Corbyn's Leadership was the Labour Party's Prague Spring & it ended the same with a Purge.

I woke up angry today because I knew this was the day that Keir Starmer was throwing the last shovel full of dirt on the possibility Corbyn could run as a Labour MP in the next General Election. To me, Corbyn's demise by Starmer, who is the hand of Tony Blair, is an echo of how politically Prague Spring ended in 1968. Dubcek a man that wanted to change the politics of a rigid system was destroyed, vilified, humiliated, mocked, stripped of power and then sent to work in a forest station. Dubcek was delegitimised whilst the corruption of that system was glorified. Now doesn't that sound familiar?

The destruction of Corbyn was a stitch-up by both the entitled in Labour and the entitled in the news media. The moment Corbyn became leader was the moment he had a target on his back. He was a political dead man walking; it was just that none of us who supported him understood that. We got caught up in the enthusiasm and what we perceived was a real possibility that shortly socialism was returning to Britain.

But you can't revolutionise politics when your party's apparatus is still controlled by people who are protecting the interests of the status quo in a neoliberal society.

There was this naïve hope that Corbyn could win an election on a surge of enthusiasm for a return to common-sense socialism. But when the majority of your caucus is dead set against that change because their success personally and professionally came from the Britain Tony Blair built that had monetised state infrastructure and created the housing bubble, you are going to lose. We lost, time and again, because, like Vegas, the owners always win, and in Britain, its owners are the 1%.

A myth was created by Blair's supporters in Labour and in the Press that Corbyn lost the EU referendum rather than the true cause; decades of neoliberalism and a racist news media. Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, and Cameron had destroyed industrial regions of the nation and replaced good-paying jobs with call centre employment. But Corbyn was blamed for Brexit on corporate news media and social media ad infinitum until it became a reality for people who don't live and breathe politics because they have lives to live.

After the EU referendum- the coup came, and Owen Smith tried to convince my dad to join his rebel army of former junior executives to be part of his putsch against socialism. My dad told them to get stuffed. But others didn't. You can't blame careerists for being careerists, and they feared their future would be short under a Corbyn government.

Corbyn's followers were naïve, as was Corbyn when they believed Labour could be transformed from within without purging it of everyone tied to Blair, the Iraq war and neoliberalism. Corbyn's enemies within the party had allies in the press who published their leaks as gospel. Much of the commentariat fell obediently into the anti-Corbyn line because no one does group think like people who appear on the news media.

Much of my father's writing for newspapers dried up when he didn't support the coup or the denunciations against Corbyn. Perhaps it was just a coincidence that as mainstream journalism went anti-Corbyn, my dad's star as a commentator on politics in newspapers began to wane. I won't ever know.

What I know is a Labour leader like Corbyn valued my father's experiences before the Welfare State, whereas Keir Starmer does not. That should make you fearful of what a Starmer government has in store for people not protected by their wealth or skill sets.

My father made the greatest speech in the 21st century at the Labour Party conference in 2014 for preserving public health care, free at the point of use. But nine years later, Labour under Keir Starmer openly talks about the privatisation of sections of the NHS as if Britain was a family strapped for cash that must rent out rooms in its house to make the mortgage.

There is a good chance that Labour will form the next government. It will not be a government for the people and by the people. It will be a competent government, but it will be running the shop for the same people the Tories ran the shop for the 1%. The top 15% of income earners will also do just fine with this Labour government. Everyone else, however, will be treated the way Macron in France treats those who don't want to work longer before they get their pensions. It's a sad end for a nation; that had so much promise in 1948 when it created the NHS.

As always, thank you for reading because I really need your help this month. Your subscriptions to Harry’s Last Stand keep the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith alive and me housed. This month is proving to be real scramble to get next months together. So if you can join with a paid subscription which is just 3.50 a month or a yearly subscription or a gift subscription. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. Take Care, John