Why I left Labour.

The change in direction under the current leadership has detached the party I campaigned for from my core political beliefs and principles.

I have left the Labour party. Plenty of others on the left have done the same, but initially I saw this as far too hasty; after all, the left needs a presence in the party in order to have a voice, and that remains the case. However, recent events have made it crystal clear to me that my core beliefs and principle are no longer accepted or represented by the Labour party, and I would be better served working to help the British left from outside the Labour party.

I joined Labour under Jeremy Corbyn’s once in a generation leadership. Quite possibly for the first time in British history, here was a New Left leader of the Labour party, with anti-imperialist, democratic socialist radical principles. Corbyn, in his personal convictions, was far more a creature of the left than the likes of Attlee or Wilson, since although his policies were in many ways less radical, his belief system (one I concur with) was more radical.

A generation that had been lied to and abuse by the political establishment in Britain, over austerity, rising house prices, marketisation of education, and regressive social values awoke like lions after slumber, and the corpse of the Labour party was briefly reanimated in 2017. I joined the party some time after that inspiring campaign, becoming politically aware and active for the first time in my life, thanks to Jeremy Corbyn and his message of hope.

I witnessed over the time following, lies and smears rain down upon the political mind of Britain, and I saw a decent man picked apart and destroyed, denounced as a bigot, attacked by members of his own party, and smeared as a risk to national security, all because he so terrified the wretched establishment in Britain; they saw him come within touching distance of power in 2017 against all the odds, and were hell bent on doing absolutely anything to guarantee no such thing were to ever happen again.

But as the 2019 election rolled around, despite all our doubts and worries, I was filled with hope. A manifesto was released that would undo the wrongs of inequality, Thatcherism, and poverty that have blighted us since the 1980s. A manifesto that would reorient Britain’s foreign policy in a historic way, making the main imperial oppressor in recent history a anti-imperialist actor upholding solidarity on the world stage. A manifesto that would empower working people all across the country, and take our vital public services into new, democratised public ownership, taking back control and giving people onus over their own lives and communities.

That 2019 manifesto is exactly what Labour should have offered up against Thatcherism, during the Winter Of Discontent. The fact it wasn’t seized upon, and the fact the SDP worked to sabotage the leadership of Michael Foot, is in great part why we’re now such a neoliberal country. Historically, and right through to the Corbyn era, the British establishment, be they centre-left or centre-right, will unify as one in order to stop nay actor that dares to step outside the accepted box and challenge a broken status quo acting on behalf of the few, in an attempt to build a new paradigm working in the interests of the many.

And we all know what happened when that exit poll came through on the night of December 12th 2019. We were crushed, ground into the earth by a combination of Brexit culture wars, internal sabotage, and 4 years of relentless, vicious media smears. The concerted attack didn’t succeed in 2017 but in 2019, the establishment achieved what they set out to: the killing of Jeremy Corbyn. The image people had when they heard that name was so disparate from the actual man, even if you watched him for 5 minutes, that the entire ecosystem of public thought in Britain had fully detached from reality and succumbed to a propaganda blitz.

The ensuing leadership campaign was a down beaten one. The left’s standard bearer, Rebecca Long-Bailey, hadn’t prepared for a campaign, and ran a weak campaign that failed to call out the special interests pulling the strings behind either the Nandy or the Starmer campaigns. Long-Bailey took a principled stand for socialist beliefs, and brought some fascinating ideas into the political eco-system, but she wasn’t the firebrand the left needed at that critical time in order to keep a hold of the party membership, and thus, Keir Starmer won, and he won resoundingly. The new Labour leader had a big mandate from right across the factions and divides of the party.

Labour did it again, in their grief, they jumped into the arms of a nice looking man in a suit claiming he could solve all their troubles. Keir Starmer was known for the People’s Vote policy, a policy which tanked Labour’s popular policy platform, but he ran on a radical platform of “Corbynism, but more managerial and competent”; whatever the merits or otherwise of such an approach, the membership found it persuasive, and if Sir Keir was a man of his word, then the left had plenty to work with.

We all started out more than willing to let Starmer do what he wanted, with a promise to hold him to his 10 key pledges. Alas, over the last 10 months or so we’ve seen the true colours of his leadership. Political corpses from the New Labour years have bee resurrected, Corbyn has been smeared and attacked, democracy has been crushed within the party, Labour is failing to oppose the government, the left and the right are attacking Starmer, young people have been abandoned, and Labour is polling at 33% in the middle of a monumental catastrophe where the govt has been responsible for tens of thousands of needless deaths.

At some point in my life, where Labour to return to its core socialist principles, I would consider returning. But it has become clear to me neither major party is offering something compelling or in any way matching up to the challenges of the 21st century. For all its faults (all the parties have many flaws), the Green party is now the party of big ideas and radical change. I am fully committed to working to further the goals of democratic socialism, from within the Green party, hopefully in time in collaboration with our comrades on the Labour left. I didn’t change, Labour changed.

Freed of any obligation to either the Labour or Conservative parties, now more than ever, I can speak truth to power, and from a third perspective, hold both leaderships to account for failing Britain in this era of crises. Whatever you choose to do, solidarity!