.
Keir Starmer shills for establishment power – they own him. They own all the corporations, land and apparatus of the materials economy too. They make the laws, buy the judges and control the media. They set the curriculums and frame the debates. They get to tell you what to think, what to believe and what to buy. To quote the late, great George Carlin: ‘It’s a big club – and you ain’t in it!’
Starmer eschews systemic reform, preferring an insiders promotion. Unlike Corbyn (a lifelong activist) Starmer’s career aims are wholly incompatible with socialism. Socialism holds that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should belong to all – the 1% disagree!
Moral principle delegitimises the prevailing oligarchy – which is why corporate spivs like Tom Watson, Starmer and The Guardian smear socialists as anti-semites and thugs. Morality is an intrinsic super-power of socialism and thus kryptonite for the establishment. This is why the corporate media restricts debate within the economic and political jargon of the status quo.
Labour’s right wing insists we cannot argue for socialism because the electorate don’t like it. But by offering no moral case for it they ensure voters never will – which is exactly the political stasis that right wingers want.
Mainstream environmentalists also downplay moral arguments – preferring the less controversial lexicons of economics and technology. While babbling about solar panels and ‘green new deals’ they unwittingly reinforce the status quo and deprive themselves of moral authority.
Thanks to the abuse of morality by the religious right and other cultural perversions – moral imperatives and thus socialism are unfashionable and will remain so until rehabilitated with rational arguments. Keir Starmer and the Labour right will never make these arguments.
Regardless of the crises of today and the catastrophes awaiting tomorrow – the careerist cabals within Labour are content and complacent. They hated Corbyn because he had moral authority and threatened change – the defeat of the Corbyn project is an invitation for Labour to indulge in amoral snoozing for more decades of Blairism.
The battle for Socialism will never be won within Labour while the party remains institutionally allergic to morality. Starmer just plays Westminster games and deploys spin doctors. With the departure of Corbyn, the hollowness of the Labour right has been brutally exposed.
The good news is that there is no reason to remain in Labour and every reason to leave. The tribalism and the branding don’t matter – what matters are the principles and the will to make and win a moral argument. Without these things there can be no socialism and with them there will be no stopping it.
The UK is crying out for a new political movement. A party willing to unapologetically make the moral case for Socialism. What on earth is stopping us?
Are we so brow beaten by the establishment that we have lost the courage to speak on our own? Is it beyond us to organise? Who did all the work of propelling the likes of Chuka Umunna, Stephen Kinnock, Margaret Hodge and all the other right wing Labour MP’s into Westminster anyway? Why should Labour activists work for them and be rewarded with treachery and abuse – when they can work for themselves: for principles and people they actually believe in?
Labour has become hypnosis – we stare as battles sway left and right – but nothing really changes. Those wanting another spin of the wheel have forgotten what the point of being in Labour was in the first place.
A courageous and united left can win the argument for socialism – or battle over a dead political brand.
Labour’s right wing parasites need the slumbering giant of Socialism to remain within the tent…but socialists do not need them.
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A very good article. Thank you. Starmer’s arrogance will be his downfall. Shocking choice as leader. Labour has become totally irrelevant.
I think the danger is that Labour may become *worse* than irrelevant – that they re-establish a framework of total control and extend the gains of neoliberalism – just as the Blair years did.
It’s reached the point that if Boris does take Railways back into Public Ownership and Brexit occurs as it should ie WTO and restoration of UK Fishing. Why on earth would the former Red Wall revert back to the Labour Party? They all know that if they’d stuck with Labour those basic requirements would have been impossible. That’s the long term problem which is LP are only interested in their own stuff and are unconcerned and opposed to what there former Voters expressed as their wishes. LP deserve their fate.
What is generally referred to as the “soft left” are the problem.In spite of everything that has happened to the LP since Blair and New Labour,they simply refuse to wake up to reality.I now think of them not as the soft left but as the stupid left.A new party is desperately needed Real Labour if you like.But you can forget any such party being led by the Campaign group of MPs.They have no intention of risking their comfortable positions for the vagaries of real politics.
Absolutely spot on John. I write on this topic as we speak and may well deploy that quote from you!
I would be flattered
done! watch this space.and please ping us an article with your thoughts (850 words or less) and we’ll carry it i’m sure.
Can a new real Labour movement displace neo-Liberal Blairite Tory Lite PASOK – SYRIZA style, like in Greece?
The Greek example didn’t *end* well – honestly I don’t know. I would refer you in the short terms to the comment from John Thatcher on this thread.