Indeed exactly right, Corbyn was destroyed unfairly and partly by the use of false accusations of 'anti semitism'. Ironically Starmer is maybe bought down via an overblown grand conspiracy about the so called "Epstein class" which, with a further irony, has a strong anti semitic element in some hands, though it hasn't yet developed into a full blown anti semitic narrative.
Much of the anti-semitism Corbyn was accused of was actually anti Zionism of course.
The main problem for Mandelson, who I despise, was of course, sharing secrets as it were, and confidential information with Epstein. Not being associated as such, which is anyway just, as in other cases, 'guilt by association' and a kind of gossip mongering that our politics has degenerated into presented as unveiling the Wizard of Oz that runs the economy or what have you. Gossip that in fairness Starmer, for all his faults, was partly immune to.
As for political infighting, the Labor left, I was part of it for years, is almost beyond belief regarding its factionalism including the Corbyn Era. Throwing away opportunity after opportunity on the basis of ideological purity, just as they will here over "Epstein Class" de rigeur attitudes and demands to conform to a standard moralistic interpretation.
That the Starmer project is doomed, seems to me a bit of hyperbole, it should be, but basically it has consistently run Britain for over 20 years and shows no real sign of flagging frankly. The in fighting can be exaggerated too, as it can be in America. The 'problem', despite wishful thinking is the 'left'. Otherwise you can pretty much get away with most things.
It is likely though that this PM will survive, making the article a bit premature, it is early days yet and the remaining vultures in the British Parliament have to decide which one of their own they want.
- Corbyn who betrayed the working class with his support of brexit?
- Corbyn who effectively demanded Gordon Brown step down in 2010 after that year's election delivered a hung parliament yet refused to do likewise in 2017 under what was effectively an identical situation?
- Corbyn who expelled Alastair Campbell from the PLP for voting Lib Dem in the 2019 MEP Election, when he himself had voted against his party whip on more than 600 occasions at that point in time?
- Corbyn who told the people of Scotland & Northern Ireland to "respect Democracy" in relation to an ADVISORY REFERENDUM in which 1 side won by 4% yet spoke about "giving back" part of the Falkland Islands to Argentina despite 99% of the electorate voting to remain part of the UK only 3 years earlier?
- Corbyn who imposed a 3 line whip on his party to give the tories carte blanche to remove our rights & protections with zero concessions extracted to protect the working class?
- Corbyn the thrice married, privately educated,putin-apologist career politician child of wealth whose actions have only ever benefited his ego?
That's right "political infighting on behalf of the Left". Amply demonstrated there.
I never said Corbyn was a victim by the way. I said he was unfairly removed by false accusations constructed round his anti Zionism. I wish, how I wish, that the errors you highlight had been the cause! How I wish. I assume you were against Brexit by the way? By no means an obvious pro-worker position. Given the EUs inbuilt 'austerity' defaults.
By 'pro-Putin' you mean 'against NATO'. In this case I agree with Corbyn, again there was and is a lot of disagreement on the Left to my previous point.
Islas Malvinas issue is interesting, a prime example of Imperial manipulation. Whose votes counted, Argentinian ones or the small number of those on Malvinas (Falklands)? It is true that the Junta exploited the sentiment regarding this Imperial strategic military outpost against a few "Little Englanders" transplanted there. My own fellow Welsh speakers in Patagonia felt differently, though they 'self deported' from Wales a long time ago. It is interesting how the Monroe Doctrine didn't kick in during Thatcher's Jingoisitic intervention against the Junta too.
Yes 99% of the tiny population of the Falklands voted one way: the same tactic, in fact, that Northern Ireland was carved out to create the bare Protestant Majority there. Corbyn was against withdrawal from the EU, there was huge dissent on the Left, who were mostly wrong and in favor of Brexit in a muddled way. He was, though against withdrawal, nuanced in his remarks, that meant he was 'secretly for it' in some eyes.
Corbyn even supported, rightly in my view, a second referendum. By no means a 'legitimate' move in terms of the UK Constitution, such that it is. Then the first referendum was idiotic too and a stunt that backfired by Cameron.
Same applies to the decision to trigger Article 50 or whatever it was by Corbyn. This time of course, the narrow majority expressing the 'will' of the People wasn't significant in your eyes. Whether the referendum was 'advisory' in any real sense is moot. To have treated it as such by the time of triggering was a heavy lift against the racism and bigotry that already huge sections of the British working class had fallen into: in England rabid "little Englanders" and bigots in my memory of many of them. I agree that a bare majority vote was insufficient though and the bar was set stupidly by Cameron et al.
It is, I admit, interesting to imagine the World where Corbyn had suddenly declared the Brexit vote 'advisory' and refused to trigger it and carried his Party that way. Sadly a huge number of morons in working class strongholds were, by then, committed "little Englanders".
The austerity politics wrought on the British Working Class is not due to only to Corbyn sadly or Brexit, much of it is due to their own vacillation and stupidity, starting mostly after the defeat of the Miners in the 80s and the Blair 'triangulation'.
You've literally spouted the Kremlin line. The biggest recruiter for NATO is putin himself and miss me with this no expansion promise, it applies both ways.
Corbyn the day following the referendum called for Article 50 to be triggered. The EU is a damn sight better than being America's vassal state and Corbyn enabled it.
Why can't you corbynistas ever accept that your guy:
1. Isn't the solution.
2. Is part of the problem.
3. Bares responsibility for his own actions.
Starmer literally did to him what he did to Alastair Campbell. I hate Starmer as well and would happily take David Miliband, Andy Burnham, Clive Lewis or even Gordon Brown. I actually want change, but unlike you lexit liars, am actually able to articulate what I want and put together a list of things that are essential. It seems like you people want to avoid all accountability and point the finger away from st Jezza rather than work together for a solution that allows us to deliver what you claim to want.
Corbyn is the establishment. A career politician, privately educated and a child of wealth. He's never once stood by the working class and has actually made life more dangerous for Muslims like me by calling Hamas & Hezbollah his friends.
He's at best a useful idiot of putin and at worst, an active measure.
I've literally spouted the Kremlin line. Indeed I did. Because it is correct. And to say otherwise, is in fact, ironically to be part of America's grand strategy via NATO, of containment as they euphemistically call it.
Neither do I think Brexit was anything other than a disaster. Pity the English working class didn't realise that as they whined and brayed about 'furreners', including, for many of them, even some in Wales, not of course 'foreign' in any way at all and furthermore not affected by Brexit anyway. What a bunch of dopes.
What did I claim to want by the way? Nothing I am aware of, it is some time since I lost any faith in the self organization of the English working class or the 'left'.
Indeed I have spouted the Kremlin line, that is because it is correct regarding NATO. It doesn't follow, and this is the point and part of the same smear used against Corbyn, that I support or would justify Putin's activities, his illegal invasion of Ukraine or indeed deny the fact that NATO provided him with the perfect excuse to do what he actually did for other reasons or partly so. I do, as it happens, despite Putin being the vile dicator that he is, that NATO provoked him. As it stands given that he has nuclear weapons, we stand at the door of a serious Nuclear escalation.
I am of the view that NATO is part of the problem, especially the ridiculous and sly attempt to draw in Ukraine. Against its own constitution, into a military alliance that should have been refigured after 'The Fall', in fact way before.
Indeed I accept that Putin's invasion of Ukraine is up there with historical crimes against International law. Nearly as bad as the Bush/Blair invasion of Iraq but not quite. Certainly on the lines of Afghanistan and causing nearly as much death and misery. In the case of Russia, over a million of its own troops including injured, so on that count it differs from Blair's war crimes which came cheap in terms of English lives.
Though a tranche of the British public did oppose it; most of the working class morons swallowed the 'defending Democracy' hogwash and PR spun by Campbell and other Labour slick willies.
Frankly I am not following up every single supposed statement by Corbyn, often taken out of context, or even careless on his behalf, what's new?
Opinions differ about Putin's motives, Boris Kagarlitsky, now in prison, feels Putin's actions were primarily and purely driven by 'distraction from a failing economy' motives. I don't. I admire and respect Boris and he might be right, either way he should not be in prison. Help us call for his release and a real solution to the Ukraine invasion. As it stands there will have to be some territorial exchange. Parts of the Donbas are, anyway, legitimately Russian and historically so.
Since I am not a Corbynista, whatever that is, I have no further reason to defend Corbyn's rather typical leftist vacillations regarding some amorphous and ill defined 'People' or what he thinks is their considered "will". Given that like 30% of Americans, most of them can be led by the nose wherever the propagandists want.
I agree that Brexit should have been called out for the stunt it was from the get go.
Well thought out and coherent comment, thanks for making my point about the incoherence and badly thought out catastrophe that the British Left became. After the great days when the NUM, other workers and returning servicemen gave us the Welfare State and NHS.
Corbyn is no victim and should have been ousted long before that 2017 Election, you know, just as he demanded Gordon Brown step down after saving the World Economy because the 2010 election ended in a hung parliament.
Corbyn is the biggest betrayer of the working class and is no different to trump. A thrice married, putin-apologist child of wealth who failed upwards and was privately educated. Explain the 3 line whip he imposed on the party to trigger Article 50 in defiance of a Court Order. That referendum was Advisory. You didnt have a problem when kkkier helped him enforce said whip to betray the working class and allow the tories to strip away our rights and protection did you?
How about pointing to the damage Starmer is doing by blocking Andy Burnham from running for a seat local to him? Is it because that would result in st jezza's own hypocrisy being revealed?
You remember when he booted Alastair Campbell from the party for voting Lib Dem in the 2019 MEP Election when corbyn himself had defied his party whip over 600 times at that moment in time? Corbyn is, was and always will be about himself. How about joining the fight against Starmer to allow us a prosperous future in the EU rather than suffering outside because youre more loyal to your dear leader than you are to the principles you claim to represent?
"putin-apologist child of wealth", though I answered your basic points in a longer reply to another comment by you, is the kind of thing Grace means I suppose? Or, in my terms, just an example of Labour left infighting and purity testing.
As for 'wealth', as we used to say in the Coalfields. "What do Neil Kinnock and Tony Benn have in common?" Answer, they are both class traitors. American won't get the reference I know.
By 'putin apologist' you mean, Corbyn was rightly opposed to NATO's continuance and over reach into Ukraine.
Oligarch Bezos Acting Invincible: WE the People Need To Boycott
LeeAnn Hall at the nonprofit National Campaign for Justice(https://bit.ly/4qtWBsB) reports that Bezos is collaborating with another oligarch Peter Theil’s software company Palantir to create an ICE surveillance data network through its AWS(Amazon Web Services) cloud server
This report comes on top of the recent layoff of 30% of WaPo(Washington Post) by Bezos as many view this as a neutering of the once prominent news organization and spending $75m on the flopped Melania documentary(Rotten Tomatoes rating 5% most recently) Bezos wants to automate Amazon to continue his layoffs going forward
So Bezos has become like Theil and Musk an oligarchic pawn for the Cheeto led Nazi Republican party The corporate greed fuels this whole Cheeto enterprise and rest assured these oligarchs will in some way try to subvert the 2026 midterms which is already underway with Musk pouring millions into Nazi Republican political campaigns thinking they will be able to buy the elections
Amazon as a company needs to feel economic pain as much as WE the People can muster WE use the service for convenience but WE need to find other ways to get products
It’s really irritating when journalists employ factually inaccurate. terms. I’m not a admirer of Starmer, but I am aware that he has repeatedly said that there is no such thing as Starmerism so I’m not quite sure why Ms Blakely refers to it repeatedly in this article. Giventhat she earns her living as a political journalist she must be even more aware of that fact than I am. Facts matter, whether you are writing on the right or the left.
I think she has rose colored glasses on frankly. I was a member of the Labour Left for a long time. The amount of faction fighting and in fighting was hard to believe: purity tests and so on. Corbyn's period was the same.
Boy does this quisling deserve it. What a worthless man!
Thank you for this illuminating article.
Starmer is a wretch! It's a horrifying story of lies and hypocrisy.
Indeed exactly right, Corbyn was destroyed unfairly and partly by the use of false accusations of 'anti semitism'. Ironically Starmer is maybe bought down via an overblown grand conspiracy about the so called "Epstein class" which, with a further irony, has a strong anti semitic element in some hands, though it hasn't yet developed into a full blown anti semitic narrative.
Much of the anti-semitism Corbyn was accused of was actually anti Zionism of course.
The main problem for Mandelson, who I despise, was of course, sharing secrets as it were, and confidential information with Epstein. Not being associated as such, which is anyway just, as in other cases, 'guilt by association' and a kind of gossip mongering that our politics has degenerated into presented as unveiling the Wizard of Oz that runs the economy or what have you. Gossip that in fairness Starmer, for all his faults, was partly immune to.
As for political infighting, the Labor left, I was part of it for years, is almost beyond belief regarding its factionalism including the Corbyn Era. Throwing away opportunity after opportunity on the basis of ideological purity, just as they will here over "Epstein Class" de rigeur attitudes and demands to conform to a standard moralistic interpretation.
That the Starmer project is doomed, seems to me a bit of hyperbole, it should be, but basically it has consistently run Britain for over 20 years and shows no real sign of flagging frankly. The in fighting can be exaggerated too, as it can be in America. The 'problem', despite wishful thinking is the 'left'. Otherwise you can pretty much get away with most things.
It is likely though that this PM will survive, making the article a bit premature, it is early days yet and the remaining vultures in the British Parliament have to decide which one of their own they want.
- Corbyn who betrayed the working class with his support of brexit?
- Corbyn who effectively demanded Gordon Brown step down in 2010 after that year's election delivered a hung parliament yet refused to do likewise in 2017 under what was effectively an identical situation?
- Corbyn who expelled Alastair Campbell from the PLP for voting Lib Dem in the 2019 MEP Election, when he himself had voted against his party whip on more than 600 occasions at that point in time?
- Corbyn who told the people of Scotland & Northern Ireland to "respect Democracy" in relation to an ADVISORY REFERENDUM in which 1 side won by 4% yet spoke about "giving back" part of the Falkland Islands to Argentina despite 99% of the electorate voting to remain part of the UK only 3 years earlier?
- Corbyn who imposed a 3 line whip on his party to give the tories carte blanche to remove our rights & protections with zero concessions extracted to protect the working class?
- Corbyn the thrice married, privately educated,putin-apologist career politician child of wealth whose actions have only ever benefited his ego?
That Jeremy Corbyn is a victim?
That's right "political infighting on behalf of the Left". Amply demonstrated there.
I never said Corbyn was a victim by the way. I said he was unfairly removed by false accusations constructed round his anti Zionism. I wish, how I wish, that the errors you highlight had been the cause! How I wish. I assume you were against Brexit by the way? By no means an obvious pro-worker position. Given the EUs inbuilt 'austerity' defaults.
By 'pro-Putin' you mean 'against NATO'. In this case I agree with Corbyn, again there was and is a lot of disagreement on the Left to my previous point.
Islas Malvinas issue is interesting, a prime example of Imperial manipulation. Whose votes counted, Argentinian ones or the small number of those on Malvinas (Falklands)? It is true that the Junta exploited the sentiment regarding this Imperial strategic military outpost against a few "Little Englanders" transplanted there. My own fellow Welsh speakers in Patagonia felt differently, though they 'self deported' from Wales a long time ago. It is interesting how the Monroe Doctrine didn't kick in during Thatcher's Jingoisitic intervention against the Junta too.
Yes 99% of the tiny population of the Falklands voted one way: the same tactic, in fact, that Northern Ireland was carved out to create the bare Protestant Majority there. Corbyn was against withdrawal from the EU, there was huge dissent on the Left, who were mostly wrong and in favor of Brexit in a muddled way. He was, though against withdrawal, nuanced in his remarks, that meant he was 'secretly for it' in some eyes.
Corbyn even supported, rightly in my view, a second referendum. By no means a 'legitimate' move in terms of the UK Constitution, such that it is. Then the first referendum was idiotic too and a stunt that backfired by Cameron.
Same applies to the decision to trigger Article 50 or whatever it was by Corbyn. This time of course, the narrow majority expressing the 'will' of the People wasn't significant in your eyes. Whether the referendum was 'advisory' in any real sense is moot. To have treated it as such by the time of triggering was a heavy lift against the racism and bigotry that already huge sections of the British working class had fallen into: in England rabid "little Englanders" and bigots in my memory of many of them. I agree that a bare majority vote was insufficient though and the bar was set stupidly by Cameron et al.
It is, I admit, interesting to imagine the World where Corbyn had suddenly declared the Brexit vote 'advisory' and refused to trigger it and carried his Party that way. Sadly a huge number of morons in working class strongholds were, by then, committed "little Englanders".
The austerity politics wrought on the British Working Class is not due to only to Corbyn sadly or Brexit, much of it is due to their own vacillation and stupidity, starting mostly after the defeat of the Miners in the 80s and the Blair 'triangulation'.
You've literally spouted the Kremlin line. The biggest recruiter for NATO is putin himself and miss me with this no expansion promise, it applies both ways.
Corbyn the day following the referendum called for Article 50 to be triggered. The EU is a damn sight better than being America's vassal state and Corbyn enabled it.
Why can't you corbynistas ever accept that your guy:
1. Isn't the solution.
2. Is part of the problem.
3. Bares responsibility for his own actions.
Starmer literally did to him what he did to Alastair Campbell. I hate Starmer as well and would happily take David Miliband, Andy Burnham, Clive Lewis or even Gordon Brown. I actually want change, but unlike you lexit liars, am actually able to articulate what I want and put together a list of things that are essential. It seems like you people want to avoid all accountability and point the finger away from st Jezza rather than work together for a solution that allows us to deliver what you claim to want.
Corbyn is the establishment. A career politician, privately educated and a child of wealth. He's never once stood by the working class and has actually made life more dangerous for Muslims like me by calling Hamas & Hezbollah his friends.
He's at best a useful idiot of putin and at worst, an active measure.
I've literally spouted the Kremlin line. Indeed I did. Because it is correct. And to say otherwise, is in fact, ironically to be part of America's grand strategy via NATO, of containment as they euphemistically call it.
Neither do I think Brexit was anything other than a disaster. Pity the English working class didn't realise that as they whined and brayed about 'furreners', including, for many of them, even some in Wales, not of course 'foreign' in any way at all and furthermore not affected by Brexit anyway. What a bunch of dopes.
What did I claim to want by the way? Nothing I am aware of, it is some time since I lost any faith in the self organization of the English working class or the 'left'.
Indeed I have spouted the Kremlin line, that is because it is correct regarding NATO. It doesn't follow, and this is the point and part of the same smear used against Corbyn, that I support or would justify Putin's activities, his illegal invasion of Ukraine or indeed deny the fact that NATO provided him with the perfect excuse to do what he actually did for other reasons or partly so. I do, as it happens, despite Putin being the vile dicator that he is, that NATO provoked him. As it stands given that he has nuclear weapons, we stand at the door of a serious Nuclear escalation.
I am of the view that NATO is part of the problem, especially the ridiculous and sly attempt to draw in Ukraine. Against its own constitution, into a military alliance that should have been refigured after 'The Fall', in fact way before.
Indeed I accept that Putin's invasion of Ukraine is up there with historical crimes against International law. Nearly as bad as the Bush/Blair invasion of Iraq but not quite. Certainly on the lines of Afghanistan and causing nearly as much death and misery. In the case of Russia, over a million of its own troops including injured, so on that count it differs from Blair's war crimes which came cheap in terms of English lives.
Though a tranche of the British public did oppose it; most of the working class morons swallowed the 'defending Democracy' hogwash and PR spun by Campbell and other Labour slick willies.
Frankly I am not following up every single supposed statement by Corbyn, often taken out of context, or even careless on his behalf, what's new?
Opinions differ about Putin's motives, Boris Kagarlitsky, now in prison, feels Putin's actions were primarily and purely driven by 'distraction from a failing economy' motives. I don't. I admire and respect Boris and he might be right, either way he should not be in prison. Help us call for his release and a real solution to the Ukraine invasion. As it stands there will have to be some territorial exchange. Parts of the Donbas are, anyway, legitimately Russian and historically so.
Since I am not a Corbynista, whatever that is, I have no further reason to defend Corbyn's rather typical leftist vacillations regarding some amorphous and ill defined 'People' or what he thinks is their considered "will". Given that like 30% of Americans, most of them can be led by the nose wherever the propagandists want.
I agree that Brexit should have been called out for the stunt it was from the get go.
You are full of shit
Well thought out and coherent comment, thanks for making my point about the incoherence and badly thought out catastrophe that the British Left became. After the great days when the NUM, other workers and returning servicemen gave us the Welfare State and NHS.
Corbyn is no victim and should have been ousted long before that 2017 Election, you know, just as he demanded Gordon Brown step down after saving the World Economy because the 2010 election ended in a hung parliament.
Corbyn is the biggest betrayer of the working class and is no different to trump. A thrice married, putin-apologist child of wealth who failed upwards and was privately educated. Explain the 3 line whip he imposed on the party to trigger Article 50 in defiance of a Court Order. That referendum was Advisory. You didnt have a problem when kkkier helped him enforce said whip to betray the working class and allow the tories to strip away our rights and protection did you?
How about pointing to the damage Starmer is doing by blocking Andy Burnham from running for a seat local to him? Is it because that would result in st jezza's own hypocrisy being revealed?
You remember when he booted Alastair Campbell from the party for voting Lib Dem in the 2019 MEP Election when corbyn himself had defied his party whip over 600 times at that moment in time? Corbyn is, was and always will be about himself. How about joining the fight against Starmer to allow us a prosperous future in the EU rather than suffering outside because youre more loyal to your dear leader than you are to the principles you claim to represent?
"putin-apologist child of wealth", though I answered your basic points in a longer reply to another comment by you, is the kind of thing Grace means I suppose? Or, in my terms, just an example of Labour left infighting and purity testing.
As for 'wealth', as we used to say in the Coalfields. "What do Neil Kinnock and Tony Benn have in common?" Answer, they are both class traitors. American won't get the reference I know.
By 'putin apologist' you mean, Corbyn was rightly opposed to NATO's continuance and over reach into Ukraine.
Im not American and NATO didnt overreach, putin did. I assume you think that Hamas overreached into Israel on October 7, 2023?
You're literally parroting the Kremlin line. Nobody recruits for NATO more than your beloved putin. Why dont you and your lexit leeches piss off?
Oligarch Bezos Acting Invincible: WE the People Need To Boycott
LeeAnn Hall at the nonprofit National Campaign for Justice(https://bit.ly/4qtWBsB) reports that Bezos is collaborating with another oligarch Peter Theil’s software company Palantir to create an ICE surveillance data network through its AWS(Amazon Web Services) cloud server
This report comes on top of the recent layoff of 30% of WaPo(Washington Post) by Bezos as many view this as a neutering of the once prominent news organization and spending $75m on the flopped Melania documentary(Rotten Tomatoes rating 5% most recently) Bezos wants to automate Amazon to continue his layoffs going forward
So Bezos has become like Theil and Musk an oligarchic pawn for the Cheeto led Nazi Republican party The corporate greed fuels this whole Cheeto enterprise and rest assured these oligarchs will in some way try to subvert the 2026 midterms which is already underway with Musk pouring millions into Nazi Republican political campaigns thinking they will be able to buy the elections
Amazon as a company needs to feel economic pain as much as WE the People can muster WE use the service for convenience but WE need to find other ways to get products
It’s really irritating when journalists employ factually inaccurate. terms. I’m not a admirer of Starmer, but I am aware that he has repeatedly said that there is no such thing as Starmerism so I’m not quite sure why Ms Blakely refers to it repeatedly in this article. Giventhat she earns her living as a political journalist she must be even more aware of that fact than I am. Facts matter, whether you are writing on the right or the left.
I think she has rose colored glasses on frankly. I was a member of the Labour Left for a long time. The amount of faction fighting and in fighting was hard to believe: purity tests and so on. Corbyn's period was the same.
Thanks for this. I had no context in which to understand the reactions opposing Starmee.