Labour despair as Corbyn refuses to deny being Marxist
LABOUR infighting intensified last night after leadership frontrunner Jeremy Corbyn spoke of his admiration for one of the founders of communism, Karl Marx.
The backbench MP, who is gaining momentum in the race to succeed Ed Miliband, refused to deny being a Marxist during a BBC television interview yesterday.
He insisted that his ambition was to be prime minister and called for public ownership of the railways, energy firms, Royal Mail and telephone networks.
His Left- wing rant provoked dismay among moderate Labour figures, who warned that the party was heading for oblivion.
Pressure was growing last night for the contest to be abandoned because of fears that communists and other hard- Left extremists were signing up in droves to vote.
Mr Corbyn, 66, was quizzed about his views on Marx, the author of the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, by BBC interviewer Andrew Marr yesterday.
Oblivion
The Islington North MP said: “Marx obviously analysed what was happening in a quite brilliant way and the philosophy around Marx is fascinating.
“He was essentially a fascinating figure… from whom we can learn a great deal.”
Asked if he regarded himself as a Marxist, Mr Corbyn paused before saying: “That’s an interesting question. I haven’t thought about that for a long time.
“I haven’t really read as much of Marx as I should have done.” He told Marr: “We all owe something to him. Probably inside you, even you do.”
Outlining his policy plans for Labour, Mr Corbyn called for “a wealth tax on massive incomes” and public ownership of “big monopolies”.
“Your house and my house have one feeder cable going in for our electricity, one gas pipe going in for our gas supply, one telephone line for our telephone system,” he said.
“There’s no competition there. There is a creation of a false market. I would be much happier if we had a regulated publicly run service delivering energy supplies.”
Asked if he wanted to be prime minister, the MP added: “Of course, we’re in this for real.”
After the interview, former Labour Cabinet minister Alan Milburn said: “Jeremy is a perfectly nice chap but I don’t think even Jeremy thinks that he is prime ministerial material. Some Labour Party members seem to be taking the party… into political oblivion.”
Labour MPs were concerned that a new system allowing people to become party supporters for £ 3 was threatening to skew the contest in Mr Corbyn’s favour.
About 140,000 new activists are expected to vote in the leadership election. Party insiders fear the newcomers include hard- Left supporters, socialists and Communist Party members.
Some Tory sympathisers were also thought to be signing up to vote for Mr Corbyn to disrupt the Labour Party.
Labour backbencher Graham Stringer said yesterday: “This is a deeply flawed system that really should be scrapped. The party has a difficult choice.
“I would prefer a change to the system and that would give us an opportunity to take a longer look at who is going to be the next leader.” Simon Danczuk, another Labour MP, said: “The party is in a terrible place. It is quite clear there has been some movement to try to get people who are Conservatives to sign up to be supporters. I think there has been an orchestrated effort to do that.”
But the former Scottish National Party leader, Alex Salmond, said his party could work with a Labour Party led by Mr Corbyn.
Mr Salmond said: “Whether people agree or disagree with him, at least you’re absolutely certain of where he stands in the direction of leadership.”
DELUDED, embittered and incoherent, Labour increasingly resembles an alcoholic who has just fallen off the wagon. For years, especially under Tony Blair, the party adopted a pose of responsibility and moderation.
But now, broken by a second heavy election defeat, Labour can no longer be bothered with any pretence of sobriety. Instead, a vast swathe of the membership has decided to blot out political reality by drinking from the vats of extremism.
This suicidal impulse explains the astounding rise of Jeremy Corbyn, a veteran socialist widely regarded as the most Left- wing MP at Westminster. Two months ago, at the start of the Labour leadership contest, he barely scraped on to the ballot paper. Now he is the front runner, cheered by adoring activists at rallies and on the internet.
As his surge gathers momentum, Labour members are continually warned that they will doom the party to oblivion if they elect him. But most of them do not seem to care. They just want to wallow selfindulgently in the vapours of radical isolation.
A central part of Corbyn’s appeal is that he is portrayed as a man of integrity who has always stuck to his Left- wing principles, unlike his careerist opponents with their gifts for jargon and compromise.
APERMANENT rebel, he has been untainted by experience of any front- bench duties. Indeed, his sole experience of public office was to chair the Planning Committee of Haringey Council in north London in the 1970s.
But Corbyn is hardly the endearing secular saint that his wide- eyed supporters pretend. On the contrary, he is a hardline ideologue who would be a profound threat to our nation if he gained any real political influence. Yesterday on the BBC he gave a glimpse of his mindset, expressing his admiration for Karl Marx, and demanding heavier taxation.
But Corbyn has often gone much further than this. Filled with loathing for capitalism, he lends his support to every kind of Leftist cause. This is an agitator who in 1987 stood for a minute’s silence at a Troops Out meeting to “honour” eight IRA terrorists killed in an SAS ambush, while today he describes the infamous Hezbollah and Hamas movements as “friends”. If he does become Leader of the Opposition, how on earth will the Government give him security briefings or allow him to attend meetings of the Cobra intelligence committee?
None of that matters to his backers, who are drunk at the prospect of the Corbynite revolution. In their swelling confidence at this potential victory, they have created a mood of McCarthyite hysteria in Labour’s ranks, where any deviation from their socialist orthodoxy is condemned as a form of Toryism. So Liz Kendall, who is by far the san- est voice in the leadership contest, is booed at hustings and urged to leave the party she has served since she was 16.
In the same spirit of totalitarian intolerance, Corbyn supporter Max Shanly, a member of the Young Labour Executive Committee, revealed that if his hero wins, then the “Labour Left will have to act swiftly and brutally. The Parliamentary Labour Party will have to be brought into line. Some members of staff will have to be pointed towards the exit”.
Labour moderates like to proclaim that this outcome will never happen because the membership will come to their senses once voting starts. But this seems nothing more than wishful thinking. All the evidence is that Corbyn is on course for a big victory. Not only has he been ahead in every opinion poll of members, but he also has the most constituency nominations, trade union support and online backing.
Corbyn’s surge is the ultimate legacy that Ed Miliband bequeathed to Labour. He helped to create this destructive mess by dragging his party to the Left with his puerile, class war rhetoric about Tory toffs.
More importantly Ed Miliband also devised the rules for the current leadership contest which have led to a dramatic transformation in the party membership. In the name of enhancing internal party democracy, he ensured that anyone paying just £ 3 could register as a supporter and vote for the new leader, while affiliates from trade unions could sign up for nothing.
THIS rule change has been ruthlessly exploited by far- Left groups such as the Communist Party and the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition, to swamp the party. It is estimated that, by the time the registration process closes in mid- August, 140,000 new Labour supporters could have been recruited.
Some Labour MPs have become so concerned about infiltration that they have called for the whole leadership contest to be halted. “It is totally out of control,” and “becoming a farce,” says John Mann, the MP for Bassetlaw.
He is right. The Labour establishment spent much of the 1980s trying to expel the notorious Militant Tendency. Now it has wilfully opened the door to a large new army of zealots.
The feebleness of the challenge to Corbyn is further reflected by the two most experienced candidates, Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper, who have given desperately unimpressive performances, characterised by endless cowardice. Both are former Cabinet Ministers. They should be demolishing Corbyn. Instead, in their terror of the insurgent hard Left, they are colluding with him.
It is extraordinary to think that less than three months ago the Labour Party presented itself as the serious, alternative government. Now, as Corbyn advances, we can see that it is really little more than a noisy socialist pressure group.
‘ He’d be a profound threat to our nation’