Labour shoots itself in the foot in Stroud
JVL Introduction
As a result of sectarian manipulation by party officials at national and regional level, Labour has lost its leadership of Stroud council.
The council’s Labour leader Doina Cornell was almost certainly the local party’s prefered choice for prospective MP but she was not shortlisted. Three councillors, including Cornell, have quit the party in protest.
The new elected candidate, against the preferred wishes of the bureaucrats is local GP, Simon Opher, who lent his voice to those who protested vigorously at the refusal to short-list Cornell.
See our earlier report Democracy and the Labour Party – the case of Stroud posted on 11 June
As Caroline Molloy points out in the article below, the same sectarian manipulation can be seen in Wakefield, (where the deputy council leader was blocked from standing), Hastings, Peterborough, and elsewhere…
What does Labour think it is doing?
This article was originally published by openDemocracy on Fri 1 Jul 2022. Read the original here.
Labour loses grip of council coalition as trio quit in stitch-up row
Exclusive: Labour no longer largest party in Stroud’s long-running rainbow council after selection backlash
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It’s a key point that Doina Cornell is ‘soft left’ – but even then the witch hunters dredged up some benign stuff to take her down, as her account of the longlisting panel interview shows. More’s the pity she tried to explain this away and even seems to have thrown Marc Wadsworth under the bus – he’s seen the underside of a lot of buses…
The pretext is ‘what if this comes up on the doorstep’ which is ludicrous. Shame she didn’t tell them to get stuffed at the time.
‘Labour shoots itself in the foot in Stroud’ is absolutely the right title about this suicidal politics being pursued by the national leadership of the Labour party.
Any doubts that the Labour Party leadership is now in the hands of a right-wing, Blairite, careerist, bunch of political, backstabbing scoundrels is beyond dispute. Not content with endeavours to wreck Jeremy Corbyn’s attempt to steer the Party back towards socialist policies and despite his enormous popularity amongst the rank & file, these Tories masquerading in Labour clothing are doing the bidding of the likes of the Daily Mail and the far-right, racist Zionists beholden to Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party.
They wish to manipulate Labour voters into the illusion that their aim is to advance miniscule reforms to the lives of said voters when, once in amongst the privileges of power, they soon fall for the notion of not upsetting the status quo and getting their own snouts in the Westminster trough of knighthoods, life peerages, not to mention lining their own pockets in one way or another.
Any with even “soft left” tendencies are now seen as enemies to be thwarted in any quest to represent their local communities and their constituencies to be gerrymandered in favour of pliable, right-wing “Yes Men”.
The more they tread this path then the more will principled members of the Party have their eyes opened to the depths of political treachery to which the Party bureaucracy and the majority of careerist MPs seem prepared to sink.
Nigh on one hundred & twenty years ago the trade union movement and growing sections of the working class gave up on the hope of the Liberal Party as a vehicle for progressive change, perhaps the penny might now begin to drop that this Labour Party and its leadership should be dumped into the dustbin of history, that a new, mass party built on socialist and progressive policies is what is needed and cutting these right-wing, political gangsters adrift.
Ridiculous statements from David Evans in respect of Cllr Cormell’s record are, at best, utter humbug.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the sectarian obsession of Labour’s right-wing leadership is designed to wreck the Labour Party as a party of demoratic socialism.
Starmer’s mission is to turn the Labour Party into a pale pink Tory Party … Safe for the rich and powerful and safe for NATO and the Zionist State of Israel.
Doina Cornell isn’t particularly left-wing but unless you are a robotic lobbyist for some multi-national that isn’t sufficient. She was on the Crispin show last Sunday and seemed like a very ordinary run of the mill councillor who had a conscience. But purges have a habit of getting out of hand and devouring their own and this is what happened.
Do people remember the time when if you said the ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations were about Israel people accused you of playing it down, whatabouttery etc ?
The tragedy is that Corbyn and those around him did not get it. The result is that Labour is being purged of any trace of socialism.
How can a tweet about fighting fascism be considered ‘antisemitic’. This is McCarthyism gone mad.
It really raises the question about the formation of an alternative party of Labour and socialism
The final line of the article is scrambled. The previously Labour councillor referred to is Ekua Bayunu, a councillor for the Hulme ward in Manchester, who as an activist for Labour Black Socialists collaborated on several joint initiatives with JVL.
This appalling leadership continues to claw away at the beating heart of the Labour Party so that, increasingly, their only hope of any electoral success relies on the Tories continuing determination to destroy themselves by sleaze, lies and incompetence.
“They pointed to the longlisting of avowedly leftwing commentator Paul Mason for Stretford and Urmston, in Greater Manchester, as proof that candidates from that wing of the party were not all being vetoed.”
I laughed when I first saw that in the Guardian a few days ago.
The Starmer-led clique of pseudo-Conservatives currently running our Labour Party (into the ground) through deceit and intimidation is worse than worthless at its intended role. It is pitiful as an official oppostion, only going along with trivial tales which have been trailed through the media. The Labour establishment hierarchy is too inept and cowardly to tackle serious problems. Our rotten ruling clique is only up to spitefully bullying real people who have the intelligence and commitment which it lacks.
The global chaos which is upon us now demands radical thinking if there is to be a real recovery . Orwell,in his famous essay “the Lion and the Unicorn” written in 1941 was adamant that the current war could only be won by socialism. He was critical of the Labour Party for its timidity. The British people would endure hardship only if it had something to hope for. His prescience was remarkable. When the Party realised progressive policies were what the people wanted they produced a life changing programme which was to raise the conditions of working people to heights undreamt of. The last 43 years have been spent dismantling that programme by successive Tory governments. That exercise has accelerated in the last 12 years. The rise of the Far Right is frightening. New Labour ,alas never had the ambition to make fundamental change. The world is now teetering on the brink of a calamity such as that during WW2. Action on climate change has virtually ground to a halt. The oil companies,the energy companies and the arms industry are coining it in. They are jubilant. Right wing politicians are encouraging them. Scientists are warning it may already be too late to prevent a melt down. Labour should be pointing all this out and adopting similar policies to the Attlee government. The 2017 Labour Manifesto can be a blueprint for rescuing the world. It can only be done by the sort of cooperation between nations as at the end of WW2. It has happened before, it can happen again . Starmers, Labour Party is offering nothing. Amelioration is worse than useless. On every membership card there is the legend “the Labour Party is a democratic socialist party”. Alas, there are those in the leadership who are not and never have been a socialists of any stripe. They are imposters. and should resign.