As Novara media wryly, and accurately, pointed out, Labour, this week, has spent thousands to put its own problems front and centre. Spectacularly eclipsing the more vital scandal of the Russia report. The latest in the dismal and long line of Tory...bullshit. I spent minutes trying to think of a more eloquent term, but fuck it. Bullshit will do.
This is in response to the latest episode of the never ending saga of antisemitism which has gripped the party because of the establishment's unwillingness to accept Corbyn. Now, for the record, there are cranks out there. Some of them are on the left, espousing an underdog victim mentality that fails to separate Israel from Jewish experience. There are also some people that are just racists.
You can find them on the left and the right because you can find them, unfortunately, throughout society. But there is nothing within left wing poltiics, even politics less radical than my own (which the Labour party certainly represents as it hurtles back toward the centre), that is intrinsically anti semitic. All of this is bound up in the position of Israel in world politics: who runs it and who it aligns with.
Furthermore, while such people do exist within the party's membership, it does not come close to the anti semitism rife among the far right. That is the sort of anti semitism (there is no good sort) that kills people. That sees them marginalised and subject to genocide. There is a fundamental difference.
So the Labour party has given in to establishment bullying, whether through ignorance or design I do not know. If it thinks this will resolve the matter, it is mistaken. The goal here is simple; to drum Corbyn out of the party. Labour paid off BBC journalists following what appears to be a hatchet job that it could well have defended in court. It has settled and so ther is a possibility, though I think it unlikely, Corbyn will defend the position, or perhaps himself, in court. He's far too mild mannered for that.
However people have decided to offer him support should that happen. I think that's a positive thing. Some mistakenly believe that, because he has money himself, he shouldn't. This is nonsense. Another smear. He didn't create the project, someone else did, while others have freely chosen to give. THat is a positive gesture.
The bottom line is this: the establishment seeks to destroy a fundamentally good man. He's clearly not the messiah, he never intended to be. I don't even think he's a very good leader. Especially given he doesn't fit the requirements for leading today's vicious hypocritical political institutions. In many ways he's better off out of it, but he's there, as an MP now, because he was democratically returned, over decades. That has to count for something, even if the system is a joke. He is being bullied and it must be resisted. This isn't even about him, it's about the system crushing opposition. They want to send a message: get back to business as usual, Labour, or be smashed.
I don't think that should be allowed to stand.
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