Why haven’t I been suspended from the Labour Party? I demand to know the reason.
I have not, as yet, been suspended from the Labour Party and I’m feeling left out. It would appear I haven’t been vociferous enough in my support for Jeremy Corbyn. I can only apologise, Mr Corbyn.
Of course, it could be that I haven’t declared my love of the Foo Fighters in strong enough terms. I went to see them in Singapore on their first tour shortly after they formed and released their first record. (This was in the mid 1990s.) But it seems that’s not enough. Maybe the NEC feel that one Foo Fighter fan banned will hurt us all and bring us to heel. It’s confusing, though; it really is.
Then again, I admit I’ve also been confused by the Through The Looking Glass rules governing the whole voting process. Or processes, I should say, because it has been one strange fiddling with the rules after another at different stages of this whole coup and subsequent election rigmarole. I may have simply missed my cue.
As it stands, we have an elected leader of the Labour Party but, in surely a first for just about any self-respecting organisation, to demonstrate support for that leader is to risk ejection from the party. To be vocal in your support for the vacuous numpty who is standing against Corbyn, however, apparently wins you — in effect — an extra vote in the election. This appears slightly unfair.
The Labour Party’s NEC, after the election was seen as unavoidable, believed its primary duty was to purge the list of eligible voters of all who might support the elected leader of the party. For a party so enamoured of democracy, this would be a puzzle. For a supposedly social democratic party, the purging of those passionate about social democracy takes us into the realm of ridicule. It is beyond irony. It has become farce.
It is clear that, no matter the result of the leadership election, the Labour Party will need to change. Whether it changes for the better or reverts to its pre-Corbyn role of cheerleader for neoliberal policies, it is hard to believe that the momentum — pun may or may not be intended — generated by Corbyn’s daring to utter economic and social truths that were once accepted as fact but are now derided because they point out the injustices perpetrated by the corporate state and their media mouthpieces can be halted in its tracks.
Corbyn has started something. If he remains to see it through, all the better. If he is deposed in this cowardly coup, it behoves us to find other roads to change.
