Could Corbyn have become Prime Minister if he hadn’t appeased the Right? Open Letter to Jeremy Corbyn

Corbyn’s acceptance of the Zionists’ ‘anti-Semitism’ narrative coupled with his continual apologies made him look weak, leading to Labour’s defeat  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iruzIEQsL4

Bob Dylan’s I Threw It All Away sums up Corbyn’s Disastrous Political Strategy

When the history of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party comes to be written the judgement is not going to be a kind one. It will show that Corbyn, in his attempt to become Prime Minister , tried to explain away his own history by attributing it to a series of mistakes or misunderstandings.

On Palestine Corbyn became virtually silent as the ‘anti-Semitism’ attacks mounted. The Palestinian representative in Britain, Manuel Hassassian described Corbyn as ‘an ardent, staunch supporter of the Palestinians and now we hardly see any statements coming from him in support of Palestine.’

A question that no one has asked is whether it was inevitable that Corbyn would fail to become Prime Minister? Is Labour condemned to elect crypto-Tories as leaders? Is a paid up member of the British Establishment the best we can hope for.

This is certainly the message of Tony Blair, who argued that when “a traditional left-wing party competes with a traditional right-wing party’ the outcome is ‘the traditional result” That was when Blair was predicting that Ed Miliband would lose because he was too left-wing!

Is the only purpose of the Labour Party to make capitalism more palatable and to provide palliatives instead of cures? Is there any place or role for a left inside the Party? Is Labour’s role that of a second party of capitalism, a British version of America’s Democrats?

There is another way of putting it. Why is it that in 2017 Labour achieved the highest swing in a General Election since 1945 whereas in 2019 it achieved the worst result since 1935?

Defeat was not inevitable

Victory, although difficult in 2019, was not impossible. However Corbyn’s strategy, if you can call it that, of appeasing the Right and the ‘anti-Semitism’ mongers made defeat inevitable. By forever apologising and temporising Corbyn made himself and the Labour Party seem weak and inarticulate.

The explanation for why Labour did so badly in 2019 cannot be understood in terms of Brexit, still less Corbyn’s own personality.

What we witnessed since the election of Corbyn in September 2015 was a concerted and co-ordinated campaign to discredit him and all he stood for. It was a propaganda war fronted by the BBC and The Guardian. The ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ establishment came together in a concerted attempt to remove Corbyn as leader.

The ‘Anti-Semitism’ Heresy Hunt

This campaign began even before Corbyn was elected as leader. On 7^th August 2015 the Daily Mail led with an ‘exclusive’ which revealed that Corbyn had ‘long-standing links’ with a ‘notorious Holocaust denier and a group, Deir Yassin Remembered’. After this there was a whole series of faked ‘anti-Semitic’ incidents and people who were picked off, one after the other, with Corbyn remaining silent.

It began with Gerald Kauffman and ‘Jewish money’ and quickly progressed to Vicky Kirby’s remarks about ‘Jewish noses’ (she had been quoting from the play Infidels by Jewish writer David Baddiel). Then there was the affair of Oxford University Labour Club. Its Chair Alex Chalmers resigned when the Club decided to support Israel Apartheid Week. Asa Winstanley later revealed that Chalmers had been an intern for Israeli propaganda group BICOM.

The Zionists later gained revenge for this and other revelations when Asa was suspended from Labour and refused press credentials for the last Labour Party conference. Again Corbyn said nothing.

There were consistent denials that the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign was about Israel. Anyone who suggested otherwise was anti-Semitic! The Zionists proved this when they clamoured to change the definition of anti-Semitism from someone who hates Jews to someone who hates Israel and Zionism.

There was a division of labour between the Jewish Labour Movement and Labour Friends of Israel. The JLM concentrated on anti-Semitism whereas LFI defended what Israel did, including the use of snipers against demonstrators in Gaza. Individual JLM officers such as Louise Ellman however repeatedly defended Israel’s abuse and torture of Palestinian children.

The anti-Semitism campaign was not spontaneous. It was the product of the press and Zionist groups operating in concert with the British Establishment. It is clear that the campaign was planned and co-ordinated between the various actors amongst whom were the Israeli Embassy, the British state and its offspring such as the Integrity Initiative and of course the US government, as Secretary of State Mike Pompei admitted. See for example Al Jazeera’s The Lobby.

This however is not an analysis of the campaign against Corbyn so much as a look at the reaction of Jeremy Corbyn to the attacks upon him.

At first Corbyn was not directly accused of anti-Semitism. That would come later. He was held to be responsible for Labour’s ‘anti-Semitism’ by his various actions such as meetings with ‘terrorists’. If the Zionists are to be believed the Labour Party had never had anti-Semites in it before!

Genuine Anti-Semitism

Of course, in a party, of over half a million, there will be a few anti-Semites.  Just as there will be a few paedophiles. However no one would say Labour is overrun with them. Indeed in the past the situation was far worse. Sydney Webb, the founder of the Fabians and the New Statesman, who became Colonial Secretary in 1929 explained that there were “no Jews in the British Labour party” and that while “French, German, Russian Socialism is Jew-ridden. We, thank heaven, are free”, the reason being because there was “no money in it”.

The pro-Zionist Home Secretary during the war, Herbert Morrison, refused to admit Jewish refugees from the Nazis during the war and thus condemned thousands to the gas chambers. Strangely enough there have been no victims of Labour ‘anti-Semitism’.

Where it all began

Corbyn’s failures began with an interview with Krishna Guru-Murphy on 13 July 2015. When pressed as to why he used the term ‘friends’ in relation to Hezbollah and Hamas Corbyn blustered and got angry but refused to confront the question which was that neither organisation was a terrorist organisation. They are both conservative Islamist groups but they come from the people who they work among and represent. Terrorists are people who, despairing of mass support, use violence and terror as a substitute. ISIS is a classic example.

Hamas was created by Israel as a counter to secular Palestinian nationalism. Hezbollah came out of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon when over 20,000 Lebanese were murdered by Israel bombing of population centres. If ever the word ‘terrorist’ had any meaning then it was as a description of Israel. Corbyn knew this but couldn’t say it because it contradicts the western narrative about terrorism

Corbyn’s said that he was a ‘peacemaker’ which completely evaded the question of whose side he was on in imperialist wars. Either you are on the side of the oppressed or the oppressor.

Everytime the Zionists made accusations of anti-Semitism Corbyn denied he was an anti-Semite. The problem was that the Zionist definition of anti-Semitism was not the ordinary common one of hatred or dislike of Jews as Jews.

The Oxford English Dictionary has a very simple definition, hostility to or prejudice against Jews.’ The Zionist definition is hostility to the Israeli state. If you question the apartheid and racist nature of the Israeli state then you are an ‘anti-Semite’.

Netanyahu’s coalition government, which includes the JLM’s ‘sister party’ the Israeli Labor Party, has agreed on the annexation of the illegal settlements on the West Bank. Netanyahu has  announced that  Palestinians living in the annexed areas won’t become Israeli citizens, unlike the Jewish settlers. This is the classic definition of Apartheid.  Two sets of people living in the same area but with differential rights. This was what happened in South Africa but if you call it Apartheid you are now held to be anti-Semitic!  What the Zionists are saying is that something can be anti-Semitic and true!  A remarkable achievement thanks to Corbyn’s cowardice.

It is as if, during Apartheid in South Africa you were allowed to criticise the policies of the Nationalists but if you attacked Apartheid itself and White Supremacy you were an anti-White racist.

Anti-Semitism

Essential to the creation of the anti-Semitism ‘disinformation paradigm’ is the idea that British Jews are an oppressed minority. Any attack on their ‘identity’ is therefore anti-Semitic. Logically if any group in Britain identifies with a repressive state then to oppose that state is racist.

We are seeing this today with the assertion by the Hindu Forum of Britain that support for the self-determination of Kashmir is ‘Hinduphobia’.  Does this sound familiar? If support for the Palestinians and opposition to Zionism is ‘anti-Semitism’ why shouldn’t opposition to Hindu racism be ‘Hinduphobic’?

India’s far-Right Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as Chief Minister of Gujarat, presided over anti-Muslim riots which claimed at least 2,000 lives. Last August Modi unilaterally revoked Article 370 of the Indian Constitution which gave Kashmir autonomy. Kashmir has been under military occupation ever since.

The last Labour Conference passed a resolution unanimously supporting Kashmir’s self-determination. Unilaterally after a meeting with Labour Friends of India Starmer revoked this and decreed that the question of Kashmir is a ‘‘bilateral issue for India and Pakistan’.

Unsurprisingly there is a bromance between Netanyahu and Modi. Hindu nationalists see Israel as their model ethno-nationalist state. They share a common enemy – Muslims. A state based on religion was the basis for Europe’s fascist and anti-Semitic states in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Hungary, Romania and the Nazi puppet states of Croatia and Slovakia all considered they were ‘Christian’.

No one has yet pointed out how British Jews are oppressed. Jews do not suffer economic discrimination nor are they victims of state violence or discrimination. The chief victims of anti-Semitic attacks are mainly Orthodox Hasidic, i.e. those sections of British Jewry who are least Zionist.

British Jews have escaped state anti-Semitism, which certainly existed in the pre-war period when the police were sympathetic to Moseley’s fascists. It is not so today.

Throughout the ‘anti-Semitism’ heresy hunt of the past five years I wrote dozens of articles warning against where Corbyn’s Appeasement strategy was leading. I have put a guide to these articles and their contents on Google drive. The Israeli state has become the ‘new Jew’ and this is the ‘new anti-Semitism’.

On 1^st November 2015 in Appeasement is no way to fight the Labour Right I wrote that Corbyn had to fight back not appease his enemies. 

‘Whilst Corbyn is making a virtue out of necessity, in turning the other cheek, he should remember that even Jesus used whips to drive the money lenders out of the Temple.  Corbyn’s experiment in the ‘new politics’ is simply postponing the inevitable whilst the Prince of Darkness (Mandelson) plots away.’

It was crystal clear that the Right could not be appeased. In their view the Labour Party was there to manage capitalism, not change it. This is a fundamental divide that can never be reconciled. In practice the Labour left solved the dilemma in the time honoured fashion by moving to the Right.  Those that move the other way, like Tony Benn, are our heroes but they were few and far between.

Despite being praised as an almost saint-like character by his adoring supporters Corbyn didn’t hesitate to throw his friends under the bus.

Not just me but comrades like Ken Livingstone, Marc Wadsworth and Chris Williamson as well as a host of other socialists – Jackie Walker, Pete Willsman, Christine Shawcroft – were also betrayed. 

Even if Corbyn did not recognise what he was up against this cannot have been true of his advisers, Seamus Milne, scion of the British Establishment and like James Schneider an Oxbridge graduate.  It is inconceivable that Milne was not aware of what was happening. The other explanations I will leave to your imagination.

Below is an Open Letter because I think we all deserve some answers as to why Jeremy Corbyn failed, at any stage, to fight back against the Right.Tony Greenstein

Open Letter to Jeremy Corbyn

29 May 2020

Dear Jeremy,

Millions of people who put their faith in you as Leader of the Labour Party saw their hopes dashed and their dreams of a fairer and just society destroyed last December. Instead we face a return to the days of Tony Blair with the election of (Sir) Keir Starmer.

One factor above all was responsible for Labour’s election defeat and that was your ‘strategy’ of appeasing the Right whilst throwing your friends to the wolves. In particular your failure to stand up to the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign and call it out for what it was. An attempt to undermine and destroy your leadership.

The fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign began even before you became leader. On 7^th August 2015 the Daily Mail led with an ‘exclusive’ which revealed that you had ‘long-standing links’ with a ‘notorious Holocaust denier and a group, Deir Yassin Remembered’. This story was immediately taken up by the Jewish Chronicle and the Guardian.

Did it never occur to you or your well-paid advisers, that ‘anti-Semitism’ was being weaponised? Did it not occur to you that there might be some connection between the aforesaid campaign and the election as leader of someone opposed to NATO and United States foreign policy?  Given your past record in supporting the Palestinians surely it must have been obvious that your enemies would use any stick to beat you with and that ‘anti-Semitism was a particularly useful cudgel?

Surely you, above all, must have been aware that the standard response of supporters of Israel, i.e. Zionists, to criticism of Israel is to allege anti-Semitism? One of your main accusers, Jonathan Arkush, President of the Board of Deputies openly called you an anti-Semite. Why? Because “delegitimising the state of Israel is anti-Semitic.” Take note, not hate of Jews but hatred of a racist, apartheid state.

The Editor of the Jewish Chronicle was even clearer. ‘instead of adopting the [IHRA] definition as agreed by all these bodies, Labour has excised the parts which relate to Israel and how criticism of Israel can be anti-Semitic.’  Labour was therefore ‘institutionally anti-Semitic’.  The Los Angeles based Wiesenthall Centre named you ‘anti-Semite of the year’ ahead of a Californian synagogue killer!

In other words, anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism.  Which if true, would have meant that the majority of pre-Holocaust Jewry were anti-Semitic!

Zionism and Anti-Semitism

Ironically Zionism has never had a problem with genuine anti-Semitism. That is why the list of anti-Semitic leaders welcomed in Israel’s Holocaust Propaganda Museum Yad Vashem is endless. It began in 1976 with the visit of Apartheid Prime Minister John Vorster, who had been interned during the war as a Nazi sympathiser and it continues today with the visits of open Hitler admirers such as Bolsonaro and Duterte.

When it began in the late 19^th century Zionism was seen as a form of Jewish anti-Semitism. This was why the vast majority of Jews opposed it. When the first Zionist Congress was held in 1897 it was going to be in Munich. It was because of the opposition of the local Jewish community that it was transferred to Basel.

Zionism has never had a problem with genuine anti-Semites because both agree that Jews do not belong in non-Jewish society. The Zionist idea that Jews formed a nation, was precisely why Zionism was welcomed by anti-Semites.

Theodor Herzl, the founder of Political Zionism, wrote in his Diaries [pp. 83/84] that “the anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies“. So it has proven. The list of anti-Semites, from Drumont to Heydrich, Le Pen to Orban who have sung Zionism’s praises is endless.

If the Labour Party was genuinely overrun with anti-Semitism then the Zionist movement and the Jewish Chronicle wouldn’t be in the least concerned. Anti-Semitism in the Tory Party has certainly never bothered them. Contrast the silence with Boris Johnson’s genuinely anti-Semitic and racist 72 Virgins. After all the Tories sat in the European Parliament in the same ECR group as fascists and anti-Semites such as Roberts Ziles and Michal Kaminsky.

I first worked with you nearly 40 years ago, in the wake of Israel’s invasion in 1982 of Lebanon, in my role as Chair of the Labour Movement Campaign on Palestine. I probably chaired up to a dozen meetings at which you spoke. If I had been anti-Semitic then I’m sure that you would have noticed!

In March 2016 I was suspended as part of the Zionists’ ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign. Jackie Walker, another Jewish anti-Zionist was suspended, twice in 2016, as were Marc Wadsworth and Ken Livingstone. Two Black people, two Jewish people and the former Mayor of London who had pioneered anti-racism in local government. These were the targets of the so-called anti-Semitism campaign and still you remained silent.

On 21 August 2015 I wrote that ‘Being perpetually on the defensive is not good enough’. I urged you to ‘speak out now’ against the purge of thousands of your potential voters.’ If you had followed my advice then events might have turned out very differently.

Instead you continued to appease and placate those who sought to remove you. In November 2016 in Appeasement is no way to fight the Labour Right I wrote that your ‘strategy appears to be one of feeding the lions rather than shooting them.  Appeasement is rarely a successful strategy. At best it buys time.’

Quite rightly you reacted angrily to accusations that you were an anti-Semite. Unfortunately you failed to understand that the anti-Semitism you were accused of had nothing to do with hatred of Jews and everything to do with hostility to Zionism.

The ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign was never about anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism as most people understand it is hostility to or prejudice against Jews. This ‘anti-Semitism’ was hostility to Israel.

The obvious thing to do was to fight back. It would have been easy to have mobilised your supporters to fight back against McNicol, the Labour Right and the Tory supporting Board of Deputies. You had the membership on your side.

The same Board of Deputies which was promiscuous in its accusations of anti-Semitism fell over itself to welcome Donald Trump to power. The same White Supremacist whose election campaign consisted of anti-Semitic ads, gestures, dog whistles and allusions to Jewish financial power As Dana Milbank wrote in the Washington Post ‘Anti-Semitism is no longer an undertone of Trump’s campaign. It’s the melody.’

Denialism

In what was a political case of Stockholm Syndrome you ended up mouthing the platitudes of your accusers. In an article Jeremy Corbyn outlines plans to accelerate expulsion of antisemites from Labour’s ranks you were quoted as saying that 

According to Corbyn’s idiotic logic  if you deny you are an anti-Semite then you are part of the ‘problem’

What you were effectively saying was that your accusers were right and that you too were part of the problem. 

The argument that says that to deny that you are anti-Semitic is to confirm your guilt is the argument of Joe McCarthy and Torquemada. It is what those who conducted the witch trials in Salem, New England in the 17^th Century said. As Elizabeth Reis wrote:

“During examinations, accused women were damned if they did and damned if they did not. If they confessed to witchcraft charges, their admissions would prove the cases against them; if they denied the charges, their very intractability, construed as the refusal to admit to sin more generally, might mark them as sinners and hence allies of the devil.”

The only women who were hanged at Salem were those who denied their guilt. This is the ‘logic’ of fascist ‘justice’ yet you accepted it. To protest one’s innocence is to admit one’s guilt. Only in the Nazi Peoples Court of Ronald Freisler was this principle in operation. In the leaked Labour Report it is called denialism.

The IHRA

In December 2016, after Theresa May had adopted the IHRADefinition of Anti-Semitism you followed suit?  Why?  The Oxford English Dictionary definition ‘hostility to or prejudice against Jews’ is pretty comprehensive. The 38 word definition of the IHRA, with its talk of a ‘certain perception’ was intentionally vague.

In addition the IHRA came with 11 illustrations of ‘anti-Semitism’, 7 of which included Israel.  Did you learn absolutely nothing from over 30 years work supporting Palestine solidarity not to know that supporting Palestinians is never anti-Semitic?  Yet to criticise Israel for its racist treatment of the Palestinians, beginning with their expulsion in 1948, was anti-Semitic according to the IHRA.

Today in the Labour Party any criticism of Israel/ Zionism is considered anti-Semitic. This is the result of the ‘fast track’ expulsions that you supported at the last Labour Party conference. Conference was promised that they would only be used in exceptional cases but this was a lie.  It is being used in virtually every case.

No one however was ever expelled for anti-Palestinian racism under your watch. When Luke Akehurst, Director of We believe in Israel, supported the cold-blooded murder of unarmed demonstrators in Gaza, including children and medics, he wasn’t disciplined. Why? If someone had supported the murder of Jewish children they would have been expelled instantly. Or do Palestinian lives count as less than Jewish lives?

The New Witchhunt that You Helped Encourage

I am informed that at the present time, following Keir Starmer’s meeting with the Jewish Labour Movement, that ‘investigations’ have begun into 25 Jewish members of the Labour Party. What kind of anti-Semitism is it when Jews are the main target?

Perhaps when the Tories get round to holding an inquiry into Islamaphobia they could demonstrate their sincerity by expelling a few Muslims?  Crazy?  That is where your appeasement has ended up.

Unfortunately many Jews today support the Israeli state and Zionism. British Jews today bears no resemblance to the working class Jews of the East End 80 years ago who were indifferent or hostile to Zionism. British Jews have moved upwards socio-economically, outwards geographically and to the right politically. 

Even under Labour’s first Jewish leader, Ed Miliband, the JC reported ‘Huge majority of British Jews will vote Tory.’ Contrast this with the election in 1945 when the England’s first ever elected Communist MP Phil Piratin owed half his votes to the Jewish voters of Mile End.

25 years ago many Muslims supported the fatwa against Salman Rushdie for his book, Satanic Verses.Would it have been Islamaphobic to have supported Rushie’s free speech?

Supposing there had been a 100,000 strong Afrikaaner community in Britain which identified with Apartheid in South Africa. Would it have been racist against Afrikaaners to oppose Apartheid? This is the absurd proposition that you have bought into.

Instead of Apartheid being held to be wrong we might have been told to be ‘sensitive’ to the feelings of the racists’ sympathisers living in north London’s suburbs.

Even if every single Jew in Britain supported Israel would that have made it right? Most German émigrés in the 1930’s supported Hitler. Would it have been anti-German to be anti-Nazi?

White supremacists, from the EDL and Tommy Robinson to Richard Spencer, the neo-Nazi founder of the alt-Right, love Zionism. Spencer even declared that he was a White Zionist. This is the state whose opponents are now being expelled.

Betrayal – the Leaked Report is Shocking

By refusing to stand up to the Zionists ‘anti-Semitism’ claims and forever apologising you gave the impression of weakness and it was this that was fatal to your election hopes. I had however assumed that it was under pressure that you abandoned your friends and comrades. 

Until I read Labour’s leaked Report I assumed that the attempts to expel Jackie, Ken, Marc and myself were out of your hands.  It was all the actions of the Blairite machine.

I was therefore stunned to read that Laura Murray, who worked in your office, had emailed the corrupt racist John Stolliday asking:

could we have an update on the current status of the cases of Ken Livingstone, Jacqui [sic] Walker, Tony Greenstein and Marc Wadsworth and a clear timetable of when they will all be heard by the NCC and when a final decision will be made on them. The Jewish Labour Movement expressed frustration that these cases have taken such a long time to be heard, as they feel that it is difficult to begin the process of rebuilding trust between the Labour Party and the Jewish community whilst we have still not dealt with these cases. (page 336)

The word treachery isn’t adequate to describe my feelings when I read this. Well we were all expelled bar Ken who resigned. And then you went on to betray Christine Shawcroft and Chris Williamson MP.

Perhaps you can tell me whether in fact our expulsions ever did ‘rebuild trust’ with this mythical ‘Jewish community’? No sooner had you expelled one person than the Zionists produced another 10 names.

By expelling us (the actual reason was never anti-Semitism) you proved that the Labour Party was anti-Semitic. In so doing you dug your own grave.

You could have fought back

Today 25 Jewish members of the Labour Party face expulsion in order to reassure Israel’s supporters that Labour will always back the racists.

You had a clear choice when you were elected leader.  You could either fight the Right or appease them.  For the first year, when Owen Smith challenged you for the leadership, you fought the Right.  The result was that you deprived Theresa May of her majority in the 2017 General Election. A performance which I had predicted.

It was at this point, when you were at the peak of your power, you could have called for the resignation of Iain McNicoll who had openly sabotaged Labour’s election chances by refusing to support challenges to Tory incumbents.

In June 2017 you could have squashed the ‘anti-Semitism’ nonsense. If you had made a speech on anti-Semitism you could have buried the issue for all time. You would have received the overwhelming support of party members and you would have put your opponents on the defensive. You could have also explained why you were not going to support the IHRA. After all, your mum and my dad were at the Battle of Cable Street fighting the Moselyites in 1936. They didn’t need a definition of anti-Semitism to recognise what anti-Semitism was.

It would have been a very simple speech. You could have started by condemning anti-Semitism and making it clear that this means racist hatred of Jews as Jews and not criticism of Israel or Zionism. Anti-Semitism is about those who don’t like Jews, of which there are virtually none in the Labour Party.

You could then have condemned the weaponisation of ‘anti-Semitism’ by the supporters of Israel as a means of avoiding having to defend things like the imprisonment and torture of children, Palestinian children that is.

If you had been bold you could have explained that if Jews in Britain experienced a fraction of the racism and discrimination of Palestinians then they would rightly complain of anti-Semitism. You could also have condemned the use of Jews as an alibi for British foreign policy.

Of course you did none of these things and just before the local elections in May 2018, Luciana Berger pulled out of a hat the bankers’ mural that had long been erased in 2012.  It was obvious that this issue  had been kept in reserve by those seeking to do as much damage as possible to Labour’s local election chances. Berger should have had the whip removed, as should Margaret Hodge.

This was followed by an ‘anti-racist’ demonstration outside Parliament organised by the Board of Deputies.  Attendees included those well know opponents of racism – Norman Tebbit and Ian Paisley.

When the JLM, in an attempt to win sympathy, threatened to disaffiliate from the Labour Party, instead of welcoming such a prospect you pleaded with them to stay. This however did not stop the JLM from voting to no confidence you at their AGM.

In the Labour Party at the present time, to tell the truth about Israel is to be condemned as ‘anti-Semitic’. The fact that the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu openly declares that Israel is “not a state of all its citizens” is ignored.  Israel has just announced that when it annexes the Jordan Valley it will not give citizenship to the Arabs who live there.  This used to be called ‘apartheid’.  Do you have another word for it?

The situation of socialists and anti-imperialists in the Labour Party today is far worse than if you had never been leader. Today to be an anti-racist in the Labour Party is to live in danger of expulsion. 

When the ‘anti-Semitism’ accusations started flying, instead of openly reaching out to those British Jews who are not Zionists, such as the many in the growing Ultra Orthodox community in Stamford Hill, 35 of whose rabbis defended you against the attacks from the Board of Deputies, you granted the reactionary Board sole rights of audience.

It was not as if you didn’t have enough chances.  The one way of intimidating the Labour Right would have been to support Open Selection of Labour candidates.  Yet at the 2018 Labour Party Conference you persuaded Len McCluskey, Unite’s General Secretary, to break his mandate and oppose Open Selection. When you were Secretary of Labour Against the Witchhunt in the 1990’s mandatory reselection was an article of faith amongst the left.

Perhaps the final insult to Labour members and those unfairly expelled was to propose that Iain McNicol and Tom Watson should be elevated to the House of Lords. 

As Bob Dylan wrote in the aptly titled ‘I threw it all away’.

Once I had mountains in the palm of my hand
And rivers that ran through every day
I must have been mad
I never knew what I had
Until I threw it all away

Yours etc.

Tony Greenstein