I’m still proud to have voted for Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister
Today is the fourth anniversary of Labour’s 2019 general election defeat.
As bitter as the immediate feeling of defeat is, it is nothing as terrible as its consequences.
Over the last few weeks, as we have witnessed the slaughter of the people of Gaza, including so many children, as it is slowly made incompatible for human habitation by Israel with the full knowledge and backing of the United States and Britain, I like many others have felt a terrible sense of hopelessness and powerlessness.
But what about the powerlessness of socialists and the left, and of those progressives and liberals that object to genocide? This collective left has almost no political power to curtail the foreign policy actions of Britain or the US or country after country, whether it be a stated position of support for the actions of the Israeli government, or outright enabling such as the supplying of weapons and intelligence that we have seen from both the US and the UK that has made the Israeli government’s slaughter of the people and children of Gaza possible.
Yesterday the United States vetoed a ceasefire resolution at the United Nations Security Council. The United Kingdom abstained. All remaining 13 members of the Council voted in favour. If a vote takes place in the UN General Assembly this week, the vast majority of the world’s countries will likely support the resolution, as symbolic, sadly, as it will be.
I thought about what it would have taken for Britain to vote for that resolution at the UN Security Council. Kier Starmer has made it clear that neither he nor the Labour Party he leads support a ceasefire and it is unimaginable that the UK would have voted for that resolution at the UN Security Council with a Prime Minister Starmer.
I can’t help but think what kind of a British government would have supported that resolution, as much of the world does, as the vast majority of the British people do? The inescapable conclusion is only one with Jeremy Corbyn, or someone much like him, as Prime Minister.
The only kind of Britain that would actively object to the war crimes, to the mass-murder and terror that we are seeing in Gaza, is one led by someone like Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister.
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Four years on from the 2019 General Election, I still remember the lashing rain and terrible sense of foreboding about what was to come that night, as I trudged the streets of East Harrow trying to get out the Labour vote.
Living in a democracy means accepting when you’re in the minority but it doesn’t mean having to agree with the majority. I didn’t four years ago and I still don’t today, even more so after seeing what the Tories have done in power since they won the 2019 election.
Since that night I’ve thought much about what could and should have been different. About whether it’s even possible for a genuinely progressive government to be elected. Maybe a less radical, a much less radical, program is essential if you want to win. I suppose I still am thinking about it.
But myself and I think millions of people are still proud to have voted for Jeremy Corbyn and everything he stood for.
Corbyn said that on his first day as prime minister he would have announced the end of homelessness. Imagine that and all the other policies a Corbyn government would have enacted. How many people would be alive today if he was prime minister? How many kids wouldn’t have gone to bed hungry night after night, year after year?
Britain is slowly but steadily declining, not just in its international standing, but more importantly in the standard of living of its people. The approach and policies of managed decline need to end. We need a government that adopts policies that benefit the vast majority of the British people not a few newspaper editors or a centrism that has become a spiralling downwards cult ever more divergent from reality. It’s insane that we don’t have a publicly-owned water system or train network like almost every other country in the world, or that we pursue economic policies that ensure poverty and misery for ever more people.
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Right at the beginning of the current conflict in Gaza and Israeli, Corbyn tweeted:
Corbyn was right. He was right in that tweet and so much more. As much as the people of Gaza are suffering, we face decades of upheaval and chaos because of what is happening. We all suffer, Palestine and Israel, the US and Britain.
Corbyn was right about the disaster that was the Iraq War. He was and is right about what we need to do to reduce poverty and increase economic growth that works for most people.
With the scale of Labour’s defeat in 2019 and the complete triumph of Corbyn’s opponents in the Labour Party, whenever the sentiment is expressed that ‘Labour has changed’ and that Corbyn was a ‘bad ‘un’ or unfit for office and much else besides, too often it isn’t challenged.
There are genuine criticisms to be made of Corbyn and the mistakes that were made when he was leader but most of the attacks on him are frankly unhinged.
Nor of course was one of Britain’s most principled anti-racist campaigners, a racist.
It is interesting to note how little reflection there is from those who ensured the Conservative 2019 election victory, even with the almost undisputable barren wasteland of chaos and poor governance that has resulted. Compare that with the attacks on Corbyn that still take place; mad hypotheticals about what kind of a prime minister he would have been.
Perhaps people need to justify to themselves the appalling way in which they behaved, and the Labour election campaigns they undermined.
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Unlike some others, I’ve stayed in the Labour Party. I am not convinced that there is any viable alternative. I have my concerns about Kier Starmer and the current state of the Labour Party; as high it is riding in the polls, what will it actually do in power? And how long will it be able to stay in power? This is the test; what change will millions of people actually see? You have to win, but winning isn’t enough. I will be very happy to see more Labour MPs but it’s the change that they create that is what matters.
I hope my fears come to nought. We will see but I don’t think this version of Labour will have the 13 years in power that New Labour did and it will have a very tough time in office.
My overriding fear is that the next general election will see a record low in voter turnout and, whatever the result, that the long-term steady decline of democracy will continue and all that entails.
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As I watched the video at the beginning of this post, I can scarcely believe four years have passed since the 2019 general election. All that hope, so much of it gone, too much of it forgotten.
I think about the misery of millions of Britain’s children who live in gut-wrenching poverty. As I see the pictures of dead babies and listen to the anguished, bewildered screams of Gaza’s children, I think about how things could be different.
I was proud in 2017 and 2019 to have voted for one of the most decent people to have ever run to be British Prime Minister. And I still am, more than ever.
