The Fight against the Right begins – Inside and
Outside the Labour Party – as COVID-19 Demonstrates Why Capitalism has outlived
its stay
If anyone had any doubts about who and what (Sir) Keir Starmer
represents, his Shadow Cabinet appointments today should lay them to rest. Starmer represents a return of the Blairite Right. Even Barry Gardiner, a supporter of
Labour Friends of Israel and easily the most articulate member of Corbyn’s
shadow cabinet has been sacked,
as has Ian Lavery, former President of the NUM and one of the few working class
members in the PLP as well as Jon Trickett.
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| Unity candidate Keir Starmer sacks the Shadow Cabinet's most articulate exponent |
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| According to Momentum the election of Starmer is a victory - the capacity lying to their members is unlimited - as is the stupidity of anyone who remains in Momentum |
Momentum sent out a ludicrous statement to members today suggesting that Starmer’s election is some kind of victory. However even the most stupid and servile member of Jon Lansman’s fan club cannot disguise the extent of the Left’s defeat. Lansman writes that:
We are proud too that, in four
and a half years, Jeremy Corbyn and the movement that supported him has changed
our party for the better and given voice to the hopes of millions who felt
unrepresented in politics.
We didn’t win – and that failure
is ours collectively – but we have transformed politics for the better. ..This
is our victory. And we should be proud.
In Labour, the dark days when our
party cheered on privatisation, pursued illegal wars, talked about scroungers
and demonised migrants are long gone.’
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| Jon Lansman went into bat for the world's only Apartheid state Israel and in the process destroyed Corbyn - this scab should be banished from socialist circles |
Momentum’s capacity for self-delusion seems to be endless. However socialists in the Labour Party are resigning by the thousand. No-one is fooled by this kind of bravado.
Lansman is not alone. The socialist left
in the Labour Party – the LRC, Jewish Voice for Labour and Labour Left Alliance
are equally culpable in their own way. They misunderstood the nature of the
attack on the Left, they failed to confront the anti-Semitism smear campaign
effectively .
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| Debate on Labour Left Alliance Facebook page on whether to stay in the Labour Party - the LLA refuses to take on board the fact that the situation has changed |
I shall
devote a separate article to the question of where the Left goes from here but
if the LLA is anything to go by then there is a steely determination to repeat
the same mistakes of the past four years and ignore the fact that we are in
changed circumstances. In the words of one contributor on the LLA’s
main Facebook Group the Left in the Labour Party either adapts or dies.
As the
Jerusalem Post gloated
‘New British Labour
Party leader Keir Starmer tackled antisemitism immediately upon
election Saturday, as he promised to root out that scourge from the party that
in the past has been charged with fostering hatred toward Jews.’
‘Anti-Semitism’ is a code word for
the Left. It plays the same role in the attacks on the Left as 'Communist' did in the days of Joe McCarthy.
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| Lee Rock, LLA's National Organiser asks what has changed! Oh nothing much, just Keir Starmer has become the new right-wing leader of the Labour Party |
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| Lee Rock, the LLA's National Organiser is adept at putting his fingers in his ears |
What Starmer is promising is a
witchhunt of the Left and anti-Zionists. Opposition to the Israeli state is
‘anti-Semitism’ in the eyes of the Labour Right. To call Israel ‘racist’ is itself
anti-Semitic. But the
responsibility for that lies with Lansman and Corbyn. When they accepted the IHRA ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism
they accepted the terms of debate as the Right defined them.
The fact that these accusations of
‘anti-Semitism’ had no foundation was irrelevant. The fact that Israel is a
racist state unlike any other was also irrelevant.
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| Israeli bulldozers demolish Palestinian buildings aimed at isolating people suspected of having Coronavirus - ethnic cleansing comes first |
To give but one example. Half of Israel’s Arab population live in what
are called ‘unrecognised’ villages, mainly in the desert south, the Negev. The Israeli state lays claim
to the lands on which they are built for Jewish settlement. These
villages, some of which are demolished periodically, receive no services from
the state – running water, sewage, electricity or even, despite the fact that their
inhabitants are nominally Israeli citizens, no polling booths are stationed in them during elections.
You might think that during the Coronavirus pandemic this might
change. If so you are wrong. They will get no help whatsoever from the
state to combat COVID-19. The Israeli state is completely unconcerned if
large numbers die as a result. Indeed Netanyahu
probably secretly welcomes such a possibility. Such is the visceral nature of
racism in Israel’s Apartheid society.
But according to Starmer if you call this racism then you are ‘anti-Semitic’.
According to Ha'aretz, even in recognised Israeli Arab towns and villages Israel's Magen David Adom is refusing to conduct tests for Covid-19. Israel's Health Ministry set up an emergency team to deal with the crisis but naturally it did not include any Arabs. If this is not racism then the word has lost all meaning.
If Starmer denies that Israel's practices are indeed racist then that is because he is a racist. What this member of the British Establishment,
complete with his knighthood, is saying is that British support for the Israeli
state, a vital part of the ‘western alliance’ is more important than the
subjugation of the Palestinians.
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| According to the Zionists' 'logic' if you opposed Ayatollah's fatwa on Salman Rushdie you were an Islamaphobe |
The excuse offered by Starmer and Labour’s Right is that support
for Israel is part of British Jews identity. That may be true for the majority
of Britain’s Jews but so what? Supporting Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against
Salman Rushdie 30 years ago over Satanic
Verses was part of the identity of many British Muslims. Would anyone
seriously argue that support for Rushdie was therefore racism against Muslims?
If 99% of British Jews supported Zionism, which they don’t, that would
still make Israel a racist and illegitimate state. It would simply prove that most British Jews have moved to the Right and instead of being victims of racism are now racists themselves.
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| You can judge Keir Starmer by who supports him - he is the poisonous legacy of the Zionists fake antisemitism campaign |
In fact, according to the most
recent 2015 survey of British Jews’ attitudes towards Israel, 59%
identified as Zionists, down 13% since the previous survey five years previously. 31% said they weren’t Zionists and 10% didn’t
know. So what Lansman, Rebecca Long-Bailey
and other Labour Zionists are really saying is that they support the most
reactionary and racist section of British Jewry. That is what the Board of Deputies 10
Commandments were about. That was
why Commandment no. 8 said Labour must not engage with ‘fringe organisations and
individuals’. In other words anti-racist
Jews.
I don’t want to say ‘I told you so’
but I have been warning against Corbyn’s appeasement strategy for 4 years. It
could only end in defeat. The Right never accepted Corbyn’s leadership and it
was tragic that this message didn’t get over to Corbyn or his abysmal advisers,
notably Seamus Milne.
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| My blog 4 years ago - if only Corbyn had listened to me and not the useless Seamus Milne |
In the wake of Corbyn’s victory against Owen Smith in 2016 I wrote that
this was ‘The
Calm Before The Storm – As Corbyn Wins the Right Intensifies Its
Destabilisation Strategy’. The sub-headline was that ‘It’s
not an Olive Branch but the Sword of Deselection that Labour’s Right Requires’.
If Corbyn
had listened to me and not Lansman he might be Prime Minister now!
Corbyn’s Appeasement of the Right coupled with his inability to stand up to the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign sealed his fate.
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| Corbyn seemed to have Stockholm Syndrome - he embraced his enemies and repelled his friends |
Two years ago Corbyn rejected ‘claims
by close ally Len McCluskey that "Corbyn-hater" Labour MPs were using
an anti-Semitism row to "smear" him.’ That is why I said that Corbyn
was like a victim
of Stockholm Syndrome. If he could not
see how ‘anti-Semitism’ was being used as a stick to beat him then he really
was beyond saving.
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| Margaret Hodge should have been expelled years ago for covering up child abuse in Islington as Council leader - instead she was made Childrens' Minister by Blair |
There were a number of milestones on the road to the defeat of the most
hopeful left-wing movement in recent history. There was Corbyn’s rejection of
Open Selection at the 2018 Labour Party Conference which meant that Corbyn
willingly became a prisoner of the Right. The second mistake was not to act
with a determined ruthlessness against those determined to destroy him. When Margaret Hodge, whose only claim to fame
is covering
up child abuse as leader of Islington Council and then defaming
one of the victims of that abuse, called him a ‘fucking anti-Semite’ she should have been fast-tracked out of the
Labour Party. To show weakness in such circumstances was a recipe for disaster.
Corbyn’s other major failings included throwing his friends overboard as
if they were ballast. First Ken Livingstone and then Marc Wadsworth and Chris
Williamson. When Chris was suspended,
just over a year ago, I wrote a blog which asked, Are
these the Dying Days of Corbyn’s Leadership? In it I observed that ‘Appeasement of the Right, Sacrificing Political Allies and Political
Indecisiveness Will be Corbyn’s Legacy.’ The past year to me has seemed
like a slow motion car crash with the left looking on like rabbits frozen
in the eyes of a car’s headlights.
Corbyn had been involved in Palestine solidarity work ever since I knew
him in 1982 in the Labour
Committee on Palestine. He was a conscientious supporter of the
Palestinians but he had never taken the time or trouble to work out why it was
that Israel was racist. He never
understood what Zionism was. So he supported the Palestinians whilst, at the
same time, supporting the Israeli state as part of a 2 state solution. Corbyn
was theoretically lazy.
Even in his early hustings with the 3 other candidates at the JW3 Centre he
didn’t criticise Israeli apartheid. The same was true of the rerun
of this debate with Owen Smith a year later. When the candidates were asked
what they liked about Israel, instead of saying ‘nothing’ or ‘the weather’ Corbyn
wittered on about the separation of state and the independence of the Israeli
judiciary. The same judges who have
presided over the confiscation of land from Arabs, not only on the West Bank
but in Israel itself. Judges have repeatedly disregarded the 4th Geneva
Convention on the occupying power not colonising the area they conquer.
Corbyn was never the brightest of MPs or even intellectually curious. He
held positions without ever working them out.
His instincts were right but this was not enough. Of course Corbyn faced
many obstacles, not least the media. The Guardian, with its relentless
anti-Corbyn coverage showed its true
colours and this should not be forgotten or forgiven. We should boycott Freedland's rag until hell freezes over.
Corbyn’s own
supporters also bear a share of the blame. Many is the time I posted an article
critical of Corbyn on a Corbyn Facebook group only to be met with hostility of
the ‘why are you attacking our beloved
leader’ kind?
Uncritical
support was worse than the hostility of his enemies because it allowed Corbyn’s
mistakes to go unchallenged. I had a post taken down from the Jewish Socialists Group because
it criticised another JSG member, Jon Lansman! This was the attitude of the JSG leader, David Rosenberg. He
held that we should not criticise Corbyn whereas my take was that it was only by criticising him that we could
counter the pressure from the Right. Eventually I got removed from the JSG FB group when I posted a blog asking why the JSG didn't support Jackie Walker,
who was then suspended.
The last
Labour Party conference merely compounded Corbyn’s failures. His inability to
understand what lay behind the false anti-Semitism campaign has been his single
biggest error of judgement. It has sapped his strength and drained his
leadership of direction and purpose. Corbyn comprehensively lost control of the
narrative.
Corbyn never
seemed to understand that the more you apologise, the more you try to please,
the more they will come for you. The
Zionist movement is not like a parent to whom a child apologises and all is
forgiven. They take an apology as proof that they were right. When I complained to the BBC about the Panorama programme Is Labour Anti-Semitic? (why it was a question when they thought they already had the answer is one of life’s
mysteries) the Executive Complaints Unit came back and said that even Corbyn
admitted Labour had an anti-Semitism problem.
How do you deal with that level of idiocy?
It
is obvious that only a handful of Labour members are anti-Semitic in the sense
of the Oxford
English dictionary definition. How is it that in the midst of the Windrush
Scandal, caused by the ‘hostile environment’ policy which New Labour was
responsible for initiating under Blair’s Home Secretary Alan Johnson, that
anti-Semitism could be seen as Labour’s biggest failing?
But
if any one individual bears the blame for what happened it isn’t Corbyn but the
owner of Momentum, property millionaire Jon Lansman. His coup in 2017
destroying democracy in Momentum and imposing a constitution that took power
into his own hands was an early warning of troubles ahead.
Without
democracy a movement is impotent.
Momentum was not a movement in any real sense. It was a control and command organisation. When
the omens were favourable in 2017 it believed that it was responsible for the
election gains. In 2019 they learnt that pushing hundreds of young campaigners
into constituencies only alienates voters.
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| No one did more to legitimise the fake 'antisemitism' smears than McDonnell who thought he was very clever appeasing the Right and inviting Alistair Campbell back into the party |
And
who supported Lansman’s coup but John McDonnell, who also bears a heavy
responsibility for giving legitimacy to the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign. A
BBC report quotes
him as saying that the ‘anti-Semitism’
crisis had ‘shaken us to the core."
And when the Zionists dug up the comments of Hajo Meyer, a survivor of
Auschwitz, comparing
Israeli policy to the Nazi regime before 1939, as many Holocaust survivors and
Israelis have done, Corbyn apologised. Corbyn said that he "completely rejects" the views of some of those he had
shared platforms with in the past. This was not serious. No one believed him
anyway and it simply helped to discredit him.
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| Instead of defending the right of Holocaust survivor Hajo Meyer to compare Israeli racism with Nazi Germany Corbyn apologised - yet again |
I
therefore thought it right that I should write to my old friend Lansman giving
him some helpful advice. I say this despite the fact that Lansman had
me expelled from Momentum and then accused me of being ‘probably the rudest man I know in politics.’ Indeed I had to
threaten to sue him for libel for using the weasel word ‘probably’, which suggests that I may not be the rudest man in politics!
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| Jon Lansman did more to undermine Corbyn by supporting the fake 'antisemitism' smears than Tom Watson |
A Letter to an
Old Friend Jon Lansman
Dear Jon,
As always at times like these my
thoughts are with you. Please allow me
to offer an old friend my warmest congratulations on your achievement. The
defeat of Jeremy Corbyn and the installation of Mogadon Man aka Sir Keir
Starmer was a master stroke.
What David Cameron and Theresa May could
not achieve you have managed single handed. Of course officially you supported
the pathetic Long-Bailey, whose only comment of note during the campaign was
that she was prepared
to use nuclear weapons. RBL is as she has often reminded people, the
working class girl who was born
to the sound of the Stretford End, despite Man City playing away in
Wolverhampton the day she was born. No
doubt she was born with acute hearing too.
The question that puzzles many people is
why the campaign manager for Tony Benn’s leadership bid should turn into the
exact opposite of everything that Benn stood for? Why should you destroy democracy in Momentum,
join the witch hunt and became an apostle of the world’s only apartheid state?
Of course some believe that you were an agent of Israel or Mossad but I think
the truth is simpler. It is summed up in that old saying
of Humbert Wolfe that
you
cannot hope to bribe or twist
(thank God!) the British journalist.
But, seeing what the man will do
unbribed, there’s no occasion to.
(thank God!) the British journalist.
But, seeing what the man will do
unbribed, there’s no occasion to.
Clearly you had an Epiphany, if that’s
not anti-Semitic, and decided that your Jewish identity meant that you had to
become a Zionist i.e. a racist. You kept company with the Jewish Labour
Movement, the overseas
wing of the Israeli Labor Party, which has virtually
disappeared today.
It is, like you, irrelevant now that
the open racists are in charge of Israel rather than those who professed
workers’ solidarity and practiced segregation. The ILP is now down to 3 seats in
the Knesset where once it could command an overall majority. ‘Socialist’ Zionism has died because Zionism rejected workers’ unity in favour of Jewish unity and collaboration with
imperialism.
I realise that you are a fixer rather
than an intellectual but presumably it must have occurred to you that there is
a reason why racist and anti-Semitic figures, from Orban to Trump, Duterte to Bolsonaro
love Israel? Clue, it isn’t because of Jews that the neo-Nazi founder of the
alt-Right, Richard Spencer calls
himself a ‘White Zionist’.
According to the IHRA
definition of anti-Semitism that you pushed through the Labour Party, it is
‘anti-Semitic’ to state that Israel is a racist state. When the rest of the
world is fighting Coronavirus, what is Israel doing? Destroying
tents Palestinians have erected to isolate those infected. Only in Israel could ethnic cleansing take
priority over fighting the pandemic. And yet you support Israel and an Israeli
Labor Party that has just got into bed with Netanyahu.
To call you a racist Jon would be an
understatement. You have pioneered racism in the Labour Party. Not because you
are another Alf Garnett but because your goal was providing support for Israel’s
project in the West.
Your destruction of democracy in
Momentum, your opposition to Open Selection and now putting up candidates
against socialists like Jo Bird, has meant the triumph of the Right. So once
again congratulations are in order. I
cannot but help wondering what the purpose of Momentum is though, apart from
filling your coffers.
I don’t know why it is Jon, but you
keep reminding me of a poem
by Jack London, Ode to a Scab.
The only part of the poem that I disagree is the
bit about you carrying a tumour of ‘rotten principles.’ Jon, I really don’t think you have any
principles, fresh or rotten.
One wonders what Jack London would have made of the
multi-millionaire property dealer who almost single handedly brought down the
Corbyn Project?
Your only true friend (i.e. the only one who tells
you the truth)
As ever
Tony
The fight for socialism goes on but we can have no doubt that the Right
have won a significant victory. Nothing could be more futile than to spend the
next 5 years in a war of attrition with the Right, knowing full well that they
control the party machine. It was bad enough when Corbyn and Formby were there. Groups like Labour Left Alliance, whose
recent travails I will cover in more detail in another blog, are for standing
still as members stream out of the Labour Party.
You can imagine what it will be like when a female version of Iain
McNicoll is chosen. I am told that an old witchhunter, Emily Oldknow, who featured
in my SAR when I was suspended, and who like most of McNicoll’s team went to
work for corrupt Dave Prentis’s UNISON, is tipped to take Formby’s place.
It is time for fresh thinking on the left. Whether the existing groups are up for it is
another question.
Tony Greenstein
The
full results of the leadership contest were:
·
Keir Starmer 275,780 (56.2%)
·
Rebecca Long-Bailey 135,218
(27.6%)
·
Lisa Nandy 79,597 (16.2%)
DEPUTY LEADER
·
Angela Rayner 228,944
(52.6%)
·
Rosena Allin-Khan 113,858
(26.1%)
·
Richard Burgon 92,643
(21.3%)
·
Ian Murray Knocked out in second round with
14.3%
·
Dawn Butler Knocked out in first round with
10.9%
Full
results for CLP reps:
JOSAN, Gurinder Singh – 57,361 – ELECTED
BAXTER, Johanna – 57,181 – ELECTED
TOWNSEND, Lauren – 56,929
BIRD, Jo – 46,150
DRENNAN, Leigh – 30,021
WRIGHT, Cecile – 25,008
SHERRIFF, Paula – 21,088
WILLIAMS, Trish – 10,826
APPS, Peter – 10,071
HOBSON, Deborah – 8,974
WEBB, Chris – 8,413
DENT, Fiona – 7,420
ELLISON, Adam – 6,322
COLLINS, Alexa – 5,669
MIDDLETON, Rick – 4,582
SUTTON, Ray – 4,248
JOHNSTON, Mick – 3,947
OWLADI, Peyman – 2,459
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