there have been some very wild theories knocking about on left twitter for the past year or so — since starmer was elected leader. i could understand, didn’t agree with it, but could understand, why he would want to expel corbyn; needed to put his stamp on the party, wanted to show his authority and so on. it prompted me to leave the party as ‘not the socialist party i recognized as having joined’ any more, as i put it in my resignation letter.
but the wild theories. ‘starmer is in the pay of ‘the establishment’’. that he is some sort of plant or black ops. agent. the party is infiltrated by right-wingers in the pay of either tories, or darker forces of capital, or starmer is some sort of israeli agent. i dismissed them of course. too wild, too preposterous. like a Q.anon of the left.
ken loach is another matter. he has his faults. he made some very careless and dismissive comments about the holocaust, most of which really boiled down to questioning whether all jews, and particularly community leaders in the ghettoes had been spotless in their dealings with the nazis just before and during the war. he came across as glib and dismissive. but a simple ‘well, history isn’t black and white’ or the jewish leaders were not quite as white as the driven snow, simply isn’t good enough. socialists need to have special care when talking about the holocaust or showa. it is unique in modern history; an attempt by a regime to violently obliterate an entire people, deserves more than ‘lets be a little more nuanced’.
that anti-semitism has been used as a weapon to dismember the left from the labour party, is itself, anti-semitic.
i’m starting to think that the conspiracy theories are not so wild after all. if starmer is not intent on keeping labour out of office for the foreseeable future, if he doesn’t want to reduce the labour party to an ineffective parliamentary rump like the liberal democrats, then he is doing a damn good impression of it.
