Corbyn’s Labour September 19, 2016
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
“The PLP don’t want him to succeed,” says Anne Pissaridou, a Labour member all her life and until recently a local councillor in Brighton; she lost her seat to the Tories by a couple of hundred votes last year. “I stuck it out through Brown and Blair, and was loyal. I don’t know why they can’t be loyal through this.”
And:
The rallies may be big, but ideologically they are tame. When Bernie Sanders was running for the Democratic nomination in the US, he railed against billionaires, bankers and corporations. Corbyn talks about renationalising the railways, building more houses and reaching out to people with mental health problems. There is no talk of neoliberal globalisation, quoting of Gramsci, or appeals for intersectional thinking. In Dundee, a band sang the Internationale and There Is Power In A Union, and socialism was mentioned several times. That was as radical as it got. In Chelmsford, Anna Wallbank, a primary school teacher, told me: “If someone better came along, I’d vote for them.”
And:
But the anticipated debacle prompted by Corbyn’s leadership has yet to materialise. Labour has won all four of the byelections held since he was elected, upping its share of the vote in three and dipping by just 0.3% in the other. In mayoral elections, Labour has won Bristol and London, key cities it had previously lost; in local elections, it has outpolled the Tories and retained control of key bellwether towns such as Nuneaton and Stevenage. In a poll taken shortly before the EU referendum, Labour was even with the Tories.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Time is running out for the Blairites. They’ll likely have to wait for the next crisis to take advantage of, and have another go!
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The sustained attacks by the war mongering neo-liberal Blairite Labourites on Corbyn and their supporters in the warmongering neo-liberal British corporate media (Younge is an exception) will not end even if he does win.
Corbyn has a long history of sustained opposition to the imperial culture that still dominates GB & NI as witnessed by the massive majority of the Tory/New Labour members of parliament to vote in favour of spending £billions to renew the UK & NI’s Trident nuclear weapons. The strong Irish/UK links by the FF/FG/Labour alliance in Ireland is because the fact that imperialism has been restored as the dominate ideology in all of Ireland as witnessed by their support for use of Shannon Airport by US troops (over 2.5 million & climbing) and Irish Army participation in the EU Nordic, Germany and British led EU Battle Groups.
Therefore if Corbyn wins and retains his position as British Labour Leader it will will also be a defeat for the FF/FG/Labour imperialist alliance in Ireland, but the struggle against the political forces that support imperialism will not be over.
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I think it will take at least a decade of slow patient work to win back Labour. Two generations From Kinnock to Miliband. Slow work. The hard slog of winning elections. Making Labour relevant to all struggles from antiwar to Trade Union disputes. The Left outside Labour could help by realising TUSC has not traction and dissolving it as a distraction.
The last poll I saw put Tories and UKIP together miles ahead of Labour. UKIP voters vote for the best candidate to keep Labour out. Note UKIP plays a very nasty role in diverting the justifiable anger of many against migrants t#rather than the boss class. We have a few of that ilk here. All elections are important in to show that a Corbyn Labour is a feasible possibility.
Calls for cooperation between Labour, Plaid Cymru and the Greens are needed.
Personally I think the dynamics in Scotland are different.
Roger is, of course, right on militarism. This side of getting out of NATO, ending the useless expenditure on Trident (which many conservatives regard as quite needless) is central. This money would go a long way to provide schools, hospitals, roads, rail etc.
I would add that for many, Corbyn’s style is very attractive. Patiently explaining what he stands for. No ranting.
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why did she stick through Blair and Brown? why was she loyal to them.
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The option of leaving the British Labour Party doesn’t carry with it any of the opportunities it does in Ireland. There’s nowhere to go to the left that has any traction at all, whereas there are -what? – five or six other left groupings in the Dail?
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