A declassifed UK Exclusive on Corbyn and the establishment campaign against him
Published
by
Richard Kuper
JVL Introduction
Matt Kennard of Declassfied UK has posted a six-and-a-half thousand word article, based on a very candid interview with Jeremy Corbyn, on the campaign to stop him becoming Prime Minister.
Highlights include:
- UK MILITARY: ‘They sent me a warning’
- MI5 and MI6: ‘Deliberately undermined me’
- MIKE POMPEO’S THREAT: ‘A quite deliberate message’
- THE GUARDIAN: ‘A tool of the British establishment’
- UK PRESS: ‘We have a supine media in this country’
- KEIR STARMER: ‘I should have been more aware of his past’
- ARMS TO SAUDI ARABIA: ‘Extraordinary levels of lobbying from Labour MPs’
We publish a few extracts below and link to the full article.
This article was originally published by Declassfied UK on Wed 22 Jun 2022. Read the original here.
Exclusive: Jeremy Corbyn on the establishment campaign to stop him becoming PM
The former Labour Party leader sits down with Declassified for his most candid interview yet – on the British media, UK military and intelligence services, Israel, Keir Starmer, Julian Assange and Saudi Arabia.
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Have read the whole interview. The campaign to undermine and smear him by the Arms Lobby, Israel Lobby and the media is well documented. We all know also of the deliberate undermining of Jeremy by his own staffers and various MP`s. Its refreshing to find that, given all he and his policies have endured – he appears hopeful for the future and as dedicated as ever to pursue peace and justice. It was significant how he side-stepped the question of standing in Islington as an Independent MP. Given his track record it wouldnt be surprising if he won by a landslide.
Many of us could see this slow motion car crash happening and were screaming at Jeremy to ‘take control’. He was like a rabbit in the headlights and didn’t know which way to turn, made worse by the useless advisers around him. Thousands of us pounded the streets campaigning for him, yet we could see our efforts being squandered by capitulation after capitulation.
We knew that Jeremy, because of his authenticity, was the ONLY person who could hold together the disparate sections of the left and also attract members of the public and thereby form a Socialist government.
It’s sad to say, that because of factionalisation, with the Blairite/Starmer/Zionist left, the Putin left and the Brexit left, the left is now finished for the foreseeable future. At least that is, until another charismatic and genuine leader emerges in the mould of Corbyn but without the weaknesses.
Poor Jeremy. Politically naivity doesn’t even begin to describe it. Starmer and his coterie are now warning any MPs thinking of joining RMT picket lines of dire consequences if they do. Anything with the whiff of support for workers fighting against redundancies and cuts to their standard of living in the face of rampant inflation are considered a threat to this Labour Party leadership’s desire not to upset the Tory middle class voters, whilst taking for granted the working class and abandoning them to the nationalistic propaganda of the far right, as they did during the Brexit issue leading up to the 2019 election.
That Jeremy also appears not to have looked into the political history of Starmer’s background beggars belief. Regrettably he appears to have learnt nothing either from the election success but then murder of Allende. The ruling elite have never, and will never, surrender power to those who fight for the goal of socialism without a fight to the death to defend their wealth, power and privilige. All talk of “peace” with these forces and their corrupt, careerist agents in the Labour movement who carry out their orders to politically disarm and emasculate the working class will wind up in the UK with the kind of disaster which befell the movement in Chile.
One cannot help but notice that Jeremy fudged a clear answer to the question as to his future as a Labour MP in his present constituency, when the press is already awash with Starmer’s machinations to oust him as Labour’s candidate unless he grovels in supplication to the right-wing gang currently in power in the PLP. Therefore no more prevarications from Jeremy, either he rallies the tens of thousands who joined the Party when his leadership campaign in 2015 shocked the right-wing to the core (as well as himself) to do battle to drive the Starmer crew out into the Tory Party or the washed out Liberal Democrats where they belong, or keeps his head down and abandons the fight to leave the field clear for these political backstabbers to continue their dirty work.
Too kind to Mr. Corbyn, in my view. One simple point: if you are accused of doing something heinous and you didn’t do it, why apologise? What are you apologising for?
Mr. Corbyn was the boxer who refused to put on his gloves. His passivity proved fatal not just to him, but to many of his followers, as your organisation knows full well.
He never, to my knowledge, just explained that those attacking his so-called antisemitism were, in reality, undermining him because he did not accord the customary, automatic and largely uncritical support to Israel that the British establishment demands. He refused to counter-attack. Presumably, he felt that he could manage the balancing act between seeing clearly the role of British imperialism in the past, support for ongoing US imperialism today and representing the British state.
He raised the hopes of many young people in this country and his fall has hobbled the Left and encouraged its enemies.
Corbyn wasn’t the “first pro-Palestinian leader of a major party for a long time” – that was Ed Miliband and he got into trouble for it. The antisemitism smear started with Miliband.
And Corbyn says on antisemitism:
“And it’s very horrible and very nasty and is designed to be very isolating and designed to also take up all of your energies in rebutting these vile allegations, which obviously we did.”
No “we” didn’t – they capitulated and threw people like Marc Wadsworth under the bus. This interview confirms that Corbyn isn’t going to apologise and is either deliberately evading this or lacks awareness of his failure.
I don’t pretend that fighting back was easy but it’s led to a disastrous and ongoing campaign against the left.
[This longish comment has been trimmed back to our standard word length – JVL web]
Some organisations and situations are unmanageable.
I think a Labour party worth having was only a distant dream when Corbyn succeeded against the odds in becoming leader. The wider Labour family and the voters wanted what was on offer, the PLP at Westminster didn’t when they understood properly what it meant.
I think Nigel and Paul haven’t taken fully into account the emotional reactions, the destruction of trust, the necessity of planning defensive actions against further betrayals and the time and energy expended on dealing with the results of the alleged administrative sabotage and coups against Corbyn.
Chronologically wasn’t the first set-back when Labour’s very sophisticated economic modelling system inexplicably went down just before the first Tory budget that Corbyn and his team had to reply to? If this failure was “engineered” (or even the result of staggering incompetence) then there would have been huge damage to internal morale and to the degree of confidence the front bench team had in the “office” function.
The mass resignations (one at a time, allegedly with journalists briefed) of Labour MPs in defiance of the new leader’s huge majority in all part of the party must have had a devastating personal impact on Corbyn and his allies. It must have felt like betrayal of all decent human values as well as betrayal of democratic decisions and all Labour values.
Recruiting replacements for the shadow ministry and other senior posts and getting this new embattled team to start working together would have been a major challenge. Developing the 2017 manifesto while simultaneously settling the party and staving off the continuing campaign against Corbyn and co must have created so much work that only key priorities could be attended to. It’s unsurprising some tasks were left undone.
I’m not optimistic but I do hope for a Corbyn Mark 2 to renew the politics and hope the earlier model left behind him.
Sorry – but what is he supposed to apologise for?
To Starmer – for saying that numbers of those
accused of antisemitism were exaggerated ?
This was purely a question of functional numeracy
– the sort off question posed by “More or Less”
on R4.
Apropos the Jewish Community and antisemitism –
Corbyn appears to have been confused by the multitude
of views expressed by the Jewish Community. Of course
faith and ethnology does divide Communities – one
example being the Christian Community with Northern
Ireland a prime example. The division between Zionists
and non Zionists very roughly mirrors that between
Unionists and Nationalists where until recently the ruling
elite were composed of Unionists.
I think Corbyn – not being a person off faith did not
thoroughly comprehend the split in the Jewish
Community.
Then of course Corbyn was naive and trusting – maybe
he should have employed an investigator to trawl
through Starmer’s Social media profile and past
allegiances.
Disappointed by some very cruel comments about Jeremy Corbyn. All very well for back seat drivers to speak up and criticise after the events – and not to recognise the awful constraints around him when he became leader.
In response to Emma Tait may I say that Jeremy Corbyn has been politically aware for a long time, though not as long as myself. Unlike Jeremy, I as a teenager initially followed the line pursued by my parents, both city councillors for 18 years, for whom subservienct loyalty to the Party leader, firstly Clement Atlee, then Hugh Gaitskell, followed by Harold Wilson was the order of the day.
After leaving school in 1961 however, I rapidly experienced an initiation into the realities of the work place, barely a year into my first job, by the threat of redundancy before 1962 was out! Labour’s youth movement responded to calls for a demonstration and lobby of parliament against rising unemployment issued by the Northern Trades Councils but at every twist and turn the Party bureaucracy both local and national attempted to sabotage our efforts to campaign for that march and lobby, preferring to undermine “leftists” to settle old political scores, rather than forge a common front against unemployment brought about by the policies of Harold MacMillan’s Tory government’s response to Britain’s worsening economic situation against the competition of the post war, resurgent economies of Germany and Japan.
The Party right-wing’s obstruction was for me a revelation and undermined everything I’d previously believed about the Party’s leadership and wasn’t surprised some years later at the political trajectory of my local MP who was the chief whip at Westminster before he was granted a life peerage and soon joined the “Gang of Four” when they betrayed to set up the Social Democrats.
Now I’m only a few years older than Jeremy, but if I had to draw conclusions about the political nature of the right-wing Party bureaucracy and its leadership given my experience of them, how come, given the years of his experience in the Party and in Westminster, he was apparently so surprised and taken aback when they and many of those he’d offered the olive branch of peace to when inviting them to sit in the shadow cabinet, fell over themselves to undermine him in relation to so-called anti-semitism in the Party and couldn’t wait to stick the political boot in and stab him in the back?
In response to Nigel, I too remember Ted Short and being in awe on the occasions when he visited the family home (Labour Committee Rooms). Innocent days!
Isn’t it funny how Jeremy is so often attacked by posters on this site and other left-wing blogs…… and by people who claim to be socialists. It is totally disingenuous – and malicious as such – to fraudulently claim that Jeremy could have fought back against all the smears and lies, or do his detractors on here supposedly believe that the MSM who conspired in all the smearing and demonisation of Jeremy (and left-wing members) were ever going to agree with him that the A/S claims, for example, were grossly exaggerated?!
Hmm……
[Enough already! – this particular argument has been had often enouogh in these comments pages. We’re drawing a line under it for now. – JVL web]
To Allan – it may have been worth disowning your comrades and appeasing your attackers if it had led to de-escalation of the smears and a united party but it didn’t – it got much worse. Sorry if this isn’t what you want to hear but the truth matters. And I don’t accept that there was nothing he and his close circle could have done. We’ve spent the past six years or so saying many positive things that were necessary.
I believe this interview was recently conducted which made Jeremy’s comment about ‘Labour’s problem with anti-semitism’ all the more breath-taking. Even now he does not realise it was all a scam to get rid of him and his supporters! No wonder he still will not speak with Chris Williamson, Tony, Jackie, Marc etc.
Why is JC still in labour ? The best way to fight the party and build a working class movement is to leave.