Is Jeremy Corbyn about to be booted out of Labour over a donation?

Right, so if you are the sort of person who still listens to ill informed right wing political pundits via mainstream media, you might be surprised at all of this, thinking Jeremy Corbyn had been expelled from Labour ages ago, they do keep repeating this line, but it is not true, Jeremy Corbyn remains so far as we are aware at time of writing, a Labour member. Keir Starmer arbitrarily blocked him from sitting as a Labour MP, because he’s petulant and ridiculous and frankly terrified of Corbyn, a man who can draw huge crowds wherever he goes, even to this day, 4 years after leaving the Labour leadership post, whereas Starmer’s audiences are more akin to a wake and his speeches about as lively as our dearly beloved waiting to be laid to rest.
But now it seems Starmer might have found his opportunity to rid himself of Corbyn, just before Corbyn might be about to leave anyway to stand as an independent to defend his Islington North seat, because Starmer would rather try and take credit for Corbyn actually being expelled, then just letting him leave. The trouble is, if Starmer does this for the reasons given, over a donation Corbyn received, then it an be reflected back on Starmer tenfold.
Right, so what has Jez done to upset Keir Starmer so much this time then Damo? Well, still drawing breath pretty much does that on it’s own, Corbyn very much still living rent free in Starmer’s head as his predecessor, despite all the accusations made against him to remove the risk he posed to the establishment, as he remains infinitely more popular than the cardboard Tony Blair, that Starmer now appears to be.
The matter boils down to a donation Corbyn has received from grassroots organisation, We Deserve Better, which is frankly calling out how awful both the Tories are, have been and still will be, as well as Starmer’s Labour barely being any different. A short bit of blurb on their website reads:
‘The Tories are toast. Starmer’s Labour will win the next General Election by default but they aren’t offering any solutions to the Tories’ ruinous record. We deserve better than this race to the bottom.’
And there’s few of us on the left who would disagree with that. Certainly they’ve been given a bit of a profile by Owen Jones, who has left the Labour Party to throw his support behind this group and despite my own issues with Jones, I don’t disagree with him here.
Fundamentally, this group is raising money to help support both Independent candidates and Green Party candidates to win in key seats, they are helping to fund them in as much of a way as possible and examples of those they are supporting right now are Leanne Mohamad, the Independent candidate taking on the awful Starmerroid Wes Streeting and the Green Party Co-Leader Carla Denyer, who is seeking to rid us of another Starmerroid, Thangam Debbonaire in Bristol Central. But they have also donated to Jeremy Corbyn, despite him having not left the Labour Party, nor having officially declared that he is running as an independent, though the fact he has accepted this donation, might imply that is very much his intention, we are of course still waiting to find out if he is going to go for it, especially now that Starmer has opened up selection proceedings to replace Corbyn as Labour’s candidate for Islington North.
In a sign that paranoid Starmer has been keeping an eye on everything Corbyn related looking for an opportunity, the moment Corbyn’s register of financial interests got updated, and a £5,000 donation from We Deserve Better was featured, showing Corbyn clearly accepted the donation, again stoking the flames somewhat that an independent challenge from him is imminent…and by that I mean some point this side of the General Election getting called, as soon as the unelected PM Sunak stops running away from it.
Given that We Deserve Better are backing antiestablishment candidates, in and of itself, I don’t really see that this donation will work to exclude Corbyn, the group declares that it is backing socialist candidates, the gray area here is that Corbyn isn’t actually at this moment in time a candidate at all, her certainly won’t be allowed to stand in Islington North, not even members are getting a say in who their candidate will be, because the Labour NEC has taken over selections. There is zero democracy going on at all at selection level, it would appear any where in the country at this point. So the donation implies that Corbyn is a candidate then, but without a candidacy, can Labour prove that is what this donation was intended for? Corbyn hasn’t declared an independent challenge, he’d have to left Labour already to do so, perhaps he isn’t going to despite claims to the contrary from the likes of We Are Collective, who have him listed amongst their list of socialist candidates that they are backing, but is caveated by the words if stands next to his name. Until it finally comes from Corbyn’s mouth that he’s standing, nobody actually can be sure. I suspect it will come, I hope it will, but at this moment in time there is no definitive candidacy. So ultimately, all Corbyn has done is accept a donation from a grassroots socialist organisation, that is backing candidates to stand against Labour, but Labour as far as I can see, cannot say this, at least not yet about Corbyn. Yet this donation, might be what they use against him, to expel him. Starmer’s opportunity to say we cannot tolerate him any longer if he is taking donations from anti Labour organisations. The thing is, that wouldn’t wash either. Corbyn is still a Labour member, he just happens to be a socialist. Starmer would literally be expelling him on the grounds that he’s a socialist. That is literally the only parallel that can legitimately be drawn from this donation right now.
Politics Home, a media outlet long critical of Corbyn, said this on the matter:
‘PoliticsHome understands that the party is looking at the donation, and Labour sources have suggested that Corbyn now faces possible exclusion from Labour. Party rules state that any member “declaring an intention to stand in a public election in opposition to a party candidate” faces auto-exclusion from the party.
It is also against the rules for a member to support “any political organisation that the NEC in its absolute discretion shall declare to be inimical with the aims and values of the party’
But Corbyn has not declared such an intention, at least not yet, but to be talking of auto-exclusion seems a bit premature and little bit like the right wing Red Tories now running the party, especially the National Executive Committee, now basically seen by many on the left as the personal fiefdom of Israel Lobbyist Luke Akehurst, are jumping to conclusions a bit quick, but of course we’ve seen groups be proscribed by the Labour Party before, Labour Against The Witch Hunt, Resist, Socialist Appeal and others and Labour members retrospectively expelled due to having spoken to such people, film director Ken Loach probably the most high profile example. If the NEC decide to proscribe We Deserve Better, and use the same retrospective abuses to expel members, then Corbyn could well be booted out, but ultimately his only crime will have been to have been a socialist. Labour the Democratic Socialist Party, which would abuse its own democratic rules, to expel a socialist. At that point, they should be taken to court for false advertising!
Is this a bit of a stretch? Well let’s see what Luke Akehurst has said about We Deserve Better then:
‘Luke Akehurst, a member of Labour’s national executive committee, said: “I suspect this project will be as unsuccessful as every previous breakaway from the Labour Party, whether to the right or previous left-wing formations that disappeared without a trace after a brief flurry of media coverage.
I am disappointed that Owen Jones who used to make thoughtful contributions to debate on the left, not least holding nuanced views around issues to do with Israel and anti-semitism, has ended his membership in this way.
There’s something rather pathetic about backing a random collection of Green and independent candidates who are seeking to undermine Labour just at the point where we’re headed towards an historic general election victory.’
That was in response to news that Owen Jones had left Labour and thrown his lot in with this group, but I would argue there is nothing precluding Labour members from joining and supporting socialist candidates. The Labour view, as far as Akehurst’s word carries any weight, and many suspect his word carries an awful lot of weight these days, is that this group are pathetic and that backing Greens and Independents when Labour verges on historic victory is just seeking to undermine that. They really do hate democracy these days don’t they? If you don’t like the competition, put a better offer to the country in then and stop persecuting people on the left and stop shamelessly ripping the Tories off like a bad tribute act. The entitlement of this twerp is mad. It isn’t your turn for power, win the election first, it isn’t yours by default and given how little you offer by way of meaningful change to the people of this country, you don’t deserve it. We do deserve better.
Labour might figure this move is doomed to fail, but with so little on offer from Labour and people equally sick of the Tories and not wanting more of the same, I’d argue there is an appetite for people to look elsewhere. The local election results certainly implied that is true, so often though that doesn’t extend up to parliamentary level. But people are angry, they are fed up and if grassroots organisations, if Independent candidates and Green candidates, who so often of course lack the media coverage they ought to get, that their smaller right wing rivals often get far too much of, can benefit from this and get their messages across, which extra funding will help with, then people who might not pick on their messaging otherwise, who might out of apathy decide to stay at home and not bother to vote, might find a reason to think otherwise, goodness knows Labour are giving plenty of people reason to stay at home instead.
Speaking of, it’s not just voters being turned off Labour and members being booted out for ridiculous reasons, Labour’s elected officials are too. Labour rely on boots on the ground, a grassroots movement to get elected, yet now see grassroots movements organising against them. They are losing that local support to other parties, but also their elected officials too, as they have been bleeding away from the party for years now under Starmer, but this appears to be speeding up as this video here will tell you all about the most recent departures and their reasons for doing so and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.