Making it up as you go – the withdrawal of the whip from Jeremy Corbyn
Published
by
Richard Kuper
JVL Introduction
In this article Michael Murray investigates the legitimacy of the withdrawal of the whip from Jeremy Corbyn under the Labour Party’s and the PLP’s rules.
He finds it has none.
It was a wrongful withdrawal of the whip and should be rescinded immediately.
This article was originally published by Labour Affairs on Sun 5 Dec 2021. Read the original here.
Jeremy Corbyn banished as Labour MP—one year on
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it is time that the remaining socialist Labour MPs confronted Starmer re this and ask him directly what he is going to do . Take back to NEC to act on it. Corbyn’s suspension does not seem to have followed any known PLP rules. It appears to based on Starmers advisers whoever they are .
It’s precisely the Corbyn story riven with unjust accusations, paranoia meted out with bile and bilge from faith fraternities and rags that purposefully misconstrued what Corbyn was all about that precipitated me as a lifelong Labour member to quit membership when anti-Brexit Sir Keir Starmer was bounced into the Labour leadership upon Jeremy Corbyn’s, I regard, unnecessary resigning. Although, I am tempted back to membership only that my local MP Harriet is to step down ~ and that a solid membership has the chance to replace Harriet with a descent Corbynister-type rather than voting in a flimsy Tory-lite Starmer supporting replacement MP, God Forbid, gushingly taking the Camberwell & Peckham political stage that Harriet graced for so long, albeit with heavily redacted expenses files to show of that awful memorable parliamentary period of across-the-board MP’s wantonness. Can always dump my membership again if a stargazing Starmer MP gets in to C&P after the Harriet by-election in a year or so or perhaps sooner.
Does anyone recall Churchill’s allegation during the 1945 General Election about the likely policing activity of a (majority) Labour government? And does anyone recall George Orwell’s comments about the scant respect shown by the 1945-1950 government for civil liberties and freedom of expression? There was plenty of freedom of expression for ‘Mr Cube’ (propaganda arm of giant sugar refining capitalists like Tate and Lyle, whose colonialist record is and was plain for all to see), not to mention the iron and steel companies – certainly part of the ‘commanding heights of the economy’. But there was no freedom of speech, even at Speakers’ Corner- especially not for anarchists – against whom Regulation 18b, a wartime emergency used against Oswald Mosley – was invoked.
Is (industrially relevant) regulation 1AA – used to threaten imprisonment against strikers at Betteshanger, one of our local coalmines, available as an Order in Council?
IF the North Shropshire by-election tomorrow is won by the LibDems and Labour trails in well below the Labour vote achieved in 2019, THEN I doubt whether the Starmer/Evans project will be able to continue.
Unlike the US set-up, the UK’s highly restrictive expenditure limits mean political parties NEED lots of unpaid volunteers to canvass for votes and support their candidates for election.
Labour’s lost so many of its activists the party’s emailing suspended individuals and non-members with urgent requests to bail out the party that treated them so badly. Labour HQ’s CHEEK is astounding!
Frankly, Jeremy Corbyn is better equipped as an independent, than anyone in the Parliamentary Labour Party, to make life hell for Starmer and his henchmen. The Blue Labour – establishment has no interest in rules or fairness. As Ken Loach has pointed out – the Labour leadership is just another tool in the Establishment tool box. They believe in delivering the status quo to an electorate hand-bound to poverty, austerity and inequality.
Sir Keir Starmer in the election for Labour Party Leadership claimed he was the ‘Unity’ candidate. Put it on the side of a bus!
Still not certain as to how Sir Keir defines the alleged crimes of the Blessed Jeremy. Perhaps he hopes to delay things until we are all dead. I believe Nye said that about broadly similar situations.
Starmer thinks he can’t afford to reinstate Jeremy because his presence in the party would fatally undermine his authority. He (Starmer) may consider this a masterstroke; in fact it is a serious miscalculation. For one thing Jeremy’s moral standing and his record as a socialist puts the present leader to shame. The multiple smears against Jeremy lose credibility with every passing year. The longer he remains in exile, the greater his standing and his influence. It is not impossible is that he will win as an independent in the next election and that this will inspire the birth of a left-wing party with the authority to replace Labour in the public imagination. If this sounds ridiculously optimistic, it should be borne in mind that elsewhere in the world successful new parties are being started all the time, particularly at times of great change.
Microbe, I don’t suppose you’ll see this post, but just for the record……. Jeremy had just been subjected to four plus years of the most hideous, malicious and malevolent abuse and character assassination, and ‘transformed’ from an anti-racist and a pacifist into an anti-semite and a friend of terrorists in the minds of millions of people AND suffered a massive defeat in the GE, and yet you would have had him stay on as leader and subjected to even MORE of the same! He may not have shown it, but I’m sure he must have been deeply affected by it all – and it was more-or-less every single day – along with his wife and his sons and close friends. They could hardly have been unaffected by it.
I doubt there are many people who could have endured and withstood such an onslaught for so long, but he DID, and he did so not only for his member-supporters, but because he really wanted to try and transform society and begin to create a better world.