In the lead-up to the Tory government’s 3 March Budget when newspaper reports suggested Chancellor Sunak might wish to raise the rate of corporation tax, Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds argued that ‘now was not the time’ to raise any taxes, a stance echoed by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer. ‘Now was not the time’ in September 2020 to oppose the Overseas Operations Bill at its second reading in the House of Commons. This would exempt British armed forces personnel from prosecution under the European Convention on Human Rights. Ten United Nations human rights special rapporteurs said the Bill would violate the ‘UK’s obligations under international humanitarian law, human rights law and international criminal law’. This was not enough to move Starmer. And nor was he prepared to oppose the Covert Human Intelligence Sources Bill when it came before Parliament in 2020 even though it would allow senior police officers to grant immunity to undercover agents whatever crimes they committed. Starmer insisted the Labour MPs abstain on its second and third readings; it was approved with tacit Labour support.
On 12 March, it was about to get worse. Starmer had decided that Labour would not oppose the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill when it came before Parliament on 16 March. The fact that it was (and is) the most draconian assault on the right to protest was quite irrelevant. Starmer needs to win votes from the most reactionary sections of the working class if Labour is to assemble an electoral coalition sufficient to defeat the Tories at the next general election, and he is prepared to pander to their most reactionary prejudices. In February 2021, an internal strategy document recommended that ‘The use of the [Union] flag, veterans, dressing smartly at the war memorial etc give voters a sense of authentic values alignment.’ Senior Labour Party officials demanded: ‘Please prioritise the Union Jack header images, not the plain red ones.’ However the 13 March Met police assault on the Sarah Everard vigil scuppered Starmer’s plans to appear on the side of law and order, so that he had no choice but to oppose Home Secretary Priti Patel’s Bill. However, with his spirit of ‘constructive engagement’, he also declared that Commissioner Cressida Dick should not resign over the debacle.
The ‘constructive engagement’ that Starmer offered the Tory government when he became Labour leader of course does not extend to the Labour Party membership, in particular to the Labour left. However, he has the measure of pro-Corbyn supporters; he knows that no matter how hard he kicks them, they will not abandon Labour. Dozens of Constituency Labour Party officers have been suspended or expelled while Corbyn himself, still denied the Labour whip, busies himself with his Peace and Justice diversion, a signal that he neither wishes to challenge the leader nor to break away and lead the formation of a new social democratic party. The plethora of Labour left organisations and ginger groups may unite in a chorus of complaint about the party’s direction, but they have not the slightest intention of leaving Labour either.
And so Starmer just kicks harder. Six of the eight members of the Anti-Semitism Advisory Board, newly set up to comply with the report from the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, are prominent Zionists. They include Adrian Cohen from the Jewish Leadership Council, Natascha Engel from the Anti-Semitism Policy Trust and Mark Gardner, CEO of the Community Security Trust. And then there are the rottweilers who led the onslaught on Corbyn’s alleged facilitation of anti-Semitism: Mike Katz, chair of the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM), Marie van der Zyl, the right-wing President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and, inevitably, Zionist MP Margaret Hodge. Their job will be to devise guidelines and codes of conduct to root out any pro-Palestinian sympathy among Labour Party members, and in particular to define the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement as inherently anti-Semitic and therefore render any Labour supporter of BDS liable for expulsion. Within the Labour Party head office they will have Assaf Kaplan, a former Israeli military intelligence officer to support their work as a manager of Labour’s social media. The Zionists also hope to get Izzy Lenga, a JLM officer, elected to Labour’s National Women’s Committee later this year; Electronic Intifada has posted a video and photographs of Lenga training with the Israeli army. She appeared as an anonymous grassroots Labour Party member with her associate Ella Rose from the JLM in the infamous 2019 Panorama programme ‘Is Labour anti-Semitic?’.
People who want to take political action, who want to resist the coming onslaught on working class conditions, are appalled by Starmer and will not go near a Starmer-led Labour Party. His ‘constructive engagement’ with the most reactionary Tory government since the Second World War is a duplicitous way of saying now is not the time for opposition at precisely the time when opposition is critical. This will not stop the Labour left and its myriad of organisations from pursuing the illusion that somehow historically Labour has been a vehicle for working class interests, and that it can return to these mythical roots in the future. We have to be clear: it is a reactionary fantasy whose sole purpose is to distract people from building a real movement against the Tories and the system they defend. Socialists must oppose it.
Robert Clough
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 281 April/May 2021
