British Politicians: Galloway's View: 3 Nails in Corbyn's Leadership Coffin are Anti-Semitism, Appeasement and Attitude to Brexit
"Full disclosure: I have known the departing Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader whose five year term ended at the weekend, for 40 years, nearly 30 of those as a close colleague in parliament...It was unthinkable that he would ever be a leader. That he became one was an historical accident..."
"On Corbyn's last day, a reminder of how The Guardian helped the establishment ensure his defeat. It specialized in the anti-semitism smear, with dozens of articles, relentlessly. These 4 were all in the week leading up to the 12 December 2019 election..."
The vicious, unprecedented smear campaign should not be forgotten. Now that Labour has a new leader the "anti-Semitism" will magically disappear. Not because the "problem" is any less widespread, but because the reason for the smear has gone. But it is waiting to be reactivated if and when Starmer attacks Israeli policy or leadership. The goal all along was to silence criticism of Israel, and smother support for the Palestinians.
this from Owen Jones, a Corbyn backer
It's enough to say he has his chance. We can only hope Owen is right.
Starmer will totally discredit himself as leader if he moves to Corbyn's right on any significant number of issues-especially since the post-election situation has totally vindicated Corbyn's arguments on policy.
And that's what it's about-policy. It was never about worshipping any one person.
Ken, doesn’t Nandy’s 16% look fairly decent against RLB’s 28?
RLB got barely half the vote Corbyn did. She had the full throated backing of his Faction, several of the largest unions, Momentum, heavy behind the scenes backing from the NEC, a smear campaign against Starmer, etc. Nancy had few if any similar advantages.
Even you must admit that this result represents the Labour Party turning its collective back on Corbynism?
There was never any such thing as "Corbynism"-and Starmer has pledged himself to the policy's Corbyn's supporters-and clearly, the prohibitive majority of his, since Nandy was the only candidate standing on an explicitly antisocialist(i.e., Tory)agenda, support.
Here is a couple of paragraphs from Owen's article that make the argument I've made to you for five years...NOW will you accept their validity?:
The mistake many “centrist” voices have made is to dismiss political phenomena they do not like – from Corbynism to Brexit to Trump – as simply being mass irrationality, stupidity and hysteria. But Corbyn secured a landslide victory in 2015 because all of the other flanks of the Labour party were politically and intellectually exhausted. Labour’s social democrats had abandoned social democracy; the last consistent social democrats left standing were Labour’s left flank. All of its sister parties were in crisis, including those – like the German Social Democrats – who had stuck to the “third way” playbook. Just two years after what was then one of the party’s worst defeats, and in the aftermath of a vicious civil war, Labour came within 2,227 votes and seven constituencies of forming a government in 2017.
Today’s two major success stories for the European left are the Spanish and Portuguese governments, where social democratic parties have swung leftwards after making pacts with the radical left. It is no coincidence that younger voters in the US, Spain, Portugal and the UK embraced the new left movements at the same time, from Bernie Sanders to Podemos: free-market ideology robbed them of security and prosperity, leading them to demand radical answers."
It was about the policies. It IS about the policies. The policies, the ideas, the dreams, were never wrong. It was just that the anti-Corbyn cabal never offered an alternative leader who wouldn't have totally abandoned them, who wouldn't have taken the policies back to the deadzone of the Brown/Miliband policies.
Starmer has won. I accept that. But he won on a promise not to abandon socialism-and that means not doing massive, scarring Kinnock-style purges-which he shouldn't do anyway since the purges didn't do Kinnock any meaningful electoral good, just as Kinnock's abolition of internal party democracy and his reduction of the party conference to a powerless, irrelevent sideshow in which Labour values were never expressed.
Unity requires healing, not venegeance.
And you've said the issue was Corbyn, so it's enough that he's gone. Labour doesn't have to the things his supporters stood for-and Starmer has pledged not to.
Time for you to finally let your half-a-decade temper tantrum end.
It’s no tantrum, Ken, that has motivated my posts but as considered an analysis of Labour’s woes that I can manage , coming to the same conclusion as virtually every intelligent commentator. That Corbynism was a curse on the Labour Party that left it an electoral pariah.
Those who forget history, to coin a phrase, are doomed to repeat it.
That is why Labour cannot simply forget the Corbynite nightmare. Starmer must navigate a very different path from Corbyn if he is to dig Labour out of the grave to which Corbyn has consigned it.
Some hopeful signs:
Ken, doesn’t Nandy’s 16% look fairly decent against RLB’s 28?
RLB got barely half the vote Corbyn did. She had the full throated backing of his Faction, several of the largest unions, Momentum, heavy behind the scenes backing from the NEC, a smear campaign against Starmer, etc. Nancy had few if any similar advantages.
Even you must admit that this result represents the Labour Party turning its collective back on Corbynism?
What is Corbynism and how has the party turned its back on it?
The party blew itself up by being on the wrong side of the Brexit debate. And Johnson is now reaping the benefits.
It’s no tantrum, Ken, that has motivated my posts but as considered an analysis of Labour’s woes that I can manage , coming to the same conclusion as virtually every intelligent commentator. That Corbynism was a curse on the Labour Party that left it an electoral pariah.
Those who forget history, to coin a phrase, are doomed to repeat it.
That is why Labour cannot simply forget the Corbynite nightmare. Starmer must navigate a very different path from Corbyn if he is to dig Labour out of the grave to which Corbyn has consigned it.
Some hopeful signs:
There's no analysis in your insistence on using the word "Corbynism"-Corbyn and his supporters are simply honorable democratic socialists influenced by antiwar and antiausterity activism.
And Labour can't move to the right of Corbyn's policies without ceasing to have a reason to exist. Nobody wants the party to reduce itself to "we can do it better/it's enough that we'd be nicer about it" conservatism-and that's what being "moderate" means.
It was never about anybody thinking Corbyn was infallible. It was about the ideas-all of which emerged from below-that his leadership candidacy represented. None of the actual policies were wrong-and it isn't possible to do anything Labour if the party abandons socialism again, as you want it to do.
It's useless for Labour to go back to being bland and dreary and centrist. Labour wouldn't be able to do anything Labour in office if it DID go in that direction-and the 2010 and 2015 results prove that the electorate don't want that.
Nobody who hates activists and activism cares about the poor or the climate crisis or about ending war. Nor does anyone who is obsessed with kicking socialists out of the shadow cabinet.
And it goes without saying that Labour would have done just as badly, if not worse, in 2019 with a leader who appeased anti-immigrant sentiment, vowed not to listen to "extra-parliamentary activism", or made useless promises like keeping Thatcher's antiworker laws and balancing the budget.
Starmer is to meet with Jewish leaders next week This MUST include those who supported Corbyn and believe that the issue was used cynically by his enemies including those who opposed his support for Palestinians I am Jewish and if Starmer mishandles this I will leave party
https://twitter.com/TomLondon6/status/1246553145037271041?s=20
One viewpoint.
And with that, I'd say this thread should be closed, since the leadership contest is over.
I had not heard the announcement that you had be made the moderator , Ken.
Congratulations on your elevation but perhaps this thread should remain open until the Human Rights Commission issues its report.
I had not heard the announcement that you had be made the moderator , Ken.
Congratulations on your elevation but perhaps this thread should remain open until the Human Rights Commission issues its report.
There's no justification for a mass investigation. There were a handful of allegations, the vast majority of which were dismissed as unfounded(including 90% of those made by antisocialist, pro-austerity MP Margaret Hodge).
The party was never "institutionally antisemitic", and solidarity with Palestinians should never have been equated with antisemitism, since in Labour circles and on the left it never was.
The party was never "institutionally antisemitic", and solidarity with Palestinians should never have been equated with antisemitism, since in Labour circles and on the left it never was.
Well said -- critical point and it does not just apply to the UK.
