Labour in the North-East is scared
JVL Introduction
Helen Pidd reports on some of the grass-roots reaction to Jamie Driscoll deciding to run as an independent candidate for mayor in the North-East.
Kevin, a lifelong Labour voter said Driscoll’s treatment was “disgusting. But to be honest, I don’t think the Labour party is the Labour party any more. Keir Starmer is more Conservative than the Conservatives are… [running] the party like a dictatorship … he will purge anybody who disagrees with him.”
He is clearly not alone in that sentiment.
Driscoll, who said he would run if he could raise an initial £25k, did so within two hours and his fighting fund now stands at £116k.
With the memory of Ken Livingstone challenging the London labour machine and winning in 2000, Labour must be fearing the worst.
Time surely for a rethink – which we would all love to see – but the vibes afer losing in Uxbridge and South Ruislip suggest Labour’s instinct now is to veer ever rightwards.
Is Keir incapable of learning?
RK
This article was originally published by the Guardian on Mon 24 Jul 2023. Read the original here.
‘Labour are scared’: north-east party members quit to back Jamie Driscoll in mayoral vote
North of Tyne mayor has raised over £114,000 to run as an independent after Labour barred him from standing
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Devolution and Independence for the North East
Jamie Driscoll is the start
Tories of all colours are finished
REJOICE
I hope Jamie thrashes the careerists and authoritarians of Starmer’s right-wing party which no longer a real Labour Party. It should be better called Fake Labour.
JVL asks at the end of the introduction “Is Keir incapable of learning?”.
The context and tone of the question suggests that the editor would wish Starmer to understand that his opportunism is counterproductive and that if he wants more votes he should advocate a different political line – equally cynically presumably, since there is no evidence that Starmer has any principles whatsoever other than gaining power.
Please stop dreaming. A sentimental attachment to the totalitarian mental prison that the labour machine has become serves only to weaken what should be our resolve to crush it. We should instead be rejoicing at every hammer blow that strikes that prison and liberates a portion of its inmates from their enforced stupor! The sooner the LP fractures the better chance the left has of resurgence.
The idea that voting for Starmer clones in a general election is to vote for a lesser evil is utterly false. A Starmer election victory with a large majority would be the shortest route to true despotism: worse even than a slim Tory majority, and far worse than a hung parliament. The reason for this is that if a Starmer regime did not quickly itself install an authoritarian regime worse than the present one, the unpopularity of its austerity policies combined with its false branding as ‘socialist’ by the populist right would very soon cause it to be replaced by a government dominated by the neofascist right, seeking to divert discontent into the purest forms of hatred of minorities. Politicians who play with fire risk being consumed by fire.
To fear that a break-up of Starmer’s LP would lead to a massive Tory victory is to misread the runes. The Tory brand is toxic in large swathes of the country and there is a a gaping political hole waiting to be filled by a movement – perhaps an alliance – openly advocating investment in public services, wealth redistribution and net zero policies. Politics abhors a vacuum and the only thing which currently prevents that vacuum being filled is the illusion of the LP as a vehicle for the left – once again the incubus of the tradition of dead generations.
Helen Pidd reports that Jamie Driscoll is ‘not above shoehorning his former membership of Mensa – or his black belt in jiu jitsu- into conversation’. Nor is he averse to boasting of his ‘achievements’ as elected Mayor of North of Tyne. This can only be a good thing, serving to highlight the popular appeal of devolved government enhancing local democracy and implementing tangible progressive policies, such as accessible integrated public transport, the creation of proper jobs and the management of public utilities for the benefit of ‘the many’ not the CEO or the shareholder. Viewed in this light, I think that Driscoll’s pragmatic and calmly articulate parrying of attempts to label him as left, centre left, socialist, Corbynista etc is understandable, particularly in a region where Labour and its huge historical constituency has been notably conservative. Likewise his constant stress on keeping representatives of local minority political parties onboard. His job is not to overturn global capitalism.
What is developing here is an optimistic and generally beneficial populism, in stark contrast to Johnson’s rancid populism.
Plus, I agree with George Wilmers about the relationship between Starmer and ‘principles’.
One of the more insulting aspects of Labour’s decision to exclude Jamie from its shortlist of mayoral candidates was the attempt to insinuate that he was tainted with antisemitism. This was supposedly based on his having participated, among his many mayoral engagements, in an event with Ken Loach, at which nobody has claimed that anyone even mentioned Israel or Palestine. In other words: “We can’t beat him on policies; he’s popular with Labour members and the public because of his effective record; so let’s get the Jews onto him and try to make people think he’s some kind of antisemite.” Of course no Labour official actually said this in public, but it’s an accurate summary of their thinking.
Disgusted at being brought on as a stage army in Starmer’s faction fight, a group of us wrote an open letter about it https://jewishvoiceforliberation.org.uk/article/some-northeast-jews-speak-out-in-support-of-jamie-driscoll/ . We only sent it to local media, but I now wish we’d gone national and included the Guardian. Weeks later, I’m still enraged at Labour’s attempt to exploit my ethnicity. And I’m happy to say that those of us who go to shul or participate in the “official” Jewish community have not been ostracised — people are still talking to us.
I totally agree with George Wimers who presents and compelling and intelligent analysis of the current political landscape.
I want to add this: Socialism is not just about winning elections it is also and more importantly about doing what is morally right.
An electoral system that gives a political party an 80 seat majority with just 42.3 percent support and enabled Boris Johnson to force through a Hard Brexit without the endorsement of even half of voters is not morally just or democratic. Those on the left should stop dreaming of a 1945 landslide and even if it was possible, 47.7% of the popular vote achieving a majority of 145 seats is also not democratic.
An unfair voting system distorts our politics and encourages arrogance in our political class.
The forthcoming General election presents an opportunity to deny Starmer a majority and introduce electoral reform. I believe we should vote tactically to achieve that essential democratic reform.
Agree with George Wimers Starmer, Evans and all who sail with them are utterly deluded that they will ever change. My only reason for remaining in Labour is the hope that I can alleviate the now corrupt PLP.
we just have to look at who funded Starmer’s leadership campaign to recognise his priorities adopted to gain further funding independent of membership.
George Wimers well said. Starmer thinks he has changed the Labour Party but what he has done is kill it.
https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1683182129293713409
Pretty much agree with George Wimers. Scary as it is to contemplate, Labour is now an enemy of progress, fairness, justice and democracy, and it’s not just a question of the present leader.
Yes, there are some good people still in the party and some vaguely progressive organizations working within it and of course we have a links with the trade unions (though they themselves are often far from progressive in a more general context).
The problem for any electoral alternative is the electoral system, and, as we know from recent history, the media and the establishment will use any weapon whatsoever to destroy any vaguely progressive movement or leader from getting near power.
Remember that when Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party, and he was not that radical in traditional terms, the BBC had generals speaking on the news to say that the army would never allow Jeremy Corbyn to become Prime Minister. That was before the antisemitism allegations campaign took off. In the end, that proved sufficient and there was no need for an open military intervention.
I have long considered Labour to have become a party where any criticism of Israel is taboo for members. The influence of that view within the Party is intolerable in the context of human rights and democracy, and its advocates have developed techniques of dishonesty to a high degree. All of this, as I understand it, is woefully contrary to the fundamentals of Judaism.
Just as regime change in South Africa was brought about peacefully, so the world needs to work to get change to take place in Israel and not to allow it to get away with murder, as is now happening.
Well done George Wimers for taking the realist left stance. His warning that a Starmer election victory would open the door to something much worse is particularly insightful and something we dismiss at our peril.
Thank you George Wimers for saying so eloquently what I feel. I wonder too if Starmer even cares if the Unions disaffiliate, apart from the optics perhaps. He has shown where his loyalties lie and will get his funding from Israel, Murdoch and corporate interests who want to milk the UK further. We need a new social democratic party but we also need to unite under one banner rather than a plethora of smaller parties. I really hope some of the left wing heavyweights will step forward and help to give people fiery focus we need!
“False hope is worse than no hope. Labour won’t make promises it can’t keep”
Wes Streeting
Labour! Tough on Hope. Tough on the causes of Hope.
All the very best to Jamie Driscoll. I so hope he is returned as the Mayor of North of Tyne (home on my maternal side). Interesting to see article by the Guardian. Wonder if people have seen George Monbiot’s article in today’s Guardian about what lefties his constituency (Totnes) are doing to identify a truly lefty to get behind in elections.
There is a tendency to say that blocking popular left-wing candidates is a ‘mistake’ or an ‘own goal’ by the leadership. The fact is however that the Starmerites would rather lose elections than win with the wrong candidate. They decided in 2019 that they would prefer to lose rather than win under Corbyn’s leadership and the reverberations of this are still working their way through. The old assumption that winning elections is the bottom line for everyone in the Labour Party needs to be abandoned.
As an example, the leadership are well aware that Labour would have won in Uxbridge if the local party had been allowed to select the candidate freely but still do not regard their actions as a mistake. Through them they not only prevented the election of an independent-minded Labour MP but also got the opportunity to undermine an elected Labour Mayor with his own supporter base and to repudiate a progressive policy supported by the mass of the membership. For Starmer and his allies this is a win-win-win situation.
Kim McGuinness appears to be the perfect Starmerite candidate. She ‘says her No 1 priority is to end child poverty’ but then endorses Starmer’s decision to adopt a policy designed solely and specifically to increase child poverty. This willingness to identify one’s most fundamental principle and then sacrifice it very publicly on Starmer’s altar is the sort of symbolic display of obeisance that marks people out for preferment in today’s Labour Party.
McGuinness also follows the standard right-wing script in playing the victim. I assume she is not Jewish as if she were she would certainly accuse her critics of antisemitism. As it is she has to make do with implying that they are all misogynists.
It was very clear in Camden that the Starmer wing wanted a MUCH smaller party. They not only wanted to get rid of the left but wanted a neat ‘modern ‘ career-ladder organisation with almost no members, just a few who could be drafted in to deliver occasional leaflets they’d had no part in writing or discussing. The result in Holborn & St Pancras is barely-existent branches, some of which only meet to vote their friends in once a year. The constituency office is permanently locked. Reducing membership is a major goal — if possible members on the left first, but not only those. I agree entirely that Uxbridge was a win-win for the Starmer-Streeting faction. I wonder if Danny Beales will come back here and do any local work as a councillor? Presumably the career ladder awaits somewhere else.
Number one priority is to stop a Sir Kid Starver majority government, it is not beyond anyone who has strong support or face recognition in their communities to flip those seats
Under FPTP you only need one more vote than the others to win
Cost £30k, equates to about £2 per supporter, you will raise that when JC holds a rally in your constituency
Eminently Doable