Activist analyses
the discredited myth - or scam - that the media and pro-Israel activists
still roll out and links it to the right's austerity scam
In 2008, the Labour government bailed-out the British
banking system with tens of billions of pounds of public money. In 2010,
the newly-elected Conservative/Liberal Democrat Coalition government
distorted the concept of solidarity - the ludicrous ‘We are all in this
together’ - to convince the British public that massive cuts to welfare and
public services, referred to as ‘austerity’, were necessary to save the
country from economic collapse even though they would be damaging:
'And it’s not possible to
make those cuts without cutting some things that are important. […] that is
the situation we are in as a country.'
Then-Tory PM David Cameron's austerity scam
Similarly, the concept of antisemitism was distorted to
convince the British public that the removal of lifelong anti-racist Jeremy
Corbyn from his position as Leader of the Opposition, was necessary to save
the country from a social collapse. As Scottish-American Professor Mark
Blyth has pointed out, austerity was sold as the ‘pain after the party’ but
it is in fact ‘class politics’ and ‘dangerous nonsense’. Austerity was
simply the continuation of a neoliberal political agenda of tax cuts and
privatisation that began in 1979 and has been embraced by all three main
political Parties in the UK.
However, there was a chance to throw the ‘tax cuts for the
rich and privatisation of public services’ agenda into reverse when Jeremy
Corbyn was elected Leader of the Labour party in 2015.
From 2015 to 2017 opposition to austerity was not confined
to a few academics, trade unionists and socialists. It was led by the
largest political Party in Europe. During this period the Labour party
rejected austerity and the 2017 Labour manifesto was a parliamentary
socialist challenge to the political consensus that had held sway since
1979. It was his opposition to this neoliberal political trajectory that
proved to be the root cause of his popularity with the public, and his
profound unpopularity with the political Establishment. The results of the
2017 general election proved opposition to austerity to be a popular
position and not the electoral liability that Corbyn’s critics had assumed
or claimed. Opposition to austerity captured the mood of the nation and
became synonymous with hope and change - and Corbyn's frankness about the
political nature of austerity exposed the lie and won the argument.
 | | My book - The Road to Corbyn (2016) - takes pride of place in the display in the Fahrenheit bookshop in Middlesbrough in 2017. Those were heady days. Copies of this excellent history of the 2010-15 Conservative/Lib Dem Coalition government are available from me (see my website at www.robdonovan-author.co.uk. |
Hopes and aspirations are often nothing more than rhetorical
techniques used by politicians as a substitute for real change. David
Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ idea ‘hoped' for a more compassionate philanthropic
society, but it was simply cover for the privatisation of public services.
Hope is not a threat to neoliberalism, but the real change
promised by a Corbyn-led Labour government was something that posed a real challenge to the
privilege of so-called 'elites'. Change meant the rich would have to pay
more taxes and that public services would remain public - and where needed
return to public ownership - which was a major impediment to the political
consensus of privatisation and tax cuts that had come to dominate the
political class.
The right wing of the Labour party had no desire whatever to
lead the charge against austerity, particularly if it meant winning an
election based on those principles. Their figurehead Tony Blair said so in
as many words. So instead of seizing the opportunity to embrace and build
upon the success of 2017 and take on the rich and powerful, the right wing
of the Labour Party chose to do the opposite. They chose to invent an
‘antisemitism crisis’ in the Labour Party as a means to undermine the
challenge to austerity and return Labour to the invisible neoliberal tracks
of privatisation and tax cuts.
This was even admitted by some. The now-disgraced Ian McKenzie, at the time an
organiser for hard-right pressure group 'Labour First', gave away that it
was just the latest in a string of tactics used against Corbyn when he
tweeted to an ally in 2018 that the 'anti Semitism stuff' was 'cutting
through like the IRA/Iran stuff didn't'.
The catastrophic Labour defeat in 2019 was the apotheosis of
this sabotage and was engineered by the right wing of the Labour party as a
means to seize control of the wreckage.
The next election will likely utilise ‘hope and change’ as
election slogans, but it will not be meaningful change, simply a change of
government. Meaningful change is only to be found in opposition to
austerity. Starmer has already abandoned the pledge to abolish tuition
fees and is no longer committed, as if he ever was
despite his promises, to the nationalisation of key industries like energy,
railways, water and post.
Starmer’s Labour is also committed to the ‘reform' of the NHS -
meaning greater use of the private sector and privatisation by stealth. If
elected, Starmer's 'Labour' government will not tackle the fundamental
causes of poverty and deprivation (privatisation and tax cuts) and has no
intention or interest in doing so.
Instead it will continue the neoliberal political trajectory
that has been impoverishing people since 1979. The so-called ‘antisemitism
crisis’ in the Labour party was nothing more profound than a political
attack on a socialist Labour leader that was committed to actual change and
was overturning the neoliberal political consensus.
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