THERE are some cracking MPs in Labour’s new intake.
The Socialist Campaign Group is reinforced by a rising generation of activists who are already demonstrating that opposition means more than challenging government policies and giving Tory ministers a tongue-lashing but provides a platform to stand up for working-class interests and expose the exploitation a of the capitalist system as such.
Of course, there should be a bigger contingent sitting behind Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner and there is a real storm of anger sweeping through the ranks of the “poor bloody infantry” of Labour politics as the evidence that a racist, Islamophobic and misogynist cabal of conspirators in the party machine were prepared to risk defeat to further their factional agenda.
The British electoral system has developed over generations to ensure that even the most modest demands for our world to be shaped in the interests of working people rather than the privileged elite are invariably blunted by the dead weight of parliamentary tradition and class compromise.
But at least Britain’s peculiar electoral system admits the possibility that the opposition can come to office.
But when Labour’s own organisation — which is nominally dedicated to winning elections — is run by people who act as if the defeat of their party is a more desirable objective than its victory we don’t have even the semblance of a democracy.
Labour in government has always faced more than parliamentary opposition.
MI5 forged anti-communist smears to bring down the first Labour government, and its leader defected to form a national government of capitalist stability.
The SNP switched to support to Thatcher and brought down James Callaghan’s government.
After Labour’s 1981 conference committed the party to unilateral nuclear disarmament and withdrawal from the European Economic Community, a faction of right-wing MPs split to form the SDP, leading to 18 years of Thatcherism.
The right always betrays Labour when the party threatens to challenge class collaboration.
But today such is the popular opposition to austerity and war that the right did not dare openly challenge the party’s progressive policies, while a media-promoted breakaway could attract only a handful of the most discredited and opportunist of MPs, all of whom have now vanished from politics.
Jeremy Corbyn’s principled position and the widespread support for Palestinian national rights among party members challenges the cosy centrist consensus and this is what drove a right-wing sleeper cell to create a clandestine conspiracy.
In doing so they obstructed the necessary task of tackling every actual manifestation of anti-semitism, a task that needs to be undertaken with complete transparency and resolute action.
Every breach of trust by party officials which allowed the extent and character of the problem to be exaggerated and weaponised for factional aims needs to be exposed with the same urgency.
Len McCluskey, speaking for Labour’s biggest cash contributor, Unite, has gifted Keir Starmer an opportunity he cannot refuse in calling for Labour’s report to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which brought these issues to light, to be published.
It is frivolous to pretend that these matters are not connected to a right-wing rearguard action to narrow down Labour’s appeal and discourage its radicalised membership, even to drive them from membership and active participation in party life.
To restore Labour’s good name in the eyes of these hundreds of thousands of members and affiliates is the clear responsibility of Starmer and Rayner.
How the party’s leadership, its MPs and councillors, its functionaries and funders respond to this imperative is both a measure of their commitment to fighting racism, misogyny, Islamophobia and anti-semitism and of their loyalty to the party.
