Starmer As Labour's leader - what should he do?

Again, there is no such thing as a "Corbynite"- there were simply people who wanted Labour to cease being the second Conservative Party it was in the days when your hero Blair ran it as a socialist-free zone- and I don't want Corbyn back as leader, nor do most of the people fighting for his reinstatement to the PLP-  they simply reject the idea that Corbyn deserves to be treated as a figure in disgrace, to be anathemized by the party til the end of his days.  He's been out as leader as months and there was never any good reason for Keir not to let it go at that.

The poll ratings Labour had in Corbyn's last few months as leader, after the election and during the leadership campaign to succeed him, are not a valid measure of anything.  They simply measure where he was in the public eye as a lame duck who had been destroyed by an endless smear campaign.

The only possible justification for Starmer's tactics would be if he had actually moved the party into a huge lead in the polls.  He hasn't, and we already know he's not going to.  

And his current slow slide in the polls, coupled with increasing intra-party and overall public opposition to Keir's refusal to end the war against Corbyn and the left and his increasingly dictatorial tactics for suppressing dissent- I assume you'll concede that he has no right to bar CLP's from voting no-confidence in his leadership since he was part of a no-confidence motion against Corbyn and since the CLP's have just as much right to have a say in what the party stands for as the PLP did in 2016- that Labour is NOT a party where what the PLP wants is the only thing that matters.

I started this thread to encourage positive suggestions about what Starmer might do to increase Labour's chances at the next election.  Would you mind at least having the decency to explain why you absolutely refused to engage that discussion?  

What harm would have come of Starmer saying "ok, I'm leader.  My job is to win the next election for Labour on the socialist policies we now hold and holding the Tories accountable for what they do.  My job is not to make my predecessor into a pariah, nor to punish those allied with him, nor to prevent people from fighting to keep the socialist policies".

Why would it have been unthinkable for Starmer to approach the job that way- rather than to focus solely on persecuting, apparently, everybody who won't renounce their support for Corbyn?

We now know Labour can't gain votes by kicking Corbyn and the Left out of the party.  

The fact that Labour's position in the polls is actually where it was for most of Corbyn's tenure- and that it should be massively higher because Starmer is not the victim of a 24-7 media/PLP hate campaign- proves that Starmer's approach isn't working.

And quite frankly, we also know that doing what you want and dragging the party back to Blairism wouldn't gain Labour any votes, because it lost badly in 2010 and 2015 on what can only be called Blairite manifestos, coupled with the fact that Labour had been sharply losing ground at the polls since the 2005 election and in every one of the last rounds of local and Euro-elections in the last five years Labour was in power prove that The Third Way is politically extinct.

There simply isn't any significant popular support for Labour blurring the differences and reducing its policy offer to "it's enough that it would be a Labour government doing that to you".

So why stay with your insistence on that?

It's just that there's no reason to force the man to make the statement "apologizing without qualifications" would mean- to essentially say what Keir wants him to say- that he and those allied with him

nicky wrote:

Ken surely you must agree that the disease of Corbynism must be eradicated before the Labour Party can seriously contend for power. 
Starmer to his imense credit is striving to do just that. Good for him.

There is no such thing as "Corbynism"- all Corbyn and those he sands with support is democratic socialism, green values, peace, and an anti-imperialist relationship with the world  How is any of that something that needs to be eradicated?  How is any of that a "disease"? Why shouldn't Labour be anti-imperialist?  It's not as though Labour values have been served by backing U.S. foreign policy at any point since 1945.

Corbyn's policies were and are popular and none of them were evil, for that matter.  

And there is no excuse for Starmer's insistence on silencing all criticism of the Israeli government- which is what he is essentially pledged the party to at that horrible JLM event today.

A few weeks ago,  Starmer even punished Stephen Kinnock, the most right-wing MP in the entire party, a man who never held any of the socialist values his father totally abandoned, and one of Corbyn's most savagely brutal enemies in the PLP- for making the mildest possible critical comments about what the IDF does to Palestinians.  Can you actually defend that?  

Doesn't that prove to you YET that the Starmer has gone totally off the rails and is doing nothing but harm?

He had no mandate for purges and essentially agreed there'd be none.

Ha had no mandate to anathemize Corbyn.

It's gone to far.

There is no way Starmer can offer a program of radical change if he forces Corbyn and everyone associated with the man out of the party, and the EHRC, as I've repeatedly pointed out, said Corbyn had the right to make the comments he made-comments which, as you know full well, weren't even ABOUT the report.

BTW...on the whole "interference in disciplinary proceedings" thing in the report...most of the interference was to SPEED UP suspensions and expulsions of those guilty of AS.  He was doing exactly what Hodge was demanding.  And Starmer is interfering in disciplinary proceedings by refusing to reinstate Corbyn to the PLP when party rules explicitly state that when an MP is readmitted to the party, that MP is readmitted to the whip and that's the end of it.

Give this a rest.

Labour can't crush the Left and still be Labour.  It wasn't Labour under Blair, and Blair and Kinnock never needed to crush the Left to beat the Tories.

nicky wrote:

I have stated several times that I abhor Israel's ( particularly the Likud led government's) policies towards the Palestinians.

I remember distinctly as a boy sitting in a railway station and listening in on someone following the 1967 war on a transitor radio. That was most of my life ago and I think it is appalling that Israeli has continued for so many years to occupy the territories and deny democratic rights to its inhabitants.

Yet the Corbynistas continually and dishonesty conflate my abhorrence of anti-semitism in the Labour Party under Corbyn as applause for Israeli policies concerning the Palestinians.

This disingenuousness is only because they have no better arguments to make in support of their tarnished, mediocre, blinkered, destructive and thoroughly pathetic idol.

So stop equating lack of blind adulation for Corbyn with approval of Palestinian "genocide" or "apartheid" or whatever cuss word you prefer. 

Again, all of us oppose antisemitism as much as you do-including Corbyn.

No one, as yet, has explained what the hell else Corbyn could have done as leader to fight the small incidence-an incidence which did not grow under his leadership- of AS which had always existed in the party and carried on existing when he was leader.

His office was found to have "interfered with disciplinary proceedings", but don't you think it matters that the EHRC itself said that the vast majority of that interference was about SPEEDING UP disciplinary proceedings against actual AS?

You say you are not about trying to suppress criticism of the Israeli government- but if THAT is the case, why do you not agree that there was no reason to insist that Labour adopt that part of the IHRA guidelines and examples that equated criticism of the Israeli government with AS?

Why not just admit that virtually nothing anybody in the party said about what Netanyahu does to Palestinians is even remotely comparable to expressions of hatred of Jewish people, Judaism as a variety of religious traditions, or Jewish identity as a set of cultures?

Why bring in a refusal to support Zionism as ideology or to support Israel's "right to exist" at all- when the Zionist movement already achieved its objective and the survival of Israel as a country will never actually be in question?

And how do you explain that, prior to Corbyn becoming leader, neither him nor his supporters were ever accused of anything remotely comparable to AS?

You keep acting as if there is a debate on whether AS needs to be fought and there never has been- and you know there never has been.

The only issue has been whether it can possibly be bigotry simply to speak out against the action of a government.  The truth is, it can't be.

And the truth is that it has always been inappropriate to use the term "racism" in this discussion at all-the only reason it was brought into the discussion is because the Labour Right and you personally were obsessed with discrediting Corbyn's lifelong antiracist activism- since AS, which is indefensible and which we all oppose and work to defeat- is about a group, not a "race", and since the concept of "a Jewish race" was actually created by antisemites like the tsars.

Why should any of THAT, whatever you might think of Corbyn, be taken as comparable to bigotry against the world's Jewish communities?

And why should there be a disciplinary process in which everyone who is accused of AS within Labour is simply assumed to be guilty and is given no chance to defend themselves?
 

And finally, why do those people-most of whom are Gentiles and none of whom cared about AS within Labour before Corbyn was elected leader-who have obsessed about what turned out to be an utterly imaginary massive increase in AS under Corbyn, care nothing at all about the fact that their demonization of Corbyn and his supporters played a major role in giving Boris Johnson, who wrote an openly antisemitic novel earlier in this century for which he has never apologized, a majority government as the leader of a party which has never had any prohibitions against antisemitic or racist comments among its MPs. MLAs(Scottish Parliament) AMs(Welsh Assembly) members or local councillors?

josh wrote:

Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, a senior official in the Jewish Voice For Labour group, has been suspended by Labour following a JC report on her conduct in a meeting of Chingford and Woodford Green Labour Party.

The JC understands that Ms Wimborne-Idrissi, who is vice-chair of the East London CLP, and the chair, Gary Lafley, have been informed they are administratively suspended from Sir Keir Starmer’s party pending an investigation.

At Monday’s meeting of the local party, the JVL media officer had backed claims about the “weaponization” of antisemitism allegations within Labour.

https://www.thejc.com/news/uk/labour-suspends-senior-jvl-official-after-deeply-unpleasant-meeting-1.509331

And here she is, speaking for herself:

Double Down News on Twitter: "BREAKING: Jewish Socialist Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi has been suspended from the Labour Party https://t.co/7jxlhPIgTC" / Twitter

Last thought- in making its finding that Labour is NOT "institutionally antisemitic",  The EHRC itself found that the incidence of AS within Labour was massively exaggerated for political purposes.

JKR wrote:

Aristotleded24 wrote:

I'm Jewish, I lost 39 family members in the Holocaust, and Jeremy Corbyn is no anti-semite: Andrew Feinstein

The vast majority of British Jews consider Jeremy Corbyn to be an antisemite.

-----

The vast majority of British Jews consider Jeremy Corbyn to be an antisemite. In the most recent poll, last month, the figure was 87 per cent.

Putting oneself in the shoes of another person, or another group, can be difficult. But we believe it is important — and urgent — that you do that. Perhaps the fact that nearly half (47 per cent) of the Jewish community said in that same poll that they would “seriously consider” emigrating if Mr Corbyn wins on December 12 will give you an indication of what it feels like to be a British Jew at a time when the official opposition is led by a man widely held to be an antisemite.

They think he's an antisemite- btw, the EHRC report said he isn't, so that should put that assertion about him permanently to rest- because the corporate media spent his entire tenure as leader claiming that he was.

Before Corbyn became leader, virtually nobody accused him of AS.  It simply was not said of him before 2015.

Doesn't it strike you as more than a little suspicious that the accusations about Corbyn on that- which are ironic, because the Left is ALWAYS more opposed to AS than any other part of the political spectrum- only happened after he became leader?

nicky wrote:

Eight posts in a row, Ken? And all repeating basically the same thing.

Seems like you are really obsessed with Starmer. And this coming from someone who claimed I was obsessed with Corbyn.

You do weirdly claim that Starmer's  supporters (who are of course  the vast majority in the Labour Party) "care nothing at all about the fact that their demonization of Corbyn and his supporters played a major role in giving Boris Johnson,"

Surely you have seen the polls that uniformly show that Johnson owes his majority to the public's revulsion over Corbyn ( by margins of  80% to 20% for other reasons such as Corbyn 's insufficient opposition to Brexit). Was all this because sane Labour members demonized Corbyn?
 Or do you concede that Corbyn himself for responsible in some measure? Is it not possible that some people just couldn't stomach Corbyn as a potential PM because of his utter lack of qualifications, his inarticulateness, his lack of education, his  shallowness of intellect, his simplistic approach to issues, his indecisiveness, his incoherence on Brexit, and the fact that he surrounded himself with loonies and AntiSemites? 

Could that have been even a tiny part of the voters' electoral calculation? Just askin'.

Here's the problem with that post:

Everything you said or asked there is based on false assumptions:

1) That I believe Corbyn is flawless and bears no responsibility for the 2019 result at all- if you'd actually read my posts in the last year of his leadership and up to the campaign to replace him as leader, you would have noticed that I made numerous critiques of Corbyn and his work as leader.   The fact that you refuse to acknowledge that I did make those critiques proves you read little of anything I've posted;

2) That I wanted Corbyn to stay on after the 2019 election, and that the reason I oppose his exclusion from the whip is that I want Corbyn to return to the leadership.  The truth is- and again, you would know and accept this if you did read my posts and engage them- that I had been saying he needed to go if the 2019 result went badly all along, and that Labour needed a different leader.   I supported RLB- who has none of the flaws you ascribe to Corbyn- because she would have been a positive new leader, as opposed to Starmer who has been nothing but negative and toxic and had no justification for devoting most of his time as leader to a war against the entire Left- a war he has now expanded to not only include Corbyn supporters, but ANYONE who opposes his treatment of Corbyn and his supporters and any CLP that rejects his Stalinist refusal to allow CLPs to pass motions on Starmer's antisocialist vendetta or to accept that, if the PLP had the right to pass a no-confidence motion on Corbyn, CLP's have an equal right to debate and pass no-confidence motions in himself and his personal Lavrenti Beria, Mr. Davies.

3) That this is about nothing but blind loyalty to a person, when you know full well it is about ideas.  It's not as if the growing number of Labour members and supporters turning against Starmer worship Corbyn like a fucking god or something- they don't, and they never did.  What it is is about Starmer's insistence on running the party like Stalin ran the CPSU.  

Corbyn is just a person.  I've always agreed that he was flawed.  But if he didn't win as leader, it was enough that he ceased to BE leader.  There was no justification for Starmer devoting almost all of his time since becoming LOTO to demonizing and encouraging the perpetuation of what everyone, even YOU, know are lies about his predecessor-  I hope you'd at least agree that, out of simple decency, Starmer should at least tell his supporters to stop calling Corbyn an antisemite.

I'm not a Corbynite- nobody is or actually was.  I'm anti-bullying- there is no other word for what's being done to Corbyn and his supporters, besides Stalinist persecution, than bullying- and I'm a left-socialist who just doesn't want to see the Corbyn policies thrown out and a good person made into a pariah.

And as to whether or not he should have been leader- there is no point in you refusing to move on from that, because the leadership election results can't be reversed and also because, as you continually refuse to acknowledge, the 2010 and 2015 results prove, Labour wouldn't have done any better with a bland centrist leader who kept the Left totally out in the cold.

For Labour to win, the bullying needs to end.  If Corbyn did anything meriting punishment, he's already been made to suffer more than enough.  The party needs to make his supporters and all socialists welcome, and Starmer needs to restore free speech and internal democracy.

What matters is the future- and Starmer is refusing to address the future.   

Isn't it time he started focusing on that?