Labour Leadership and a Brief History of Centrism - 3 April 2020

With Jeremy Corbyn on his way out of the Labour leadership (but not the political debate) now is an important time to reflect on the absolute strategic ineptitude of the liberal capitalist "centrists" over the last decade.

Between 2010 and 2015 the liberal capitalist Lib-Dems allowed David Cameron's Tories to use them as human bullet shields. Austerity extremism, unprecedented wage repression, the lowest house building rate since the 1920s, Theresa May's unlawfully racist "Hostile Environment", the worst NHS cuts on record, unlawful employment tribunal fees designed to price low-income workers out of the justice system, deliberate under-funding of police, fire and other emergency services, endless tax cuts and handouts for corporations and the mega-rich, the Royal Mail privatisation fraud ... and none of it could have passed without Lib-Dem MPs voting it all through.

In 2015 Labour blew an absolute gimme of an election because Ed Miliband let the "centrists" have control of the shadow treasury. Instead of opposing ruinous Tory austerity extremism these strategically inept idiots came up with the ludicrously uninspiring "austerity lite" agenda aimed at appealing to soft Tory voters in marginal constituencies. What they forgot to account for was the fact that for every soft-Tory they won with this cowardly and unappealing ersatz Toryism, they drove dozens of traditional Labour voters away.

After throwing the 2015 general election these inept idiots managed to lose the Labour leadership to a rank political outsider that even a lot of full-on political nerds hadn't heard of before he decided to stand.

In 2016 these incompetent idiots managed to lose the EU referendum to a bunch of absolute liars who didn't even have a manifesto explaining the plan of action for what to do if they actually won. One reason for this loss was their "jobs for the boys" approach of appointing lazy political insiders to crucial roles in which they did nothing except collect their salaries (Alan Johnson, Jack Straw's son ...). Another reason is that they couldn't counter the central lie of the Brexiteers; that immigrants and the EU were to blame for collapsing living standards. The Lib-Dems and Labour right-wingers knew perfectly well that austerity was the real cause of cratering living standards, failing public services, and the worst period of wage deflation in recorded history, but they couldn't point it out because they'd just spent the last six years either voting it all through, or imitating it on the sidelines.

Then there was the ludicrously failed Anyone But Corbyn coup in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit referendum, which gave the Tories a complete free pass on having completely divided Britain without having even drawn up a contingency plan in case Cameron lost his gamble with the entire future of our nation. The opportunity to control the narrative on the Brexit chaos completely thrown away, the opposition reduced to total paralysis, and all they achieved was handing Corbyn an even bigger mandate to lead the Labour Party than he had before!

Then there was the ludicrous #FBPE Remain monomaniacs who midwifed the most extreme hard-right Tory interpretation of Brexit possible by concentrating the vast majority of their criticism, abuse, and lies at Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour left, who they desperately needed to ally with if they were to have any chance whatever of preventing Tory Brexit disaster capitalism. In the end Lib-Dem and Green Remainer protest votes in dozens of marginal constituencies ended up being more than the difference between the Tories and Labour. The difference between a thumping great Tory majority to do whatever they liked, or a razor thin majority/minority government that could be held to account.

The liberal capitalist "centrist" hacks are absolutely gloating about Corbyn's imminent departure, and the prospect of his successor filling key cabinet positions (shadow chancellor, shadow DWP minister, shadow foreign secretary) with the kind of pro-austerity, pro-privatisation, Tory-imitating right-wing wreckers who continually undermined their own party for the last five years.

But if Corbyn's successor does this, and returns the party to being the grotesque austerity-lite, anti-welfare, pro-imperialist, pro-privatisation mess that it was before, imitating the Tories instead of opposing them, then things will go dramatically wrong, and quickly.

Of course the billionaire donors would come back in to support it financially, but the mass membership would dissipate, leaving the party with a terrible deficit of activists to fight back against the billionaire backed Tories and the massed ranks of the mainstream media hack pack.

You'd have to be politically illiterate to think that Corbyn's successor won't receive the same kind of abuse that every single Labour leader after Blair has suffered.

Look at the way they absolutely hounded Blair's trusty sidekick Gordon Brown when he took over. Look at the way they abused the hapless but well-meaning Ed Miliband to the extent of smearing his dead war hero father. Look at the sickening vilification of Corbyn.

Even if Starmer is being feted by the mainstream media now, to the extent of being endorsed by the architect of ruinous Tory austerity extremism George Osborne, if you think he isn't eventually going to face the same mainstream media abuse as his predecessors, you're an absolute fool.

If you think he's going to be in a stronger position to withstand it by immediately telling half of the Labour Party membership to 'piss off', by appointing the right-wing internal wrecker brigade to all of the key positions, you're absolutely deluded.

And if you think that surrounding himself with people who have demonstrated nothing but strategic ineptitude for an entire decade is going to suddenly turn Labour into an "effective opposition" you're going to have a very rude awakening indeed.

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