A radical, ecosocialist take on the climate change crisis and the challenges confronting humanity in the face of global warming, resource depletion, religious intolerance, media manipulation and social injustice.
FORMER NU-LABOUR PRIME MINISTER TONY BLAIR ON THE JEREMY CORBYN CAMPAIGN FOR LEADER OF THE LABOUR PARTY: “I wouldn’t want to win on an old fashioned leftist platform, even if I
thought it was the route to victory, I wouldn’t take it.”
Mr Blair ridiculed those who said their “heart” wanted to back the leftwinger, declaring: “Get a transplant”. (HUFFINGTON POST, 22/7/15)
“If Jeremy Corbyn becomes leader it won’t be a defeat like 1983 or 2015
at the next election. It will mean rout, possibly annihilation." (THE GUARDIAN ONLINE, 12/8/15)
TONY BLAIR ON FORMER TORY PRIME MINISTER MARGARET THATCHER: "I always thought my job was to build on some of the things she had done rather than reverse them."
"Many of the things she said, even though they pained people like me on the left... had a certain creditability." (BBC ONLINE, 8/4/13) "As a person she was kind and generous spirited and always very supportive of me as Prime Minister... (although they came from different parties)." London24, 8/4/13
A world where we care for each other.
A passionate speech on why socialism works from Labour leadership contender Jeremy Corbyn at the Oxford Union from 2013. Interestingly, from a Green perspective, a good chunk of it is on ecology and saving the environment, and humanity, from the ravages of the free market. Well worth watching him facing down Tory extremist John Redwood and by the end you can only concur with the statement on the YouTube blurb accidentally made about Jeremy Corbyn by the Oxford Union:
The Labour MPs who have nominated left winger Jeremy Corbyn to stand for leader are morons. So says John McTernan.
Who he? He is former special adviser to Tony Blair when he was Prime Minister and he popped up on Newsnight to slag off the apparent front-runner in the Labour leadership contest in the same week his former boss came out of hiding to claim that anyone whose heart was with Corbyn "needs a heart transplant".
Democracy it seems isn't keeping to the script. As people listen to the patently sincere Islington North MP talking about ending austerity, taxing the rich and scrapping nuclear weapons and then compare him to the muddled middle of Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper alongside the sub-Tory clown that is Liz Kendall, his popularity and chances have surged. As well as drawing hundreds to his meetings, he has prompted a wave of voters, especially younger people, to join the Labour Party to support him.
Faced with this revolt, Labour MPs are in meltdown. To stand, candidates needed the nominations of 35 Labour MPs, a high number in their depleted ranks, and Corbyn just made it with two minutes to the deadline when some non-supporters agreed to sign for him. Some apparently nominated him simply to "widen the debate", assuming he would be content to turn up at hustings, be patronised a bit as an unrealistic idealist and then come last in the vote, finally putting a nail in the coffin of the Labour Left. Then the neoliberals who have been in charge since Blair could get on with tactics like not opposing the Tory Welfare Bill and a strategy of seeking to match the Tories on their own far right ground.
And so we have the spectacle of the media, from the Torigraph through the BBC and Sky News to the New Statesman trying to portray the Corbyn surge as some sort of summer silly season story. Just as they have rubbished every other popular revolt, from the Scottish referendum to Syriza and Podemos, they repeatedly seek to decry any demand for genuine change: the public must be misled/having a laugh to not keep the Establishment in place.
One piece suggested Labour members aren't taking the future of their party seriously, otherwise they would know that the last thing they would want would be some crazy old guy calling for wild-eyed schemes such as, er, renationalising the rail companies or energy firms, or investing in public services. The Telegraph today suggested that as a handful of his nominators had said they won't vote for Corbyn because he might win, he no longer has a mandate to stand - which must be the first time someone's burgeoning popularity has been viewed as losing a mandate!
Even more darkly, an item in this week's New Statesman quoted a Labour MP as saying if Corbyn wins, the MPs will remove him "by Christmas." This has to be about as shocking and blatantly undemocratic a threat as could be expected, and proof positive of the ill intent and innate hostility of the elite to any true assertion of democracy.
Labour MPs, cravenly sucking up to the right wing media, have bought the narrative that the only voters that matter, the only people whose views should be taken into account in framing future political debate, are the 3 or 4% of the electorate among the 24% that voted Tory who might one day be persuaded to vote Labour. As these people are by default pretty right of centre, that means Labour must spend their time timidly trying to simply sound like slightly nicer Tories. The 76% who did not vote Tory and who, according to the polls, are generally well disposed to left wing policies on tax, equality, nationalisation and public services (even among UKIP voters) are discounted.
But it is among the 76% that Corbyn is drawing his support. One note showed how his key nine campaign promises are supported by the majority of the electorate and just as the turnouts at his rallies and the polls show, when people hear him, they warm to him. An LBC debate on Wednesday evening was followed by a phone-in where over 90% of callers, many of them people who had not previously voted Labour, said they supported Corbyn.
It will be some weeks before we know the outcome. A not unlikely scenario is that Jeremy Corbyn will poll first place but, because of the transfers of second and third preference votes from Kendall and Cooper, Burnham will probably scrape in on the second or even third count. If his response or, possibly more likely, the response of those around him in Labour's High Command is to patronise or diminish acknowledgement of the strength of feeling behind Corbyn's campaign for genuine socialist values, the continuing unity of Labour must be seriously in doubt. Yet while this may spark considerable turmoil on the Left, it may also kindle many positive new possibilities of a major and lasting realignment of political forces.
As blogged previously, British politics are in generational transition. The rise of UKIP, the Scottish referendum, the Green surge, and the SNP triumph in May are each way markers on the journey. The Corbyn campaign shifts the gear up substantially in that process. But progressives need to keep guard, and keep calm. Each step forward, each small victory will be derided, scorned and downplayed by the agents of status quo, many of whom simply can't understand what is happening as they are not programmed to. For in a political class whose motto is about near complete personal pragmatism, any candidate or movement gathered under anything remotely resembling an ideological banner will be viewed as an aberration, and a dangerous one at that.
So #GoJezzer. He carries the hopes of millions with him and strikes fear deep into the heart of the heartless Establishment. Blair's Friends and Sponsors won't go quietly or cleanly, but as the Eye of Tony falls disapprovingly on the horde of tiny morons who should know better than to challenge his dark legacy, it is quite clear whose hearts are full of hope as the march on Mordor quickens its pace.
People across the left join to oppose austerity in London in June
The Labour leadership election contest is well underway with four MPs competing for what might be increasingly seen to be a post that comes complete with its own poisoned chalice. With the collapse of the party in its old Scottish heartlands, its vote in northern England eaten into by UKIP and with many leftwing young voters switching to the Greens, the rushed vote to replace Ed Miliband is rapidly revealing a party that is bereft of both unity and a soul.
In the media at least, the frontrunners are seen as Yvette Cooper and Andy Burnham, both very much graduates of New Labour, while the odious Liz Kendall seems to be positioning herself day by day more and more to the right. These three represent all that has gone wrong since Blair's ditching of Clause 4 and the subsequently quick march to the right. Committed to market economics, privatisation, austerity and spending cuts, the party has abandoned all the things that it once stood for - in place of equality comes choice (determined by access to cash); in place of public services comes "partnership" with the profiteers; and in place of fairness is at best an emphasis on "opportunity" rather than outcomes. You can't help but wonder why they don't just join the Tories and get on with it; except of course that would vacate the Labour Party to those on the left who still have some desire to stand for something, to work for something better, more egalitarian. People who even now sometimes dare to whisper the word "socialism".
Labours Choice: Cooper, Corbyn, Kendall and Burnham
People like Jeremy Corbyn. This left wing Labour MP may yet be the surprise in an election which, to be fair, embraces a very broad constituency - members all now get one vote as the electoral college and union block votes have been abolished. Anyone can register as a supporter for £3 and vote. Many on the non-Labour Left have done just this to have the chance to vote for Corbyn, whose unalloyed commitment to end austerity and return to socialist values have put the only sparks into an otherwise tedious contest between would-be meritocrats. With his meetings drawing vast audiences and key unions backing him over the pseudo-left Burnham, there is every chance that Corbyn will poll very strongly indeed. If he wins, which is not impossible, he will be at odds with the hierarchy of his party, but he will have a powerful mandate to change the party and begin to shape a genuine choice in 2020.
On the other hand, the smart money remains on Cooper or Burnham and herein lies the seeds of yet more problems for Labour. For if either of them scrape through in a second or third round over Corbyn after he polls the largest minority vote in the first round, Labour's splits will come ever more into the open. This may finally lead to a fracturing and realignment of progressive politics in England, perhaps on a par with the huge shift in Scotland. If other parties on the left, and especially the Greens, stand open to co-operate and welcome new allies, it may finally be possible to build a genuine alternative to the politics of austerity, fear and profiteering. Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, has already talked about cross-party co-operation and plenty was evident across the Left in the recent People's Assembly March Against Austerity. With the budget this week showing a Tory Government warring on the poorest yet again, the appeal of a genuinely socialist left alternative is growing.
Corbyn campaigning with Greens Romayne Phoenix & Caroline Lucas MP
It will be no fast task. But it is feasible and even essential. A good showing for Corbyn may ironically hasten the process of party disintegration and realignment, but it won't be before time. If Labour is no longer a political home for someone such as Tommy Shepherd, formerly a senior Labour member but now an SNP MP (see the video below), then it is little wonder if, faced with Tory versus Pseudo-Tory, voters abandon Labour. What real purpose does it now play apart from validating the deeply illusory nature of our supposedly democratic system?
It is unlikely to be a pretty or comforting process. It may take many years to complete the change fully, but voters are less and less impressed by the major parties and, just as Corbyn is wowing crowds for the leadership election, who knows what unexpected train of events might kick in very rapidly indeed if there was a substantial and real leftwing choice on offer? Syriza and Podemos may yet reach our shores.
