[ad_1]
TThe report on anti-Semitism in the Labor Party was more damning than expected. In addition to finding the Labor leadership guilty of political interference in the handling of complaints, the Equality and Human Rights Commission found specific examples of harassment and discrimination.
“But equally worrisome,” he added, “was the lack of leadership within the Labor Party on these issues, which is difficult to reconcile with its stated commitment to a zero-tolerance approach to anti-Semitism.”
The EHRC concluded that the Labor Party could have addressed anti-Semitism more effectively if the leadership had decided to do so.
Jeremy Corbyn’s almost instantaneous response on Facebook was much more anticipated. Much ado About Nothing. After acknowledging that there had been anti-Semitism in the Labor Party, though no more so than in society at large, and that one racist in the party was too much, the big “buts” arrived.
But he had been trying to deal with it, but was frustrated by the party bureaucracy. But the media and opponents had greatly exaggerated the problem for political advantage. In fact, it was almost exclusively due to the media falsely reporting true allegations that he had lost the last election. It was almost as if the only anti-Semitism he had ever witnessed during his time as party leader, not that he had personally witnessed any, was a slight recreational racism.
The former Labor leader could be felt simply eager to bring up Boris Johnson’s comments about letterbox-like Muslim women and other examples of conservative Islamophobia. Hell, no one had done more to fight racism in all its forms than him, but no leader could be expected to be on top of it all while creating a new socialist utopia. Give it a break.
Keir Starmer looked like a man under the cosh while giving his own press conference. This was by far his worst day since he became Labor leader. Dealing with Boris and the Conservatives was child’s play compared to this.
In a brief statement, Starmer said this was an embarrassing day for Labor. It accepted all the EHRC’s conclusions without reservation and would implement them in full. It was what the Labor leader did not say that caused him the most pain.
Because what Starmer was doing his best to avoid was acknowledging that he had served in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet and backed him in the general election last December. All of which was, well, potentially embarrassing.
He was more or less clear in regards to the accusations made against the leader of the opposition office because everyone had always known that Corbyn never consulted Starmer about anything of importance or delicacy.
But backing Corbyn to win the last election was far more problematic, because Starmer could not speak the truth and say that he had never shared his values and that the only reason he had pretended to do so was because he knew Corbyn was leading. for a great defeat.
And if all the centrist MPs had left the Labor Party to join the doomed Change UK, then no one credible would have been left to take over as leader when Corbyn was inevitably forced to resign. In which case Labor would have been out of power longer.
Those were the kinds of personal moral commitments that every successful politician had to make, but could not be expressed out loud. Especially on a day when the morality of the Labor Party itself was in the spotlight.
So Starmer simply looked anxiously into the middle distance and absorbed Labor’s existential guilt while carefully avoiding any complicity of his own.
Naturally, most of the questions focused on what Starmer planned to do with Corbyn, and these were also treated with a similar level of evasion. These were matters, he insisted, that should be dealt with after an adequate period of reflection and internal investigation.
Except they couldn’t. Corbyn’s refusal to accept the EHRC report in its entirety put an end to that, so by lunchtime Starmer had been forced to remove the whip and suspend his predecessor from the party. Had Change UK won any seats, Corbyn would now have been free to sit alongside all the MPs he had expelled from the party as independent.
In an hour or so, Corbyn had upped the ante yet again by posting on Twitter: “I am going to vigorously challenge political intervention to suspend myself,” while again insisting that there was not a racist bone in his body. He followed this with a short broadcast clip, urging Labor members not to give up on the fight for social justice and not to believe everything in the EHRC report.
This was Starmer’s worst nightmare and he could only issue another statement insisting that the party was right to suspend Corbyn, but that the investigation into his actions must be completely independent.
At a time when the Labor Party should focus on the government’s incompetent handling of the coronavirus pandemic and Brexit, the party was tearing itself apart again. Momentum and other Corbyn supporters treated their man like a saint, martyred in pursuit of pure socialism, while the rest of the party desperately tried to find a way to overcome a problem that had been aggravating for years.
Instead of ending the matter, the EHRC report had once again divided the party along tribal lines. Boris must be unable to believe his luck.
