The Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer might not be not be everyone’s idea of a potential Prime Minister, but then neither was Neil Kinnock but they’ve both had to fight against the destructive far Left that has embedded itself in the Labour Party. With Kinnock it was the Militant Tendency group that needed to be sidelined and removed from the levers of power in order to make the party more electable and Starmer has had to deal with the far Left Momentum crowd of avowed Marxists and extremists who entered the party on Jeremy Corbyn’s coattails when he became party leader.
These far leftists are a turn off when it comes to general elections and their presence and influence helped greatly to keep Labour out of government both during the 1980’s and 90’s as well as at the 2019 general election. Starmer needs to deal with the Corbynite nutcases who up until just a few years ago basically controlled the party.
To a certain extent Starmer has succeeded. No more are the extremists centre stage at the main Labour conference but instead they are relegated to fringe meetings.
To get an idea of just how effectively the far left has been moved off stage then you could not do much better than to read a piece by Will Lloyd over at Unherd. He’s visited one of the Labour Left’s big shindigs, ‘The World Transformed’ festival and has found a veritable ocean of failure. He said the Corbyinites of the Labour Left are still here but only just and with very little power. Mr Lloyd said:
But they are still here, just. They incubate in a discoloured ex-church building that looks like an ossuary, 15 minutes’ walk from the official conference. This is the World Transformed, the hard Left’s political festival and refuge, taking place for the seventh time, wobbling on its last legs. “There was a real energy before,” says a man selling Stuart Hall essay collections, “and now…”
Now it seems that all that’s left of the Labour Party’s Corbynite Left is the usual plastic revolutionaries, members of parliament like Zarah Sultana who held their seats on ridiculously small majorities and those who are utterly and completely out of touch with the general public. People like this one described by Mr Lloyd:
On a panel to discuss abolishing the monarchy, Mish Rahman, a member of Momentum’s National Coordinating Group, says: “Five white people, wearing black, with a Union Jack behind them — it’s intimidating, like a far-Right rally.” This is the only room in the country where that is an applause line. We are in a parallel reality.
I’d go so far as to say that the Labour left is not even in a parallel reality, but instead live in complete fantasy land. People will not vote for this sort of nutbaggery and this was clearly proven in 2019.
The only thing I really disagree with is Mr Lloyd’s conflation of Corbyn with Michael Foot and George Lansbury. Whilst I agree that Lansbury was what we would today call a far left extremist and Foot leaned very much to the Left, Foot at least had a moral compass and stood out against those wanting appeasement of Nazi Germany. Neither Lansbury nor Corbyn had such a moral compass.
It’s good to see Sir Keir Starmer isolating the dangerous far Left from influence within the party but there are still a lot of people like me who are worried about whether Starmer is serious. There’s still the possibility that the far left who have been shunted to one side for electoral reasons might regain power and influence should Labour win the next election. That for me is a sufficient worry to make me not want to give Labour my vote.
As a lifelong supporter of right wing politics I confess I am reduced to total despair by today’s Tory government. I have honestly never seen such an inept mob in my life. When the next election comes I think the feeling will be anything apart from the sleazy, inept, greedy and self serving Tories. Oppositions don’t win elections governments lose them and I will be amazed if we see another Tory government in my lifetime.
At present the Conservatives are terrible but the alternatives are even worse. I refuse to vote for any of them.
Agree that the Tories are terrible but the alternative which is a Labour Party that contains a left wing that might defenestrate Starmer after a general election and replace him with another far left extremist. Maybe it’s time for Farage to put the willies up the Tories again?
With respects I don’t quite see what you have against ‘the left’? A lot of British voters for instance support the renationalisation of the railways so that we can in theory all travel around the UK affordably again. There was an idea that abandoning investment in public services and opening them up to private competition would make them better value for money. I fail to see evidence that has happened?
You are quite right there Marian, far from making things cheaper and better our public services have largely fallen into the hands of foreign companies who are now fleecing us. Not for nothing is UK revered to by foreigners as treasurer island. My daughter lives in Spain in a far better house then I have and has a swimming pool etc. She tells me her water charges are third of mine, her council tax is a quarter of mine and her weekly shop costs a third less than it did in UK. We are supposed to be too stupid to know these things I guess as the government feeds us bull while filling its own boots and those of its rich friends.
I used to be on the Left and the more I learned the more I understood that it is an ideology that not only doesn’t work but which has failed everywhere it has been tried and very rarely, if ever, directly benefits those at the bottom of the social pile. Nationalisaton doesn’t always mean cheaper prices. Monopolies charge what they can get away with rather than what the market will stand. I recall when British Rail was a nationalised industry and many journeys were cheaper by car or by coach.
Proper competition between providers whether that be for groceries, travel, healthcare, energy, unhindered by unnecessary interference delivers better results because if one provider is shit then someone else will take that customer and not the original provider. The problem is we don’t have proper competition, we have a series of monopolies often owned by foreign companies including companies from semi hostile nations.