Normally when it comes to Labour Party Conference I do not normally comment on the main event though there have been exceptions but look at what happens around the fringes as the event is covered in detail across other media with which I cannot even begin to contemplate competing with but this year is different and it's not just down to the pandemic.
Like many activists I tend to dip in and out of conference proceedings as broadcast on the BBC's Parliamentary channel. Not so this year, there are only on-line events and no real interaction not that conference is an exiting event. Like the trade union ones I used to attend these are mostly discussion of issues around which there is general agreement with only certain issues like the expulsion of Militant or foreign affairs to pique interest.
The only real highlight to this weeks under-reported affair will be Sir Keir Starmer's leadership speech which I hope does get broadcast on the telly as for one will be watching. He has done much to restore the party's credibility after the disastrous Corbyn era but it will not an easy ride as The Times (no link £) reports today:
"....in a shot across Sir Keir's bows, Len McCluskey, general secretary of the Unite union, told the Labour leader that if he did not listen to the left he might "steer the party on the rocks".
A veiled threat by any standards.
Matt wrack of the FBU also warned Starmer off "watering down" the radical policies still in place after the party's darkest hour.
I'm sure hard pressed subscription paying union members will be impressed by the antics of their leaders when the need to build a Labour Party that can actually deliver rather than shout ideologically correct platitudes from the sidelines needs electing more than ever.
Despite his campaign pledges which frankly are not exactly the ten commandments which can and should be as the situation demands it Starmer has made it quite clear that what will count is the Manifesto that the party goes into during the 2024 election.
The fight to reform Labour has only just begun Keir Starmer has made the right moves so far and is tackling the antisemitism problem that his predecessor allowed to fester inside the. party. Even as I type these words despite the departure of many of the "three-pounders" and the return of so many driven away under the previous regime the recidivist left is preparing to ensure that it's delusions are retained.
The old broad church model of the Labour Party has broken since the Corbyn era. There are now two Labour Parties. One hard left and the other moderate to centre. There remain many in between who need to be won over from the old ways, but change the party must.
What once worked is no longer fit for purpose. The deliberate attempts by the far left to simply take over Labour and turn it into a hard left organisation demonising others left a a bitter taste to many long term supporters and activists.
These were people who had spent years condemning Labour as the enemy standing against the Party in strange little groupings such as Respect or the (now revived) Trade Union ans Socialist Coalition brought alien and intolerant practises and ways of conducting debate, if you can call it that as with them it was simply this is it if you oppose it you are just Red Tories or in the pay of Zionists.
No longer can the party allow these types to hold CLP's and members to ransom. Politics is not and never has been monochrome. Yet for those that came it was just the one way or nothing. Co-existence cannot continue.
Starmer should begin by firing a warning shot across the bows of the left by simply implementing the rules to expel and exclude members of the entryist organisations all hidden in plain sight. No longer should groups like Labour Party Marxists or the AWL be allowed to stir trouble through the front organisations they create such as Labour Against the Witch Hunt or even the supposedly independent Momentum itself riddled with entryists.
Many of these political popinjays have left and many others are considering doing so. Showing the parasitical groups the door may encourage the less serious to depart and others to reconsider their ways. There will be protests mostly vexatious but the message to the electorate would show that Labour has kicked the cuckoos out of the nest and has begun to change into the modern social democratic party it needs to be to actually deliver what working people actually need.
No comments:
Post a Comment