I see you on your staircase, all smiles and new beginnings, blinking in the new dawn of flash photography washing over you. You’re here to piss vinegar into the milk of modern politics and shake it up until everything curdles. The centre ground has been crying out for your stagnant lumps, hasn’t it? It’s time to give the plebs what they’ve always wanted – a fresh start, a new beginning, a shiny and invigorating 180-degree turn straight back to spoon-feeding them the gruel of neoliberalism until they choke on it. There’s a huge swathe of the electorate gasping in the desert of no man’s land and you’re offering them a stick of chalk as refreshment. You’re an oasis between two extremes, promising the cool waters of change and delivering a mirage.
What a week to take off. I turn my back for five minutes and boom, there’s a new political farce in town. Then, mere seconds later, Angela Smith opens her mouth and kills your momentum faster than that lamp post stopped Paul Walker. Her ‘funny tinge’ clanger was an absolute gift, seized upon immediately as an example of hypocrisy by those seeking to trivialise and minimise any claim of antisemitism within the Labour movement. A moment of panicked absent-mindedness it may have been but it quickly highlighted just how fundamentally ill-prepared she was for the sudden glare of the media spotlight. Sigmund Freud, eat your mum out.
It’s been a little while since Jeremy Corbyn last threatened to annihilate Israel or threw a bacon-wrapped Stielhandgranate through the window of a synagogue, but here we are again. It’s perpetually the scandal that threatens his Momentum and it is without exception or excuse utterly shameful that anyone in Labour, regardless of how right of the leadership they sit, should ever find themselves subjected to racist abuse.
The line between criticism of Israel and genuine hate speech sits beneath waters that are constantly muddied by disproportionate lobbying and political interference, including the deliberate weaponising of identity politics. However there are times when it’s clear as day, and Luciana Berger has been subjected to the sort of outright racist bile that has no place in modern politics. That shouldn’t be minimised and she hasn’t been listened to by the party that should have supported her. There’s a lot about the Independent Group that smacks of opportunism, but to hand-wave all accusations of bigotry away in Corbyn’s name hands a victory to the critics exploiting those genuine racists the left need to call out. The line may be blurry but it’s also not unreasonable to say that those who believe any and every claim of antisemitism is a fabrication on the part of a shadowy Israeli political elite might just be unable to see the wood for the bigotries.
Is Twitter the same as Labour as a whole, and is Corbyn himself one of those genuine racists? Of course not. Social media is the sort of cesspit that belches all kinds of horrors to the surface every now and then and no politician is directly responsible for every shitty tweet sent in his name. Every move the party has taken to address the crisis is a positive one on paper but at no point have they gone far enough, or moved quickly enough, to reassure or win back those members of the Jewish community Labour have alienated. That Derek Hatton’s name would even find itself mentioned in the news alongside Labour’s on such a controversial news week is proof enough that the party leadership are still utterly fucking disastrous at managing the optics of the situation.
So we end up with a splinter group, helmed by Chukka “leader under the bus” Umunna, breaking away in a series of carefully staggered walkouts aimed at damaging Corbyn as much as possible. There’s every chance they haven’t ended yet, and more from both sides could still yet join them. Thankfully Theresa May didn’t escape unharmed – just how much of a vicious, reactionary authoritarian do you have to be for Anna Soubry to consider you to be pandering to extremists? – but the biggest dent so far has certainly been to Labour. The loyalists can crow all they like about by-elections that won’t happen and supporting the leader, but that’s just the sort of reaction The Independent Group wanted. The Wild Emily Thornberrys are out for blood, labelling them traitors and cowards. An angry and vocal crystallisation of support around Corbyn further paints him as a far-left lunatic and brittle ideologue, rather than a democratic socialist that could quite easily appeal to the centre ground if they only trusted him enough to listen to him.
It’s a difficult pill to swallow, particularly when those jumping ship are the centrists who have vocally opposed Corbyn since day one, but if Labour have any hope of regaining lost ground and trust it’s time for cooler heads to prevail. As it stands, the die-hard Corbynites can’t by themselves command an electoral majority, and this split damages those chances even further. There has to be an earnest attempt to heal and repair, and that includes some pretty introspective reflection on just how toxic some of Labour’s internal politics have become.
And as for The Independent Group?
I see all eleven of you, shivering and shuffling along the path to nowhere in particular. I see your dirt-streaked faces, your moth-eaten clothes, the soles of your well-trodden shoes separating away and and flapping back with each tired step. I feel the rain beating against your bodies, a funeral march of self-imposed exiles out in the cold, without the warmth of a single original idea to keep it out of your bones. You’ve wandered for days, your initial exuberance dampened by the chill.
I see Chukka Umunna leading the pack, rubbing his hands together to try and get some warmth back into his fingers. I see the sad little group turn a corner and reach the bottom of a hill, their heads craned to its summit. I see the house, lights blazing in its windows, the promise of warmth and welcome carried by the scent of roasting meats on the air.
I see you all begin to climb as if pulled along by some invisible force. There’s something hidden here, something dark and malignant behind the scenes. I see Anna Soubry pause, listening hard, before shaking her head and shuffling onwards. For a split second she thought she heard a jangling, clinking noise, like coins bouncing off each other somewhere in the distance.
I see Chukka’s hand raise and knock feebly on the door. I hear the creak as it swings open.
I see you, The Independent Group. I see you raise your begging bowls, hope beginning to twinkle once again in your lost and forlorn eyes. There always was a shadowy figure pulling the strings. A puppeteer in the background, interfering in British politics and lobbying to funnel cash and support to you. They’re bloodthirsty, convinced of their own moral superiority, and they work through nefarious means in order to advance their own agenda and profit out of the turmoil in the Middle East.
I see Tony Blair smile, the wide slash of his awful mouth a dark shadow filled with brilliant white teeth. He doesn’t mind that he has eleven more mouths to feed. Cherie’s is already fucking massive and there’s more than enough blood blood pouring from his hands for all of you. As one, I hear you crow in your choir of orphan’s voices.
“Please sir, can we have some war?”
I see you, The Independent Group. I fucking see you.
