Starmer's move against Corbyn is a big mistake
- Howard Simmons
- Oct 30, 2020
- 2 min read
In suspending Jeremy Corbyn from the Labour party, Keir Starmer revealed what many had suspected for a long time: rather than seek to lead a 'broad church' in which the Left's contribution to the party would be valued, he wants to destroy the Left entirely and assert the supremacy of the largely parliamentary centrist/right wing. Apart from the grave injustice of this action, he is almost certainly making a big political mistake.
First: the injustice. Corbyn was commenting on the just released EHRC report on Labour anti-semitism. The report concluded that the party had not succeeded in putting in place a system that dealt quickly and effectively with complaints of anti-semitism. It is important to note that Corbyn did not dispute this conclusion. He merely pointed out that the extent of anti-semitism in the party had been exaggerated and he gave statistics to back up this claim. For this Starmer suspended him and at the time of writing there has been no indication from him or the party disciplinary machine of precisely what his offence is supposed to have been. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Starmer acted against him because he told an inconvenient truth - inconvenient, that is, to Starmer and his wing of the party, who would rather maintain the myth that the anti-semitism row has had nothing to to do with political factionalism. But beyond this of course, there is the fact that it serves Starmer's short-term interests to get rid of Corbyn in order to tell the world that he is prepared to 'get tough' with the Left.
But this brings us to the second, political aspect. For it is just short-termism on Starmer's part. It was because of the popularity of Corbyn's and McDonnell's progressive policies that Labour came so close to unseating the Tories in 2017 and might very well have defeated them altogether in 2019 had it not been for Brexit. That support for equality and peace has not gone away and Starmer, in largely ignoring it, risks leading the party to a fifth consecutive election defeat in 2024.
Yes. Starmer's commitment to due process seems at best a little tenuous!
We might feel that lawyers, of all people, should have a strong commitment to the rule of law. But not Starmer, it seems, even though, as a QC and former DPP, he has been at the very apex of the legal system.
As you say, he appears to have suspended Corbyn utterly without reference to any law or Labour Party rule, none of which appears to have been infringed.
Starmer has form in his regard. He was the DPP who opportunistically pandered to the moral panic that followed the death of Jimmy Savile by allowing complainants against the late TV star to be referred to not as "alleged victims", or “complainants”, but simply as "victims", thereby undermining the legal presumption…