A recent Parliamentary election in a small English city shows what can be achieved when the grassroots Left works hard enough. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PETERBOROUGH Peterborough is a relatively small town in the UK with a population of circa 200,000. It has long been a battleground between Labour and the Conservatives (Tories). But as we shall see, the Brexit Party changed all that. In the 2017 snap general election, the Labour MP, Fiona Onasanya, beat the Tory candidate by just 607 votes. But Onasanya was deselected because she briefly went to prison for lying about a speeding ticket. This meant a fresh local election (by-election). For one thing, the hypocrisy over dragging Onasanya over the coals in local and national media is appalling, given that, around the same time, a Tory MP, Chris Davies, admitted to claiming £700 in expenses by falsely filing invoices. Because Davies is a white, Tory male he avoided prison and was instead fined £1,500 and ordered to work unpaid for 50 hours. Neither of these “crimes” was particularly important, but Onasanya’s led to a by-election, Davies’s didn’t. For another, it is worth noting that none of the Change UK MPs who defected from their respective Labour and Tory parties (many of whom subsequently defected from Change UK(!)) dare to call by-elections, having been elected as Tory and Labour candidates, because they know they’d lose their seats. THE RISE OF THE HARD-RIGHT For the last couple of months, the Brexit Party, the new party of Nigel Farage, ex-City trader, ultra-free marketeer and chum of Donald Trump, has reared its wealthy head. The Brexit Party claims to be the anti-establishment party, despite being the party of millionaires and multimillionaires like Robert Rowland, Richard Tice, Ben Habib and Mike Green. This anti-establishment party also gets frequent coverage by the establishment mainstream media. From the limited, anecdotal evidence available, such as video of the party’s meetings, it would appear that their supporters are on the wealthier end of the income spectrum. But nonetheless, many older, white (and a tiny minority of non-white), working-class people have been suckered into backing the Thatcherite party which taps into their xenophobia and racism (“we’re not racist,” say the voters, “but…”) and their general humiliation at the hands of successive Westminster elites who have deindustrialized the north and, in the case of Farage, successfully blamed it on the European Union. BEATING THE HARD-RIGHT The blowhard Farage predicted great gains with his elite party of non-elites, trashing the Tories and slaying Labour. But Farage & Co. forgot that people vote on issues beyond Brexit, such as the low-quality jobs flooding the market as part of the UK’s “gig economy,” the record levels of homelessness, the unaffordability of housing including in the rented sector, worsening student debt, rising living costs, collapsing infrastructure, police cutbacks in high-crime areas, and so on. In addition, Farage’s best friend, the anti-elite billionaire property magnate Donald Trump, blundered and announced blatantly during his state-visit to the UK that Britain’s holiest of holies, the National Health Service (NHS), would be “on the table” of any US-UK, post-Brexit “free trade” deal. None dare announce the privatisation of the NHS because doing so makes them unelectable, hence the NHS’s incremental privatisation. It is plausible that, having heard Trump acknowledge his plans for Britain’s sacred cow, the would-be Brexit Party voters had second thoughts, given their leader’s close association with The Donald. Labour’s candidate in the Peterborough by-election was Lisa Forbes, a trade unionist with UNITE. The Brexit Party’s candidate was Mike Greene, a multimillionaire businessman. Luckily, the Brexit Party did split the Tory vote, handing a narrow but significant victory to Forbes. Despite massive, well-funded, grassroots and social media campaigning, multimillionaire working for a party of multimillionaires lost to a trade unionist. Despite the Brexit Party’s efforts to play on the fears and prejudices of its voter-base, the party could not whip up enough anti-EU, anti-immigrant hysteria to drag the party over the victory line. ANTI-SEMITISM Finally, it is worth noting that Zionists within and without the Labour Party, including Dame Margaret Hodge (who feels like it’s 1930s’ Germany all over again), have publicly criticised and/or tried to stop Forbes. Forbes’s hate crimes against Jews are: 1) saying she “enjoyed” reading a thread about how then-PM David Cameron was causing division between Muslims and non-Muslims, which, following in the footsteps of Tony Blair, included a reference to ISIS and other extremists being created by the CIA, Mossad and the ongoing British empire; 2) Liking a Facebook post of children praying, which also featured a claim that Theresa May is a “slave” to “Zionists”; and 3) opposing the IHRA’s (very wide) definition of anti-Semitism. On the basis of these shocking revelations, efforts were made to stop Forbes from running. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn supports justice for Palestine and is a small but significant threat to Israel’s domination, as the Jerusalem Post explains. Israel’s role in attempting to sabotage the Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Party has been exposed by Al-Jazeera. The anti-Semitism smears by Zionists designed to destroy the prospect of a Jeremy Corbyn government are, slowly, being met with resistance from within the Party by those who had previously silenced themselves in fear of appearing racist. Shadow International Trade Secretary, Barry Gardiner, told Sky News that, based on Labour’s internal figures, 0.01% of the Party’s nearly-600,000 members were found to have said or done things, almost entirely on social media, that were considered to be anti-Semitic or borderline. Likewise, Shadow Treasurer, John McDonnell, finally responded, this time to Tory allegations against Labour, calling the Tories: “a party that has supported governments that actively promote antisemitic policies in Hungary and Poland, and has spent the week wooing Trump – the man who refused to condemn neo-fascists in Charlottesville who chanted ‘Jews will not replace us’.” BUILDING ON SUCCESS One final thought. Britain has moved so far to the “free market” right that issues that were once classic Tory concerns—litter, crime and drug abuse—are now electoral issues on which Labour is fighting, according to Forbes, who says that people in her constituency care more about these things than they do about Brexit. Well done, Lisa! Now build on this success so that other, grassroots Labour candidates can follow. Dr. T.J. Coles is a columnist with Axis of Logic and the author of several books, including Human Wrongs (iff Books - see review here). © Copyright 2019 by AxisofLogic.com This material is available for republication as long as reprints include verbatim copy of the article in its entirety, respecting its integrity. Reprints must cite the author and Axis of Logic as the original source including a "live link" to the article. Thank you! |