Our priorities

One of the dafter genres of political writing is the offering of unsolicited advice to leaders. Nevertheless, I’d like to suggest what I would do if I were Sir Keir Starmer. You can think of this as advice if you’d like, but I’d rather regard it as a way of contrasting two different types of politics.

What I’d do is to greatly beef up the party’s National Policy Forum, giving it more resources, a much higher profile and emphasising that it is open to all. We need ongoing informal and widespread public inquiries in which experts, the public and interest groups are engaged. These should be exercises in deliberative democracy in which devices such as citizens’ juries are combined with academic research.

Connecting with grassroots is not an alternative to technocracy. The two are complements because good policy requires a detailed knowledge of ground truth.

I stress here that these are not focus groups: the party must ask not “what do you think?” but “what do you know?” And the results of this research must form policy, and not be over-ridden by the instincts of party leadership or by the search for quick headlines. Phil says that:

Labourist politics relies on mass passivity, it's an elite project where the masses vote in the politicians, and they make the changes by passing legislation.

This must change.

Here are some examples of what I mean:

 - What is global best practice? Why have some countries such as South Korea and New Zealand handled Covid much better? Why is French childcare so good and cheap? Why has Finland (until recently) had better education outcomes? Can we learn from these, or are there cultural factors that prevent us importing their success? And so on with respect to public transport, infrastructure, vocational training etc. In contrast to Tory waffle about a “world beating” test and trace scheme, Labour should have detailed empirical evidence on best practice in public services from around the world.

 - How do we put in place the right policy infrastructure for fighting recessions? This year’s events have reminded us that recessions are unpredictable. And the government’s response has been patchy, with many (especially the self-employed) not getting the financial help they need. Which poses the question of how to ensure the government or Bank of England can get support quickly to everybody in the next downturn. The means of delivering helicopter money or people’s QE must be in place.  

 - How do we reform the tax and benefit system? Yes, there’s a case for land value tax. But the details are key: how to value land, what to do about people who are asset-rich but cash-poor and so on? Ditto lots of other tax changes, such as ending the bias towards corporate debt. The same’s true of benefit reform. Whilst a basic income is appealing, can we reconcile it with wide variations in personal needs and housing costs? In these questions, the experience of benefit users is crucial: how can we make the system as simple and quick as possible, so users do not face weeks without cash, or uncertainty and harassment, and how can we ensure that the transition from benefits to work is as smooth as possible?

 - Why have real wages stagnated since the mid-00s, and how might this be reversed? The main reason is stagnant productivity rather than increased exploitation. And there are many likely causes of that stagnation. But how can we get productivity going again? Increased aggregate demand is part of the answer. So too is better training and management, stronger competition (included from overseas), more innovation and R&D and - yes- greater equality. But how to achieve these?

 - What are the links between economic growth, institutions and values? We know from Ben Friedman’s work that economic growth increases tolerance and liberalism, so we need it to reduce the right’s ability to exploit culture wars; the left will win these by economic growth, not by being dragged onto the right’s terrain. Necessary as growth is, though, this does not suffice to get us to socialism. Some believe that this requires a change in values, towards more reciprocal altruism. But what institutions might promote such values? Failing that, how might we harness self-interest to promote socialism? How far can or should we promote decommodification, for example?

 - How can we empower working people? We know that union membership and more autonomy improve worker’s well-being – which is great not only in itself but also because happier workers are more productive. But how can these be extended? Is a shorter working week also feasible? How else might job satisfaction improve?

 - What corporate forms should government encourage? We’ve evidence that coops can raise productivity, and that a stock market listing can reduce efficient investment. Which poses the questions: how far can cooperatives be rolled out? What form should worker control take? What are the relative merits of regulation and nationalization in dysfunctional industries (I suspect there’s a stronger case for nationalizing banks than utilities)? How can nationalized industries be put under effective and democratic control? How far should outsourcing go, and should it be dominated by the usual suspects? Can procurement policy be used to encourage coops? I’m not sure there are general answers here. Context is everything.

 - How might we best achieve value for money in the public sector? We all know that the only binding economic constraint upon fiscal policy is inflation. But there might come a time when this constraint bites. So efficient public spending matters. But how can we ensure that government procurement isn’t dominated by cronyism? How can we empower public sector workers to identify waste and improve efficiency?

 - How can we best promote green growth? We know we need it. But what are the mechanisms? How do we best encourage green R&D and innovation? What’s the role of taxes and subsidies?

You might reply here that we know some of these answers. Maybe. But politics isn’t only about ideas. It’s about what ideas get mobilized and which side-lined. The point of such an exercise is to increase the salience of these policy areas – to ensure that they, and not the passing faff of newspaper headlines, form the agenda. This requires a form of message discipline from Labour MPs - to stick to issue that matter and not respond to media froth. 

What’s more, abstract centralized knowledge of principles is not enough. We need detail and ground truth. And this comes from mobilizing not just academic experts, but local experts – those with hard experience of getting benefits, working in the NHS, setting up a small firm and so on. Hence the need for widespread, bottom-up deliberation.

This might seem technocratic stuff. And God knows we need that. But it’s a different sort of technocracy. It’s not the bullshit managerialism of New Labour, but a genuine drive to harness local expertise. Ground truth is everything.

But it’s more than that. What all this amounts to is a different way of doing politics. It sets the agenda. It says: our focus is upon real, material living standards, and we must resist distractions from this. It also says that policy is to be developed not with regard to fleeting newspaper headlines but to hard empirical evidence. Policy is not something to be pulled out of your arse or a newspaper column.

The aim of this exercise should be to marginalize the likes of Kuenssberg and Peston, as well as all those centrists and right-wingers who think that politics is about the voices in your head rather than the ground truth of living standards. The message to these should be: you are irrelevant.

Now, it should be obvious that my point in saying all this is not to offer advice to Starmer but rather to highlight how a different politics is possible, and how Westminster-centric politics is a trivial distraction from material truths. In an age of stupidity, the pursuit of expertise becomes a revolutionary act.

Comments

[Jim]

"Why have some countries such as South Korea and New Zealand handled Covid much better? "

NZ is an island far away from anywhere, and they've turned it into a penal colony. If Nigel Farage suggested closing the UK's borders to almost all travellers, forcibly testing all the few who were allowed in and locking up any positive cases, you and people like you would call him a racist and worse than Hitler etc. Indeed that actually did happen back in the early days of covid, when Trump closed the US borders to people coming in from China and all the Democrats went into 'Hug a Chinaman' mode, and called him xenophobic etc. Yet the lovely Jacinda has closed NZ entirely and she's a hero.

South Korea on the other hand is an ethnically homogenous nation that has completely different views to the West as to what degree of mass public compulsion is acceptable. It is also effectively an island as well, due to its land border being land mined and heavily militarised on both sides. If anyone in the UK suggested the degree of controls on individuals that S Korea has imposed to control covid you'd call them fascists (and probably racists as well, that always gets thrown in).

Then of course there's the Germans. They've done pretty well through the covid crisis. Could this be anything to do with their entirely privately run healthcare system? And the UK's underperformance down to its State owned run and funded system? No of course not, everyone knows the NHS is the best at everything and can never be a failure........

Its all very well to demand fact based analysis of solutions to problems facing the country, you might not like some of the facts that emerge. In which case you'll pretend they don't exist, like all good Leftists do.

[Paulc156]

NZ is full of fascists... Korea everyone looks the same...yada yada . Similar b.s. used to justify not trying to emulate Finland's no child left behind anti streaming schooling...'country too small and everyone knows one another'.

The claim that 'entirely privately run healthcare system' is in force in Germany is garbage. It's mostly paid for by the state through non profit gtoups with optional private top ups and a user fee payable every quarter if services used in that quarter. What poster didn't want to mention was the system is far more expensive than NHS.

It spends 11.1% of annual GDP on healthcare expenditure. One of the highest in Europe versus UK with one of the lowest. They take something like 15% of your salary up to a certain amount (half by individual half by employer)to pay for basic healthcare GP, hospital in patient out patient and dentist etc. Unless your on less than 10K or so in which case it's free. That state health insurance is administered by non profit groups. GKVs.

Oh and about 75% of that 11.1% GDP is through publicly funded health providers

[UserFriendly]

Oddly enough you are talking about what the 5 star party in Italy was trying to do, or at least be seen to be doing.
https://www.wired.com/story/italy-five-star-movement-techno-utopians/

[aragon]

Perhaps you should read this article:

https://newsocialist.org.uk/transmissions/starmer-ainsleyism-methodology-behind-starmers-week/

"the left should not imagine that Starmer is eagerly waiting for their contributions. Ainsley’s methodology, as we have seen, is its own complete system."

I haven't read the paper or book, and can't comment on the policies. Their is not much information except behind a paywall.

It looks to based upon only the article alone, like: Soft Positional barging with the electorate!

Starmers policy of making Labour a remainder party was a disaster at the last election.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/northern-mps-tell-starmer-win-back-working-class-trust

I don't see the Red Wall warming to Starmer.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/negotiation-styles-soft-hard-principled-milad-alipour-d-b-a-cpa

No chance of a Land Value Tax then...that would take a principled approach.

[James Charles]

" . . . but rather to highlight how a different politics is possible, . . . "

'We' may need something 'different', and quite soon?
“ . . . our best estimate is that the net energy
33:33 per barrel available for the global
33:36 economy was about eight percent
33:38 and that in over the next few years it
33:42 will go down to zero percent
33:44 uh best estimate at the moment is that
33:46 actually the
33:47 per average barrel of sweet crude
33:51 uh we had the zero percent around 2022
33:56 but there are ways and means of
33:58 extending that so to be on the safe side
34:00 here on our diagram
34:02 we say that zero percent is definitely
34:05 around 2030 . . .
we
34:43 need net energy from oil and [if] it goes
34:46 down to zero
34:48 uh well we have collapsed not just
34:50 collapse of the oil industry
34:52 we have collapsed globally of the global
34:54 industrial civilization this is what we
34:56 are looking at at the moment . . . “

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxinAu8ORxM&feature=emb_logo

[LJC]

Or just steal ideas from your political opponents, before they announce them. For example, the Office of Tax Simplification is reviewing Capital Gains Tax. Sunak will be tempted to reform this giveaway to rich people to raise taxes because he wants to balance the budget.

So Labour should announce that under them all income would be taxed at the same rates, regardless of source and there would not be multiple disregards for different sources of income. This appeal to fairness should be a natural Labour position.

[Dave Timoney]

"What all this amounts to is a different way of doing politics. It sets the agenda. It says: our focus is upon real, material living standards, and we must resist distractions from this."

"NZ is an island far away from anywhere, and they've turned it into a penal colony."

Lol.

[George Carty]

Jim: "Indeed that actually did happen back in the early days of covid, when Trump closed the US borders to people coming in from China and all the Democrats went into 'Hug a Chinaman' mode, and called him xenophobic etc. Yet the lovely Jacinda has closed NZ entirely and she's a hero."

What countries needed to do to keep Covid out was to quarantine _all_ incomers, including their own citizens returning from abroad. All the success stories in the Asia/Pacific region did this but the United States never did: Trump's "travel ban" was completely useless because it didn't apply to US citizens.

It is striking though that even Boris Johnson (elected on a "Get Brexit Done" ticket, let's not forget) was staggeringly reluctant to close the UK to incomers. Perhaps it was because he knew he'd be accused of racism (which would have made Jacinda's wokeness an asset in the "only Nixon could go to China" sense), or perhaps it was more down to the British culture and economy?

I suspect that many Leave voters in Britain are in denial about how European they really are, and wouldn't have reacted well to a complete shutdown of foreign travel. Australia and New Zealand (as sparsely populated commodity exporters) are probably far less dependent on visitors from abroad than the UK's concierge economy, and many East Asian countries have a tradition of extreme isolationism ("sakoku" in Japan, "swaegug" in Korea: those words look like they could be cognates!) which never existed in Europe. Note that during the late 19th-century heyday of European colonialism, most European countries had no immigration controls whatsoever!

Jim: "South Korea on the other hand is an ethnically homogenous nation that has completely different views to the West as to what degree of mass public compulsion is acceptable. It is also effectively an island as well, due to its land border being land mined and heavily militarised on both sides. If anyone in the UK suggested the degree of controls on individuals that S Korea has imposed to control covid you'd call them fascists (and probably racists as well, that always gets thrown in)."

I doubt that a South-Korea style panopticon policy would have flown in the UK, as South Korea had been so traumatized by the 2015 MERS outbreak that it pretty much tore up all its legal protections of privacy, while the UK can't even stomach compulsory ID cards (which is of course the main reason why it has a bigger problem with illegal immigration than continental Europe: once they're here, illegal immigrants can vanish into the black economy in a way that they can't on the continent).

I'm not sure though how relevant "ethnically homogenous" is here, as the main obstacle to a SK-style policy against Covid would surely be the existence of subcultures with a strong mistrust of the state? While some of those cultures would be ethnic minorities (such as Orthodox Jews, black Americans or Muslims in Europe) others would be from the ethnic majority (rednecks in the US). And South Korea does have such a culture in the form of its large evangelical Christian minority, which was infamously responsible for one big super-spreader event, and which the political opposition has indeed accused the government of persecuting under the pretext of fighting Covid.

[Jim]

"I'm not sure though how relevant "ethnically homogenous" is here"

Its relevance is that any policy that impacts ethnic minorities more than the natives in a Western country is automatically decreed 'racist' by the usual suspects. Thus a travel ban would be decreed racist because it affects people with families and connections abroad more than people who don't. Thus an ethnically homogenous country can impose far greater restrictions because everyone feels they are 'in it together'.

[Jim]

" What poster didn't want to mention was the system is far more expensive than NHS."

I don't care what the German system costs, I just want a healthcare system that works. The NHS model doesn't. You could shovel as much money into it as the Germans do into their system , and it still would be sh*t. The sh*tness is because of the NHS system, not because of lack of money.

It shouldn't have gone unnoticed that the covid crisis has been managed very well by all the privately run parts of the economy (food, energy, water, transport, communications etc) and terribly by the State run parts (NHS, education, public health, general administration etc). But of course that sort of 'fact based' politics isn't what our host wants.......

[ltr]

November 14, 2020

Coronavirus

UK

Cases   ( 1,344,356)
Deaths   ( 51,766)

Deaths per million   ( 761)

Germany

Cases   ( 781,335)
Deaths   ( 12,558)

Deaths per million   ( 150)

[ltr]

November 13, 2020

Coronavirus

US

Cases   ( 11,064,364)
Deaths   ( 249,975)

India

Cases   ( 8,773,243)
Deaths   ( 129,225)

France

Cases   ( 1,922,504)
Deaths   ( 43,892)

UK

Cases   ( 1,317,496)
Deaths   ( 51,304)

Mexico

Cases   ( 991,835)
Deaths   ( 97,056)

Germany

Cases   ( 772,822)
Deaths   ( 12,503)

Canada

Cases   ( 287,318)
Deaths   ( 10,828)

China

Cases   ( 86,307)
Deaths   ( 4,634)

[ltr]

November 13, 2020

Coronavirus   (Deaths per million)

US   ( 754)
UK   ( 754)
Mexico   ( 750)
France   ( 672)

Canada   ( 286)
Germany   ( 149)
India   ( 93)
China   ( 3)

[ltr]

I’d like to suggest what I would do if I were Sir Keir Starmer....

[ Resign the leadership of Labour and abjectly apologize to Jeremy Corbyn, or simply sincerely apologize to Corbyn and learn what it is to be true to the ideals of Labour. Then work to rescue Britain from these destructive Tories. ]

[George Carty]

Jim: "Its relevance is that any policy that impacts ethnic minorities more than the natives in a Western country is automatically decreed 'racist' by the usual suspects. Thus a travel ban would be decreed racist because it affects people with families and connections abroad more than people who don't."

It's not really a matter of "ethnic homogeneity" then, as "people with families and connections abroad" would be just as common in a land of mass _emigration_ as they would be in a land of mass _immigration_.

It's more a matter of East Asians having a cultural tradition of isolationism: the only immigrants that the Japanese can stomach are ethnic-Japanese Brazilians, and even _them_ only barely.

[ltr]

I’d like to suggest what I would do if I were Sir Keir Starmer....

[ I am still waiting for Chris Dillow to apologize for failing to defend Jeremy Corbyn. Absent that apology, the stuff on Labour is meaningless insincerity to me. ]

[Blissex]

«I don't see the Red Wall warming to Starmer»

To help with that his current policy towards the EU is "get Brexit done" (that is the literal transcription), and he is blowing his trumpet as to his support for every jingoist and authoritarian position in addition to his eternal support for the politics favoured by the financial sector and the security services (largely the same of course).

[Blissex]

«This must change. Here are some examples of what I mean: - What is global best practice?»

Best practice for whose interests? Without that answer the whole post is just a wykehamist daydream.

[rsm]

"We know from Ben Friedman’s work that economic growth increases tolerance and liberalism"

We also "know" from Easterlin's paradox that growth does not make us happier. Tolerance and liberalism must be depressing?

Black is right:

"noise makes it very difficult to test either practical or academic theories about the way that financial or economic markets work. We are forced to act largely in the dark."

Freidman is just another blind man thinking he has fully described the elephant.

The fact that his noisy conclusion keeps getting repeated in this blog bodes ill for the possibility that policy makers can learn much of practical use.

[the other jim]

All very interesting but not much to do with practical politics. I feel Starmer will have to work with the grain and hostility of capitalism. Not waste time on some utopian vision that will never come to pass. Unless one wants to divert him for a while....

Re Co-ops, when I worked I had enough to cope with designing this and that without bothering about how the company was run. The last thing I would have wanted was to listen and contribute to some worker's co-operative. I just wanted to go home, have dinner and carry on extending the house - far more profitable even than the job. As for local politics - what normal person wants to turn out on a wet Wednesday night to some smelly town hall and argue the toss.

People specialise, the snag is that those who look as if they can run organisations are quite often merely game players. ‪Like toxic employees it is hard to tell the difference up front. Cummings has gone but the sum 2+2=9 still does not add up and it never will.

[Paulc156]

@Jim "I don't care what the German system costs, I just want a healthcare system that works. The NHS model doesn't."

Fatuous statement. All you evidently care about is promoting private over public.
Or else you would have cited deliberate underfunding of NHS since 2010 until 2019.
You don't, presumably for ideological reasons and seem oblivious that Germany, with health system that is predominantly publicly funded and/or 'not for profit',(as opposed to your earlier fabrications) has also just gone into a lockdown due to lack of spare capacity in accute beds. Duh!

As for your example of water as being well run utility in covid? Wtf! Monopoly makes good profits SHOCK! It has been constantly harangued by regulators and FREE press for its excessive return to shareholders whilst neglecting investment. Go figure.

[Blissex]

«Starmer will have to work with the grain and hostility of capitalism. Not waste time on some utopian vision that will never come to pass.»

There is a huge difference among three different positions:

1) Supporting the interests of business and property rentiers, as K Starmer and the Mandelson Tendency (and the Clinton Tendency in the USA) aim to do "because end of history" or "because meritocracy".

2) Writing essays on the details of the inevitable demise of the rule by business and property rentiers, whatever system will replace it, while singing the "Red Flag" :-).

3) Engaging in the political struggle with the interests of the minority of business and property rentiers (realizing though that they are a large minority and mass rentierism requires new political approaches) to carve a better deal for the interests of the majority, even if it is within the framework of an industrial market system ruled by business and property rentiers.

The Labour Party as R Hattersley wrote is about the 3rd option, and those who support the 1st option should really move to the Conservatives or the LibDems instead of using the block of votes it still has for having been founded to support the 3rd option, to support the 1st instead.

[the other jim]

France, Germany, Nordics, Spain and possibly Italy are capitalist. You will have to go some to be different from them and succeed. Why not steal some of Germany and France's ideas and offer to run the place a bit like them, they seem fairly civilised places. I am sure many voters would be tempted by some sort of Social Democratic notion, coalfield carpark socialism not so much.

Then I repeat, getting elected is a selling game, overpromise and underdeliver. Look nice and clean, don't smell and clean your fingernails. Shallow? yes, but no normal person reads a manifesto, the product's brand is the thing. Just like soap powder.

Come 2024 Starmer may have an opportunity but the product has to look right. Gone the grubby unwashed, gone the stained packaging, in with the shiny new. No-one is going to buy 'Socialism', the word stinks in marketing terms, time for re-branding. I don't like the Tories and it grieves me to see Labour throw away any chance of election. For Labour philosophy the 'best' really has become the enemy of the good.

[ltr]

Failing to understand that the Labour of Jeremy Corbyn was ruined by the immediate and ceaseless and false depiction of Corbyn as a communist and as anti-Semitic is strange to me. Keir Starmer disgracefully turned against traditional Labour and Corbyn, and I at least will never support of Starmer led party.

[ltr]

November 15, 2020

Coronavirus

UK

Cases   ( 1,369,318)
Deaths   ( 51,934)

Deaths per million   ( 764)

Germany

Cases   ( 792,982)
Deaths   ( 12,635)

Deaths per million   ( 151)

[rsm]

"3) Engaging in the political struggle with the interests of the minority of business and property rentiers (realizing though that they are a large minority and mass rentierism requires new political approaches) to carve a better deal for the interests of the majority, even if it is within the framework of an industrial market system ruled by business and property rentiers."

Give them no taxes in return for money-printing an inflation-proofed basic income.

[Blissex]

«No-one is going to buy 'Socialism', the word stinks in marketing terms»

In the UK someone mentioning "democratic socialism" with a mild centre-left programme got 40% of the votes and nearly 13m votes, and still over 10m in 2019 despite ferocious and foul attacks. I guess those voters are no-ones and their votes don't matter.
Or perhaps many of them simply wanted the end of thatcherism and a return to centre-left and centre-right politics like in the 19506-1960s.
Thatcherism, whether the hard Conservative and LibDem form or the slightly milder New Labour one stinks to most of those who are not invested in finance and property in the south, to the point that some clever propagandists claim it no longer exists.

[Blissex]

«"Engaging in the political struggle with the interests of the minority of business and property rentiers [...]"
Give them no taxes in return for money-printing an inflation-proofed basic income.»

When I read amazing silliness like this I am reminded that this should of course be funded with unlimited free USA dollars from central bank swaps :-).

The amazing silliness is to ignore that it is a distributional problem, where real resources rather than mere "money" have to be moved downwards; merely giving more "money" to the lower classes while also giving more "money" to the upper classes won't change their relative negotiating leverage significantly.

Even if an UBI would help the lower classes withold their labour if wages were too low. But overall an UBI would eventually result, for the working majority, in wages smaller by most of the amount of the UBI, just like happened with tax credits, because the particular level of real wages is determined by leverage (within a range set by "technology").

[Jan Wiklund]

You recignize that Facebook blocks links to your website?

[ltr]

"Thatcherism, whether the hard Conservative and LibDem form or the slightly milder New Labour one stinks to most of those who are not invested in finance and property in the south, to the point that some clever propagandists claim it no longer exists."

Really interesting assertion; I surely agree. As for Jeremy Corbyn and Labour the attacks were never about democratic-socialism but about false communism and false-horrid anti-Semitism.
Understanding the scurrilous attacks on Corbyn is essential.

[Nanikore]

@jim

"Could this be anything to do with their entirely privately run healthcare system?"

Could it have anything to do with German regulation?

Would you argue that further privatisation is what the NHS needs?

Germany is a highly regulated consensual system."Corporatist" in the sociological literature. Wages are determined through collective bargaining. The market is not king. (Mainstream economists also don't understand this and also why the German authorities haven't liked to vary the money supply, and in fact often can't, in the way Anglo Saxon central banks have done.)

Government/private ownership are often red herring arguments. The separation of government and private entities does not mean the same thing everywhere.

[ltr]

Nanikore:

Germany is a highly regulated consensual system."Corporatist" in the sociological literature. Wages are determined through collective bargaining. The market is not king....

[ Really nicely described. ]

[ltr]

November 17, 2020

Coronavirus

UK

Cases   ( 1,410,732)
Deaths   ( 52,745)

Deaths per million   ( 775)

Germany

Cases   ( 833,732)
Deaths   ( 13,248)

Deaths per million   ( 158)

[ltr]

The horrid, awful, scary Keir Starmer has now refused to allow Jeremy Corbyn to sit as a Labour MP. This should frighten Conservatives just as much as Labour supporters.

The leadership of "Labour" have ruined the work of decades of a traditional Labour representative and are spitefully harming the voters who supported Corbyn.

Who will talk against the false, malicious ruining of Corbyn and those who have supported him? Show that democracy is meaningful in Labour.

[ltr]

Please show support for Jeremy Corbyn, for the question here is supporting democracy in the UK. Corbyn has been falsely and maliciously maligned, and that should not be allowed to stand no matter whether Conservative or Labour.

Please show support for Corbyn.

[ltr]

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1329107738367029251

Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald

Everyone now knows that Labour centrists did everything possible to sabotage Corbyn, preferring that May or Boris win than they win with Corbyn. Now this.

Why would any leftist keep supporting Labour under Starmer? What else do they have to do to show they hate you?

Keir Starmer @Keir_Starmer

In those circumstances, I have taken the decision not to restore the whip to Jeremy Corbyn. I will keep this situation under review.

Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald

I've never seen a more flagrant, repellent and cynical exploitation of anti-Semitism in my life than its disgusting use to smear Corbyn because of a lack of alternatives for how to defeat him.

Nothing has trivialized this cause more than what British Blairites have done.

Jeremy Corbyn is a better human being by a multiple of about 1,000 than all of the Oxbridge cretins in politics and media who have united to cynically smear him with accusations they know in their rotted souls are false.

12:02 PM · Nov 18, 2020