{"id":660853,"date":"2022-05-18T19:22:48","date_gmt":"2022-05-18T19:22:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/?p=129733"},"modified":"2022-05-18T19:22:48","modified_gmt":"2022-05-18T19:22:48","slug":"keir-starmer-has-returned-western-imperialism-to-the-core-of-labour-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/05\/18\/keir-starmer-has-returned-western-imperialism-to-the-core-of-labour-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"Keir Starmer has returned western imperialism to the core of Labour policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

The local authority election results earlier this month in the UK<\/a> were as bleak as expected for Boris Johnson\u2019s government<\/a>, with the electorate ready to punish the ruling party both for its glaring corruption and rocketing high-street prices.<\/p>\n

A few weeks earlier, the police fined Johnson<\/a> \u2013 the first of several such penalties he is expected to receive \u2013 for attending a series of parties that broke the very lockdown rules his own government set. And the election took place as news broke that the UK would soon face recession<\/a> and the highest inflation rate for decades.<\/p>\n

In the circumstances, one might have assumed the opposition Labour Party under Keir Starmer would romp home, riding a wave of popular anger. But in reality, Starmer\u2019s party fared little better than Johnson\u2019s<\/a>. Outside London, Labour was described as \u201ctreading water\u201d across much of England.<\/p>\n

Starmer is now two years into his leadership and has yet to make a significant mark politically. Labour staff are cheered that in opinion polls the party is finally ahead<\/a> \u2013 if marginally \u2013 of Johnson\u2019s Tories. Nonetheless, the public remains adamant that Starmer does not look like<\/a> a prime minister in waiting.<\/p>\n

That may be in large part because he rarely tries to land a blow against a government publicly floundering in its own corruption.<\/p>\n

When Johnson came close to being brought down at the start of the year, as the so-called \u201cpartygate scandal\u201d erupted with full force, it was not through Labour\u2019s efforts. It was because of relentless leaks presumed to be from Dominic Cummings<\/a>, Johnson\u2019s former adviser turned nemesis.<\/p>\n

Starmer has been equally incapable of cashing in on the current mutinous rumblings against Johnson from within his own Tory ranks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Self-inflicted wounds<\/strong><\/p>\n

Starmer\u2019s ineffectualness seems entirely self-inflicted.<\/p>\n

In part, that is because his ambitions are so low. He has been crafting policies to look more like a Tory-lite party<\/a> that focuses on \u201cthe flag, veterans [and] dressing smartly\u201d, as an internal Labour review recommended last year.<\/p>\n

But equally significantly, he has made it obvious he sees his first duty not to battle for control of the national political terrain against Johnson\u2019s government, but to expend his energies on waging what is becoming a permanent internal war on sections of his own party.<\/p>\n

That has required gutting Labour of large parts of the membership that were attracted by his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, a democratic socialist who spent his career emphasising the politics of anti-racism and anti-imperialism.<\/p>\n

To distance himself from Corbyn, Starmer has insisted on the polar opposites. He has been allying ever more closely with Israel, just as a new consensus has emerged in the human rights community that Israel is a racist, apartheid state<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And he has demanded unquestioning loyalty to Nato<\/a>, just as the western military alliance pours weapons into Ukraine, in what looks to be rapidly becoming a cynical proxy war, dissuading both sides from seeking a peace agreement and contributing to a surge in the stock price of the West\u2019s military industries.<\/p>\n

Broken promises<\/strong><\/p>\n

Starmer\u2019s direction of travel flies in the face of promises he made during the 2020 leadership election that he would heal the internal divisions that beset his predecessor\u2019s tenure.<\/p>\n

Corbyn, who was the choice of the party\u2019s largely left-wing members in 2015, immediately found himself in a head-on collision with the dominant faction of right-wing MPs in the Labour parliamentary caucus as well as the permanent staff at head office.<\/p>\n

Once leader, Starmer lost no time in stripping Corbyn of his position as a Labour MP<\/a>. He cited as justification Corbyn\u2019s refusal to accept evidence-free allegations of antisemitism against the party under his leadership that had been loudly amplified by an openly hostile media.<\/p>\n

Corbyn had suffered from a years-long campaign, led by pro-Israel lobby groups and the media, suggesting his criticisms of Israel for oppressing the Palestinian people were tantamount to hatred of Jews. A new definition of antisemitism focusing on Israel was\u00a0imposed on the party<\/a> to breathe life into such allegations.<\/p>\n

But the damage was caused not just by Labour\u2019s enemies. Corbyn was actively undermined from within<\/a>. A leaked internal report highlighted emails demonstrating that party staff had constantly plotted against him and even worked to throw the 2017 election, when Corbyn was just a few thousand votes short of winning.<\/p>\n

With Brexit thrown into the mix at the 2019 election \u2013 stoking a strong nativist mood in the UK \u2013 Corbyn suffered a decisive defeat at Johnson\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n

But as leader, Starmer did not use the leaked report as an opportunity to reinforce party democracy, as many members expected. In fact, he reinstated some of the central protagonists exposed in the report, even apparently contemplating one of them<\/a>\u00a0for the position of Labour general secretary.<\/p>\n

He also brought in advisers closely associated with former leader Tony Blair<\/a>, who turned Labour decisively rightwards through the late 1990s and launched with the US an illegal war on Iraq in 2003.<\/p>\n

Instead, Starmer went after the left-wing membership, finding any pretext \u2013 and any means, however draconian \u2013 to finish the job begun by the saboteurs.<\/p>\n

He has rarely taken a break from hounding the left-wing membership, even if a permanent turf war has detracted from the more pressing need to concentrate on the Tory government\u2019s obvious failings.<\/p>\n

Flooded with arms<\/strong><\/p>\n

Starmer\u2019s flame-war against the left has become so extreme that, as some critics have pointed out, both Pope Francis and Amnesty International would face expulsion from Starmer\u2019s Labour Party were they members.<\/p>\n

The pope is among a growing number of observers expressing doubts<\/a> about the ever-more explicit intervention by the US and its Nato allies in Ukraine that seems designed to drag out the war, and raise the death toll, rather than advance peace talks.<\/p>\n

In fact, recent views expressed by officials in Washington risk giving credence<\/a> to the original claims made by Russian President Vladimir Putin justifying his illegal invasion of Ukraine in late February.<\/p>\n

Before that invasion, Moscow officials had characterised Nato\u2019s aggressive expansion across Eastern Europe following the fall of the Soviet Union, and its cosying up to Ukraine, as an \u201cexistential threat<\/a>\u201d. Russia even warned that it might use nuclear weapons<\/a> if they were seen as necessary for its defence.<\/p>\n

The Kremlin\u2019s reasons for concern cannot be entirely discounted. Two Minsk peace accords<\/a> intended to defuse a bloody eight-year civil war between Ukrainian ultra-nationalists and ethnic Russian communities in eastern Ukraine, on Russia\u2019s border, have gone nowhere.<\/p>\n

Instead, Ukraine\u2019s government pushed for closer integration into Nato <\/a>to the point where Putin warned of retaliation<\/a> if Nato stationed missiles, potentially armed with nuclear warheads, on Russia\u2019s doorstep. They would be able to strike Moscow in minutes, undermining the premise of mutually assured destruction that long served as the basis of a Cold War detente.<\/p>\n

In response to Russia\u2019s invasion<\/a>, Nato has flooded Ukraine with weapons while the US has been moving to transfer a whopping $40bn in military aid<\/a> to Kyiv \u2013 all while deprioritising pressure on Moscow and Kyiv to revisit the Minsk accords.<\/p>\n

Nato weapons were initially supplied on the basis that they would help Ukraine defend itself from Russia. But that principle appears to have been quickly jettisoned by Washington.<\/p>\n

Last month, US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin declared that the aim was instead to \u201csee Russia weakened<\/a>\u201d \u2013 a position echoed<\/a>\u00a0by Nato former Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. The New York Times<\/em> has reported that Washington is involved in a \u201cclassified\u201d intelligence operation to help Ukraine kill senior Russian generals<\/a>.<\/p>\n

US officials now barely conceal the fact that they view Ukraine as a proxy war \u2013 one that sounds increasingly like the scenario Putin laid out when justifying his invasion as pre-emptive: that Washington intends to sap Russia of its military strength, push Nato\u2019s weapons and potentially its troops right up against Russia\u2019s borders, and batter Moscow economically through sanctions and an insistence that Europe forgo Russian gas.<\/p>\n

The existential threat Putin feared has become explicit US policy, it seems.<\/p>\n

Fealty to Nato<\/strong><\/p>\n

These are the reasons the pope speculated last week that, while Russia\u2019s actions could not be justified, the \u201cbarking of Nato at the door of Russia<\/a>\u201d might, in practice, have \u201cfacilitated\u201d the invasion. He also questioned the supply of weapons to Ukraine in the context of profiteering from the war: \u201cWars are fought for this: to test the arms we have made.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pope Francis, bound by formal Vatican rules of political neutrality, has to be cautious in what he says. And yet Starmer has deemed similar observations made by activists in the Labour party as grounds for expulsion.<\/p>\n

The Labour leader has clashed head-on with the Stop the War Coalition, which Corbyn helped found in the immediate aftermath of the 9\/11 attacks. The group played a central role in mobilising opposition to Britain\u2019s participation, under Blair, in the 2003 illegal invasion of Iraq.<\/p>\n

Stop the War, which is seen as close to the Labour left, has long been sceptical of Nato, a creature of the Cold War that proved impervious to the collapse of the Soviet Union and has gradually taken on the appearance of a permanent lobby for the West\u2019s military industries.<\/p>\n

Stop the War has spoken out against both Russia\u2019s illegal invasion of Ukraine and the decades-long expansion by Nato across Eastern Europe that Moscow cites as justification for its war of aggression. Starmer, however, has scorned that position<\/a> as what he calls \u201cfalse equivalence\u201d.<\/p>\n

In a commentary published in the Guardian<\/em> newspaper<\/a>, he denied that Stop the War were \u201cbenign voices for peace\u201d or \u201cprogressive\u201d. He termed Nato \u201ca defensive alliance that has never provoked conflict\u201d, foreclosing the very debate anti-war activists \u2013 and Pope Francis \u2013 seek to begin.<\/p>\n

Starmer also threatened 11 Labour MPs<\/a> with losing the whip \u2013 like Corbyn \u2013 if they did not immediately remove their names from a Stop the War statement that called for stepping up moves towards a diplomatic solution. More recently, he has warned MPs<\/a> that they will face unspecified action from the party if they do not voice \u201cunshakeable support for Nato\u201d.<\/p>\n

Starmer has demanded \u201ca post 9\/11\u201d style surge in arms expenditure<\/a>\u00a0in response to the war in Ukraine, insisting that Nato must be \u201cstrengthened\u201d.<\/p>\n

He has shut down the Twitter account of Labour\u2019s youth wing<\/a> for its criticisms of Nato.<\/p>\n

In late March he proscribed three small leftist groups<\/a> \u2013 Labour Left Alliance, Socialist Labour Network, and the Alliance for Workers\u2019 Liberty \u2013 adding them to four other left-wing groups that he banned last year. Stop the War could soon be next.<\/p>\n

Starmer\u2019s relentless attacks on anti-war activism in Labour fly in the face of his 10 pledges<\/a>, the platform that helped him to get elected. They included a commitment \u2013 reminiscent of Pope Francis \u2013 to \u201cput human rights at the heart of foreign policy. Review all UK arms sales and make us a force for international peace and justice\u201d.<\/p>\n

But once elected, Starmer has effectively erased any space for an anti-war movement in mainstream British politics, one that wishes to question whether Nato is still a genuinely defensive alliance or closer to a lobby serving western arms industries that prosper from permanent war.<\/p>\n

In effect, Starmer has demanded that the left out-compete the Tory government for fealty to Nato\u2019s militarism. The war in Ukraine has become the pretext to force underground not only anti-imperialist politics but even Vatican-style calls for diplomacy.<\/p>\n

Apartheid forever<\/strong><\/p>\n

But Starmer is imposing on Labour members an even more specific loyalty test rooted in Britain\u2019s imperial role: support for Israel as a state that oppresses Palestinians.<\/p>\n

Starmer\u2019s decision to distance himself and Labour as far as possible from Corbyn\u2019s support for Palestinian rights initially seemed to be tactical, premised on a desire to avoid the antisemitism smears that plagued his predecessor.<\/p>\n

But that view has become progressively harder to sustain.<\/p>\n

Starmer has turned a deaf ear to a motion passed last year by Labour delegates calling for UK sanctions against Israel as an apartheid state. References to it have even been erased from the party\u2019s YouTube channel<\/a>. Similarly, he refused last month<\/a> to countenance Israel\u2019s recent designation as an apartheid state by Amnesty and a raft of other human rights groups.<\/p>\n

Last November, Starmer delivered a fawningly pro-Israel speech alongside Israel\u2019s ultra-nationalist ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, in which he repeatedly conflated criticism of Israel with antisemitism<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He has singled out anti-Zionist Jewish members of Labour<\/a> \u2013 more so than non-Jewish members \u2013 apparently because they are the most confident and voluble critics of Israel in the party.<\/p>\n

And now, in the run-up to this month\u2019s local elections, he has flaunted his party\u2019s renewal of ties with the Israeli Labor party, which severed relations during Corbyn\u2019s tenure<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Senior officials from the Israeli party joined him<\/a> and his deputy, Angela Rayner, in what was described as a \u201ccharm offensive\u201d, as they pounded London streets campaigning for the local elections. It was hard not to interpret this as a slap in the face to swaths of the Labour membership.<\/p>\n

The Israeli Labor\u00a0party founded Israel by engineering a mass ethnic cleansing campaign<\/a>, as documents unearthed by Israeli historians have confirmed, that saw hundreds of thousands of Palestinians expelled from their homeland.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s Labor party has continued to play a key role both in entrenching illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied territories to displace Palestinians, and in formulating legal distinctions between Jewish and Palestinian citizenship that have cemented the new consensus among groups such as Amnesty International that Israel qualifies as an apartheid state<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Israeli Labor party is part of the current settler-led government that secured court approval last week to evict many hundreds of Palestinians from eight historic Palestinian villages near Hebron \u2013 while allowing settlers to remain close by \u2013 on the pretext that the land is needed for a firing zone.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s Haaretz<\/em> newspaper concluded of the ruling<\/a>: \u201cOccupation is temporary by definition; apartheid is liable to persist forever. The High Court approved it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Labour\u2019s ugly face<\/strong><\/p>\n

The ugly new face of Labour politics under Starmer is becoming ever harder to conceal. Under cover of rooting out the remnants of Corbynism, Starmer is not only proving himself an outright authoritarian, intent on crushing the last vestiges of democratic socialism in Labour.<\/p>\n

He is also reviving the worst legacies of a Labour tradition that cheerleads western imperialism and cosies up to racist states \u2013 as long as they are allies of Washington and ready to buy British arms.<\/p>\n

Starmer\u2019s war on the Labour left is not \u2013 as widely assumed \u2013 a pragmatic response to the Corbyn years, designed to distance the party from policies that exposed it to the relentless campaign of antisemitism smears that undermined Corbyn.<\/p>\n

Rather, Starmer is continuing and widening that very campaign of smears. He has picked up the baton on behalf of those Labour officials who, the leaked internal report showed, preferred to sabotage the Labour Party if it meant stopping the left from gaining power.<\/p>\n

His task is not just to ensnare those who wish to show solidarity with the Palestinians after decades of oppression supported by the West. It is to crush all activism against western imperialism and the state of permanent war it has helped to engineer.<\/p>\n

Britain now has no visible political home for the kind of anti-war movements that once brought millions out onto Britain\u2019s streets in an effort to halt the war on Iraq. And for that, the British establishment and their war industries have Sir Keir Starmer to thank.<\/p>\n

\u2022 First published in Middle East Eye<\/a><\/em><\/p>The post Keir Starmer has returned western imperialism to the core of Labour policy<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.\n

This post was originally published on Dissident Voice<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The local authority election results earlier this month in the UK were as bleak as expected for Boris Johnson\u2019s government, with the electorate ready to punish the ruling party both for its glaring corruption and rocketing high-street prices. A few weeks earlier, the police fined Johnson \u2013 the first of several such penalties he is [\u2026]<\/p>\n

The post Keir Starmer has returned western imperialism to the core of Labour policy<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[128,271,286,731,82,193,5626,712,24,197,376,200,12353],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660853"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660853"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":660854,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660853\/revisions\/660854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}