Reds under the bed (pt.2)

+Keir Starmer’s promise to ‘unite the Labour Party’ seems to be based on the premise that this can be achieved by completely eviscerating the left. Anyone who has shown any leftist inclination now appears to stand little chance of being selected as a Labour parliamentary candidate, and many members have been suspended for trumped up crimes, such as having once or twice shown sympathy with organisations now proscribed (n.b. not crimes that were ‘crimes’ at the time—before such organisations were deemed unacceptable. I thought this kind of retrospective ‘justice’ was outwith the bounds of the great British sense of fair play). The mass scale of this purge would make somebody with Stalinist inclinations proud. It is pretty unprecedented. There have always been efforts to keep certain individuals off Labour’s promotion ladder (I should know) but what is happening now is taking place on an industrial scale. It suggests that Starmer is a vulnerable kind of leader, the sort of person who can only lead if his troops are all entirely in his mould and demonstrate blind loyalty.

Despite views to the contrary this was never true of the New Labour years. Members of the Socialist Campaign Group were tolerated (if being entirely ignored amounts to toleration). That egregious example of rebellion (and future leader), Jeremy Corbyn was never taken as a threat by Tony Blair or Gordon Brown. Many MPs who weren’t vetted prior to the 1997 landslide (because nobody thought they would win) weren’t subsequently deselected. Another word for leader is ‘dictator’ and that is the road Starmer has chosen. He feels this way not just about individuals on the left, but also anything the Party’s conference may decide which he doesn't agree with, for example showing solidarity with the Palestinians’ subjugation under the Israeli government’s apartheid occupation (and where is Starmer’s condemnation of the recent Israeli election result, with its inevitable dire consequences for Palestinians?) The internal democracy of the Labour Party is falsely touted as one of its strengths especially compared to the Tories, but this comparison has less and less substance as this current leadership exercises its priorities.

​What are those priorities? Yes, obviously priority number one is to get the Tories out. That’s the priority that binds a lot of members to the party, that keeps them wedded to it. But beyond that, what? I don’t detect any great ambition to make the transformational change our society needs. There are some reasonable if timid policies slowly emerging, but Labour under Starmer doesn’t have the spine to take on ‘the establishment.’ Why would it take on itself, after all?

+My jovial suggestion yesterday that Elon Musk could replace Trump thankfully can’t become a reality: Musk was born in South Africa, so he is ineligible to become US president. And Musk’s future prospects can’t be rock solid. After predicting a red wave tsunami, his prescience must be questioned too. Perhaps in response to Musk’s pro-Republican stance, Biden has just announced that Musk’s businesses' deals with Saudi Arabia and China may have to be scrutinised on national security grounds. And then there’s his purchase of Twitter . . .