The British Labour right's campaign to purge all socialists with false accusations of "antisemitism"

One thing is clear:  if there are no leftwingers in the shadow cabinet, Labour won't be different from the Tories once in government.  It's only the Labour Left that wants a clear break from austerity, special deference to the rich, and perpetual war.

The Labour Right-and that's what the "moderates" are; none of them have any radical or non-capitalist views about anything anymore- won't stop until they've lowered the party to Blair's policies, even though the public doesn't want Labour to be a right-wing party like that anymore, and even though it would be meaningless to win an election on those policies, which the miserable showing of Change and the LibDems in '19 proves is impossible anyway.

Labour can only win next time if it keeps left activists in the party and addresses the real reasons it lost dozens of seats what used to be the Red Wall areas:  The long-term decline in Labour organization-going back well into the Blair and even Kinnock years-in those areas and the pointless insistence of Starmer and the PLP-there was no broad-based popular demand for this anywhere-on pushing Labour to endorse a second referendum when Red Wall-area voters are overwhelmingly Leave and will always be overwhelmingly Leave, and then refusing to let it go at that and pushing for the party to go all-out Remain in the referendum campaign, knowing that that push would do nothing but further antagonize the Red Wall voters while having no chance of gaining any significant number of seats anywhere else.

One thing that is clear:  Starmer can't win if he does what you clearly want and leave the left totally out in the cold.   There simply aren't any votes to be gained from doing that.

Kinnock's no socialism/no internal democracy policies are not the key to a comeback, and neither is Blair's appeal to snobbery and militarism.

In a moment of just desserts, Squawkbox has officially charged Starmer with antisemitism, due to his insistence on conflating Israel with Jews and Judaism:
 

https://skwawkbox.org/2020/06/27/skwawkbox-editor-lodges-formal-antisemitism-complaint-against-keir-starmer-for-conflation-of-jewish-people-with-actions-of-israeli-government-in-breach-of-ihra-code/

nicky wrote:

I suspect you and I may disgarre on this Ken.

You think that Corbyn can only win by embracing the little sect that doomed Labour in the last election and achieved the worst result in 85 years.

I think he can only win by isolating them.

Polling has quickly turned in Labour's favour, coincident with Starmer marginalizing that sect. He must put further distance between them in order to win. If he doesnt, he will not.

Who are you defining as being in that "sect"?  What united people who supported that former leader was ideas, not a man.  And the key idea is that Labour values cannot be made compatible with free-market capitalism, that there has to be some sort intervention in the market, that yes, sometimes the state or the workers themselves need to be able to pick winners.

Labour can't move to the right of those ideas and still remain distinct from the Tories.  And Labour can't do much of anything that isn't Tory-all of Blair's policies could have been carried out by Stanley Baldwin or Churchill, for god's sakes-if it isolates socialist ideas and anathemizes people simply for being associated with the previous leader.  It's enough that that leader is not leader now.

The difference between us is not about people, it's about ideas, and it's about the purpose of the Labour Party.

Based on all the indications you have given think Labour should go back to being bland and centrist, to supporting the Tory austerity agenda-as it did when it abstained on the benefits cuts in 2015- should be just as militarist as the Tories, and should not only not restore full internal democracy, but should go back to the days when internal democracy didn't exist and the party conference was a meaningless, irrelevant sideshow.  And you appear to want Labour to make it impossible for anyone in the party to say anything critical of the Israeli government, given your support for "examples" which would allow the Israeli government or anyone defend it to simply claim that that government was being held to a higher standard than other countries, which, of course, is what Netanyahu ALWAYS says about anything the Israeli government is criticized for.

You don't seem to want a Labour government that does anything radical or egalitarian, anything to further the cause of peace, anything to challenge the idea that nuclear weapons must always be a part of life, even in an era where they serve no valid purpose.

You don't seem to want Labour to be a party where the members have any real say-to go back to the days when a handful of cynical, antisocialist advisers to the leader decide what the party does and does not stand for.

And you seem to want the party to not only be as obsessed as you are with perpetually demonizing the last leader-a decent man who was smeared by his own MPs even though he did nothing to deserve those smears-but to drive the hundreds of thousands of people he encouraged to join the party, to believe that politics might actually matter again, to go away, even though no good would come of people to their right-people who hate socialism, as you do, people who would bring a "we don't like peace campaigners 'round here" attitude, could have anything to offer Labour or stand for anything that would possibly be different from the Tories.

I want Labour to have a reason to exist.  

It can only have a reason to exist if it is socialist, if it is radical, if it is as antimilitarist as possible.

Labour values can never again justify war.

It can never be decent for any future Labour government to ever bring in another austerity budget.

It can never be morally acceptable again for former Labour cabinet ministers to end up on corporate boards after leaving politics-if you're on a corporate board, it means you never had Labour values at all.

It can never be good for Labour to once again become a party where activists and the rank and file have no say.

Labour can't be capable of standing for anything different than the Tories if the socialist majority in the rank and file are marginalized again and if the party leaves left activists out in the cold.  The Left are the only people in the party with any passion and energy.  

And there cannot be any justification for Labour to become a party in which the Israeli government is the ONLY government on the planet that cannot be criticized by party members without risk of suspension or expulsion.

It's not about any one leader-it was NEVER about any one leader, and you knew that all along-it was about preventing the PLP and the party bureaucracy from chaining the party to Blairism for the rest of eternity.

That is what terrifies a lot of people-that Starmer would reduce Labour to Blarism again-any swing to the right on policy will inevitably end up there-and that Labour will drive all the hundreds of thousands of people who supported the ideas the last leader stood for, since he'd have no right to even ask for their votes if the party did go back to Blairism and even though the country doesn't WANT Labour to do that.  If the country wanted Blarism back, Change UK would not have had the pathetically weak showing it did, and the LibDems would not have seen their own leader beaten in her constituency.

And the reality is that ANY Labour leader not being perpetually smeared and vilified by the press would be gaining on the Tories in the polls.  That is a massive difference that, for your own cynical reasons, you refuse to acknowledge.

I'm fighting what could only be a tragic outcome if Labour ditched the ideas associated with the previous leader-ideas supported by the majority of the Labour rank-and-file , ideas popular with the electorate, some of which have been implemented by Boris,

nicky wrote:

Yes, josh, “sect” is what I meant, a sect that made Labour unelectable and delivered a landslide to the Cons.

i used the name Corbyn in my last post when I of course meant Starmer

There was no other candidate and no other possible set of Labour policies that would have led to a better showing for the party.  Labour would not have done better with a bland, cynical leader who treated activists like dirt, refused to promise to be anti-austerity, and still defended the deluded idea of "humanitarian intervention".

Labour would not have done better with any of the other 2015 leadership candidates, all of whom pledged to keep the party exactly where it was on the issues-other than Liz Kendall, who promised to move the party to the right of the Tories.  

Neither Kendall, nor Yvette Cooper, nor Andy Burnham had anything more to offer.

And neither could Owen Smith, who, by taking a job as a Pfizer lobbyist, proved he had no socialist values at all, no speaking skills at all, no agenda at all.

And as I've said many times, the previous leader, who hadn't actually wanted to be leader at all, likely would have gone if the PLP had agreed that the ideas his supporters-the majority of the party-backed, would not face a purge or marginalization.   Why couldn't the PLP just publicly accede to that?

And why couldn't the PLP accept the reality that the 2015 and 2016 leadership results meant that the party, at grassroots level, was committed to distancing Labour from the pointless fixation with the "centre ground"?  Why couldn't they accept that the party was done with Blarism and that they, the PLP needed to accept that and stop trying to drag Labour back to the 1990?

Last questions:  to what degrees do you want Labour to be to the left of the Tories at all? 

Do you accept that if Labour goes nonsocialist again it will no longer have a reason to exist?
 
And what would have to happen for you to accept that the "distancing" has gone far enough?  Will you accept that Labour is distanced enough without it abandoning all traces of socialism?

Finally, what is the point of Labour being centrist again when the 2010 and 2015 results prove that Labour can't win as s center party anymore?

And here is why Starmer would not have done better as leader in the last election:

Starmer, for no valid reason, was pushing for Labour to not only support a second referendum-which was concession enough to Remain voters to get their support-but also that Labour pledge to go all-out Remain in the second referendum, and before that to keep trying to undo Brexit in the then-current parliement.

That position was going to cost Labour even more seats in the Red Wall areas- areas that were overwhelmingly Leave and would always stay overwhelmingly Leave-not over immigration but because UK membership in the EU had excluded every part of the Red Wall from economic benefits-while, at the same time, bringing such benefits to much of Scotland, including areas only a few miles away from the North and North East of England.

There is no possible way Starmer could have won the votes of people in Leave areas while taking a position on the EU that totally disregarded the universal sense of abandonment and disregard Red Wall areas felt about the EU.

And if Starmer was, therefore, doomed to do as badly as or worse than the previous leader did, which he was, there was no way he could have made anywhere near enough gains in any other regions of the UK-there were no significant numbers of Tory constituencies anywhere in the UK that would have flipped to Labour if only Labour had gone all-out Remain, and there were no significant numbers of LibDem constituencies, period.

So give it a rest about the flaws of the previous leader.  He was smeared, he's gone-but the stances the party took on issues under that leader were never unpopular and the voters aren't demanding that everyone who had any connection to him be thrown into permanent exile within Labour  

And they damn sure don't ever want Labour to go back to a pointless obsession with a "centre ground" that simply doesn't exist anymore.

There's nowhere further right Labour can go on any significant issue without inexorably ending up back in Blairism or "Blue Labour" and neither of those approaches have any solutions to offer for the problems the UK faces-problems that can only be addressed with policies that bring radical change.

(Self-delete.  Dupe post).

nicky wrote:

Well Ken, how do YOU explain that Labour under Starmer is now 15% ahead in the Red Wall seats that switched to the Conservatives? I guess you would say that without Starmer's history as a Remainer they would be 30% ahead.

Of course it has nothing to do with switching leaders. That just does not compute for you.

I didn't say that a difference in leaders makes NO difference-and you seem to think that I'm arguing that the previous leader should have stayed on after the last election and I'm not, I'm honestly not.   

Here's what I'm ACTUALLY saying

1) As much as anything else, the change is due to the fact that Starmer is not being subjected to a 24-7 hate, smear and lie campaign from both the media and the antisocialist wing of the PLP.   There's no way you can seriously deny that a leader who isn't having all of that thrown her or his way will automatically do better in the polls than a leader who is;

2) There is valid reason to worry that the fact that the current leader isn't receiving that treatment is a good sign that that leader won't be verry different than the Tories if that leader does somehow lead Labour to victory- the media and the Labour Right don't ever give that kind of deference and respect to Labour leaders who are going to make any significant changes;

3) It's somewhere between absurd and obscene to even insinuate that the change in poll ratings somehow JUSTIFIES the barbaric treatment the previous leader received, especially the relentless AS smear, especially since this change in poll ratings would not have happened if the previous leader had been replaced by an all-out Remainer on the eve of an election.   If the last leader had been forced to step down right before or during the last election, no one the PLP would have accepted as a replacement for that leader could ever have won the unified support of that party and, having spent the previous four years refusing to accept that previous leader, there is no way the PLP would have had any authority, let alone any moral right, to expect the party to unite behind a leader they imposed.  Starmer was hated by the supporters of that previous leader-who, at that time, were the majority of the party.  Even if he'd been willing to stand to be a replacement leader-he wouldn't have been-he would never have been accepted by the majority of the rank and file and could never have offered a unifying message.

4) At the moment, nobody is talking about Brexit.  When that does become an issue again, there will be no way Labour can unify on an all-out Remain message because that will drive the Red Wall-almost all of which is Leave territory-back to the Brexit Party or the Tories.  

5) It's unhealthy for you to seemingly demand that Labour repudiate everything-and I assume you mean every policy-associated with the previous leader, because Labour can't make "we don't like peace campaigners 'round here" it's organizing principle.  Labour needs to regain the Red Wall voters lost over the EU issue-voters who would never have voted Labour if its policy had been all-out Remain- and to hold the young activists who joined Labour in the Teens, whose arrival was nothing but positive for the party, in the party and believing that Labour can be a vehicle for transformative change.

Starmer has promised not to move the party to the right.  Keeping that promise, at least on policies, is the only way Starmer will retain any right to ask anyone under 45 to vote Labour.  

You are the one who has a pathological hatred of the last Labour leader.  Nobody in the UK does.  Everyone there let it go at his standing down from the leadership.  They aren't demanding that the man be anathemized for life-only you are.  They aren't demanding that everyone even vaguely connected with the man be proscribed or expelled.  Only you are.

And the reality is, if Labour did everything you wanted, if it erased everyone and everything even remotely related to what the 2015-2019 era, it wouldn't be different than the Tories.  It wouldn't be capable of being radical, it wouldn't be capable of expressing empathetic, humane values (those had all been extinguished among the people who were obsessed with forcing the last leader out) and it would never question militarism or imperialism.

There are three words to describe what Labour would be if it did all that you wanted regarding the last leader;

The Conservative Party.

Labour needs to keep the radicalism it allowed back in.

It needs to move forward with Open Selection and the restoration of internal party democracy.

And from now on, it must always be anti-austerity and antiwar(not pacifist, but reserving the use of force to defending UK soil from attack, rather than staging pointless and always unwinnable invasions of non-European countries).

That may happen.  And if it does, Labour will never win another election, because the vast majority of the rank and file, including many who voted for Starmer(and probably some who voted for Nandy) support the policies associated with the previous leader, and there's no significant number of voters who would switch from voting from LibDem to Labour-partly because there's no significant number of voters who will ever vote LibDem again after the betrayals of the Coalition years-who would swing to Labour if the party moved significantly to the right, let alone anyone who voted Tory last time at all.

There are no votes to be gained from making a show of flying the Union flag and cozying up to the royals, or from going back to being "extremely casual" about massive concentration of wealth in the hands of the few, OR from making a fetish of the racist antiworker cause of "law and order", or from blaming everything in the Northern Irish conflict on the IRA.

As to that "apology"- it was actually a thank-you note from the beneficiary of the AS smear to the right-wing cabal who spread it.

It proves nothing other than that Starmer knows how to show gratitude to those who gave him his big break.

Meanwhile, it is still self-evident that the last leader did not in any universe deserve the AS smear.  

He had fought against AS all his life, as did everyone on the Left.

He was willing to accept everything in the IHRA guidelines except for the parts that unjustly restricted what people could and could not say about the Israeli government and what it does to Palestinians, and it was legitimate to refuse to accept that, since nothing anybody can say about that, with the sole exception of statements that equate Israel with Jews or Judaism-as Starmer himself did when he falsely said that the tweet Long-Bailey repeated, a tweet which was simply a comment about IDF tactics, can ever actually BE antisemitic, thus making Starmer guilty of repeating an antisemitic trope- can ever actually be antisemitism.

Did the last leader have flaws?  Yes, many-and I've been one of the people who critiqued some of them here.  But there is no justificaton for Labour's current leader, in establishing his own identity, to spend any more time anathemizing the last leader.  He needs to be positive and inclusive, not vindictive.  

And part of that means admitting that the war against the past leader and those whose ideals he supported needs to end.

Is it really asking too much to ask that Starmer, if he truly wishes to unify the paryt,  needs to accept that unity means the end of the idea that supporters of the previous leader should be punished, needs to accept the end of the canard that the results of 2015 and 2016 leadership contests were somehow illegitimate, and that the time has come for the PLP to apologize to that previous leader for the way they treated him and to the party itself for acting as though ousting the previous leader was such an extreme imperative that it justified sabotaging the party's chances in the 2017 and 2019 election?