CORBYN'S EXCLUSION - LOOKING AT THINGS THE OTHER WAY
In the light of the decision to ban Corbyn, knowing how many people on here feel about Labour under Starmer and disagree with my approach, I am going to describe what I think would happen if all of us on the left, locally and nationally, turned our back on Labour as from this afternoon and refused to support them under any circumstances while Starmer was leader and the current administration in place.
Firstly, locally. All our councillors would become independents, with no support network, and Labour nationally would somehow cobble together a slate for our local elections in May. There would obviously be complete chaos, and each ward election would be different depending on the personal following of the councillor involved, but in an area where the Tories have always traditionally been strong the split in the vote would mean that they would win back control easily in West Sussex and resume their decades-long fiefdom of lazy, callous complacency and self serving. All the hard work, all the help for the poor and vulnerable, all the plans for the future would have been for nothing.
Nationally there would doubtless be some great individual results - especially in areas where Greens were a strong alternative force - but in most area the split would invariably favour the Tories and they would gain control of councils all over the place.
At the next election we would have had time to set up an alternative mass party. Have no doubt, in terms of activists it would be a mass party, galvanising countless people - especially young people - who were inspired by the vision which Corbyn had offered them. It would obviously be lambasted by the right wing media, and one of the highlights could be a serious rerun of Wapping both on the streets and online. There would be direct action all over the place. The next election would be chaotic, inspiring, mad, cathartic.......and utterly, utterly disastrous for the poor, sick and vulnerable in the UK.
'Red Labour' (let's call it/us that) would gain far more support than any previous radical left UK electoral movement and would in my opinion end up with around 10% of the vote. Under FPTP the split in the vote with Starmer Labour would, I predict, give the Tories over 400 seats with around 38% of the vote.
Many on the radical Left would hail 10% for a radical left party as a triumph. Under PR, it would be. It would be brilliant. But under FPTP it would be exactly the opposite. It would be a disaster for everyone whose personal circumstances meant that they couldn't support themselves through another 5 years of brutal, heartless, unfettered Tory rule. And telling them 'Starmer Labour would have been no different' would be inviting a punch on the nose.
It would be vastly more exciting, we'd all feel as we did in 2017 only more so...but it would be self indulgence on a scale to make the Bullingdon Club look like abstemious ascetics. And the poor and sick and vulnerable, in whose name we were claiming to speak, would hate our guts and in some cases head off to the far Right. It wouldn't be Starmer pushing them there. It would be us.
I've done gigs for a radical left party in Germany (Die Linke) under PR. I know what it feels like, and it's wonderful. At general elections, as long as you get 5% of the vote - or 3 direct mandates - you get into parliament. At local elections, the sky's the limit. (Die Linke is seriously split at the moment, which is what my recent 'Wagenknecht' single on Spotify is about, but that's another story..)
Of course, those who have turned their back on Labour are welcome to give an alternative scenario. On this crucial day I wanted to put this out there with the core message: until we have PR, this is what we've got, and if helping others is what we're about (it is for me, and for Robina) we have to work with it.
