Tag Archives: Blairite

Labour reshuffle: last bonfire of the Left makes Starmer party LESS ready for power

Keir Starmer has reshuffled his shadow cabinet in a move that many are saying has removed the last left-wingers from that party’s top team and left it as nothing more than a hollowed-out carbon copy of the Conservative Party it is supposed to oppose.

Jim McMahon has resigned as Shadow Environment Secretary, and Rosena Allin-Khan has quit as Shadow Minister for Mental Health. She did not go gently, writing in her resignation letter that Starmer does not “see a space for a mental health portfolio in a Labour cabinet”.

It seems “Allin-Khan – a serving frontline doctor with actual first-hand knowledge of healthcare – was openly sceptical of Labour’s Blairite shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, and his support for expanding privatisation in the NHS, putting her at odds with the direction of the party”.

Angela Rayner and Ed Miliband are being tolerated among the Blairites – for now – because they both have power bases within the Parliamentary Labour Party. But look at the responsibilities they’ve been given:

“Rayner … retains responsibility for the party’s agenda on workers’ rights, its last remaining transformative set of policies. However, her oversight of workers’ rights are not attached to a government department-in-waiting, and are at heavy risk of being watered down in office.”

And “Miliband survives, for now – but even after the party’s £28bn a year climate transition fund was scaled back, he remains unfinished business as far as powerful Labour officials are concerned.”

A few right-wingers have been promoted into the Shadow Cabinet and a lot of right-wingers have been moved around within it. A full list can be found here, if you can manage to read it without a mounting sense of futility and despair.

Starmer lied to the entire Labour membership and has done nothing but betray the trust that was given to him

Owen Jones put the boot into this collection of nameless Blairites in a Guardian column that makes sharp points:

The standout theme from this reshuffle is the ascendancy of the Blairites, cementing the repudiation of Starmer’s “Corbynism with competence and unity” 2020 leadership pitch.

This means Keir Starmer was lying about his entire approach to politics when he stood as a candidate to be the leader of the Labour Party. That alone should disqualify him from even being in the Shadow Cabinet himself, let alone appointing the other members of it.

This means Labour now has a shadow cabinet dominated by politicians opposed to taxing the well-to-do, sceptical about public investment, fixated with expanding the private sector in public services and uncomfortable with the welfare state.

In other words, the Labour Party’s policies are now entirely opposed to those on which it was founded by another Keir – Hardy – at the turn of the 20th century.

Take Liz Kendall, a key figure in understanding Starmerism. In 2015, she stood for leader on a platform that included backing welfare cuts, and secured a paltry 4.5% of the vote. This was a searing experience for her campaign manager, Morgan McSweeney, who went on to run Starmer’s leadership bid. His new strategy was to play the long game: posture to the left in a leadership campaign, then crush the Corbynites, marginalise the soft left and promote the Blairites.

Again, this shows that Starmer lied to the entire Labour membership in order to become leader and, having gained that position, has done nothing but betray the trust that was given to him.

Now Starmer’s chief of staff, his plan has been vindicated as Kendall is promoted to work and pensions shadow secretary, replacing the left-Brownite Jonathan Ashworth, who won lasting bitterness from his colleagues for refusing to resign during the 2016 coup against the then leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

Pat McFadden, Blair’s former political secretary, is now the party’s national campaign coordinator, revealing Labour’s political direction on the final approach to a general election. Darren Jones once hailed Blair as his political hero: he is now shadow chief secretary to the Treasury. Peter Kyle, one of the most ardent Blairites on Labour’s benches, now holds the science brief.

The soft left has no meaningful future in Starmer’s Labour party. The brand of politics now dominant is Blairism circa 2005, when the leadership became obsessed with marketising Britain’s public services.

But this indicates that Starmer and his cronies are out-of-step with the spirit of the times:

The problem is that the country looks more like it did in 1974, a period defined by turmoil and decline. Investment is desperately needed in failing services and to kickstart industry to help Britain grow. And unlike the Labour landslide of 1997, there is a resurgent labour movement and younger generations are more politicised: these are potentially powerful forces if a Labour government disappoints them.

This is certainly true:

Ultimately, Jones is scathing in his condemnation of a Labour team (if it can be called such a thing) that will do nothing with power other than send the electorate back into the grip of the most corrupt and incompetent incarnation of the Conservative Party to be seen in the UK in generations:

This brand of politics offers no meaningful answer to a nation defined by crisis. There are those who crave social, economic and environmental justice who indulge illusions that the party will be more ambitious in government but, like New Labour, it will only lurch rightwards. Many of them keep silent in the run-up to an election, rallying around the opposition as the only means to dislodge the calamity of Tory rule. When the reality of Starmerism – and the Blairite coup – becomes evident in government, it will be their disappointment that will be the bitterest.

In a nation whose political make-up is polarised into two-party stateism (and particularly now, when both those parties have the same policies), this means voters who lack the imagination to seek a better alternative – or who are herded towards the “main” parties by mass media organisations with vested interests – will continue to be shunted between political machines that have no interest in the needs of the many and will continue to serve only their own mendacious desires.

Here’s Cornish Damo to point out some of the underlying horrors:

The take-out from the video is that the Labour-Tory duopoly has to end. That’s not going to happen as long as voters are influenced by mass media that support the ‘Big Two’.

It is time to embrace change – turn away from Starmer’s hollowed-out Substitute Tory Party and find something new.

As Damo says, the Green Party seems a logical choice, in terms of policies and integrity.


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Starmer is trying to GASLIGHT voters into supporting him with turn to explicit Blairism

We all knew Keir Starmer was a Blairite, didn’t we?

His closeness with Peter Mandelson should have been a big hint (Mandelson was as much an architect of Blairism as Blair was). Also the way Starmer jettisoned every Corbyn policy after he became Labour leader, to be replaced by aimless, amorphous, focus-group-led attempts to follow any trend that might seem popular at the time.

Now Starmer has made it explicit with an article in the Financial Times (paywall) in which he asks voters to embrace the legacy of pale-Tory warmonger Tony Blair so that he can win a general election.

That’s what it is about. It isn’t about doing anything to help UK citizens in genuine need; Starmer wants to win an election and he thinks he can do it by invoking the memory of Blair.

He’s very far off-target and is heading for yet another humiliation.

And he gave himself away by saying, “We have to turn the Labour Party inside-out.” It is a clear statement: he wants to eviscerate Labour – gutting it of every socialist member and policy – in order to make it acceptable to the ruling businesspeople and to Tories who get fed up with Boris Johnson.

Traditional Labour voters take note – and avoid Starmer’s party like the Plague until he is long gone, along with all his successors.

He said he had just one goal: “To win the next election.” Coupled with his comments about eviscerating the party he leads, we can only conclude that this is for his own glory and not for the benefit of anybody else. We already have a prime minister like that in Boris Johnson. We don’t want another!

And he relied on boring old Blairite “let’s-silence-the-lefties” arguments like the one about Labour being serious about winning power, rather than just protesting, and the one saying the party must “get real”, drop internal disputes over policy and follow his dictatorship leadership.

Not on your nelly, mate!

Labour got closer to winning power in 2017, under Jeremy Corbyn, than at any time since 2005. But this prompted Blairites in the party’s organisational structure – people who support Starmer’s comments in the FT – to panic because they did not want the wider public to believe that a socialist could ever gain power.

Having worked hard to ensure a Conservative – yes, these so-called Labour members had deliberately sabotaged their own party to make sure the Conservatives won – they redoubled their efforts in the two years leading up to the 2019 general election, with multiple attacks on Corbyn’s credibility and attempts to undermine his policies and supporters.

So it is hypocritical of Starmer to demand that left-wingers are responsible for disharmony within his party. It is his own Blairites that have been stirring up trouble since 2015!

As for that tired old “party of protest” argument: Labour would have won in 2017 if Starmer’s supporters hadn’t spent so much time protesting against Corbyn.

He told the FT that his keynote speech at this autumn’s Labour conference will be a “big moment” because it will signify a major relaunch for the party and for his leadership. Yes, another one.

And we learn now that he’s claiming it will be a shift towards “positivity” and away from a negativity that he claims was a hallmark of the Corbyn years.

That is the worst kind of gaslighting.

If we’ve learned anything from the last few years, it is that Corbyn’s leadership of Labour was a huge positive force. That’s why he was able to encourage hundreds of thousands of people to join the party. It’s why he fixed the party’s finances that Starmer’s idol Blair had ruined. And it’s the reason Corbyn was able to address rallies numbering in their tens of thousands of people.

Starmer himself is lucky if he can speak to 10 people when he appears in public. He has turned more than 100,000 people away from the party. And it is one paycheque away from bankruptcy, thanks to his appalling financial mismanagement.

Couple that with the constant sniping and backstabbing against socialists by Starmer’s coterie of Blairites and it is clear to see that there is only one way Starmer will be able to rid Labour of the negativity that he reckons is stifling it.

That will be for him and all his nasty Blairite minions to leave Labour forever.

Until that happens, Labour members and supporters can forget about winning elections. They can forget about transforming the country. And they can forget about improving the prospects of everybody in the UK. That’s not what Starmer is about.

His purpose – as made clear by anybody who can read between the lines of his FT piece – is not to “rock the boat”; to make sure that the current status quo prevails into the future.

That is why he is sitting at the top of the Labour Party, long after it became clear that he is a millstone, dragging the party’s electoral chances down into the mire.

It is the reason we are having to suffer relaunch after reinvention when what we need is Starmer’s resignation.

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#LabourIslamophobia is running riot – because Blairites are in charge again?

Starmer: draping himself in a Union Flag is only going to reinforce claims that his Labour is virulently Islamophobic.

It’s a reasonable suggestion – Tony Blair was quick enough to attack Muslim countries, back when he was the UK’s prime minister.

The Labour Party swung back towards a balanced approach to religion under Jeremy Corbyn, meaning he tried to treat people of all denominations equally, in line with traditional Labour values.

And we all know how that turned out, don’t we? Pro-Israeli people and organisations (not pro-Jewish; they were just using that as a false flag) accused Corbyn of anti-Semitism with a series of lies.

Now, Keir Starmer is leader. He’s a right-winger, although This Writer isn’t sure whether he has been named as an out-and-out Blairite, Islamophobia is a serious and growing problem in the Labour Party – and he couldn’t care less.

As Aditya Chakrabortty writes in The Guardian:

This is apparently Labour’s new “red wall” playbook: prejudice from some white voters amounts to “legitimate concerns” to be pandered to; prejudice from some Asian Muslim voters is used to tar an entire community.

Labour claimed to be campaigning in the name of Jo Cox, Leadbeater’s sister, who was shot and stabbed to death in the same constituency during the Brexit referendum by a far-right terrorist intoning “Britain First”. Among the last things the MP had been working on was a report into violence against Muslims, yet five years later senior employees of her party were in the business of blaming Muslims.

The failures we see notched up daily by Starmer’s team aren’t just political: they are moral.

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Watson to launch latest attempt at Labour Party treachery on Monday. Will it be over by Tuesday?

Tom Watson: Not influential; not relevant; not worth our time.

Is this an attempt to launch an attack against Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party on two fronts?

A few days ago, the Jewish Labour Movement announced that it would remain affiliated to Labour – with a threat that it could still leave, and cause a stink while doing it, if the party doesn’t accept its lunatic posturings about anti-Semitism. See this article for the hideous details.

It seems Tom Watson will ask fellow Labour MPs to join his latest attempt to split the Parliamentary party at a meeting on Monday. This new party-within-a-party will be called the Future Britain Group and is likely to consist of Blairites who don’t like the fact that Mr Corbyn has been returning Labour to its proper position on the political map – slightly left-of-centre.

Mr Watson would rather see Labour occupying the position it took under the leadership of Tony Blair – on a par with the Conservative Party, firmly on the authoritarian right.

It will be interesting to see how many Labour backbenchers will have the courage to put their heads above the parapet and admit to their constituency parties that they plan to betray the hundreds of thousands of new members who joined because they support the Corbyn project to restore Labour to its rightful place.

Occurring so soon after the JLM made its ultimatum, it seems likely to This Writer that Mr Watson is hoping to orchestrate some kind of exodus from the party, to create more bad publicity for Mr Corbyn and bring his leadership into disrepute. It’s what he has been doing ever since he was elected deputy leader in 2015.

Alternatively, he may be hoping to stir up enough anti-Corbyn sentiment to oust the leader altogether and take his place – although I cannot consider that to be anything more than wishful thinking.

It seems likely that Mr Watson will use his new group to try to force concessions out of Mr Corbyn that weren’t forthcoming when TInGe (The Independent Group of elitists) was created a couple of weeks ago. Robert Peston summed them up in a series of tweets on Wednesday:

The trouble with the last point there – that Watson is claiming Labour representatives may defect to TInGe – is that Chuka Umunna’s band of rebels has sunk, almost without trace. Any politician would have to be mad to consider joining it now, as David Turner points out:

That’s why Mr Peston got short shrift for his interpretation of Mr Watson’s meeting with the Lords.

And the Labour membership at large has run out of patience with Mr Watson:

Zero credibility.

His latest plan won’t earn any of that lost credibility back, either. The Guardian reported that, in his invitation for Parliamentary colleagues to join the group, “the language echoes that used by MPs from the Independent Group, including Chuka Umunna”.

And who, among the ranks of Labour MPs, wants to look like an unprincipled squatter?

Least principled of all, it seems, is Mr Watson himself.

“As deputy leader, it’s my job to do everything I can to hold the party together and ensure we are ready to government [sic],” he stated. But we all know that he has done his level best to split Labour apart and harm public opinion so severely that a Corbyn-led Labour could never form a government.

You have only to look at the way he has been stoking the anti-Semitism row to see proof of that.

Those with longer memories may recall the scandal when it was claimed that members of Labour’s campaign team had deliberately handicapped the party’s efforts in the 2017 election – and that, if the party had put resources where they were needed, it could have won. Responsibility for that may be laid at Mr Watson’s door.

Labour’s half-a-million members know the score. They have long memories and have seen enough of Mr Watson to form their own opinion of him. And they want him out.

Anyone following him into his Future Britain Group will find there is no future for them in Britain’s politics.


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‘Break the mould’ of British politics? New Blairite party will be as mouldy as the rest

A new political party, formed in 2016 (the same time as the so-called ‘Chicken Coup’ by Blairites against Jeremy Corbyn), to occupy the so-called (again) centre-left of politics vacated by Labour?

This would be the centre-right party we all thought the Blairites would split from Labour to create, back at the time of the abortive coup, then.

A gang of political has-beens dedicated to the preservation of the neoliberal status quo at all costs.

Not attractive to the masses. I await evidence that I am mistaken. I expect to wait a long time.

A new political party with access to up to £50m in funding has been secretly under development for more than a year by a network of entrepreneurs, philanthropists and donors keen to “break the Westminster mould”, the Observer can reveal.

The movement, spearheaded by a former Labour benefactor, is understood to have been drawn up by a group frustrated by the tribal nature of politics, the polarisation caused by Brexit and the standard of political leadership on all sides. It appears to have a centrist policy platform that borrows ideas from both left and right.

Senior figures from the worlds of business and charity are understood to be involved, as well as former supporters of the main parties, including a number of former Tory donors.

Source: New party gets £50m backing to ‘break mould’ of UK politics | Politics | The Guardian


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How many innocents will die because of right-wing Labour’s petulance?

Empty promises: Cartoonist Steve Bell draws a parallel between David Cameron's claims and the promises that were made in order to draw the UK into a previous Middle East war.

Empty promises: Cartoonist Steve Bell draws a parallel between David Cameron’s claims and the (false) promises that drew the UK into a previous Middle East war.

They’re a bloodthirsty bunch, these Blairites and right-wingers and ‘moderates’ (perhaps This Writer was right to dub them ‘intolerants’)!

They say they want a free vote on air strikes in Syria, and it is clear that they want to support David Cameron’s plan of attack – because they believe in it, even though Cameron’s case is flimsy, or because they want to harm their own party leader, Jeremy Corbyn?

Or do they simply want to kill innocent children? I mention this because it will be an inevitable consequence, no matter what Cameron says about the accuracy of his eldritch Reapers, RAPTORs and Brimstones.

Perhaps some of them want to support Cameron simply because Corbyn has written to everybody in the Parliamentary Labour Party, providing his own reasoned argument for opposing the proposed air strikes, without telling them first. How petty. The letter reads:

“The Prime Minister made a Statement to the House today making the case for a UK bombing campaign against ISIS in Syria. A copy of my response has already been circulated.

“We have all been horrified by the despicable attacks in Paris and are determined to see the defeat of ISIS.

“Our first priority must be the security of Britain and the safety of the British people. The issue now is whether what the Prime Minister is proposing strengthens, or undermines, our national security.

“I do not believe that the Prime Minister today made a convincing case that extending UK bombing to Syria would meet that crucial test. Nor did it satisfactorily answer the questions raised by us and the Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

“In particular, the Prime Minister did not set out a coherent strategy, coordinated through the United Nations, for the defeat of ISIS. Nor has he been able to explain what credible and acceptable ground forces could retake and hold territory freed from ISIS control by an intensified air campaign.

“In my view, the Prime Minister has been unable to explain the contribution of additional UK bombing to a comprehensive negotiated political settlement of the Syrian civil war, or its likely impact on the threat of terrorist attacks in the UK.

“For these and other reasons, I do not believe the Prime Minister’s current proposal for air strikes in Syria will protect our security and therefore cannot support it.

“The Shadow Cabinet met today for an initial discussion and debated the issues extensively. We will meet again on Monday, when we will attempt to reach a common view.

“I will get in touch again when we know the timing of the debate and vote.”

Here’s another – expert – view which supports Corbyn’s position. These are strong arguments.

Cameron’s demand that the UK should join the US and France (and Russia, and who knows who else in the crowded skies over Syria) has been met with derision on the social media. “How does adding our three planes make the situation any better?” asked one wit, playing on an early Tory decision to reduce UK air power significantly.

Cameron’s plan involves bombing Daesh (IS if you like) from the air, while supplying ‘moderate’ rebels in order to use them as ground troops. It’s a recipe for disaster because there is no guarantee that any such funded and equipped group will not rise up and become the next Daesh. Many have done it in the past, and if Cameron reckons there are 70,000 of these people – a figure he cannot prove – that’s plenty of possible future terrorists.

(He got this information from the same source that told the UK Saddam Hussein could bomb British bases within 45 minutes; take it with a pinch of salt.)

So Cameron’s plan – as This Blog has pointed out very recently – is to continue the cycle of international stupidity. Here it is:

cycle of hate

No Labour MP should be in favour of that! Or do they have shares in weapons-manufacturing firms?

Whichever way we cut it, it seems unlikely that ‘moderate’ Labour will be able to see far enough past its own petty interests to make a wise decision, if Cameron calls a vote.

One is moved to wonder how many dead innocents it will take to make them question their choice.

Perhaps it is up to us – the rank-and-file constituents – to make a better case. If you have a Labour MP, maybe it’s time to write them a short letter, urging them to follow the path of sanity and vote against Cameron’s pointless air strikes. You can mention the human cost, the cost to the UK economy, the fact that the plan perpetuates the cycle of terrorism and also, perhaps, the fact that Labour ‘moderates’ will be blamed when it all goes wrong.

Perhaps Daesh, or IS, is in less danger than the Parliamentary seats of these so-called ‘moderates’. Perhaps they should be given the opportunity to consider that possibility.

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Would McDonnell’s ‘Mao moment’ have gone unnoticed if not for Blairites?


The important part of this appears to be in the fourth paragraph, where Mr Hodges states a Labour MP has sent him a text.

The word on the social media is that reporters for the mainstream news channels and papers would not have paid any attention to shadow chancellor John McDonnell brandishing Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book – if right-wing members of the Parliamentary Labour Party had not insisted on it.

The claim is that they prompted a huge backlash against McDonnell. If true, it is unforgiveable.

The quotation, “We must learn to do economic work from all who know how, no matter who they are. We must esteem them as teachers, learning from them respectfully and conscientiously. We must not pretend to know when we do not know,” was intended to refer to the Conservative Government’s ‘sell everything to China’ policy and Mr McDonnell said he “thought it would come in handy for the Chancellor in his new relationship”. This relationship:

151125china tories martin rowson

In that context, there’s nothing wrong with it.

And, to be fair, This Writer hasn’t seen any adverse comments from members of the Parliamentary Labour Party.

But there is the claim by Mr Hodges, as quoted in this article on the Zelo Street blog, which appears to give the game away. The article goes on to point out what the outburst against Mr McDonnell has successfully glossed over.

And on Twitter, Conor Pope helpfully pointed out: “Having sat in the press gallery, can confirm no journos had noticed the Mao bit until Blairite MPs started briefing.” Or was he joking? There’s many a true word spoken (or indeed, written) in jest.

Are Blairite Labour MPs actually helping the Conservative Government?

Most people will not have noticed, but today the Rt Hon Gideon George Oliver Osborne, heir to the seventeenth Baronet, stood up in the Commons to give MPs the dubious pleasure of listening to his Autumn Statement, the detail of which has been lost in the clamour to heap disdain on his Labour opposite number John McDonnell by the assembled punditerati.

McDonnell had made a half-decent fist of responding to Osborne, especially given his lack of front bench experience and that this was his first Autumn Statement or Budget response. But referring to Mao Zedong is best avoided, and brandishing his Little Red Book is a no-no, even though McDonnell was using it to make the point that Osborne is happy about nationalisation, so long as the Government is in countries like China.

This cut no ice with the Telegraph’s not at all celebrated blues artiste Whinging Dan Hodges, who had made his mind up beforehand that Labour were rubbish, and whatever recourse to Phil Space journalism would fill his next column. “Why doesn’t John McDonnell just sit down … This has to be the most embarrassing response to a government statement in the history of parliament” he carped plaintively.

He had the inside track: “Labour MP texts me. ‘I’m in tears in my office’”. Laughing at Dan’s Twitter whinge, perhaps. And then a last, desperate appeal to Look Over There: “Don’t forget, the John McDonnell red book fiasco is all the fault of the Tory press and disloyal Labour MPs”. But Hodges will never get a Labour leader he can back.

Aren’t we missing something?

Tax credit cuts at least re-thought, if not totally backed out. Police cuts – trailed for some days now – abandoned. And while Hodges was having his mardy strop, he seems not to have noticed that the Junior Doctors’ dispute has been taken off Jeremy Hunt and sent to ACAS.

Source: Zelo Street: Dan Hodges Sees Red

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The jig is up as more and more members of public and media twig what anti-Corbyn Labour MPs are doing

Under attack: But Jeremy Corbyn has said and done nothing that any rational UK citizen could possibly find objectionable.

Under attack: But Jeremy Corbyn has said and done nothing that any rational UK citizen could possibly find objectionable.


There’s a paragraph in this article that states the right-wing Labour assault on Jeremy Corbyn is not about having a rational debate but about preventing it.

That is a comment that corresponds exactly with This Writer’s experience, having engaged, on Saturday evening, in a discussion with a supporter of Kevan Jones who absolutely refused to pay any attention to rational arguments about that gentleman’s behaviour at all.

It seems likely that similar scenarios are being played out around the country and I may blog the conversation as an example of the lack of reason that seems to typify these people’s assertions.

Right wing Labour MPs have launched a full-scale coup against Jeremy Corbyn, and against the members of the party they represent, writes Oliver Tickell. Their plan is simple – backed by mainstream media, to discredit him so utterly that even his supporters turn against him – and elect a new ‘heir to Blair’ leader.

Moreover most of those Labour MPs who are sniping at Corbyn from the green benches of the House of Commons know which side their bread is buttered. It was Tony Blair who put them there, after all, by imposing short lists of ‘approved’ right wing candidates on local parties.

And now they are at risk in a newly energised left wing Labour Party that has just elected a genuinely progressive, pacifist, environmentalist left wing leader. All the hundreds of new members that have flooded into the party inspired by Corbyn’s combination of compassion, understanding and commitment to social, ecological and economic justice are hardly going to reselect them when the time comes.

So here’s the plan: seize on any perceived weakness and attack, attack, attack. Hit hard, hit often, in public and in private. Backed up by the entire spectrum of Britain’s ‘mainstream’ media who are only to happy to join those Labour MPs in puttting the boot in.

And the objective is clear: kill Corbyn. Wipe him out. Discredit him so utterly that not only will MPs and media unite against him, but even his supporters in the wider Labour Party will lose faith and either leave the party in disgust, or refuse to re-elect him after the leadership challenge they are building up to.

The first thing is for us all to understand what is going on. The rush to attack and denounce Corbyn is not based on anything he said. After all, what’s to disagree with?

It is not a sign that a debate is taking place in the Labour Party. The ferocity and intensity of the attacks is, on the contrary, intended precisely to prevent rational debate and forestall any reasonable discussion of the issues.

The purpose is simple. It is to brand Corbyn a softie, a cissy, an ex-hippy peacenik, unfit to rule, weak on defence, a risk to national security, a left-wing corduroy-jacketed beardie scarcely fit to serve as a humanities lecturer in third rate ex-Polytechnic University.

It is above all to present him as, and render him, unelectable – a man who can only lead Labour to abject failure in any future general election. And so convince the great mass of the Labour Party to turn against their failed left-wing champion and elect in his place an ‘heir to Blair’. Someone more like … David Cameron?

So first, understand. Second, don’t fall for it. Third, resist.

Read the full article: Shooting to kill Corbyn – the coup is on – The Ecologist

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Labour will discount leader election votes AFTER they’ve been cast – won’t that encourage vote-RIGGING?

The right-wing Labour leadership has put itself in a proper dilemma, thanks to the candidacy – and popularity – of Jeremy Corbyn.

Look at the denial of comedian Mark Steel’s application to become a Labour supporter – and vote for Corbyn – because he does not “support Labour values” – this is a man who wrote newspaper articles in favour of Labour, doorstepped members of the public to encourage them to vote Labour, and actually voted Labour himself.

It seems that, because he admitted he’d vote for the Green Party’s Caroline Lucas if he was in her Brighton Pavilion constituency, he’s out. That’s a comment in favour of a person, not a party.

Is his endorsement of Ms Lucas then really the reason he got the boot? Or is it because he supports Mr Corbyn now?

That is the question that will be worrying many dedicated Labour supporters who have signed up in good faith, in order to do the same.

Now, the Labour leadership has said it will remove “infiltrators'” votes, even after they have been cast. The Daily Mirror reports:

The party will carry on vetting people right up until the September 10 voting deadline to stop ‘stooges’ and ‘entryists’ taking over the race.

Insiders say that means they will tell independent vote-counters to strip out individual ballots if they suspect foul play – for example if a Tory stooge mocks Labour by posting their paper on Twitter.

This plan is wide-open to abuse. What’s to stop right-wingers, neoliberals, Blairites (or whatever else you want to call them) from looking at votes, thinking, “These people voted for Corbyn – they’re disqualified”, and finding a reason for the decision later?

Conversely, there is nothing to stop Corbyn-supporting voters from making that accusation right now. The decision brings the election into disrepute.

The decision has been attacked by the Electoral Reform Society campaign group – which partly owns the company running the election – as it said Labour should delay sending out ballot papers for a few days.

This would have been a better choice – and it counts against Labour’s leaders that they did not support it.

The current system of weeding out members of other parties is working perfectly well. This Writer took part in the process, here in Mid Wales, and managed to identify Conservatives and Greens who were trying to skew the process.

I also recognised the names of many genuine Labour supporters who will certainly vote for Jeremy Corbyn. Their applications have been accepted and their votes will be counted.

By the time the count takes place, though, will the entire process have been discredited beyond redemption?

I am seriously considering writing a letter to Labour’s general secretary, Iain McNichol, about this issue. Perhaps other Labour members, of long-standing in the party, may wish to do the same.

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There’s no place in politics for Blairites who are disgruntled by their abrupt loss of influence

Telling it as it is: Michael Meacher has more to say about the current Labour Party than yesterday's man, Tony Blair.

Telling it as it is: Michael Meacher has more to say about the current Labour Party than yesterday’s man, Tony Blair.

Michael Meacher has it right (as usual). In the same Guardian article that publicises Tony Blair’s latest attack on Jeremy Corbyn, he explained why the former Prime Minister and his followers are so disgruntled by the return to real Labour Party values he represents:

“Understandably,” he said, “the Blairite faction is disconcerted by their abrupt loss of power.”

That is the meaning of everything that has been said by these people – by Tony Blair, by Alastair Campbell, by Simon Danczuk, by John Mann, and by all the others who are bleating that the democratic system of electing a new leader – that they all supported – should be halted because it might mean they’ll have to follow a real socialist instead of a Tory in a red tie.

Blair’s comments aren’t worth repeating because they contain nothing of substance at all. “The party is walking eyes shut, arms outstretched over the cliff’s edge to the jagged rocks below,” is it, Tony? What makes you say that? What particular policies of Corbyn’s will cause the catastrophe you have made up inside your mind? You don’t say, so we shouldn’t pay any attention.

Blair appears to support calls for New Labour hangers-on to split from the party in the event of a Corbyn win: “This is not a moment to refrain from disturbing the serenity of the walk on the basis it causes ‘disunity’.”

This, of course, runs against party discipline and Mr Meacher was right to counter it: “They have a duty to remain loyal to the Labour party as the left has always done.”

Again, Meacher is right; Blair is wrong.

Let’s have a bit more of Meacher. Referring to the rise of Corbyn, he said: “It is the biggest non-revolutionary upturning of the social order in modern British politics.

“The Blairite coup of the mid-1990s hijacked the party to the Tory ideology of ‘leave it all to the markets and let the state get out of the way’, and when asked what was her greatest achievement, Mrs Thatcher triumphantly replied, ‘New Labour.’

“After 20 years of swashbuckling capitalism, the people of Britain have said enough, and Labour is finally regaining its real principles and values.”

Blairites in the Parliamentary Labour Party have a stark choice, if Corbyn is elected by the party membership they claim to serve: They can knuckle under and toe the party’s new line, as the left-wingers have been forced to do – in the name of party unity, Tony Blair – for the last 20 years…

Or they can sling their hook.

That doesn’t mean resigning the Labour whip and sloping off to the Liberal Democrats (or wherever), as Shirley Williams has suggested.

It means resigning their position as MPs and making way for the election of somebody who will support Labour’s new direction.

The behaviour of men like Danczuk and Mann is nothing less than treachery against their party – meaning the people who voted them into Parliament, a majority of whom – it seems – want Jeremy Corbyn to be the new Labour leader.

The people are speaking. They want the New Labour dinosaur to go into extinction. Let us hope the hangers-on get the message.

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