You Can’t Unite With A Rattlesnake – the Left Will Never Defeat Starmer as long as it accepts his ‘Anti-Semitism’ Narrative

Starmer Promised to ‘tear the poison of anti-Semitism out of Labour’ – what he meant was expelling supporters of the Palestinians from the Labour Party

See Asa Winstanley’s recent article

When Starmer suspended Jeremy Corbyn 2 weeks ago I predicted that his expulsion was inevitable. Starmer’s reaction when an NEC panel voted to reinstate him demonstrates that expulsion was his original intention. Starmer then did the next best thing. He expelled Corbyn from the Parliamentary Labour Party.

When Starmer was elected in April I wrote that ‘Mogadon Man Assumes the Leadership of the Labour Party… The Fight against the Right begins.’ Craig Murray wrote

‘Sadly, Sir Keir Starmer has all the captivating exuberance of a stagnant pond, with the murky secrets of his dubious past polluting the fetid waters.

In the circumstances that was rather mild! I followed this up, on May 13, warning that

‘If Labour Wants to Win the Next Election then it needs to Dump Starmer fast – COVID-19 Demonstrates why Sir Keir is so useless – He has Nothing to Say’.

Unfortunately Momentum and the Campaign Group ignored my advice. Many people are inclined to call them the ‘soft left’. I prefer the term STUPID LEFT. As Einstein is said to have remarked, the definition of insanity is repeating something over and over again and expecting a different result. For the past 5 years, Momentum and Corbyn have repeatedly tried appeasing the Labour Right and the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement. The more they gave them the more they demanded. The more they apologised, the more ground they conceded.

These fools even got it into their heads that Starmer was going to preserve Corbyn’s manifesto pledges and that he was a ‘unity’ candidate. Anyone acquainted with Starmer’s record would have known that that was a lie. Starmer is and always has been from Labour’s hard right.

https://youtu.be/M4hW2X37z8g

As Director of Public ProsecutionsStarmer prosecuted Julian Assange and to this day refuses to speak out about his incarceration for being an investigative journalist. Starmer prosecuted women for making false allegations of rape whilst trying to cover for the Police who murdered Ian Tomlinson. Starmer is the only MP who is a member of the international ruling class body, the Trilateral Commission.

Not the least of Starmer’s crimes was the fact that he was first person to welcome my expulsion. This always struck me as curious.  Why, if someone is sincere in their opposition to anti-Semitism should they welcome the expulsion of a Jewish anti-racist?

Starmer however, unlike Corbyn and the Campaign Group/ Momentum is not stupid. Cunning, deceitful, dishonest but not stupid. From the beginning of his leadership he has repeated his promise to ‘tear the poison of anti-Semitism out of Labour by the roots’. That was what justified the sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey and Lloyd Russell-Moyle and the dressing down of Stephen Kinnock. Not once has any member of the stupid left challenged his narrative.

Starmer went out of his way, from the start, to ensure that the EHRC Report was as damning as possible. That was why he paid off the racist liars and frauds among Labour’s senior staff who had campaigned against the Labour Party in 2017. This despite being told that Labour had a winning case. That way their version of events, that they had been prevented by Corbyn in tackling ‘anti-Semitism’ could not be contradicted without legal consequences.

Starmer wanted the EHRC Report to be as bad as possible in order that he could wield it as a weapon. As it turned out the EHRC Report was insubstantial and evasive. Despite ignoring the evidence of Jewish Voices for Labour and my own offer, as the first Jewish person to be expelled, to give testimony its Report was a botched political stitch up. The suggestion that Ken Livingstone and Pam Bromley had been guilty of harassment is not worth the paper it is written on. Political speech and denying that there is an anti-Semitism problem is not harassment. It would be laughed out court. That is why Starmer and his glove puppet, David Evans, have been so concerned to prevent local Labour parties discussing the Report.

Hence Starmer’s reaction to Labour’s Leaked Report was to attack those who leaked the Report whilst rewarding Labour’s racist and misogynist former staff. The last thing Starmer could afford was any undermining of McNicol’s lies.

It is or should be obvious that Starmer isn’t the least concerned about racism. ‘Anti-Semitism’ to him is what ‘Communism’ was to Joe McCarthy. It is a means of denouncing his critics and smearing the Left. Back in April I wrote that

If anyone had any doubts about who and what (Sir) Keir Starmer represents, his Shadow Cabinet appointments today should lay them to rest. Starmer represents a return of the Blairite Right. Even Barry Gardiner, a supporter of Labour Friends of Israel and easily the most articulate member of Corbyn’s shadow cabinet has been sacked, as has Ian Lavery, former President of the NUM and one of the few working class members in the PLP as well as Jon Trickett.

It is not as if Starmer didn’t give a clear warning of his intentions. It is the cowardice and pathetic reformism of the Labour Left (if one can even call it such) that meant they didn’t heed the warnings. The signs of what Starmer’s real intentions were many:

i. Starmer’s ‘constructive opposition’ in the ‘national interest’ to Boris Johnson’s disastrous COVID-19 strategy as the government presided over the highest death rate in Europe. The official death toll is 50,000 but the real death toll is far higher. The failure of the Tories is directly linked to the privatization of the NHS and the outsourcing of PPE and Test and Trace. Far from being ‘efficient’ the private sector is only efficient at maximizing its own profits. Channel 4 Dispatches has just shown how a private lab (they used to be in-house) treated test results cavalierly, allowing cross infection and leaking test tubes. Starmer’s failure to call out the health dangers of privatisation should have been taken seriously.

ii. Starmer reversed Labour’s policy to support Kashmiri independence. Why? Because Hindu chauvinists, supporters of the far-Right BJP government, accused supporters of Kashmiri independence and opponents of discrimination against the Untouchables of ‘Hinduphobia’. The ‘Anti-Semitism’ scam is winning widespread admiration amongst racists.

Just as opponents of Israeli Apartheid and Zionism are called ‘anti-Semites’ so Hindu bigots are calling opponents of caste discrimination ‘Hinduphobes’. And who turned up at a House of Commons meeting to pledge his support for their campaign to keep caste discrimination legal? Gideon Falter of the CAA! Starmer is very sensitive to the feelings of racists and chauvinists.

iii. Starmer followed this up by sacking the weak and insipid Rebecca Long-Bailey, the Momentum candidate in the leadership elections. She had retweeted Maxine Peak’s statement that US Police learnt the neck hold from Israeli Police. Given that hundreds of thousands of US cops have been trained by the Israeli Police, it was a reasonable assumption, yet Starmer called this an ‘anti-Semitic conspiracy theory’.

iv. Starmer may be concerned with ‘anti-Semitism’ and the feelings of fellow Zionists but when it came to Black Lives Matter he had no hesitation in declaring that it was a ‘moment’ that had passed. Concern about genuine racism against Black people, the Windrush scandal and ‘hostile environment’ hasn’t even left his lips.

Yet what was the response of Momentum to the suspension of Corbyn? Was it to call for Starmer to go? Was there a call for defiance of David Evans declaration that discussion of the suspension was not ‘competent business’ for Labour parties? Andrew Scattergood, Momentum’s Co-Chair issued a statement that ‘This suspension risks politicising Labour’s response to antisemitism.’ Where have they been? The ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign has been political from the start. It has been the means by which the Right has progressively undermined Corbyn.

Even Scatterbrain realised that this statement was hopelessly inadequate and Momentum therefore issued another statement, which was even worse. It read:

‘The suspension of Jeremy Corbyn by the Labour Party leadership is a factional attack on the left that inevitably undermines the fight against anti-semitism and makes a mockery of Keir Starmer’s pledge to unite the Party. Tonight our Party is more divided than ever.’

There was a similar statement on Youtube and in an interview with LBC.

False Allegations of ‘Anti-Semitism’ Are Destroying the Labour Left

It is the inability of the Labour Left to come to grips with the Zionists’ anti-semitism hoax which sealed Corbyn’s fate and is now consigning the Labour Left to oblivion. It is a consequence of their acceptance of pro-imperialist politics in combination with identity politics.

Jews may be a minority in Britain but they are not an oppressed minority. Today Jews are a privileged white group which has voted Tory for the past 50 years (except for the initial Blair years). Only 14% voted for Ed Miliband, Labour’s first Jewish leader, in 2015. Jewish support for the Tories has nothing to do with Labour anti-Semitism and everything to do with their class position in society.

The Tory Party has historically been a racist party, including an anti-Semitic one. It wasn’t in the Labour Party that an MP was told ‘

”If I had my way people like you wouldn’t be allowed in this place.”

‘And I said: ”Sorry, when you say people like me, do you mean lower-class or Jewish?”

‘To which he replied: ”Both.”’

It was the Tory Party and the MP was former Speaker, John Bercow. In the same interview Bercow, when asked about Corbyn and anti-Semitism said about Corbyn that ‘I’ve never detected so much as a whiff of anti-Semitism’.

When anti-Semitism was a form of state racism in Britain, when the Metropolitan Police supported the British Union of Fascists and attacked Jewish workers was the time when Jews voted overwhelmingly for the Left. Not just the Labour Party. In 1945 Phil Piratin, was elected for Mile End as a Communist with an estimated 50% of his vote coming from Jews in London’s East End.

Jews today no longer live in the East End. They have migrated to London’s middle class suburbs of Golders Green, Edgware and Redbridge. Britain’s Jews have changed as society has changed. Jews aren’t victims of racist murders, police harassment or Stop and Search. There is no Jewish Windrush or ‘hostile environment’. Jews aren’t deported because they are Jews. Yet the identity politics of much of the Left prevents them from relating racism to class.

Racism isn’t the same as prejudice. It is a form of class oppression but only more so. It is an attack on the most exploited and vulnerable sections of society. Jews are no longer in that position. They are no longer society’s scapegoats.

When Momentum’s Scatterbrain declared that Corbyn’s suspension ‘undermines the fight against anti-Semitism’ he is demonstrating that there are no limits to the stupidity of Momentum which, under Lansman, did more than Boris Johnson to lose the 2019 election.

Why does Scatterbrain imagine that the Daily Mail and the Tory press are so concerned about ‘anti-Semitism’ when no other form of racism disturb them in the slightest? It should be clear that the ‘anti-Semitism campaign had, but one target, and that was Jeremy Corbyn.

Since March 2016 when I was suspended I have repeatedly emphasised that Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Ken Livingstone, Tony Greenstein, Peter Willsman and finally Chris Williamson were not the real targets. We were just collateral damage. The real target was always Corbyn even if he didn’t realise it.

Corbyn was a victim of what has come to be known as the Stockholm Syndrome. The more the Zionists attacked him the more he understood them and apologised. I’ve lost count of the number of friends that Corbyn threw under the bus in the vain hope that he would satisfy his enemies. Len McLuskey put his finger on it when he said that

‘Corbyn Has Answered Concerns On Anti-Semitism, But Jewish Community Leaders Are Refusing To Take ‘Yes’ For An Answer’.

Unfortunately McLuskey refused to face up to the logic of his own statement. He was correct. Whatever Corbyn did not satisfy the Zionist leaders of the Board of Deputies. McLuskey admitted

‘I am at a loss to understand the motives of the leadership of the Jewish community – the Board of Deputies, the Jewish Leadership Council and the Jewish Labour Movement.’

The answer was, as Bob Dylan once wrote, ‘blowing in the wind’. The reason why the ‘Jewish leaders’ i.e. Zionists at the Board of Deputies refused to take yes for an answer was that there was nothing that Corbyn could have done to satisfy them. The Zionists weren’t genuinely interested in anti-Semitism. They had but one goal – the removal of Corbyn. That was why the JLM was refounded in 2015.

It was clear to me from the very start that what was happening was an orchestrated campaign which had been tested in Latin America, in particular Nicaragua and Venezuela, where ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations had been leveled by Zionist groups and US Administrations at radical regimes. ‘Anti-Semitism’ has been patented and used as a weapon of the Right for over 30 years.

Contrast this with Argentina under a neo-Nazi Junta between 1976-1983. They tortured to death up to 3,000 Jews as part of their slaughter of 30,000 Argentinians. Yet the Zionists and Israel remained silent. Genuine anti-Semitism has never bothered Israel or the Zionist movement. From the Czarist regime at the turn of the 20^th century to Hitler the Zionists have remained indifferent to genuine anti-Semitism.

We see this today. Who are Israel’s best friends in the world? The anti-Semitic Hungarian regime, the far-Right anti-Semitic Polish government and the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion in Ukraine to whom Israel supplies weapons. Not forgetting of course Trump who has repeatedly told American Jews that Israel is their ‘real home’. Which is what the Zionists also believe. When a White Supremacist gunman murdered 11 Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue, Israeli Labor Party leader Avi Gabbay told them that they should emigrate and come to their ‘real home’.  Which is what the anti-Semites also say.

Clues for the Stupid Left – Scatterbrain and the Campaign Group – that the ‘Anti-Semitism’ Campaign was about Zionism/Israel not Jew hatred

On a personal level I have no sympathy for Corbyn. I consider him a disloyal, treacherous fool who had it within his power to become Prime Minister and he threw it all away by throwing his own supporters to the wolves. Corbyn knew, more than most, that the ritual accusation of ‘anti-Semitism’ is levelled at all Palestine solidarity supporters.

There are many reasons why the anti-Semitism campaign was a confected hoax, orchestrated by the Israeli, British and US governments. Here are some of those reasons:

1. It is curious that despite being told repeatedly that Labour is overrun with anti-Semitism, which according to Sturmer, is a ‘stain’ on the Labour Party no one has actually produced any Jewish victims of this ‘anti-Semitism’. All they can point to are opinion polls that say British Jews were living in fear. If true this is testimony to the ability of Zionist leaders, coupled with the British press, to instil fear in some British Jews by false and lying propaganda. I’ll wager a bet that if researchers had asked these idiots why they feared the Labour Party they would either have no answer or they would reply ‘Israel’.

2. Accusations of Anti-Semitism were seen as far more likely to divide the Left than say hostility to Corbyn because of his opposition to Austerity. That is a product of the infatuation of much of the left with identity politics.

3. If concern over ‘anti-Semitism’ was serious why was it that the Labour Right – Tom Watson, Margaret Hodge etc. – didn’t display any concern over other forms of racism? Hodge had even been sent a bunch of flowers by the BNP because they approved of her Whites Only housing policy for Barking.

Tom Watson demonised asylum seekers in the Hodge Hill by-election in 2004 with the slogan ‘Labour is on your side, the Lib Dems are on the side of failed asylum seekers.’ Watson also supported the racist Labour MP Phil Woolas in 2010 when the High Court removed him from Parliament, for a campaign which involved trying to ‘make the white folks angry’.

4. The Board of Deputies has never opposed anti-Semitism in its history. In 1936 it told Jews not to oppose the British Union of Fascists and Oswald Moseley. In the 1970s it repeated that with the National Front.

5. If the Zionist Board of Deputies was so concerned about anti-Semitism why did it have nothing to say about the Tory alliance with fascists and anti-Semites in the European Parliament from 2009-2020?

6. Why did the Board of Deputies say nothing about the Tories alliance with anti-Semites in the European Council? Boris Johnson even sacked Lord Richard Balfe, a former Tory MEP, for objecting to sitting down with parties like the Swedish Democrats whose members parade with swastikas.

7. Why is it that the only ‘anti-racist’ demonstration that the Board has ever held was in March 2018 against Labour just before the local elections? How is it that racists like Ian Paisley Jnr and Norman Tebbit attended an ‘anti-racist’ demonstration. The Board has never called demonstrations against the National Front or British Union of Fascists.

8. The Board of Deputies is hardwired by its constitution into supporting Israel right or wrong. When Israel began using snipers to shoot unarmed demonstrators in Gaza the Board of Deputies supported them.

9.           Why, if the concern over anti-Semitism was genuine, was the same concern not extended to other forms of racism?  Luke Akehurst, who has just been elected to Labour’s NEC openly supports Israel’s snipers. Are the lives of Palestinians worth less than Jewish lives? Over 70 Palestinian children have been shot dead by these snipers yet Formby and Corbyn, despite my complaining to them, did absolutely nothing. Even The Telegraph carried a UN Report that said that Israel deliberately targeted children. Naturally Starmer or his Blairite choice as General Secretary aren’t going to expel Akehurst but it was Corbyn and Formby who did nothing.

10. Why if the concern about anti-Semitism is genuine are anti-Zionist and non-Zionist Jews being suspended and expelled? Its a funny type of campaign which targets anti-racist Jews whilst ignoring Zionists.

11. If the concern was really about anti-Semitism why did the Zionists clamour for Labour to adopt, in September 2018, the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. A definition which has been panned by former Jewish Court of Appeal Judge Stephen Sedley (Defining Anti-Semitism), Hugh Tomlinson QC, Geoffrey Robinson QC, Sir Geoffrey Bindman and even David Feldman of the Pears Institute. The IHRA is a definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ which conflates anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Its a definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ that anti-Semites are quite happy with!

12. If the campaign was really about anti-Semitism, then why has the newly elected NEC member, Gemma Bolton, been made the subject of an investigation for saying that Israel was an Apartheid State. [See Labour probes new NEC member following ‘Israel apartheid state’ posts]

13. Why is it that all those who are now targeted for expulsion under the fast track procedures that Formby and Corbyn introduced questioned about their attitudes to Israel not Jews?

On any objective analysis the campaign against ‘anti-Semitism’ was always about Israel and Zionism. In December of 2016 Corbyn voluntarily proposed the adoption of the IHRA’s 38 word definition of anti-Semitism? The idiocy of Corbyn beggars belief.

Not only did Corbyn make a rod for his own back by introducing the concept of ‘denialism’ whereby if you argue that the Labour Party doesn’t have an ‘anti-Semitism’ problem then you are ‘part of the problem’. This is the same kind of ‘logic’ that led to women and men in the Salem Witchhunt being hanged. As Elizabeth Purdy wrote:

Those who publicly questioned the guilt of a defendant were likely to be accused of witchcraft themselves.

To compound his idiocy and cowardice Corbyn opposed Open Selection at the 2018 Labour Conference. Once again he appeased his enemies. They have repaid him handsomely by threatening to resign from the Labour Party if Corbyn resumes the Labour Whip.

And if this was not enough at the 2019 Conference Corbyn and Formby lied by arguing that the proposed ‘fast track’ expulsion procedures, whereby you have no hearing and the NCC is bypassed, would only be used for ‘egregious’ cases. This has been used to expel hundreds of socialists and anti-racists.

Corbyn was the author of his own misfortune but he wasn’t the only one. McDonnell, who had previously traded on his far-left credentials was even worse than Corbyn.  He intervened when even Corbyn and his office wanted to discipline Margaret Hodge. McDonnell played the role of a scab throughout telling us to listen to the Tory Board. He said that he was ‘tearing his hair out’ about ‘anti-Semitism’. McDonnell constantly was the appeaser-in-chief.

What can we do now?

I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that the fight against the Right in the Labour Party is becoming hopeless, not least because of the capitulation of most of the formerly Corbyn left. A campaign of Open Defiance of David Evans is needed, a refusal by local parties to accept Evan’s dictats. Suspensions and expulsions without a fair hearing should not be recognised.

Campaign Group MPs would, if they even knew what the word solidarity meant, resign the whip in sympathy with Corbyn. As it is these cowards and opportunists rush like gadarene swine to distance themselves from Corbyn. When a petition in support of Corbyn was circulated only 22 Campaign Group MPs signed it. Careerists like Russell Lloyd-Moyle refused to sign it because it was ‘political’ as if the suspension of Corbyn was a humanitarian venture.

The latest letter from 28 Campaign Group MPs has not been signed by Momentum front benchers like Sam Tarry. This is disgraceful. So-called ‘left’ MPs and Tarry is a full-on Lansmanite, are prioritising their own personal careers over the fate of Corbyn and the left.

Corbyn himself should declare that he is sitting as an independent socialist MP and will stand again at the next election. Indeed it would be a good idea if he resigned and stood for re-election in a by-election. Starmer’s decision to suspend him would blow up in his face if, as is likely, Corbyn won the re-election. At that point Corbyn and those socialists left in the Campaign Group should announce that they are leaving Labour to set up a Socialist Party.

Victory can still be salvaged from defeat but unfortunately the Campaign Group and Corbyn himself is so lacking in any Marxist or class politics that they are blown hither and thither in the gusts of capitalist reaction. Of one thing we should be clear. The Labour Party has been captured by Zionist and imperialist supporters who are as dedicated supporters of neo-liberal capitalism as Boris Johnson.

Tony Greenstein