The Case Against Labour Is A Moral One

The backtracking is just gravy

When Curtice says you’re dead, it’s time to check your pulse.

I am all but alone in the Philippine jungle, muttering to the rainforest monkeys that the Tories still have a chance of stopping Keir Starmer from becoming the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. After this week’s by-election results, the macaques are cackling even more loudly and mockingly at me. Indeed, even I am mocking the widely shared Conservative cope that, with no significant leaps in the absolute numbers of Labour voters in these two contests, their vast raw swings to the Labour Party aren’t “real”; the results just mean that Labour candidates won because Conservative voters stayed at home.

A Change Is Gonna Come

With so little difference in practice, if not in rhetoric, between the way voters expect the Opposition to operate in power and the way the Conservative government is operating in power, one fact, above all others will determine the outcome of the next UK General Election: Voters want a change. It almost doesn’t matter what kind of change—though voting for the Labour Party is the obvious way to get that change in most constituencies both in Scotland and the rest of the UK.

By the time it takes place, the Conservative Party, in different ways, under different leaders, will have been in power in the UK for 14 years. On the rare occasions in day-to-day conversations when I have heard any adult who is not unhealthily obsessed with politics say anything about the upcoming election, they’ve made a reference, a direct one or an indirect one, to The Need For New Management.

It is impossible to argue with this feeling. Not merely because it isn’t in itself a logical reason to vote for the Opposition, but also because I can’t deny that extended incumbency tends to make governments complacent and democracies stagnant.

Unfortunately, I can’t find the paper that I read some years back about how, in most democracies, this psychological tendency—the need for longer-lived democratically elected governments to be replaced—has a real, quantifiable effect on election outcomes; but this paper does discuss “incumbency fatigue” in US Presidential elections and make reference to other work that addresses such effects.

Bad Week

Even sympathetic media reporters admitted that the days leading up to these by-elections had been bad ones for the Labour leader. After much speculation/leaking, he publicly abandoned the party’s £28bn-per-annum commitment to “green investment”. After days of dithering, he publicly abandoned his initial support for Labour’s candidate in the Rochdale by-election Azhar Ali, following Ali’s having been caught claiming Israel had staged Hamas’s October 7th pogrom of Jews. Ali had also ranted about “people in the media from certain Jewish quarters”.

This should have been a campaign photo of Azhar Ali meeting Shadow International Development Secretary Lisa Nandy, the day after revelations about his conspiracist, victim-blaming ranting about Israel became public; but, by the time I googled it, the Labour Party wasn’t sending out senior MPs to back him, so it had been deleted.

Then, things got worse: another Labour Parliamentary candidate (and former MP) had been caught referring repeatedly to “fucking Israel” and telling Ali at the same meeting that Britons who signed up for the Israeli Defence Force “should be locked up”.

Unlike in the Ali case, when several members of Labour’s front bench initially made media appearances to claim that it was sufficient that Ali had apologised¹, Starmer suspended Jones immediately. There are rumours that other elected Labour representatives were either present when these statements were made or have themselves been recorded saying similar things, and the other journalists are coming for them.

But none of this, widely reported in the media and fresh in the minds of voters, who by turning out at low-turnout votes proved themselves to be more interested than most in politics, seemed to do much damage to Labour’s fortunes—in two constituencies where communal issues are not thought to be significant.

Winning And Losing; Right And Wrong

So, after proving they can do it on a wet Wednesday² in Wellingborough with their team captain crocked, and after months of twenty-point polling leads over the Conservatives, the consensus is now that Labour is on its way to a comfy Parliamentary majority. All that’s left for (the many) sympathetic political commentators is to bemoan the next Premier’s lack of vision:

Labour Is An Ultra-Low Ambition Zone [New Statesman]

“[T]his Labour frontbench is neither as dazzling nor potentially transformative as that of the first Blair government” [Forbes]

If You Win By Saying Almost Nothing, What Happens When You Take Power? [The Guardian]

I have a long-fermenting substack in my queue that dismisses the importance of political “visions” and other seminar-room abstractions; but, whether or not voters are that fussed about them, there’s a more fundamental issue here that fans of political visions have to face:

Any overarching political framework is nothing without a moral underpinning. The candidacy of any campaigning politician standing up for an idealistic vision won’t be able to bear its weight if his integrity is seen to fall short, a lesson Labour learned the hard way when that moral colossus Boris Johnson crushed Jeremy Corbyn at the last General Election.

The Opening Notes Set The Key

Click through to watch video of Starmer tell us how tough and decisive he’s been and remember how another Labour leader told us how tough [sorry “touss”] he’d been—when he’d betrayed the Syrian people

Prigs like me date our split from Labour back to Ed Miliband’s choice of narrow party political advantage over action against Assad’s war crimes, a betrayal of the people of Syria that continues to shame the west to this day, and has led to an ongoing slaughter that now only exists for The Good People to provide a growing archive of images of atrocities that they can re-label as having taken place in Gaza last week³.

Although I had resigned from the party long beforehand, Labour’s election of Jeremy Corbyn as its leader cut the final link this particular prig had with the party I had supported all of my life—even under Michael Foot, a man to Corbyn’s Left, whose political integrity was such that Corbyn remains unfit to tie Foot’s laces. In contrast, I was a Eustonite and Corbyn was former Chair of Stop The War, an (if not the) organisation that, for me, embodied everything wrong with the crank Left: its reflex anti-westernism, its indulgence of—support for!—terrorism, its absence of international workers’ solidarity, its cult-like mentality, its personal nastiness, and—perhaps most of all—its antisemitism.

Corbyn brought “Stop” The War “comrades” with him to his office as Leader Of The Opposition and I burned my bridges.

Starmer, who started his political life on the communist Left, embraced Corbynism. But, then, as so often with Starmer and his principled positions, he told the world that he had turned away from it:

“The problem is, however, that by conceding that the Corbyn years were mired in moral squalor, and a politics he finds anathema, it raises serious questions about the credibility — and perhaps even the character — of Keir Starmer. Whilst the Labour leader puts clear water between him and his predecessor, he is still the person who served under him as Shadow Brexit Secretary for four years. He remained on his frontbench in that period when it was clear to all what Corbyn stood for. When it was discovered that Corbyn supported an antisemitic mural depicting hook-nosed Jewish bankers, Starmer did not resign. When the Panorama documentary on antisemitism within the Labour Party came out, Starmer stayed put. The very fact that the party was even being investigated by the EHRC did not dislodge Starmer from his place.”

Starmer was not alone. Save for a scattering of resignations, whatever their claimed “fighting behind the scenes”, many (most?) of Labour’s MPs were happy to give a standing ovation to Jeremy Corbyn when they thought he was less of an electoral liability than they had feared. It was only when he became a disaster that they became reacquainted with their consciences, and remembered that they had had their doubts about Corbyn all along.

Technical Recession

But, when Keir Starmer took over leadership of the Labour Party from the man that Labour MPs and candidates and Starmer had stood alongside and campaigned for UK citizens to make the nation’s leader—while the party descended into such disrepute that it was investigated for racism by the statutory body set up by a Labour government—that man, Jeremy Corbyn, was still in the Parliamentary Labour Party.

With Corbyn still in place, a fresh start would be impossible; he would be a focus for dissent and a standing indictment. How to remove the ghost at the feast? In a way beloved of lawyers: on a technicality. Do not let how boring⁴ this story is distract you from how grave its implications are:

Episode I: The Phantom Menace

First, the Labour Party’s disciplinary unit suspended Jeremy Corbyn from the party. Then, he could no longer hold the party whip in Parliament. Because this news was told to the world by Keir Starmer, at a press conference about the ECHR report on Labour antisemitism, immediately after the decision, it was widely seen as Starmer “sacking Corbyn for Labour antisemitism”. This isn’t what happened.

Corbyn was suspended by the disciplinary unit, not Starmer, because he was deemed to have “minimised” the extent of Labour antisemitism when he responded to that report in this way:

“Anyone claiming there is no antisemitism in the Labour Party is wrong. Of course there is, as there is throughout society, and sometimes it is voiced by people who think of themselves as on the left.

“Jewish members of our party and the wider community were right to expect us to deal with it, and I regret that it took longer to deliver that change than it should.

“One antisemite is one too many, but the scale of the problem was also dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media. That combination hurt Jewish people and must never be repeated.”

Read Corbyn’s words, like I did. I found myself in the uncomfortable position of having to concede that a man I hold in comprehensive contempt had made an arguable point—one I disagreed with, but one that I couldn’t in good faith spin as inherently antisemitic, let along a sacking offence.

Episode II: Attack Of The Clones

Then, within weeks of his suspension, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour membership was restored. Unlike the question of Corbyn’s membership, the question of the party whip was in Starmer’s hands. At the time of Corbyn’s reinstatement, no decision had been made about it. But, the next day, Starmer confirmed that the whip would remain withdrawn; Corbyn would not be permitted to be a member of the Parliamentary Labour Party.

Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith

Starmer had hinted that Corbyn might regain the whip if he apologised for his words. Then, he hinted that this would be conditional upon Corbyn rejecting Stop The War’s agenda, (an agenda that, of course, Starmer himself had had little problem with for years). Despite the efforts (and meeting votes) of his local party, Corbyn will likely stand as an independent at the General Election.

So?

What is the point of all my procedural pedantry? I recount the history in detail because, alongside the latest drama in Rochdale, it exposes most aspects of one common narrative as false:

No, Starmer did not “immediately sack Corbyn for allowing (indulging?) antisemitism when Corbyn was leader of the Labour Party”. No, Starmer did not “draw a line under the issue”.

Because Starmer never had to face down Corbyn over Labour antisemitism itself—only temporarily displace him over the meta-issue of perception of the problem—and because Starmer removed the whip from Corbyn for something Corbyn did after handing over to Starmer, Starmer has never had to engage formally and publicly with his own complicity during the time when Corbyn was leader of the party and Starmer “back[ed] him 100%”.

Indeed, Starmer took the extraordinary position that terrible things had happened while his former boss had been in charge, but implied that there were still circumstances under which he would welcome Grandpa Terrible Things back into the family.

This spirit lives on. This week gone, we heard various senior Labour figures tell us what a nice man Azhar Ali was, how sorry he was, and how the problem of this unfortunate leak of an official Labour candidate’s sincerely held views could be dealt with by giving Ali time to “rebuild trust” with (that famously mono-opinioned entity) “the Jewish community”.

This is, at very best, moral idiocy. But, we’re living through one of the very worst times for British Jews, it’s hard to bid it any higher than disgraceful. Since Hamas’s openly antisemitic, openly murderous pogrom, UK Jews have become the No.1 target for racial hatred in the country.

Britain’s Jews Aren’t Safe

Boggle at the horror of this: Because Jews in another country were victims of a racist slaughter of innocents, Jews in this country have become the biggest per-capita victims of racist attacks.

But, to our media classes, otherwise so quick to righteous outrage at the slightest sin against the gods of multiculturalism, it’s no biggie. Certainly not big enough for even the word “Jew” or “Jewish” to make the (extensive widescreen desktop version of) the front page of the BBC News Website—even as the BBC wrestles with the problem of the views of a contestant on one of its own reality shows.

Observe that, within a certain stratum of society⁵, unlike anti-black racism, antisemitism isn’t something that’s inherent to an individual—a person either is or isn’t a racist—that antisemitism isn’t systemic in society, but instead the kind of stain that can be rinsed off with some “specialist sensitivity training”.

That’s where the Labour Party under Keir Starmer is now: It’s “been on a sensitivity course”. It’s made the right noises to keep (E)HR(C) happy. The underlying problem persists; and everyone from the leader down is prepared to make excuses for it—right up to the point at which the the media can’t be fooled any more⁶; but, because the voters want a change and Labour aren’t The Tories, no one really cares. Except prigs like me. And the Jews⁷.

But there aren’t many Jews registered to vote in the UK. Under a Starmer government, full of Ministers and MPs who have made and continue to make the same excuses as Starmer, there’ll be even fewer Jews here. That alone is reason enough why no decent person should vote for him or his party.

1. Ironically, sending fellow Cabinet members out to defend a morally questionable political choice, only to later pull the rug out from under their feet, was a recurring pattern of Boris Johnson’s leadership of the Conservative Party.

2. Yes, I know it was a Thursday.

3. At the time of that vote, Starmer wasn’t yet an MP, but has voted against UK intervention in Syria since.

4. Boring you out of your moral mind is another favourite lawyerly gambit.

5. Perhaps because it’s been quoted by a national newspaper journalist without the rest of the essay, or perhaps because people are choosing to misunderstand it, I am now adding this footnote to this paragraph to point out—even more explicitly than I already did in the text itself—that I am not expressing an opinion on whether or not being racist is an inherent character trait; I am pointing out how telling it is that some people believe that's true of one kind of racism, but not true of another.

6. This is always too late.

7. That bit where I refer to myself repeatedly as a “prig”? That’s irony. This bit where I refer to what my betters cringingly call “the Jewish community”—as if they need a euphemism—as “the Jews”? That’s irony as well. Choosing to refer to this ad hoc alliance as “The prigs and the Jews” is “the saying of one thing in the voice of the other”: that is, irony. Any trace of humour washes out when you explain it, but this is one price of living in The Age Of Stupid.