Jeremy Corbyn

A debate on Corbyn, Israel and left antisemitism

This comment on our debate is from Alan Davies of Socialist Resistance. More debate on the right of return here. “Defend Corbyn against the AWL” Just as the latest round of witch hunting antisemitism allegations against Jeremy Corbyn has reached its crescendo something particularly vile has emerged from the woodwork – a 2,400-word open letter to Corbyn from Sean Matgamna of the AWL (Alliance for Workers’ Liberty), an organisation claiming to be on the radical left, arguing that Corbyn is guilty as charged. The AWL has a proud thirty-year record of supporting Zionism and attacking anti-Zionist...

Our debate with Jeremy Corbyn on Nicaragua, 1983

Our criticism of Jeremy Corbyn's politics is not of yesterday. From 1978, and through the early 1980s, Jeremy Corbyn wrote frequently for Socialist Organiser , a forerunner of Solidarity . The picture above shows him on the platform (to the right) at a conference organised by Socialist Organiser in September 1983, the same month as the political exchange of opinions reprinted below. The exchange was on Nicaragua, where in 1979 the old US-backed dictatorship had been overthrown by the left-wing, Cuba-oriented Sandinista movement. Many on the left besides Jeremy Corbyn were uncritical...

Morning Star still in knots over Brexit

After a still unexplained period of silence on Brexit following the 29 January parliamentary votes on the subject, the Morning Star has found its pro-Brexit voice again. Mind you, there’s been no repetition of its editorial support for no deal and the attractions of trading on WTO terms. Presumably that policy is just a little embarrassing for a publication that prides itself upon its unwavering support for Jeremy Corbyn, whose only consistent policy on Brexit is opposition to no deal. No, rather than tell us what it’s for (i.e. no deal), the Star prefers to tell us what it’s against. And it’s...

Gang of Seven, Brexit and antisemitism

Seven right-wing Labour MPs quit on Monday 18 February. They did not join another party or form a new one. They did not call on their rank-and-file supporters within Labour to quit. Two Tory MPs sceptical about Brexit, Nick Boles and Sarah Wollaston, face deselection by their local Tory parties in coming weeks, and a Government minister has openly said that the hard-right Tory MPs “are not Conservatives” and should join the new “Brexit party” being launched by former Ukip leader Nigel Farage. The seven have chosen the bland name “Independent Group” for themselves, surely to maximise their...

For Labour! Against Brexit!

Labour right-wingers have chosen this moment to help out the hard-pressed Tory government. They have turned up the volume on the murmured speculations about a right-wing split from Labour just as the Tory impasse worsens. Labour and trade union activists want unity to maximise the chances of using the Tories’ thrashing-round to oust them from office, to force an early general election, and to get a new public vote to stop Brexit. To get a solid political basis on which to build that unity, we need to shift the Labour leadership, as well as rebuffing the right-wing Labour split-talkers. Labour...

Unite should call its leader to account

Four union leaders, including Len McCluskey of Unite, had one-on-one talks with the Prime Minister in Downing Street late in January. According to usually well-informed sources like Robert Peston and the Financial Times, McCluskey played a key role. McCluskey sought commitments from May that would give some Labour MPs an excuse to back the government in the next “meaningful vote” on Brexit. That could allow Brexit to proceed without Jeremy Corbyn being held responsible by Labour’s overwhelmingly anti-Brexit rank and file. “The unions are at war given Unite’s attempt at a side deal,” an unnamed...

Brexit can still be stopped

Brexit can still stopped. The first step, though, is to halt an emerging mood of retreat among anti-Brexit people. “People switch off from responding to every depressing political twist and turn of Brexit”, one activist wrote to us this week. Another: “people in my local [anti-Brexit] group feel down after Jeremy Corbyn’s responses on 28 and 29 January”. Yet others have said: “Face facts. Brexit is going to go through. No amount of agitation now will make much difference. The task now is to prepare the left for after Brexit”. Versions of the same sentiment appear among the not-politically...

Brexit and unreason

Steve Richards is a routine political pundit, probably (in his 2017 book The Rise of the Outsiders, for example) a bit less hostile to Jeremy Corbyn than most of his type. In the Financial Times on 1 February, however, he was acid about Corbyn, and with some justice. “Like Mrs May, [Jeremy Corbyn] asserts rather than explains, repeatedly declaring that he supports ‘a customs union’, ‘a close alignment with the single market’ and ‘workers’ rights’. Why is this his position? What does he mean by these terms?” In some media interviews Corbyn may have no choice but to limit himself to summary...

Rallying Labour for migrant rights and against Brexit

Fifty Labour activists from ten boroughs across London attended a 4 February emergency meeting in Lewisham to discuss the Labour Party’s stance on migrants’ rights. The meeting was called by Labour for a Socialist Europe, Labour Campaign for Free Movement and Another Europe is Possible, in cooperation with local left activists, in response to Labour’s fiasco over the Tory Immigration Bill. In Parliament on 28 January, the Labour front bench at first recommended abstention on the Tory bill. It swung to voting against only under pressure and at the last minute. The meeting heard speeches from...

Morning Star goes for "no deal"

Conspiracy theories are on the rise in politics these days. Traditionally conspiracism has tended to be associated with the right but – increasingly in the UK – it’s coming to characterise sections of the left. Conspiracists see the world in terms of shadowy groups of individuals controlling finance, the media and institutions. Insofar as they oppose capitalism, it’s not through a critique of basic social relations: no, it’s because sinister forces (often characterised as finance capital or just “the bankers”) are in control. This kind of thinking has nothing to do with Marxism even when it...

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