It's time Corbyn took the gloves off against Starmer.

It's a question of when and not if Jeremy Corbyn is expelled as a member of the Labour Party. Starmer has already made it so Corbyn can't run as a Labour MP in the next General Election. And, now Starmer and Tony Blair’s machinations are underfoot to strip Corbyn of his Party membership. The credo of neoliberal technocrats in politics is- Denounce, Discredit Demonise and then Decapitate politically your socialist enemies. This tactic has worked because the left has forgotten how to street fight.

Corbyn's coming expulsion from the Labour Party reminds me of an event in my father's life. In 1947, as he was catholic, my Dad sought the permission of the Bishop of Hamburg to marry the woman who would become my mother.

The Bishop didn't take kindly to the request. He threatened my father with excommunication if he dared marry a "German slut" My dad replied, "I excommunicated myself a long time ago from this sodding church." I wish Corbyn would tell Labour to piss  off because under Starmer it isn't fit to represent Britain's ordinary voters.

I am sure Corbyn has his reasons that he won't vehemently attack what Labour has become and call out all the charlatan MPs who now represent the people, and the party in parliament. Being a martyr in either religion or politics had its day in the Inquisitions of Rome in the 16th century and the Show Trials of Moscow in 1937.Now it serves no purpose but to weaken the left's arguments on why it must retake control of social democratic political parties.

For the people to get their democracy back politicians must be like Sean Connery's character in Brian De Palma's film The Untouchables. It's time we bring a gun to a knife fight.

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. I am pretty certain that had my dad lived another year, he would have been tarred as an antisemite to discredit him as Jeremy had been. I remember feeling both disgust and pity for many of the people I knew in publishing, who spoke with me during the week of my dad's memorial in London in February 2019. Sadly, they had all drank the Kool aide and disavowed Corbyn as a terrible antisemite. Again, it wasn’t genuine belief driving this but herd mentality and career survival.

A Labour leaders like Corbyn valued my father's experiences growing up before the Welfare State. 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. He has already admitted he will keep most of the Tories austerity policies including the two-child cap on benefits.

Labour will form the next government. It will not be a government for the people and by the people. It will be a  government, that looks out for the interests of the entitled.  The top 15% of income earners will do just fine under a Starmer government. But refugees will be treated as dreadfully as they are under this conservative government. University Educations will be priced out of reach for working class kids like they are now with Rishi Sunak. Housing will be just as scarce and expensive and shit will flow in the rivers of England like it does now. There is nothing that separates Labour from the Tories except a fresh pair of eyes to better to decouple what is left of the Welfare State from society. It's a sad end for a nation; that had so much promise in 1948 when it created the NHS.

Thanks for reading and supporting my Substack. Your support keeps me housed and also allows me to preserve the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith. A yearly subscriptions will cover much of next month’s rent. Your subscriptions are so important to my personal survival because like so many others who struggle to keep afloat, my survival is a precarious daily undertaking. The fight to keep going was made worse- thanks to getting cancer along with lung disease and other co- morbidities which makes life more difficult to combat in these cost of living crisis times. 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. But if you can’t it all good too because I appreciate we are in the same boat. Take Care, John