Keir Starmer’s factionalism is bad for Labour and the country
JVL Introduction
Perspectives on the General Election (2)
Compass has long campaigned for a different kind of politics.
It describes itself as
“a home for those who want to build and be a part of a Good Society; one where equality, sustainability and democracy are not mere aspirations, but a living reality. We are founded on the belief that no single issue, organisation or political party can make a Good Society a reality by themselves so we have to work together to make it happen.”
In July 2023 its director, Neal Lawson, was threatened with expulsion from the Labour Party because he had commented on a Layla Moran 2021 tweet about her cooperation with the Green Party, calling it “proper grown-up progressive politics”.
In response Lawson said that the “progressive majority in our country is thwarted by the electoral system”, and called for more cooperation to oust the Conservative Government. Labour, he said then, had been “captured by a clique … behaving like playground bullies” and was caught in a “paranoid, top-down way of political thinking”.
A year later, the bullying seems to be worse than ever…
See also the JVL statement Election 2024 – For The Many.
RK
This article was originally published by New Statesman on Thu 30 May 2024. Read the original here.
Keir Starmer’s factionalism is bad for Labour and the country
This desiccated and brittle project will be found badly wanting in office.
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Neal talks about Jeremy’s weakness as a Leader. But where was Neal when the anti-Semitism smears took hold…
Lawson vastly underestimates the achievements of Jeremy Corbyn : attaining the position of leader and coming near to a majority in 2017. History will give these achievements their due. What Jeremy could not do was to resist the full propagandistic, mendacious tactics of the establishment media (especially the repetitive, false accusations of anti-semitism) and the back-stabbing attacks from the PLP that followed. I agree that only PR could bring about progressive change, but with the current duopoly in power, that will never happen. One thing must be faced : Starmer’s Labour Party is irretrievable. Only a coalition of independent, extra-parliamentary groups can hope to begin change.
Neil says ‘since 2020, as the factional leaders of the right have taken over the governance and bureaucracy of the party machine’, but in fact they were pretty much in control already. That was one of the big problems during Jeremy’s leadership period.
Starmer and his whole front bench MPs must lose their seats, and be sacked from the labour party, along with those in the Labour NEC. Bring back those decent MPs who were fraudulently removed by the liar, fraud, deceiver, Starmer!
Sadly, the baby being thrown out of Starmer’s bathwater is democracy. Local democracy thrived under Corbyn; members felt they had a voice, and it was listened to. Conference was truly a place where the membership and the shadow cabinet hammered out policies which Corbyn genuinely brought on board. Now, local democracy is ruthlessly crushed and members’ wishes count for nothing. I shan’t be voting for this insipid shadow of a party.
I don’t recall Compass playing a role in opposing the proscription of Labour Against the Witchhunt. Why is this important? For two reasons: 1) because it widened the definition of “antisemitism” to include those opposing the IHRA; ans 2) because it set up a ploy – straight out of the Stalin purges playbook – whereby anyone opposing the proscriptions could be labelled a “supporter” and threrefore expelled.
Of course, taking wrong positions in the past doesn’t make a person’s current position wrong but a little honest accounting would be reassuring.
So called centrists seem to imagine their ideological purity is not ideological purity but in fact some hallmark of competence. However it is now seen as entirely something else. Quisling loyalty is the hallmark of the mediocrities that are quite aware that’s all they have.