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The stakes are very high in the battle over Corbyn’s suspension

DIANE ABBOTT argues that the attack is not only on one man, but on ‘Corbynism’ itself — a system that believes in nationalised services and social justice

TONY BENN always used to say quite rightly that politics is not about personalities, it is about issues.

Although Jeremy Corbyn has been a friend and political ally for decades, I oppose his suspension from the Labour Party on political grounds.

Those political issues should be of the utmost concern to everyone in the Labour Party, across the labour movement and to the tens of millions of people in this country, the majority of the population, whose only serious hope of a better life is largely dependent on the election of a Labour government.

It is a cliche in British politics that divided parties do not win elections. But, like many cliches, it achieves that status because it holds a strong element of truth.

To take the two most recent examples, Labour was divided in 2019 because too many people, on both sides of the argument, put the Brexit issue ahead of ending austerity, promoting peace and tackling racism through the election of a Corbyn-led Labour government.

Austerity within the EU or economic damage outside it was always Hobson’s choice, but unfortunately too many people in Labour got their priorities wrong.

In the 2017 election, the Tory Party was in open warfare, again on the issue of Brexit. The ERG was acting like a party within a party, and they publicly poured contempt on a Tory prime minister as too weak, even though she was principally responsible for the Windrush scandal and the “Go Home” vans. The Tories lost their majority in 2017, and came within a whisker of losing office outright.

So, the truism has proven to be true. This matters. Everyone’s hopes and plans about what the next Labour government should do when it is next in office are beside the point if we fail to win the next election.

The labour movement as a whole and its left in particular must take the issue of power seriously. Otherwise, we are effectively chatting about what we would like to see in the 2029 manifesto.

That is what is so damaging about the suspension of Corbyn.

It is not primarily about how badly one person has been treated. It is not even mainly about what a threat this represents to the left as a whole.

The real issue is the damage this will do to the needs and hopes of all the millions of people who rely on us.

Who knows what Britain in 2029 will look like, after nearly two decades of vicious Tory rule?

There should also be no illusions about the viciousness of that rule.

They have presided over a shambolic, profit-driven response to the worst public health crisis for a century. We have one of the worst per capita death tolls in the world and the situation is clearly deteriorating rapidly. ICU units are filling up.

The recent data shows the government has let the virus run out of control. The complex tier system is almost designed to antagonise people against real lockdown measures, while providing no effective barrier to the spread of the virus at all.

The tier system will not work, as Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty has made clear. We need a lockdown and a vastly improved system of track and trace to combat new cases as they arise, after the virus has been suppressed.

The first step to achieving that is to nationalise the system, bringing it under combined NHS and local authority control. We should also stop handing over billions to Serco, Deloitte and others, which has proved a colossal waste of money. There would then be plenty of money for free school meals and other necessities.

At the same time, and because of this, they are also presiding over the worst economic crisis for 90 years.

This government is forced into a U-turn on furlough payments because without them millions would have been made jobless over a very short period.

But there is no reason to cheer a government which is cutting wages by 28 per cent, which has effectively overridden legislation on minimum wages and which is refusing to provide meals to hungry children.

Across the board wages are being cut, services are being cut and in the next financial year universal credit will be cut. This is an all-round assault on living standards for workers and the poor.

Government obstinacy on the issue of free school meals is totemic for them. They are refusing to do another of their U-turns because, for them, this might be the thin end of the wedge and they will have to give way on many other issues. There should be no let-up in this campaign.

This is the character of this government.

“Corbynism” means rejecting all these policies, as well as rejecting being a lapdog for the US, rejecting dog whistle policies that are designed to distract from the effects of government policies.

That is why maintaining and building on this movement is so important.

The alternative to Corbynism is very clear. It can be seen in the fortunes of many of the other social democratic and socialist parties across Europe.

In 2017 there were a number of European general elections, not just in Britain. Corbyn’s Labour stood on platform of opposing austerity with state-led investment, peace instead of endless wars, equality not discrimination.

Unfortunately, Labour’s sister parties in those elections had long since conceded ground to austerity, war, racism and Islamophobia. Yet Corbyn got more votes than the Dutch Labour Party, the French Socialists and the German SPD combined in 2017.

Those who believe that our polling in the crushing defeat of 2019 is a floor below which we cannot go are mistaken. We are frequently below that 32 per cent in polls now. And the Dutch, German and French sister parties are all currently polling in the mid- to low teens. These were all once mighty parties of government. We can follow them.

So the stakes are very high in the fight over this suspension, and not just for my good friend Corbyn.

Diane Abbott is MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington. She writes this column fortnightly.

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