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Nobody with any with morals, intellect or self respect should now remain in the Labour Party. Throughout Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, the party was constantly sabotaged from within: the plotters praying that electoral defeat would help restore the hegemony of the right wing careerists – and it has. They have won.
Corbyn had the harder job: he was trying to build something positive, something genuinely moral and coherent. All the rats had to do was pull it apart: their job made easy because they infested the party machinery and had the full weight of the media establishment on their side.
That Labour’s higher echelons were aghast at Corbyn’s socialist principles was an open secret. They attacked their own party via any pretext, colluded openly with the corporate media and smeared and insulted their own membership as thugs and racists.
With Keir Starmer as party leader, the rout of the Labour left is complete: the disgraceful dismissal of Rebecca Long-Bailey greeted with gloating delight by the careerist right. Starmer is now racing to reposition Labour as the other Tory party and doesn’t give two figs for the oft touted ‘unity’ that was the basis of his leadership appeal.
Starmer wants an ugly and public fight with the left to help rebrand Labour as a politically cleansed party of centre-right neoliberalism. Using the pretext of antisemitism or other smears, all dissent will now be silenced.
This new order was explained by Polly Toynbee in The Guardian as she mused that even the memory of the Corbyn era would have to be erased. If any doubt remained, Nia Griffith helpfully explained that any opposition to smearing the left as antisemitic will henceforth be deemed outright racism.
Social media is awash with disillusioned socialists cancelling their Labour membership and pleading with the Socialist group of MP’s to quit the party and start afresh. I echo these sentiments 100%. The Labour Party is beyond redemption; any hope that it might be more than an energy sink has been dashed. It’s time to leave.
Those minded to stay and fight over the carcass of Labour risk becoming part of the problem. By giving money and time to Labour they will aid the appearance of debate where none will actually take place: providing a faux socialist frosting for a new era of Blairism. Worse, they will deprive any new party of its unity and energy.
Starmer and crew have spent recent days baiting the left and pumping out anti-union press releases. The Guardian which strained every sinew to wreck the Corbyn project now offers daily puff pieces for everything Starmer says and does.
A movement divided against itself cannot make, much less win, a moral argument. It is time to realise that there will never be any reconciliation between genuine socialism and what corporate spiv Owen Smith called ‘Labourism’. Socialism is based on set principles and values; Labourism is a whore to the lowest common denominator and for sale to the highest bidder. It will be whatever the corporate media says it must be.
The choice for socialist Labour Party members is stark: stay in this abusive relationship and be silent or leave to found a stronger fellowship of shared values. It’s a no-brainer, it’s time to give up on Labour: the tatters of the brand are not worth fighting over.
Be under no illusions, Starmer doesn’t want left wing people in the Labour party anyway. They are a nuisance to him: a constant and embarrassing reminder of his moral vacuity and duplicity. He has calculated that he doesn’t need the membership to gain power – just the media. It won’t be long before Starmer follows Blair and makes the pilgrimage to gain the blessing of Murdoch. I doubt his blessing will be long in coming.
I get tribalism – really I do. But politics is not a football match and a victory for team red under these conditions would be Pyrrhic indeed. There is no reason to think that being the other Tory party will work for the Labour brand – and even if it did, is this what people want to pound rainy pavements to support?
Go. Leave. Now.
Throw away all your old pictures, delete their number from your phone and move on. Believe me, you will feel much better when you do and it will be better for everyone.
Since 2013 I have worked between 4-6 hours a day on this Ad-Free site: trying to give a voice to those without the power or agency to speak out for themselves and uncovering truths that well paid journalists in the corporate media dare not utter.
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Thank you in solidarity with all our readers. John Lynch, Editor.
Sadly,I have to agree with everything you have said here.
It is very sad.
The only chance which I can see for good people to wrest back some modicum of control would be to follow in the path of the TIGgers. When they split the party it was a desperate move which ended in it’s own obliteration. But it Could have worked… And if a new group of MP’s were to try again they would have a chance, since BoZo’s corona laws forbid any by-elections taking place for the foreseeable future. This buys the new party time to recruit MP’s. If only ten cross, it is simply an annoyance. If fifty leave, labour is weakened and starmer’s position becomes untenable…and if 101 labour mp’s cross the floor, then these new tiggers will become the officially recognised opposition by strength of numbers.
It’s a long shot… but it might just work ;0)
Agree totally!!
I agree with every word of this excellent article. I am so glad that I’ve now left the toxic Labour Party and that I am now free to speak out about the atrocities that are happening to the Palestinian people at the hands of Israel’s politically Zionist Government. I can now speak out about the fact that Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership campaign was funded by Trevor Chinn, a Zionist lobbyist and that Starmer refused to disclose this fact whilst his campaign was running. (He was forced to do so afterwards, because of Parliamentary rules). If I’d spoken out widely about these things whilst remaining in the Party, I would have been investigated by its witch-hunters and then interrogated McCarthy-style and either suspended or expelled. The Labour Party is completely dead to socialists and progressives now. As socialists, we can and will find another way.
We really must find another way and very urgently. I shall be writing about this later today.
This is a great article, I’m so glad I saw it, it says everything I’ve needed to hear in one fell swoop and has finally made my (ever the optimist) mind up for me. I’ll be cancelling my membership tomorrow, after much emotional toing and froing. Thank you.
In the meantime, may I please leave this here with you with the audacity to assume that you might sign and share it yourself if you are agreeable please?
https://www.change.org/p/democratic-socialists-creation-of-a-new-democratic-socialist-party
Even I have been shocked by the strength of feeling we have encountered around this. This article is on course for being our most shared of the year – what does that say about the current stat of the Labour movement? It’s all desperately sad – I feel very emotional about it too. I was so hopeful about the Corbyn project – he was decent man surrounded by snakes. But in endings can come new hope and I shall be writing about that later. It is a house rule that we don’t share petitions (a) because they never work (b) because we dislike the way they have become monetised. However…for you – we will. Good luck to you.
Sadly, a lot of hard lefties still believe they can reform the party from the inside. I think they are very much mistaken. If all left leaning MPs formed a new party, Starmer would be a dead duck, with no power or influence. Just alone with his right-wing centrists and his 30 pieces of silver, like the Judas that he is. Ironic, the Jews chose to kill Jesus when the Romans offered to release him. Today, some influential (BOJ) Jews chose to hang Corbyn out to dry and ignored the voice of millions of Jews who do not support what Israel is doing to Palestine, nor the false claims of anti-semitism, that will ultimately weaken their cause in the future when the far right rises and demonstrates to everybody what real bigotry and hatred actually looks like. Starmer has already sidelined BLM, so who’s next?
That Starmer has continued to weaponise the antisemitism smears against Corbyn’s legacy, the Labour membership and senior left wing figures within the movement is appalling and will carry a cost as you say.
Can I just cancel my direct debit or do I have to tell someone? .
As memory serves – you already have (it was cancelled the day after you set it up but i’ll check)