I have never had an online rant before but I need to do this. I am sick to death of the way Jeremy Corbyn has been depicted as a disastrous leader, a loser, and worse, an anti-semite. Because it’s a travesty. Corbyn was elected as Labour leader twice by a massive majority of members. He fought an amazing general election campaign in 2017 and nearly won. People were hanging off lampposts trying to see him at his huge rallies.
The Ford Report shows how the Labour hierarchy deliberately sabotaged his chances of winning that election by channeling funds to seats where there was no hope of winning rather than to marginals where the difference would be made. In the end, it was a difference of 2,500 votes which would have led to a Labour victory. Imagine that. A politician who actually believes in what he says he does. So following this election, the backlash really started. Corbyn had to be stopped. The disastrous campaign for a second referendum was stoked up by Starmer and co and trashed Corbyn’s pledge to honour the results of the referendum. And then a combination of the Board of Deputies, pro-Israel media, Labour right-wingers and the entirety of the media decided to paint Corbyn, a lifelong anti-racist campaigner, as an anti-semite.
How did this happen? Corbyn “liked” or reposted a cartoon which showed a representation of the world’s financial power brokers feasting on the backs of the world’s poor. Unfortunately, this cartoon included ugly stereotypes of Jewish bankers and Arab oil magnates. Not OK. He apologised for this as I imagine he was endorsing the message in this cartoon and not the images as such. Corbyn supported Jewish constituents in Islington when they were fighting against the relocation of a sacred cemetery – a move proposed by the leader of the Council, Margaret Hodge. Hodge became one of the leading accusers of Corbyn hypocritically slating him as anti-semitic in a most vicious way. Jewish Voice for Labour have consistently defended Corbyn but were never called on for comment whereas the Jewish Labour Movement, pro-Israel to the core, were always trotted out to slate him. The disastrous decision to adopt the IHRA definition of anti-semitism AND all its examples, became a stick to beat him with even harder. So it became common currency in the whole of the media, Corbyn is an anti-semite. An Orwellian travesty.
Yes the 2019 election was a disaster because Corbyn had become a toxic name. Thanks BBC, Guardian and all the rest. Yes he should have sent all his shadow cabinet critics to the back benches and fought harder for his position. Yes, he should have refused to have the confusing mess of a second referendum removed from the manifesto but he was too nice. He is a decent human being so obviously shouldn’t be in the nihilistic bullying politics we all know and most of us hate but we could have had a transformative government who would defend our NHS, build our schools, give us free broadband, treat refugees with dignity, allow us to protest and vote and express our views without risk of imprisonment and protect all those people who died in care homes during the pandemic.
Instead we got this:
Yes I am bitter. We now have Starmer a leader who lied to get elected by pretending he would unite the party and instead has persecuted the left and lost thousands of members through expulsion and resignations and who now sees as vital to party membership a pledge of allegiance to Israel and NATO. Since when were they Labour Party principles?
Don’t allow the rewriting of history. 2017 was almost the miracle we prayed for and the only thing that stopped this was the Party itself. 2018 saw the best local election results in over a decade but Corbyn was unelectable?
Enough of this!
Jane Ann Carter
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