Brilliant Momentum Rally Says Corbyn Stays

Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We'll keep the red flag flying here

I attended the Momentum rally last night, together with my son Tom and about 10,000 other people. It was a brilliant and optimistic rally with a clear message – Jeremy Corbyn isn’t going anywhere.

Making their way to the rally

John McDonnell, Corbyn himself, Dennis Skinner, the President of ASLEF and others had a simple message -  Jeremy Corbyn was elected by Labour’s members and only they will vote him out.

Corbyn speaks to the rally

At last night's rally

Only the blind and stupid will believe the New Labour pretext for attacking and trying to depose Corbyn – that it was all down to the Brexit vote.  The vote in the northern working-class constituencies for Brexit weren’t the doing of Corbyn.  UKIP gained 4 million votes in the May 2015 election.  Those who remember that awful election night will recall that the Sunderland constituencies each delivered votes of approximately 8,000 votes to UKIP.  Just like the decimation of Labour in Scotland, the erosion of working-class support for Labour took place on New Labour’s watch.

One of the New Labour traitors

The idea that Corbyn could reverse the damage that New Labour had done, at the same time that New Labour in the form of Wes Streeting, John Mann and Hilary Benn were waging war on him, is fanciful.  From the time that Corbyn was seen as a credible candidate last summer to today, the Right has waged a war against Corbyn in alliance with the Daily Mail and the Tory press.  Today the Daily Mirror, a paper that once supported Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascists, joined in the witchhunt.

John McDonnell speaking to the rally

There will be some people who supported Corbyn who will not lost heart and succumb to the nonsense that this is all about Corbyn winning the next General Election.  Without New Labour muddying and diluting Labour’s message of an end to austerity there is no doubt that Labour under Corbyn could do much better than Ed Miliband.  The only obstacles to this is New Labour which is determined to ensure that Labour remains a safe alternative party of capitalism.

Corbyn making his way to the rally

The Right started off the attack with bogus ‘anti-Semitism’ and it has now ended with Hilary Benn’s treachery.  It is fortunate that his father Tony Benn is dead otherwise he would be aghast at the behaviour of his son in emulating the worst characters of Labour historically such as  Ramsay MacDonald. 

At last night's rally

With the Tories in disarray and Britain facing a constitutional crisis and with Chilcot around the corner, the Labour Right was desperate.  What they feared was that at a general election Corbyn could win.  As Tony Blair said

“Let me make my position clear: I wouldn’t want to win on an old-fashioned leftist platform. Even if I thought it was the route to victory, I wouldn’t take it.”

It is essential that the left in the Labour Party should keep their powder dry, support Jeremy Corbyn, build Momentum and above all deselect those who tried to stab Corbyn in the back.

Tony Greenstein