The establishment feared Corbyn’s internationalism
JVL Introduction
In this article for Jacobin, Oliver Eagleton highlights why the British establishment hated Corbyn so much: his anti-imperialist commitments.
In it he chronicles Starmer’s rapid reversion to a defence of the US-dominated world order.
But, more importantly, he locates the strategic shift taking place within the establishment to a realistic assessment of the British economy (read: City of London) and its need to reorient post-Brexit towards the expanding Asian markets, “courting allies and constraining China” while continuing to strengthen its alliances with – and dependency on – the Gulf states.
It is vital, he says, that the left develops a clear analysis of these overall developments rather than simply focusing on the government’s most clear-cut transgressions, such as its complicity in Saudi and Israeli war crimes.
This article was originally published by Jacobin on Sun 19 Dec 2021. Read the original here.
The establishment feared Corbyn’s internationalism
Above all, the British establishment feared Jeremy Corbyn because he advocated forcefully for socialist internationalist foreign policy. This anti-imperialist politics was the first casualty of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party leadership.
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Those responsible for the defenestration of Jeremy Corbyn and the destruction of the country’s hopes for a desperately needed reforming socialist government, fall into five interconnected groups.
1. The Blairite rump of the PLP furious at the prospect of Corbyn upending their shameful legacy – and after 2017 terrified that he might succeed in doing so. This groups was swelled by other Labour MPs on the so-called ‘moderate’ wing of the party.
2. The supporters of Israel right or wrong, who feared that Corbyn might lead a UK government determined to see justice done to the Palestinians and indict Israel for its abuses of human rights. In an interconnected world they feared that a courageous stand in favour of Palestinian rights would have a knock-on effect throughout the western world, and possibly endanger the aid Israel receives annually from the USA, including its contributions to Israel’s defense capabilities.
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3. Armaments manufacturers and salesmen (including the UK) fearful that a Corbyn government might weaken their monopolies and prevent arms sales to dictatorships like Saudi Arabia.
4. The obscenely wealthy and giant corporations fiercely opposed to the introduction of new levels of taxation including taxes on inherited wealth.
5. Press barons like Rupert Murdoch and the weight of the traditional media who also felt that Corbyn threatened the comfortable neo-liberal consensus that provided them with employment and reliably high incomes.
Oddly enough Labour Party interests feared Corbyn far more than the Conservatives, who stood in the wings watching Labour destroy itself without any need for them to assist.
The unholy alliance of these groups launched a concerted assault on Corbyn’s reputation, trying out one line of attack after another, until they hit upon the very area where his record was strongest, his lifelong dedication to fighting racism. The notion that Corbyn and his allies should have done more to appease his attackers by acknowledging his failings in the area of antisemitism is patently absurd. Corbyn did far more along those lines than was advisable, but the more he did the more his attackers redoubled their efforts. In the end the very actions that he took to defuse the matter added credibility to the accusations. By 2019 the party’s Remainers, including the present leader, had bullied him into accepting a policy that made no sense to the electorate and positively incensed the large body of Leavers who had voted to leave the EU. Labour’s defeat in December 2019 was inevitable.
Jeremy Corbyn is the greatest mp of our time’s.
Thankyou for this. A coherent understanding, of the change socialists didn’t want.
Kuhnberg: “The notion that Corbyn and his allies should have done more to appease his attackers by acknowledging his failings in the area of antisemitism is patently absurd. Corbyn did far more along those lines than was advisable, but the more he did the more his attackers redoubled their efforts. In the end the very actions that he took to defuse the matter added credibility to the accusations.”
I wrote an article along those lines to the Clarion back in July 2018 (just after Labour adopted the IHRA definition and all its examples), putting it slightly differently: “The problem with Jeremy Corbyn is that he’s too nice… He assumes that other people, especially other people he feels an affinity with, are like him and expects them to react accordingly, and with rationality… The IHRA definition of antisemitism was adopted in response to a smear campaign, intended to delegitimise the leader of the Labour Party. People who indulge in such despicable tactics are rarely amenable to reason and the attempt to appease them by conceding some of what they want whilst rejecting their more outrageous demands was doomed to failure. Because they don’t want compromise, they don’t want a solution. They want blood.”
Clarion didn’t print it, nor any of the others I wrote, all of which predicted pretty much what happened. I’m quite proud (though also disappointed) to have been right about what was going to happen, way back in July 2018, especially as I don’t always do too well with such things (I predicted that 2019 would result in a hung parliament, for example).
The article is OK, but riddled with spelling mistakes, e. g.
saber-rattling
defense spending
centers
anemic manufacturing sector
aging population
I mean, is it too much to ask that an article by a British author, about British politics, printed on a British website be written in English?
[The article was publshed by Jacobin, a US-based website – JVL ed]
I’ve no particular respect for the “great ones” running UK politics in either of the main contenders for government BUT:-
(1) they MUST have twigged that the USA now sees its partner in the European sphere as the EU and isn’t interested in sideshows.
We’re no longer in the EU and are fast facing growing economic / political global irrelevance and isolation as a result. London is losing its global dominance as a centre of finance. While the USA will put pressure on the UK if it directly harms any political / economic concerns they have, the USA has almost nothing to gain from maintaining the relationship it had until recently with the UK. So it won’t.
(2) These “great ones” must know that attempts to cosy up to what’s today’s largest super-power by squaring up to the super-power poised to take over from it are dangerous folly for a relatively tiny country already so dependent on Chinese manufactured goods and their investments.
While the USA is CURRENTLY the world’s leading power, within the next 20 years China is likely to take over that role. It has a huge “soft power” empire already (based on trade, technology, loans and the creation of solid, sustained relations with a vast array of the world’s already rich economies and its developing countries).
…and we’re, just, beginning to see, now, how today’s Labour Party are beginning to ‘reap the whirlwind’ of their treacherous behaviour, in their electoral failures.
They can suspend, expel, gerrymander – lie – to their hearts content, but we’re, already, seeing how that translates, at the ballot box.
The Party can replace Membership fees and donations. They can replace Union donations and structural support, by accepting large donations from well-heeled, private individuals, but…
…without the votes, they’re going nowhere.
One thing that’s needed to cement this scenario, is for ‘The Left’ to unite, and give people a real alternative, to vote for. Not, just, a political alternative, but a media alternative, as well.
Too many left wing groups, too many left wing media outlets. Money is tight, and people can’t afford to donate to them all.
Consolidate, The Left! Give us something to rally round.
The word is ‘SOCIALISM’ that is what the establishment have always feared. Anyone remotely associated with Socialism is completely ‘NO PLATFORMED’in the Johnson/Starmer Brave New World.
I knew we’d get hammered in the 2019 election. The electorate were confused about Brexit and they swallowed lies about Corbyn being an antisemite. What it taught me is this: the pro-Israel lobby will never, ever ease off and will use a series of arguments which have little consistency depending on the constituency they are trying to influence. They aim to confuse and portray themselves as ‘the victim’ in order to get sympathy. It managed to confuse some on the Left who swallowed the nonsense that criticism of Israel – ‘the Jewish State’ – was an attack on Jews. The pro-Israel lobby is used by the UK ‘establishment’ as a Trojan Horse against the Labour Movement and is a political force that needs to be identified and isolated, and destroyed. Corbyn was, at heart, a romantic socialist – with all the right morals. But it isn’t enough. He lacked the clarity and killer instinct that is a pre-condition for anyone in his position to have an impact. He should have concentrated on sorting out the Labour Party and NOT swallowed the nonsense that he could become PM and change the course of history. In the absence of a mass movement this was never going to happen. One of the things that irritates me increasingly by those good natured ‘socialists’ who want to accommodate the fears of pro-Israel Jews is that they fail to understand that there is a concerted and coordinated pro-Israel lobby that is rational and well funded working in Israel’s interests as well as the interests of British Capitalism in the Middle East. It should not be overestimated – but to acknowledge its existence is not a conspiracy. This lobby will attack and undermine those who shine a light on it – like David Miller. But it needs to be exposed and it will be exposed – as Walter Hixon’s recently published book ‘Architects of Repression: How Israel and its Lobby Put Racism, Violence and Injustice at the Center of U.S Middle East Policy’ has done in the USA. I know that there are those who fear that this line of argument MAY ignite some real antisemitism when it becomes the subject of popular discourse. That’s a risk that will need to be taken. But I’ve had enough. There are many Tories such as Alan Duncan who know that UK foreign policy in the Middle East is heavily influenced by Tel Aviv – and I know from years of activity that few politicians with any public profile will stand up to the pro-Israel lobby because if they do it will mean their political ‘career’ will be over’. The message is clear: time to go onto the attack against these bastards.
The traitors within Labour hold financial interests that they did not want to lose.
Kuhnberg has written this brilliantly, & has stated clearly why Mr.Corbyn was stabbed so often even by Starmer, the fake Labour Leader, all in all Mr.Corbyn was so feared, & still is because thousands remain loyal to this man who represents Socialism.
Bernie Sanders another man who has been crushed under the capitalists greed.
I would still vote for an honest politician but the abhorrent corrupt keep creating lies, smears to protect their personal wealth!
This is a great article, clear and succinct. I don’t need to look up any references on Google to understand what it is saying. It is therefore all the more powerful in its argument which is something I had not fully appreciated before, which I would like to be developed and built upon.
Lets try and keep discussion and ideas from being too intellectualised and verbose.
The UK has been beholden to the US since the 50s. An example is the nuclear power industry. Britain provides the US ,illegally, with plutonium for nuclear weapons. Because the reprocessing of nuclear fuel can be done in Britain more easily than the US. Our legal restraints are looser. In 1957 Britain nearly had a major nuclear disaster at Windscale making plutonium. Since then civil nuclear reactors have been used. Not safe, cheap, cool reactors but dangerous, massively expensive, hot reactors, because they produce plutonium. It carries on today. The new generation of reactors which produce electricity costing three times as much as wind, have been funded regardless, because they make plutonium. Because the US demands we make it for them. We are their slaves.
Our hope is to wriggle free as the US economy falls into decline, like the USSR, unable to fund its grossly bloated war machine.
George Peel – the Starmer supporters also believed Labour “can replace Membership fees and donations. They can replace Union donations and structural support, by accepting large donations from well-heeled, private individuals” … but when they tried this approach it didn’t work. A “Guardian” article some months into Starmer’s leadership admits this. Too few of the well-heeled made donations and too few of these donations were anywhere near big enough to offset the money lost from membership subscriptions and union affiliate fees.
John is right about intimidation – the way political careers are threatened if someone expresses support for the Palestinians. Another factor equally important is political opportunism – expressing unwavering support for Israel and unwavering opposition to anyone who disagrees as a way of advancing one’s political career. I can’t say that in all cases the posture adopted was insincere, since I can’t read the minds of the persons involved, but the rewards are a matter of record.
Excellent article and great commentary from Kuhnberg. Thank you.
There are members of the Labour Party who place the entire blame for Corbyn’s electoral loss at Corbyn’s feet. One has said to me that it was his complete refusal to recognise alternative agendas to his own which earned him the disfavour of his party colleagues, and ultimately earned him the disrespect of the voters. It’s a great shame there are members of the party who hold to this ill-judged view of events, and this article tells us just how misjudged it is.