Disclaimer: I have not voted Labour for five and a half years and haven't been a member of the party for six years. I did vote for them at virtually every other election.
Did you know there's this thing called the Forde Report, commissioned by Labour leader Keir Starmer investigating the antisemitism allegations levelled at Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party at the time. You might not have heard of this report because once it was released it got buried, by the Labour Party. The reason? It proved categorically that the allegations against the former Labour leader and the rife antisemitism were a load of hogwash and that there was ONE example of it, originating from an old tweet made by a Corbyn supporting councillor in Merseyside. Considering there are still Tories who would throw their support behind any of the previous PMs we've had, one lone dodgy bloke does not make a political party rife with racism and corruption.
To put some perspective on it, there were 36 recorded examples of Tory Islamophobia in the same period of time, suggesting that it's okay for Tories to criticise Muslims but it's not okay to criticise the right-wing Israeli government and its systematic eradication of the Palestinians? I mean, we know the world isn't a fair place, but that's a bit crazy isn't it?
Anyhow, one of the news channels I usually throw scorn towards, Al Jazeera, released a series of films called The Labour Files, which broke down and investigated the entire incident from the election of Corbyn as Labour leader to the invention of allegations, which originated inside the Labour Party and until the removal of Corbyn, which it basically claims was a centre-right coup. It named all the newspapers as being culpable in the persecution of Corbyn, but focused it's attention at The Guardian, which it accused of adding imaginary meat to the bones of a non-existent story. The Guardian currently moderates or blocks any comments that mention the Labour Files.
These documentaries also go as far to suggest that the right wing of the Labour party deliberately sabotaged their own party's election chances to get rid of Corbyn from the party and that these MPs and party workers were responsible for everything that has happened since 2017. I find it quite crazy that in 2017 when Theresa May looked like she was trying to lose that election that members of Corbyn's party were leaking lies to the press or deliberately starting arguments about non-existent issues. I can't believe these people sacrificed us because they didn't like this old bloke with a beard and an allotment. Everything said about Corbyn for years was a lie; it was a scam and an organised destruction of a decent man.
Incidentally, Starmer has announced that Jeremy Corbyn will not be standing at the next election as a Labour candidate - an election liability, apparently - and the Constitutional Labour Party (CLP) - the mob who basically did Corbyn in - are now considerably more dangerous than Corbyn could ever have been because they are forcing the party to the right, just not as right wing as the Tories. Starmer continues to drive Labour down this centre-right path in an attempt to win floating Tory voters at a time when all he needs to be is competent to win the next General Election - it makes no sense.
Now this isn't designed as a hatchet job against Labour; far from it. The last thing I want is for people to think I've been an enabler to another Tory government, but I'm not sure the Labour Party are very nice people at the moment. Wes Streeting, their Health spokesperson is more for privatisation than any Tory has ever openly said; Rachel Reeves, the Shadow Chancellor, has some ideas that Thatcher would have applauded and opinions on the economy, Europe, immigrants and other things that would have some of us frothing at the mouth if it came from a Tory's mouth.
Labour's CLP believed the only way the party would be electable again was if it swung slightly right of Tony Blair and they completely ignored the fact that in 2017 more people voted for a left wing Labour leader than anybody had ever voted before. Corbyn might have lost, but his policies still resounded with people, especially the young - he probably lost because the press had already character assassinated him; had someone young and exciting gone to the polls with his policies I'm betting we wouldn't be having this conversation now.
There are a lot of unhealthy links between top people in Starmer's Shadow Cabinet and regimes around the world we don't necessarily want to be seen aligning with and too many of their opinions seem to agree with the government rather than oppose them. I know a lot of people are saying they're saying this that and the other to win votes, when they get in they'll be far more radical and to these people I say the Tories don't do that; they don't promise one thing and deliver the diametric opposite; even if they don't fulfil any of their election pledges it's usually because of profitability or being ignored, Even if the Tories can get away with lying, the right wing media will never let you forget it if Labour did it. It doesn't matter how good they might prove to be they'll never be forgiven; it would be on every Tory election campaign leaflet for 100 years.
Reeves has said there isn't enough money to do anything really radical and it could be that instead of changing things, Labour could get into power and just hope that it coincides with an economic recovery, because the more to the right they shift the less likely they're going to actually do anything or enable something from being built, which means the decaying country in front of you will continue to decay, but at a faster rate. I must share this with you, I heard this the other day and figured it just about sums up this country in a nutshell at the moment: it would cost £14bn to fix all of the UK's roads, but the amount of time it would take would man the cost would eventually be £17bn. However, if the UK was to completely resurface every single road with more than 20% erosion and decay it would only cost £22bn. I know that's £5bn more, but the £17bn 'repairs' cost would become £22bn by the time the 'repairs' finished because there would then be the new repairs to repair. The cost would increase every year - a painting of the Forth Bridge scenario - however, spend the £22bn on resurfacing 80% of the road network, the annual repair costs nationally are in the millions not the billions for at least ten years.
If people are worried about the UK borrowing money, if that money is used to repair the country, build new schools and hospitals and drag it back to where it should be, ending years of Tory corruption, then that is money well borrowed because it will generate jobs, it will be ploughed back into the economy and the country will prosper again. Fuck your tax breaks and contracts and inflation-busting interest rate rises; create a country that needs people to work in it and if that means extending 1 to 5 year visas to Europeans or Africans or even Asylum Seekers to help do that work and pay more into local communities and wow... suddenly you have happy thriving societies where dislike and xenophobia are a small minority not the overriding majority. This is the message Labour needs to be sending out to every one.
The last seven years have effectively ended the idea of hung parliaments and rainbow alliances; with the exception of the SNP - who are an entirely different blog if I understood enough about them - no one really looks like they can offer any real opposition nationally. The Libdems are basically where the Liberal Party was in the 1970s and the United Kingdom will never elect Green MPs unless it's in places like Brighton; so we're a two party nation and one party is now like the Tory party and the other is like the BNP. What a fucking choice?
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