Corbyn wins, Labour loses

 


It was with great reluctance that I tuned in to see the news of the Labour Party leadership election as the result has been clear for some time as the left rallied and organised to get their man in. Jeremy Corbyn won, quite overwhelmingly.

That's bad news for ordinary working people and any and all that are vulnerable in our society. The reason being that this man will not be (and should never be) Prime Minister, let alone the leader of the main opposition party which will now drag itself into an extended period of internecine warfare.

Regardless of what he says, Corbyn will not be able to control the monster he has unleashed. The left will now be organising to take over the constituency parties and begin the process of purging those MP's they consider either not socialist enough or as many of their opponents were labelled "Tory lit".

Labour will cease to be a broad church over the next years and the hard line left will implement their own Robespierre like terror on those that dare oppose them.

An exaggeration?

Whilst this will not happen straight away and there are many who would resist, I have seen this process in action before, albeit on a different scale inside the PCS union following the election of Mark Serwotka as General Secretary.

Those that opposed the far-left were sidelined, bullied, censored and pushed out of posts. The structures of the union became geared to the priorities of the activists regardless of members real interests.

PCS is now itself a pale reflection of what it was and what it could have been under the reckless stewardship of the anti-austerity activists, who almost laughably had to both make and justify sweeping cuts including to Pensions and benefits of their own employees.

In addition the union geared it's activities towards the anti-imperialist agenda, particularly the Palestinians which under the influence of Hugh Lanning, PCS Deputy General Sercretary (now retired) and Chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign this issue became "central to PCS's international work", a phrase now removed from their website.

The SWP pushed the union into the Stop the War Campaign and the Socialist Party (the major force in PCS) slowly took control with bureaucratic manoeuvring that has left countless numbers of it's members in highly paid positions on the union.

Some did try to fight back, myself included but following the breakaway of a whole department from PCS to form a new union the possibility of reclaiming the organisation was no longer achievable. Too many were leaving and dropping out.

Changing unions was the option I went for as did many of my colleagues. Others simply allowed their membership to lapse after the end of check-off in major departments such as the DWP & HMRC, hence the huge drop in PCS's membership to under 210,000 with more to go as the Tories end similar arrangements in other areas of the civil service.

The parallels with the rise of the Corbinistas is clear.

Serwotka is already on record as saying he would affiliate "his" union to Labour of Corbyn won. Of course he'd have to put that to the membership, but given the low turnouts that may be a forgone conclusion.

The old Militant Tendency will have a "back door" to return to Labour. One of their leaders Dave Nellist has openly called for co-operation with Corbyn. Their TUSC electoral project has been an abject failure so a change of line is probably due from their Central Committee some time soon.

Of course there plenty inside Labour who will try to organise a fightback. Labour List has already issued an appeal this afternoon..

I am not a member of the Labour Party but this blog has always called for a Labour vote since it's inception.

No more.

I was luke warm to selection of Sadiq Khan as the London Mayoral candidate yesterday, but Corbyn's election has made my support for Labour to evaporate. Whilst there may remain good people in Labour like Liz Kendall and Caroline Flint, I cannot bring myself to call for a vote for a man with so many unsavoury friends.

There is a difference between being in government and having to deal with some unsavoury regimes as part of real politics, but to voluntarily share platforms with Hate Preachers, Homophobes, anti-Semites and refer to genocidal maniacs in Hamas & Hezbollah as "friends" is totally unacceptable.

To call for peace but only by the West and ignore Russian aggression in the Ukraine and support for the brutal Assad regime as Stop the War does, and then to question "what was the point" of taking out two British terrorists who were part of the criminal ISIS gang makes Corbyn a dangerous appeaser.

Unless Labour comes to it's senses before the next election I and many, many others will not vote for or support a party led by such a man.