WHY CORBYN MUST NOT WIN

  CORBYN, ANTI-SEMITISM, AND THE REGRESSIVE LEFT

I

Famously, a week is a long time in politics and the power of this cliché must now have been brought fully home to David Cameron. Though things started to go seriously wrong for the Osborne Cameron Project considerably before the revelations about his father and significant tax evasion surfaced.

As a consequence, the Labour Party has enjoyed a minor recovery in the opinion polls, not as I have seen depicted in some headlines, ‘a surge,’ but a modest recovery from a disastrous low base. Given the recent disastrous budget and the open warfare within the Tory party, not to mention the revelations about Cameron and his father, this was the least that could be hoped. Of course, a competent Labour leader would have wiped the floor with Cameron following the shambolic budget and the resignation of Iain Duncan Smith. Instead of which we witnessed two of the most incompetent performances by a Labour leader in my lifetime.

 ‘Presented with a priceless opportunity to skewer the prime minister and take apart his claims to lead a one-nation government, Mr Corbyn decided the most effective approach was not to mention the self-defenestration of IDS and his excoriating attack on the cabinet which he had just left.’

In spite of this, I am now being taunted by some who point to a small Labour lead over the Tories as evidence of Corbyn’s effectiveness as a leader. Now putting to one side the facile optimism that imagines former Tory voters suddenly turning to Jeremy Corbyn as their saviour, the question itself misunderstands my opposition to Corbyn, since it is predicated on the assumption that my opposition is based on the fact that Corbyn is incompetent, a crap leader who would struggle to lead a band of like-minded automatons, let alone an organisation as complex as the Labour party. This is not the case. For in the, admittedly unlikely, event that Corbyn should transform himself into a highly competent leader, leaving the Tories trailing far behind in the polls, I would not only continue to oppose him but would campaign much more openly against the possibility of him ever becoming PM. At the moment, the prospect of Corbyn closing the door of no 10 behind him are about as likely as my spending Christmas on the moon, and consequently, I can be fairly relaxed about the threat that he poses.

I am of course not alone in calculating that the prospect of Corbyn being handed the keys to 10 Downing Street is remote. David Cameron has made the same calculation. For those Corbyn supporters who imagine that their man is currently having a rough time of it, they ain't seen nothing yet, for Cameron is, in fact, pulling his punches. He has, after all, an embarrassment of riches in reserve, for Corbyn’s words and actions over the years provide a rich reservoir of material to throw back in his face. For they are words and actions that most voters will find unpalatable.

Mr Corbyn’s long history of fellow travelling with theocrats and organisations such as Hamas and Hezbollah is a matter of record. As are his paid appearances on RT and Press TV, along with his hostility to NATO and indulgence of the Putin world outlook. All of these things make him unsuitable to be the leader of the Labour Party, let alone Prime Minister. Added to this charge sheet is now the repugnant emergence of anti-Semitism within the Labour Party. To even write that sentence feels astonishing, and yet the growing evidence of this repulsive hatred within the party can no longer be dismissed,- as Corbyn acolyte, Ken Livingstone has sought to do.

Corbyn with George Galloway and other members of
'Stop the War UK.'

II

Let me be clear I do not think that Jeremy Corbyn himself is an anti-Semite, though I do believe that his passionate hatred of something he would call Zionism* has made him far too indulgent of those among his supporters who are. His describing the virulently anti-Semitic Hamas as ‘friends’ was, despite his weasel formula, all too typical of soft touch on anti-Semitism, - does anyone believe he would have called Benjamin Netanyahu or any of the current Israeli cabinet ‘friends.’ No, of course, he would not.

It is worth watching the full video above, for it provides a full sense of the Corbyn world view.  However from 13:46 onwards he speaks of the foundation of the state of Israel, without actually mentioning the Holocaust. It seems that Israel was established despite considerable opposition from "many Jewish people who wanted just to maintain their Jewish identity in London or Moscow, or Berlin or anywhere else."# Though having managed to avoid mention of the Holocaust once he does go on to repeat several times that the Palestinians have been terribly wronged. Now briefly leaving to one side the treatment of the Palestinians, - I too think that they have suffered and deserve justice,- this is an extraordinary version of history completely devoid of any understanding of how the state of Israel came to be established. This is the kind of understanding one might expect from a 1st-year undergraduate, blinded by the treatment of the citizens of Gaza and the West Bank, not from the leader of the Labour Party.

How much responsibility Corbyn bears for the increase of anti-Semitism in the Labour party is a matter for debate, however, it can hardly be a coincidence that an increase in hostility to ‘the Jews’ within the party has occurred within the period since he was elected. And it is only necessary to hear him speak to detect his ambiguity – I could put it more strongly- in relation to the existence of the state of Israel to understand his appeal to those hostile to Jewish people.

Fundraiser for SWP/Far Left Front
Organisation

*Zionism has now become little more than a code word for Jewish, as anyone with a Twitter account and who engages with current political issues can testify. This used to be de rigueur for the far right, now it is increasingly true of the left, with Corbyn supporters well represented amongst this increasingly self-confident ‘anti-Zionism’ of the left. (It is perhaps worth noting the damage that this ant-Semitism is doing to the Palestinian cause, of which I have always been a supporter, though no longer feel able to attend protests and demonstrations dominated by supporters of Hamas and other groups who openly parade an attitude hostile to Jewish people).

Anti-Semitism aimed at a left-wing audience.

#The reality of life for Jews in post-war Berlin, or indeed Moscow seems to have escaped Mr Corbyn's attention, as indeed has anti-Semitism as a phenomenon.  

III

I am aware that in presenting my concerns a certain solipsistic, even a pompous note is bound to creep in, and that my being out of sync with a significant portion of the current Labour membership, including a few people I like and respect, represents a shift in me rather than vice versa. Well certainly as I have grown older I have grown ever more suspicious of ideologies and what Orwell always called ‘smelly orthodoxies.’It is also true that I have fallen somewhat out of love with the revolutionary fervour of my youth and can now see the value of gradualism, though recognise that this is a luxury afforded by living in a comparatively rich and stable society. For the rest, I am still as committed to protecting the weak and vulnerable, to equality and economic justice and as angry about tyranny and injustice as I ever was. Indeed, in his support for Hamas, refusal to confront Islamism and apologia for the theocratic fascism of Iran and defence of Putin, Corbyn betrays these very principles of progressive democratic politics.

                                    Left Wing Conspiracy theorists now infest Twitter

In truth I don’t really want to write about Corbyn, he is a dull man of limited intellectual capacity and faulty moral outlook. I am not even sure how unfair it is to summarise his position as follows: -

Cold war, the wrong side won. Injustice and tyranny in the world, all traceable back to ‘us’ i.e. England, the Celtic fringe also mere victims of English colonialism.

Born in 1955 I was lucky to benefit from the post-war surge of social democracy, a free health service, cross-party commitment to building and sustaining social housing and solid social insurance against unemployment and unforeseen adversity. All this against the background of a powerful and self-confident working class culture, out of which emerged the music of the Beatles and other rock bands, to the working class talent that poured out  of RADA and art schools across the country. To be born in 1955 made it possible to believe in ‘progress.’ 

Thatcher began to dismantle this project, and Blair later accepted far too many of the premises on which Thatcherism was constructed. Still the Blair years were on balance years of social progress from Sure-start to the minimum wage and tax credits; the Tories could only snipe from the sidelines. 

However, it was also during these years that the regressive left was born,- a mutation of cultural cringe and politically correct dogma, which now dominates the Labour membership. So that as Cameron takes up where Thatcher left off the  Corbyn leadership, a mix of 70’s nostalgia coupled with incompetence that borders on an art form, looks like maintaining the Tories in power for at least another 9 years, if not longer. It is even possible that the Labour Party could implode as Corbyn supporters seek to establish control over all aspects of the party. I cannot be sanguine about such a prospect, though I am an age when political changes stretching into the next decade and beyond will have considerably less of an impact on me than they will on young recently enfranchised voters.

I also cannot be silent in the face of the betrayal of those fighting for freedom in places such as Kurdistan, Ukraine, Iran, Russia, or collude in the betrayal of imprisoned Trade Unionists and human rights activists in these and other places.

I firmly believe Corbyn is unfit to be prime minister and consequently, on this matter again, I cannot be silent.