Labour ‘more divided than ever,’ socialists warn after party’s ‘anti-democratic’ suspension of Corbyn
by Bethany Rielly
ANGER grew today over the “anti-democratic” suspension of Jeremy Corbyn, as socialists warned that the Labour Party is now “more divided than ever.”
Momentum said the “unjust” suspension of Mr Corbyn from the Labour Party “makes a mockery” of Labour leader Sir Kier Starmer’s pledge to be a uniting force.
The left-wing pressure group held an online rally last night to demand the former party leader’s reinstatement.
Mr Corbyn was suspended on Thursday over his response to the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) report into allegations of anti-semitism within the party.
Momentum co-chairs Andrew Scattergood and Gaya Sriskanthan described the suspension as a “factional attack on the left.”
Read more at morningstaronline.co.uk
The killing of Jeremy Corbyn
By Peter Oborne and David Hearst
5 June 2020
Throughout his parliamentary career, the mild mannered, infuriatingly calm Jeremy Corbyn has never failed to excite strong emotions.
For his enemies, he will go down as one of Labour’s worst leaders. He failed to unite his party. He sent too many contradictory messages on Brexit, which was the greatest issue of his time. He never dealt with Labour’s antisemitism problem. And he ultimately went down to a catastrophic defeat in the 2019 general election.
For an equally vociferous and ardent army of his supporters, Corbyn tripled party membership, banished austerity, shifted the mainstream political discourse leftwards, and presented a genuinely radical alternative to the quagmire of post-industrial capitalism.
Read more at www.middleeasteye.net
Antisemitism report: By suspending Corbyn, Starmer is tearing Labour apart
By Richard Sanders, Peter Oborne
30 October 2020
It’s 35 years since Neil Kinnock established his reputation as Labour opposition leader with his blistering attack on Derek Hatton and the Militant Tendency.
t’s approaching a quarter of a century since Tony Blair established himself as Britain’s next prime minister by taking on the Labour left with his sensational removal of Clause 4 from the party’s constitution. Both Kinnock’s evisceration of Militant and Blair’s abolition of Clause 4 were massive moments in political history.
Yesterday, another Labour leader, Keir Starmer, tried to copy the Kinnock and Blair masterstrokes.
And tried too hard.
He suspended former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, alongside whom he served as a senior member of his front bench team for several years, and in an especially sensitive post.
And for what?
Read more at www.middleeasteye.net
Pro-Israel lobby attacks Corbyn
The row over anti-semitism in the Labour Party has deep implications. It represents the latest in a series of attacks designed to unseat Jeremy Corbyn from the leadership of the Labour Party and a determined counter-attack by the pro-Israel lobby to thwart the growing popularity and success of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
The anti-Semitism charge against the Labour Party reached a peak on the eve of the recent elections in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The timing was immaculate.
Well-orchestrated, the campaign was designed to do the maximum damage to Labour in the elections to provide a new and better platform for a coup against Corbyn. However, much as the pro-Israeli lobby and right-wing Labourites with their strong mainstream media connections dominated the air waves and the print media, the virulent campaign did not have as much impact on the elections as was hoped.
The campaign had been some months in the making. Arguably it broke surface publicly in February with the resignation of one of the co-chairs of the Oxford University Labour Club, making the charge that many members of the club were anti-Semitic. Citing as part of his evidence of anti-Semitism the club’s decision to support the ‘Israeli Apartheid Week of Action’ in support of Palestinian rights, Alex Chalmers resigned from his post as co-chair.
Read more at www.thesocialistcorrespondent.org.uk
