favourable conditions than exist for them today, they quickly dissipated, and ended up having to liquidate themselves into the Liberals.  Ironically, today, one of the original Gang of Four, David Owen has given a large donation to Corbyn's Labour, and says he has no problem with Corbyn as Prime Minister.  And, for all their claims about some silent majority being eager for some centre party to be formed that they can vote for, the fact is that such a centre party already exists.  It is the Liberals, and that centre party got annihilated in the 2015 election, and again in the 2017 election.

The Labour Right will not split to form such a centre party, because they know it is doomed.  They will continue to throw out their ridiculous and hysterical charges to try to do as much damage to Labour as possible, and will, like Field and Woodcock, simply resign the Labour Whip, individually, as their party memberships vote to ditch them.  They will not, of course, then put themselves up for election as independent candidates, because they know they will lose badly.  But, the truth is that Labour also cannot allow these destructive elements to remain as Labour MP's, until after the next election, because at that time, they could undermine a Labour government, and would, as with Field, Hoey, Mann etc. simply line up with the Tories.

Its time for the Labour Party to tell these right-wing MP's to go, and to test their support with the voters, by standing in their own name.  Its time the party introduced mandatory reselection, and that local parties started selecting decent candidates that reflect the views of the party, and who will fight the next election on that basis.   

Frank Field Resigns - Hurrah!!!!

The vile right-wing MP Frank Field has resigned the Labour whip.  Hurrah, don't let the door hit you in the arse on your way out.  The truth is that Field should never have been a Labour MP to begin with, and he has jumped ship now before his party members got shut of him.  Field is a vile right winger not just in Labour Party terms, but in almost any terms.  The atmosphere in the party is much healthier without him.  We can only hope that those who think like him clear off as soon as possible too.

Field's accusation of anti-Semitism as the basis of him resigning is clearly hogwash.  He needed something to hang his resignation on, and anti-Semitism is the hook upon which the Labour Right and their Zionist allies have chosen to hang their opposition to Corbyn, and the vast majority of party members.

Field's charge that the party is a force for anti-Semitism, is clearly nonsense, and everyone knows its nonsense.  But, it is no more nonsense than the other such accusations that have been systematically levelled at Corbyn and the party over the last few weeks, as part of a concerted, and increasingly hysterical propaganda campaign.  Field's accusation is no more nonsense, for example, than the charge made by former Chief Rabbi, and ultra rightwinger, Johnathan Sacks, who ridiculously claimed that statements made by Jeremy Corbyn five years ago, were the worst example of racism since Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood Speech fifty years ago.  They were clearly so bad that it has taken Sacks five years before he was even able to make any comment upon them!  In fact, Corbyn's statement was not anti-Semitic at all, but was a comment about particular Zionists.  So unless Sacks wants to claim that all Jews are Zionists, which would thereby mean that any criticism of Zionism would be equated with anti-Semitism, his accusation is clearly just a piece of hysteria.

It follows on from the similarly hysterical and co-ordinated front page stories by the three Jewish newspapers ridiculously claiming that Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party represents an "existential threat" to British Jews.  Even some representatives of the Tory media that has given such attacks full rein over the last few months, were led to point out that perhaps that went rather a little too far into the realm of hyperbole.  What it means is that they are equating Corbyn with Hitler - something of course, which no one criticising the racist policies of the Israeli government is allowed to do, on pain of accusations of anti-Semitism!

What they are doing is essentially just trolling.  As with internet trolls, or as with Donald Trump, who many of these opponents of Corbyn associate and identify with, they simply throw out one unsubstantiated and ridiculous charge after another.  Every time one charge is shown to be nonsense, they simply throw out another, facilitated by the Tory media.  The charges are so clearly ludicrous, and the fact that the Labour Right are at the forefront of propagating them, that it is clear what their real purpose is.  Having repeatedly failed to be able to present any kind of credible political alternative to Corbyn, having continually failed to be able to mobilise forces behind them, and  increasingly seeing the writing on the wall, as the masses of party members in the constituencies begin to show them the door, they are implementing a scorched earth policy, trying to do as much damage as possible before they disappear into oblivion.

The Labour right and their Zionist allies (many of whom are acknowledged Tories, who will drop them if they were to get what they want) obviously think that Labour voters are so stupid.  They seem to think that with the help of the Tory media they can simply pump out these ridiculous charges and Labour voters will take them as good coin.  Labour voters are not that stupid.  They know that Jeremy Corbyn is a decent bloke.  They know his whole life has been devoted to fighting bigotry, oppression and racism of all kinds.  Its Corbyn that for the last 40 odd years has been on the streets actively fighting the racists and anti-Semites when the Labour Right and their allies were nowhere to be seen, and indeed, some of whom gave a free pass to racists like Trump, and Orban etc.

If the Labour right had any actual contact with ordinary working-class people and Labour voters, they would know that they are not so stupid as to be taken in by these increasingly hysterical attacks, that become ever more hysterical, the less they have any impact.  In fact, the Labour Right, and their Zionist allies are doing Corbyn and the left in the party a great favour by these ridiculous attacks, because the more hysterical them become, the more Labour voters, and workers more generally see them for what they are, and see the Tory media that provides them with a free platform for what it is.  It means workers and Labour voters can more easily see the rabidly biased nature of the Tory media, and the desperation of the Labour Right, as it ponders its consignment to the dustbin of history.  The more hysterical and removed from reality these attacks become, the more Labour voters and other workers will be led to question all of the other ridiculous charges that the Tory media level against Corbyn and Labour, and their biased reporting of other issues.

Unfortunately, the other consequence of these hysterical attacks is that it undermines the real fight against anti-Semitism, but then the Zionists have always been prepared to subordinate the fight against anti-Semitism, in order to promote Zionism, and to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.  The sooner these elements follow Field into the wilderness the better.

Expel The NEC Mole

In all of the Tory media hyperbole and hypocrisy, yesterday, over Pete Wilsman's perfectly valid comments at an NEC meeting, one question was never mentioned.  That is which member of the NEC recorded its proceedings, and then passed this recording to the Jewish Chronicle.  The other question of why they were covertly recording the proceedings of a private NEC meeting, and why their first port of call for handing over this recording was the Jewish Chronicle, hardly needs answering!

The act itself is a clear indication that, contrary to what the Labour Right try to claim, and what the Tory media are happy to convey for them, and to imply themselves, the Labour Right have continued their undemocratic campaign against Corbyn and his supporters, having lost the political arguments, and having lost successive democratic votes by the membership.  They hoped that Labour would do very badly in the 2017 General Election, so as to give them another opportunity to attack Corbyn and the mass of the party.  They did everything they could to undermine Corbyn, as the admission from Tom Baldwin illustrated.  That hope was dashed, as Corbyn led the party to the biggest rise in its vote since 1945, reducing the Tories to a Minority Government.  That silenced the Right for a time, but no one with any sense thought that they would simply admit they had been wrong, and shut up.

Indeed, there is no reason why they should shut up, but there is a difference between continuing a political argument after you have lost a vote, and trying to find various bureaucratic, and administrative means of getting your way, when you know that you are never going to be able to win the political arguments by democratic means.  The Labour Right know they have lost the political arguments, and that they have no chance of changing that situation in the immediate future.  All of the dogmas they have chanted for the last 30 years, have now lost their power, and it is the ideas of Corbyn and his supporters that have growing support amongst the electorate, particularly amongst that section of the electorate that represents Labour's core vote, and which has felt that the party had become indistinguishable from the Tories over the last 30 years.

So, the Labour Right, sought some means of undermining the Labour Party, so as to undermine the position of Corbyn, and his mass support within the party.  At each set of local elections, as well as at the General Election, and the EU referendum, the Labour Right sought to create some issue of dissent within the party, because they know that divided parties do badly in elections.  They tried a vote of no confidence, they tried preventing, by going to the courts, Corbyn getting on to the ballot in the second leadership election, they used the very real issue of Anti-Semitism, as a weapon against Corbyn himself, who has a long record of opposing racism and bigotry of all kinds.  When the first Tory media campaign based around Anti-Semitism was launched, the lazy journalists of the Tory media even tried to connect it, and Momentum, to the Alliance for Workers Liberty, a most clumsy and ridiculous amalgam, given that the AWL has a long history of both of opposing Left Anti-Semitism, and of supporting Zionism!

The reason that someone, undoubtedly from the Labour Right, on the NEC, was covertly recording this meeting, was precisely to be able to obtain some snippet of a comment by someone that could be used to support the ongoing ridiculous claims about Anti-Semitism being rife within the party, and encouraged by the leadership.  It is a familiar pattern of trying to amass a large number of usually peripheral, and irrelevant facts, so as to throw them all together to give a picture that supports a particular narrative.  It is facilitated by a Tory media more than keen to act as the propaganda arm of that Labour Right, so as to undermine Corbyn.  The latest ridiculous revelations by The Times, being simply a continuation of that campaign, which also seeks to keep the leadership tied up responding to these allegations.

There is undoubtedly Left Anti-Semitism in the party, and even a smaller amount of traditional Anti-Semitism, but even if we take into consideration all of the spurious charges of Anti-Semitism, the most glaring of which is probably the charges that were brought against, Steven lawrence campaigner, Marc Wadsworth, there are only around 200 charges of Anti-Semitism being considered, by the Party's disciplinary committees.  In a party of 600,000 that amounts to charges against 1 in 3000 members.  Its likely that many of these charges are spurious, and will be thrown out.  Its more likely that the valid charges amount to around 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 20,000.  Even that should be unacceptable in a party that prides itself on fighting discrimination and bigotry, but it is hardly and indication of "widespread Anti-Semitsim in the party".   It is rather an idnication of widespread fear mongering and shit stirring by the Labour Right, aided and abetted by Jewish Tories, and the Tory media.

That Tories of any kind should seek to attack and undermine the party using any tools and any shit they can get their hands on is to be expected, but that members of the Labour Party should make common cause with them is unacceptable.  It is an act of betrayal.  If they have a valid grievance they should pursue within the party, by the usual democratic means, not going running to the Tory media at the first opportunity so as to try to undermine the party for their own narrow political interests.  Indeed, mostly for the right-wing careerist Labour MP's, it is not even a matter of undertaking such actions for narrow political reasons, but purely for narrow personal reasons, by people who have grown accustomed to having a cushy, and comfortable existence as a well-paid MP, with the prospect of an even more lucrative career after leaving parliament, "working" for some large corporation, on an income that most workers could only dream of.  No wonder these elements are desperate to stop Corbyn and his supporters by any means including destroying the Labour Party, if necessary, so as to continue living the high life.

Labour should undertake an immediate investigation to identify which Right-wing member of the NEC covertly recorded its proceedings.  Having identified this spy, and fifth columnist, they should be subject to immediate disciplinary proceedings, and if the charges are proved against them, they should be expelled from the party forthwith.  The NEC, should learn from this experience, and insist that all phones, and other recording devices be handed over prior to the meeting taking place.

The continued campaign of the Labour Right, and the Tory media against Corbyn and the party, is however, a good lesson to be learning now.  When Labour wins the next election, the kind of bureaucratic manoeuvring, concerted attacks and challenges, smear campaigns from the Tory media  seen now will be nothing compared to the way a radical Labour government will be challenged by extra-parliamentary means.  Sections of the ruling class even considered launching a military coup against Harold Wilson's Labour government in the 1960's, and 70's.  Those who think that Labour's opponents will restrict their attempts to remove it to simply peaceful, democratic channels are deluding themselves.  Whenever the ruling class have felt they were about to face a serious challenge to their property and privileges in society, they have responded with whatever degree of violence and viciousness they deem necessary, as The Paris Commune discovered, as Mossadegh in Iran discovered, and as Allende in Chile discovered, not to mention the history of failed bourgeois revolutions such as those of 1848, or the 1905 Revolution in Russia. 

Labour should learn from the fact that its attempts to conciliate the Tory agents inside the PLP, local councils, and the party bureaucracy have only encouraged those forces to more openly ally with Labour's external enemies, and to redouble their demands and attacks upon the party.  If you feed this snake, it will simply attempt to swallow more and more.  The labour leadership has wasted two years, and allowed these fifth columnists to organise and build up a head of steam, with the help of external forces.  The Right would never allow the Left to do that.  The leadership two years ago should have moved to introduce mandatory reselection of MP's, and give members greater power to recall their MP's at any time.  The leadership should have worked with Momentum to clear out from the grass roots up, all of those right-wing Councillors and bureaucrats that have continued to use their position so as to attack the party.  It doesn't require us to follow the example of the right-wing under Kinnock that resorted to bureaucratic expulsions, and the closing down of oppositional branches and CLP's, it only requires us to democratically remove them from their positions.  With most of these people, when their access to the watering hole of office, has been removed,  they will quickly disappear to their true home in the ranks of the Tories, in lucrative jobs in business etc.

Labour should learn the lessons of this assault, now, and prepare for the assault it will face in government.  It should realise that attempts at conciliation with these opponents only encourages them to launch further attacks, and that the way to respond is to act decisively against them.  Labour should learn that its opponents will resort to all kinds of underhand means to oppose it.  Today, in opposition it is the use of Fifth columnist covertly recording private internal meetings and so on, along with the alliance with the Tory media, tomorrow it will be use of the Courts to undermine a Labour government, just as the Labour Right already resorted to the Courts to try to disbar Corbyn from the ballot, to restrict the voter base in the Leadership election and so on.  And, there will, of course be the use of global financial institutions to try to destabilise a Labour government, even if that damages the immediate interests of the economy, and even of those financial institutions.  Ultimately, as the Communards, Mossadegh, Allende etc. discovered, if all those methods fail, they will resort to the use of the paramilitary forces, or even the use of the military itself, whose titular head remains not parliament, but the unelected Monarch.

Labour should take heed, and begin to act now against its enemies inside and outside the party.  Its shows once again the desperate need for the Labour Movement to create its own media outlets, from a newspaper to a cable/satellite TV station.  We also need to recognise that in government we will face other more physical assaults, both on activists, on workers on strike and so on.  We will need to develop democratically controlled defence squads to protect our activists from attacks by fascists and other paramilitary forces, and to protect workers on strike etc.  We will need to build alliances with rank and file soldiers, and raise demands for the democratisation of the armed forces, giving ordinary soldiers the right to elect officers, and so on.  We will need to do the same thing in relation to the police, and we should turn the elected Police Commissioners into genuinely democratic figures, with real control over policing, so that we never again see the kind of political policing seen at the Battle of Orgreave.