Wednesday 29 June 2016

The Nation's Interest

172 British Labour Party MPs have called for Jeremy Corbyn to resign on the grounds that he did not do enough to ensure LP members voted to remain in the EU.  

So, not what he did do, but what he failed to do, i.e. the reason the country is in a total shambles and the self-proclaimed centre has been left with egg on its face and people in Europe are laughing at them, is all down to him. 

The 172 are backed by the likes of Cameron - that vile, duplicitous example of over privileged windbaggery - who also says it is 'in the nation's interest for Corbyn to go. 

Like he has any idea whatsoever about what is in the nation's interest.

Some of those 172 Labour MPS will be responding to peer pressure; some will want to be on the winning side; some will personally dislike Corbyn; some will have been bought off with promises of future political or other benefits; some will be embarrassed by having a bike riding, bearded, principled socialist as their leader, and some will be calculating ideologues who want to drag the party firmly back to the political centre, aka the right.

They all overtly or tacitly support a political system in which two major rightwing parties compete against each other - creating circuses, cults of personality and promoting tribal loyalties to con the electorate into believing they have real political choice. In truth that political system is about ensuring conditions in which global corporate capitalism can operate feely and without having to adjust itself to changes in political direction every 3 to 5 years. 

They knew Corbyn was between a rock and a hard place on Brexit - that like any principled and thinking person he has serious reservations about the EU and its role as a hand servant of neo-liberalism, US imperialism and militarism, and that he sees free movement of labour as being about the ability of business to access cheap labour and to undermine organised labour in more subtle ways than the sledgehammer approach of the likes of Thatcher.

Like any politician, Corbyn has had to compromise. He swallowed his personal beliefs and he stood the party line of remain in the EU and try to negotiate a better deal for Britain. He unconditionally deplored the vile racist and xenophobic lies of the leaders of the Leave campaign and its many supporters in the Tory Party and the media. He stood as firm to his principles as it possible for a mainstream politician and leader of a deeply divided party could. And anyone who thinks that is easy has never been involved in politics. 

Had the Remain camp won they'd probably still have used Brexit as a stick to beat him with but, perhaps by having been so embarrassed by their unexpected defeat, they've added tones of hysteria and unrestrained vitriol to their calls for him to go. 

That they can turn away from attacking the Tories who stage managed this cruelly divisive fiasco and who are in total disarray, and choose instead to publicly eviscerate their democratically elected leader is almost beyond comprehension. 

BBC Newsnight reported that 45 of the 50 Labour Party constituency chairs they contacted support Corbyn and are furious with the revolting MPs.  Clearly there is a chasm between the grass roots of the Labour Party and the MPs it has selected.  

If I was a member of the LP in Britain I would struggle to stay if Corbyn is ousted. I would be torn between the need to fight to retain the name, the history and the resources of the Labour party and the need to send a message to the Labour light/right that more than ever, there needs to be a strong, united, principled opposition to the short termist, profligate, war mongering, self serving forces which currently are spinning the world into an uncontrollable nose dive. 

Over the top? No. Not even close to the top. In the context of the world as it is today and what it will become unless radical changes are made now, the top is so up there we can't even see it.

More than ever before in their ignoble history,  the Blairites and the spineless fellow travellers who have attached their self interest to the Blairite bandwagon have demonstrated they are Bogus Labour Advancing Indefensible Rightwing Ideology To Eliminate Socialism. 

It's time they did the decent thing and resigned - in the interests of the nation.



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