Bullying, purges, threats – this is Corbyn’s Labour
APREGNANT woman is bullied by men and threatened with the sack if she does not recant her opinions and publicly humiliate herself by stating something she does not believe. It sounds like the kind of pitchfork and torches religion of the history books.
The sort of injustice that the ‘old’ Labour Party of Keir Hardie, Hugh Gaitskell and Tony Blair was inspired to fight.
But this is what happens in Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘new’ Labour Party. Today. This is his reformation of the Left.
His supporters have taken control of the Liverpool Wavertree constituency Labour Party. Luciana Berger, the sitting Labour MP who held the seat at the General Election by winning four out of five votes cast, has been threatened with deselection because she has criticised Jeremy Corbyn.
She has to admit error of thought and deed. She must praise the new messiah to survive. For her tormentors, it doesn’t help that she is Jewish.
A great niece of the revered Manny Shinwell – the Labour legend jailed after Glasgow’s 1919 George Square riots and a leader of Clydeside when it was red – she is to be humiliated.
THERE are many policies that the Labour Party has adopted in the last decades that the late Manny Shinwell might not recognise were he alive today. But surely the most startling difference he would see would not be Blairite ‘agendas of choice’ but Corbyn’s denial of dissent. Whatever this is, it is not the Labour Party.
The arrogant heresy of the hard Left is that purity is found by becoming ever more extreme. The tracts of Karl Marx from two centuries ago are the gospel to be reached for. Self-flagellation is the path to grace.
In the current fervour it would not be a surprise if the Labour Party decided to reselect MPs by dunking; throwing them into the water. If they float they are guilty, if they drown they are innocent.
The true core of the Labour Party is decency. Fairness. Making a practical difference to people’s lives, not adhering to ideological theory picked up in a 1970s student bedsit.
It lies in trying to unite society by recognising interdependence, not creating the division of ‘them and us’.
I recently spoke to an MSP I like who is also a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn.
He asked me if I was going to eat ‘humble pie’ after the General Election result. The answer was no.
I admit that like many I was surprised Labour gained seats instead of losing them. But it still lost the election.
Yet even that is not the real point. Those on the Left adhere to the belief that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown diluted Labour in order to win.
Well, no, they didn’t. They won because they had a convincing story of what the UK could be.
It is not Jeremy Corbyn’s electability that makes me reject him – I don’t believe his story.
Yes, his ‘bread and circuses’ manifesto was better received than Theresa May’s ‘sackcloth and ashes’ version.
But the man who condemns the Tories for their welfare cuts didn’t notice he promised to keep them in his manifesto. For those without a job, an education and a decent house he offered a nationalised railway.
He worships the icons of socialism not the goals – to make people’s lives better. As Neil Kinnock once put it a generation ago, he is ignoring the real needs.
At heart, real people are just bit parts in Corbyn’s grand, flawed vision. He doesn’t seek the truth because he is convinced he already knows it – and that makes truth the casualty.
Whoever is ultimately responsible for the Grenfell Tower tragedy, the truth is more likely to be obscured, not by some cover-up by the council or the ‘Establishment’, but by Corbyn and his cronies.
They already had their narrative sorted before any flame was ignited. Grenfell Tower merely fits into it. As the hateful John McDonnell spat, the victims were ‘murdered’ by capitalism.
They have a verdict before a judge or jury can be sworn in. Evidence will be made to fit in with their conclusions.
And when they themselves are exposed they lie.
Both Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell supported the IRA during the Troubles.
They supported almost anyone who was opposed to the British state. Now they deny meeting any terrorists and claim they were facilitating the peace process.
Pull the other one.
BUT in their world we are all fools to be played. People want change. The country is weary of austerity, fearful of Brexit and frustrated by a Tory Government in stasis. Jeremy Corbyn is benefiting from that frustration.
But his thoughts for the future of the country are flawed. And his deeds with his party just plain wrong.
At the 1919 George Square riots, Manny Shinwell had been so badly beaten that – semiconscious – he had to be held up by police officers while the Riot Act was read to him.
He went on to become an MP and a distinguished Cabinet Minister.
I hope his grand-niece, Luciana Berger, has inherited his grit. Only by people like her standing firm will the old, real Labour Party survive.
And that is important for all of us – and our democracy.