The Elephant in the Room

We need to talk about Jeremy

Motherhood and apple pie

A few months ago, I went to the Liverpool Community Independents meeting. People were very excited because Jeremy Corbyn was speaking and it was rumoured that he might be (finally) announcing the creation of a new political party. In the event he did no such thing, and actually, I wasn’t even slightly surprised.

Younger readers may not be familiar with the US American phrase motherhood and apple pie. It’s used to denote things that the 1950s white majority America was extremely comfortable with, things that any politician could talk about and not find any disagreement. In other words: comforting, anodyne empty words about nothing you could object to.

Corbyn's speech was the left-wing British equivalent of motherhood and apple pie. He said all the right things and got cheered in all the right places. I was probably alone in the crowd because the speech made me absolutely furious. It was full of what we might do if things ever fell our way, and had absolutely none of what we should do in order to make that happen. It was a warm bath of post war welfare state aspirations. It closed with a rallying call was all to go back to our communities and keep building our independent resistance, and that’s all it was, a pat on the head from the person that used to be sarcastically called magic grandad in some quarters. In the current period, with the horrible stuff that’s going on everywhere, it was vacuous. Even though he's known as someone who is against what's happening in Palestine, as far as I can remember he didn't even mention it. I had to leave because I wasn’t sure I could keep my temper.

Some months later, Zarah Sultana finally forced Corbyn‘s hand and now we have the whole your party thing going on. I believe the founding meeting has been put off, it was originally going to be in November and there's a kerfuffle and mess about how it's being organised. I have an absolute ton of respect for Zarah. I think she’s direct, brave, resourceful, and incredibly honest. The problem we have, in my opinion, is Jeremy is a sea anchor. Sea anchors are constructions that create a lot of drag and used to try and stop ships that cannot put an anchor down because it’s too deep from foundering on rocks as they’re being blown or dragged towards them. In this case the anchor is stopping the rest of us getting things done.

Someone who wanted to be gentle and nice to some of the most vicious political operators that we’ve seen in recent times is not someone who should be in charge of fighting for us. Someone who didn’t sue the dishonest people who accused him of antisemitism isn’t someone we can rely on. He took an awful lot of shit, and I admire him for his resilience. I just don’t think what his legacy should be is a party that waffles and doesn’t fight and I’m afraid that’s what we will get. The original Labour party was always a party of the upper echelons of the working class and it wasn’t that interested in the poor and the unemployed, and it certainly didn’t give any consideration to brown people that lived far away. It tolerated the more left leaning factions because they gave it credibility. For example: the money that was used to found the NHS was at least partly extracted by force from the colonies that Britain still had at the end of the war.

I make no secret of the fact that I joined the Greens a while back. In my local branch there are a few people who were labour left folks who were purged by Starmer‘s crew, or the wild accusations that were thrown around in the final days of Corbyn's leadership. I now have someone I count as a friend who was called an antisemite even though she’s Jewish. The whole thing leaves a bad taste in the mouth and Corbyn didn’t really do much to stop it happening that I can see. If anything, he capitulated and let the wreckers run riot.

The Greens have a new leader, Zack Polanski, he’s more than happy to take it to the ruling class and to stand up for working class people and fight for things like health and housing and is uncompromising opposing the genocide. This is fine and just what we need to overcome the political desert we find ourselves in right now. It's a great blast of fresh air, in fact, but am l alone in thinking that suddenly there's a credible mass left party in the Greens and now there's all this fuss about a party that doesn't even exist yet distracting energy from it?

A party with socialists in it

The old Labour Party was called a party with socialists in it by Tony Benn. The emphasis here is that the party itself was not a socialist party but one that might sometimes be able to so socialist things depending on who had the upper hand. I think the Greens are mostly a socialist party, the election manifesto was all about putting the country back together after all the damage austerity has done and creating a greener and better place to live. They’re also organised so that the centre can’t tell people what to do. My local councillors aren’t subject to a party whip, they are expected to think things through for themselves. I believe it’s the same in parliament. The party is a federation rather than a hierarchy. There is a centre but it does things like allocate funds for strategic goals that the folks implementing those goals agree with first. It suggests and supports, it doesn’t order. It's a very different beast from the old Labour Party, and most parties you come across. Polanski was elected with a landslide, 80%, and he's come out fighting.

I'm still waiting for your party to start existing, never mind campaign on anything. I don't question the sincerity or willingness to do things from the folks at the grass roots. I know some of them personally and they're real working class fighters I admire greatly. If the people who make up the leadership turn out to be the same crusty faces from the Labour Party, with the same love of bureaucracy and centralised control, then I'm afraid my cynicism will go into overload. Corbyn appears to want the tiny number of MPs he's gathered around him to control the goals the party pursues, like Labour does. It was noticeable when Corbyn was elected and Momentum founded to support him that it was run by an old hack called Lansman who never really let the grass roots members speak for themselves, his leadership of Momentum was one of containment, and I believe he's reluctant to allow criticism of Israel which in the present climate is more than a little unhelpful, to put it mildly.

We really don't need a repeat of this. If the energy and enthusiasm is wasted the way it was during the last Corbyn debacle then it will be another tragedy. I felt that there was a generational chance to topple the old regime in British politics that was sabotaged and squandered. Not standing up to the saboteurs was by far the biggest issue. Trying to be kinder and gentler to people who are quite happy to lie about you is a waste of time and hurt a lot of innocent people with baseless accusations. It should have been stamped on, and the perpetrators called out and removed from the party, instead they were accommodated and now we have Starmer leading the rump of what was the biggest party in Europe under Corbyn after selling it, and the rest of us, to Blackrock. The ongoing consequences of this failure are severe and still working themselves out.

The elephant(s)

What to do with Corbyn is an elephant in the room, to coin another phrase. The huge thing, the huge problem, than no-one talks about. He has brand recognition with the British electorate, it can't be denied. On the other hand, he let us down, he didn't defend us from our enemies' attack dogs and let them maul him, us, and the socialist project. I refuse to call it the Corbyn project because it belonged to all of us, not one individual. It isn’t a joke to say this cost lives, particularly when you look at Starmer backing the incompetent and venal Johnson government all through Covid, like the establishment yes man he is. This can't happen again. At the time of writing the Wikipedia article about your party is full of incidents where Corbyn wanted to hold things back, and control who the leadership might be and make it so MPs make all the decisions. Nope, sincere thanks for your service, take a title like honorary president, carry on with the tub thumping motherhood and apple pie speeches, please keep out of the way otherwise.

When challenged as to whether or not he's learned the lesson and is going to stand up to the zionists Corbyn is ambivalent. In a recent article veteran anti-zionist journalist Asa Winstanley documented some recent incidents where this ambivalence is on full display. To his credit, Corbyn does say and has given speeches supporting Palestinians. However, to quote from the article:

Corbyn was reluctant to decisively break with Labour, or lead a new party by himself. But he also doesn’t seem to want anyone else to lead one.
...
Corbyn’s pandering to the Israel lobby within the Labour Party not only demoralized activists but did not help win elections.
Zionism is a maximalist ideology, which accepts nothing less than complete and utter fealty. Israeli embassy proxy, the Jewish Labour Movement (which Corbyn had coddled and supported), played a key role in driving Corbyn out of Labour.
Pro-Israel groups sabotaged and smeared him to the end. They and their allies are certain to do it again if he becomes leader of the new party.
Yet there is no sign that the former Labour leader is ready to start fighting back against Zionism and weaponized anti-Semitism smears.
If Corbyn – who retains a great deal of affection and respect for his solidarity with Palestine – can’t offer a more assertive form of leadership, then perhaps he should not stand in the way of those who can.

We don't need this while the world burns from an avoidable ecocide and a genocide is happening right in front of our eyes.

Comfort blanket or wet blanket

The phrase wet blanket comes from throwing a wet blanket or cloth on a fire to reduce or smother it. It describes Corbyn's ambivalence almost perfectly. His apparent drive to stop the membership of the new party having much say in the running of the party, very like how Labour is currently structured, is another way to hold things back.

When he was first elected party leader there was a wave of enthusiasm that's hard to remember now. Young people who had given up on politics and ever living in a better world joined Labour in large numbers and started participating. There was a joy, an enthusiasm for change that folks like Lansman were quick to create mechanisms to channel and control. I wrote an article back in 2022 where I talked about the labour left as a lightning rod and sadly, I was proved right. All that wonderful energy was taken and thrown away while costly calamities like Brexit were visited upon us.

Maybe all Corbyn ever had to offer was the warm bath I described earlier. Maybe it was weak tea, a comforting looking back over the shoulder to a time that neoliberalism has destroyed. A beacon of what once was and should be. A comfort blanket in dark and difficult times. We don't need a wet blanket though. We never did. It's time to stop singing we shall overcome, someday and actually start overcoming.

In the last few days Corbyn's control-obsessed approach has caused a fall out between him and Sultana. Sultana wants to make sure the membership of the new party have a full say in how things are done, and the money and control over the organisation to be member led. Corbyn's faction stand accused of operating as a boys' club, trying to squeeze her out. Sultana is quoted as saying:

The democratic founding conference of this party will take place in late November.

I will keep fighting for a minimum programme for maximum democracy, you have my word.

No stitch-ups, no coronations: the members must decide."

Here we go again.

The way forward

A Sultana-led party that takes over Labour's deep roots in the trade union movement, and picks up support from people tired of Starmer's continual lying and enabling of genocide would be a formidable force in British politics. Such a party having a common front with the Greens would be very hard to beat. We would certainly be able to give Reform a run for their billionaire backers' money. I think this is what most people who've thought about this want. But please, put the wet blanket away, forget about motherhood and apple pie, and start overcoming today.