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Days after being involved in a minor car accident that left his car dented and scratched and a Deliveroo rider with an injured arm, Sir Keir Starmer is on a collision course with the Labor left.
But while his car can be repaired and the rider’s arm will quickly recover, the Labor leader now faces a long and bloody battle with his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn and his left-wing allies.
Did Sir Keir plan for this outcome all the time? Were you looking for an opportunity to take on the left, like Neil Kinnock crushing the Militant or Tony Blair abolishing Clause 4 of the Labor Party constitution?
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Well not exactly. But it is claimed that Sir Keir had decided in advance his course of action if Mr. Corbyn refused in his answer to the equality watch report to show remorse and apologize for the anti-Semitism debacle.
For his part, Mr. Corbyn was certainly taken by surprise by the decision to suspend him from the game and withdraw the whip.
“What!” he exclaimed when a television crew told him the news shortly after recording a television interview.
Earlier this year, Sir Keir fired his pro-Corbyn leadership rival, Rebecca Long-Bailey, from the shadow cabinet when she refused to retract and apologize for endorsing an anti-Semitic tweet by actress Maxine Peake.
Many in the party believe that the Labor leader and his new secretary general, former Blair aide David Evans, planned to follow the same strategy this time: that the offense was defiance and lack of apology, not the original wrongdoing.
“I’m sure they had their finger on the ‘send’ button,” said an insider irritably.
Keir Starmer is convinced he will eradicate anti-Semitism
Throughout this day of great drama, Corbyn was engaged in conversations with the same inner circle that served as his leader: his wife Laura Alvarez, guardian Karie Murphy, and spinning doctors Seamus Milne and James Schneider.
As one of them said: “The old band was reassembled for this moment.”
The group is said to have held a “court martial” at one point, which was joined at Zoom by Corbyn’s most important ally in Parliament, John McDonnell, along with representatives from the Unite, Momentum and the left-wing Campaign for Labor Party. . Democracy.
Although Corbyn stated publicly in his second television interview of the day that he would “vigorously challenge political intervention to suspend me,” the strategy agreed upon by his inner circle, on the advice of veteran allies McDonnell and Len McCluskey of Unite, was keep calm, for now.
In other words, don’t get mad, do it.
Numbers matter in politics … At some point in the future, the left may need members in large numbers to save Corbyn, in a vote at the Labor conference, for example.
Some of the younger members of the pro-Corbyn Socialist Campaign Group of Labor MPs, from the 2019 admission, were persuaded not to inflame the dispute, for now, by giving up the party whip in protest against Corbyn’s suspension.
But several hours after the suspension was announced, McCluskey, the biggest union beast in the Labor jungle under Corbyn’s leadership, finally roared, condemning it as “an act of grave injustice.”
McCluskey claimed that if the suspension was not reversed it would create chaos in the party and jeopardize Labor’s chances of victory in the general election, declaring: “A divided party will be doomed to defeat.”
However, he also appealed to Labor members angered by the suspension not to leave the party, although that request came too late to avoid some resignations.
Numbers matter in politics, after all. It was Lyndon Johnson who said that the first rule in politics was to be able to count.
The report found that the Labor Party violated the law for its handling of anti-Semitism issues.
And at some point in the future, the left may need members in large numbers to save Corbyn, in a vote at the Labor conference, for example.
Yet there was gloating from Mr. Corbyn’s enemies.
“Corbyn had me expelled from the Labor Party for opposing violence and anti-Semitism,” Frank Field tweeted. “Now you know what it’s like to have the party machine that you have contributed to for decades to launch.”
Although Corbyn said in his second television interview of the day that he had not yet received any official communication, it is likely that by now he has received an email with a series of questions to answer.
Subsequently, the appeal process will begin and your response will be considered by the national executive’s dispute panel, which will report to the full executive, who in turn will decide whether to reinstate him or potentially expel him.
Figures on the left urge members to stay and not quit the party
If it is the latter, the left will no longer remain calm. All hell will break loose and the battle could end in court.
Corbyn’s inner circle believes that Sir Keir, the former director of the Public Prosecution Service, is in “big trouble” and on “unreliable legal ground.”
Earlier this week, a witness to Sir Keir’s car accident claimed that the Labor leader had been trying to make a 180-degree turn. Not true, a Labor Party source insisted.
And Sir Keir is convinced that there will be no U-turn in anti-Semitism, nor in his battle with the left over Mr Corbyn.
