The opportunist left has made much of the five ‘independent’ candidates who defeated Labour opponents. Four of them stood primarily on the issue of Palestine against Labour’s Zionism; the exception was Jeremy Corbyn who did not mention Palestine at all in his vapid election leaflet. Other pro-Palestinian ‘independent’ candidates polled respectably, with Leanne Mohammed nearly unseating the odious Wes Streeting, and Jody McIntyre for Workers’ Party running Jess Phillips close in Birmingham Yardley; George Galloway was, however, defeated in Rochdale.
Yet these victories contribute little if anything to the key task of building a class conscious movement of the working class; the focus of bourgeois electoral campaigns is on individual triumph rather than collective building. Five MPs count for nothing against a Labour majority of 172; and in the absence of any broader programme the various ‘independent’ campaigns had the significance of vanity projects. Leanne Mohamad expressed the underlying individualism when, following a dispute with Redbridge Community Action Group, she declared ‘I have decided it is better I restart my campaign with supporters who really want to be with me on this journey.’ And despite Corbyn’s claim in The Guardian that ‘this election wasn’t about me. It was about our community’, it was only ever about Corbyn, as hundreds of ‘Vote Corbyn’ canvassers from various opportunist left organisations and Labour Party splinter groups flooded the constituency desperate to ensure his re-election.
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 301 August/September 2024
