The REAL face of the Labour Party…
Keir Starmer's approach to recent crises shows we are dealing with a radical wolf in sheep's clothing, argues Jonathan Eida
With the election of Keir Starmer, Labour has a shiny new face at the head of their party. Unlike his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, who defined himself as ideologically consistent and anti-establishment, Starmer is very much his antithesis. Corbyn's time as Leader of the Labour Party will be defined by claims of radicalism and controversy. The election of Starmer as leader has come to neutralise this perception of the party and to redefine it in the eyes of the general population.
However, as the saying goes, you can dress up a wolf in sheep's clothing, but that won't change its nature. Starmer may be the fresh face, but beneath that hides a party which is still very much associated with Corbyn's radical faction. They cannot pull the wool over our eyes!
One of the concerns regarding the Internet age is the fact the Internet never forgets, and all will be revealed. Diane Abbott, the former Shadow Home Secretary and one of Corbyn's radical puppets, found that out the hard way this week when she repeated a statement, which amounted to something reminiscent of racism, that she had said eight years ago and for which she was forced to apologise the last time.
On Andrew Neil's show "This Week" in 2012, she claimed that "white people like playing divide and rule." She then attempted to mitigate the impact of her views by saying that she was merely referring to the historical reality of the British Empire.
This week, a video excerpt was published from a Zoom meeting with left-wing BAME Labour members including Faiza Shaheen, Zarah Sultana, Clive Lewis and Bell Ribeiro-Addy. Abbott was giving a speech on the call when she said "We need unity between black, Asian, minority ethnic and Muslim people – we need the maximum public show of unity. Because time after time in the past 32 years I've seen efforts of people to organise disrupted by white people playing the 'divide and rule' card, and this time we can't allow that to happen."
Given that the context of "the past 32 years" doesn't cover British Imperialism, I struggle to see how Abbott can brush this off by claiming she was referring to colonialism. She is evidently accusing white people of continuously and malevolently subjecting minorities even to the present day. This is a claim which one might suggest to be racist in nature, considering she holds all "white people" responsible. Abbott herself must surly know these comments are misguided, for otherwise she would not have felt the need to apologise after her previous set of remarks.
This also came very shortly after Ms Abbott and Ms Bell Ribeiro- Addy were told off by Keir Starmer for attending a Zoom call which contained open anti- Semites such as Jackie Walker, who was kicked out the Labour Party for anti-Semitism and where- in public- anti-Semitism was accused of being a "weapon of the Right", among other things. It is interesting to note how Abbott's coalition of the victimised did not include Jews…
Bearing in mind how many Labour MPs were on this call, and the fact none of them stepped in to correct her comments, it is quite clear that this is a view that those MPs on the call, and potentially more in the Party, are comfortable with. This means that a good portion of the Parliamentary Labour Party are unmoved by an extreme version of identity politics which is very concerning.
On this evidence, the spread of radical Left is still very alive with in the Party. As much as the Labour Party can try and pretend that, under the leadership of Keir Starmer, everything is now hunky dory and all the radical elements that the party has exhibited over the past four years are gone, it seems this is not the case. Abbott's comments and the implied affirmation from her colleagues show that there is much to be done in terms of resolving Labour's radical factions. No amount of pretty face will be able to solve that- a more concrete solution is needed.
