This is the house that Keir built
JVL Introduction
”Paul Davies,” says Skwawkbox, “long one of the leading figures of the Labour left on Merseyside, has quit the party with a letter of resignation that provides a devastating dissection of the evils of Labour under the Keir Starmer regime.”
Although Davies won a famous battle against his suspension by the party nationally, and was then elected as the local party chair, he has now had enough and has resigned from the party.
He gives twelve contributory reasons, all of which will be familiar to readers of this website:
- Central control by the party machine
- Exaggerated claims of antisemitism
- Suspension of CLPs and branches
- Lack of respect for local democracy
- Lack of respect for national democracy
- Authoritarianism
- Lack of free speech
- Unjust disciplinary procedures
- Proscriptions
- Witchunt or McCarthyism
- Starmer’s leadership campaign
- Sidelining and controlling potential rivals
These are elaborated in his statement, reposted below.
This article was originally published by Skwawkbox on Sun 15 May 2022. Read the original here.
Exclusive: party chair quits Labour with withering dissection of Starmer’s unfitness
Former chair long targeted by Labour right for standing up for democracy leaves party in disgust
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This is not, of course, the first time that Wallesey CLP has found itself embroiled in a dispute with the Labour Party establishment. In 1987 popular local activist Lol Duffy, the Party’s candidate, came within a whisker of unseating sitting Tory MP Lynda Chalker, slashing her majority from 6708 to 279, very much against the national trend.
Neighbouring Labour MP, Frank Field, then decided he didn’t like having a socialist next-door, and led a campaign to have Duffy removed as PPC. The national leadership saw to it that he had his way: Duffy was removed and Angela Eagle was appointed withot so much as a democratic “by your leave”.
How ironic then, that at the very same time, a young up-and-coming legal expert was writing for “Socialist Alternatives”, the house journal of the Trotskyite “International Revolutionary Marxist Tendency”. Step forward Keir Starmer. My, how he has changed.
https://www.thesocialreview.co.uk/2020/05/28/starmers-socialist-alternatives/
This can’t be improved upon this as a summary of everything that’s gone wrong with the UK’s most important “democratic socialist” party under the current leadership. Since spring 2020, every significant decision of KS and his acolytes has taken Labour in the wrong direction. Thank you, Paul Davies, and solidarity.
As Lenin said “What is to be done..?” Imagine, we are in the invidious position of hoping the LP leader will fail and be displaced…so we can tackle the Tories he is allowing to run riot.
Starmer? Liar, cheat, manipulator, schemer, Machiavellian, loser. What more is there to say? Sadly nothing.
An excellent summary of everything that is wrong with the Labour Party today, explaining why it is no longer fit for purpose. Clearly the lacklustre local election results this month show general agreement among the voters. The question now of course is where do we go from here? Why are the Socialist Campaign Group content to allow the huge head of steam that Corbyn built up to evaporate?
Paul Davies pithily expresses conclusions which have been reached by many on the left who have either abandoned the party, or been expelled, or who remain members because they feel they have nowhere to go.. However we must be under no illusions about the new beast which has emerged: the Labour Party is now a totalitarian party of the right led by cynical opportunists who will exploit any form of chauvinist division or populist bigotry in order to garner support. They are not believers but unprincipled manipulators. Fortunately their use of rhetoric is poor, but in the event that they were to gain power their contempt for due process and natural justice would be extremely dangerous for the future of democracy; indeed Labour may well now be more totalitarian in its internal procedures than even the Tories.
For the above reason the task of the left should be to organise as an expanding movement of interlinked groups and unions, outside the confines of the LP, but including left activists who have chosen to remain in the party. Such a movement can act as the embryo of a socialist party, ready to rapidly form such a party at the moment when Labour collapses. Until that moment is reached the movement should seek to support any remaining leftwing Labour electoral candidates, but target rightwing Labour candidates by exposing their record and supporting more progressive candidates who stand against them in elections. Those who for sentimental or historical reasons remain attached to the LP need to grasp that like so many other corrupt social democratic parties the LP has reached the end of its lifespan and has nothing to offer the working class. Let its rotten shell collapse: when it does so it will make room for a radical socialist party, for politics abhors a vacuum.
Very clear summary which describes why so many of us have also resigned – with heavy hearts.