CORBYN CULT THAT SAVAGES ANY MP WHO DEFIES HIM
LABOUR MP Andy Slaughter could hardly be described as a political moderate. He is a member of Labour Friends of Palestine, has visited Gaza and regularly denounces Israel. Some say his sympathies for the widely proscribed Arab ‘terrorist’ organisation Hamas are almost as strong as those of hard-Left party leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Yet this week, the shadow justice minister, like so many of his colleagues in the Parliamentary Labour Party, concluded that after Mr Corbyn’s lacklustre performance for the Remain camp in the EU referendum, Labour simply cannot win the next General Election with him as leader.
So it was that Mr Slaughter resigned. He was also one of the 172 Labour MPs, more than three-quarters of the total, who supported a motion of ‘no-confidence’ in Mr Corbyn.In this era of what Mr Corbyn laughably calls a ‘new kind of politics’, this meant that Andy Slaughter must be shredded by the Corbynista faithful for taking part in a ‘coup’.
The onslaught against the Hammersmith MP began with a furious statement from Stan Keable, a secretary of Labour Party Marxists, a Unison trade union delegate and, perhaps most significantly, organiser for the fanatically pro-Corbyn grassroots movement Momentum in the Hammersmith constituency. Mr Slaughter’s views no longer reflected the Labour membership, Keable said.
Then the social media onslaught began on Mr Slaughter’s Twitter account. He was a ‘rat’, a ‘gutless liar’ and an ‘infiltrator’. A user named Phillip Jones tweeted: ‘You are a traitor to our party, our country and democracy.’
Another tweet said: ‘Good riddance to you and all other #RedToryTraitors taking part in this #ToryLiteCoup.’ Then, inevitably, came the ‘D-word’ haunting so many of the MPs who voted against their leader – ‘Deselect MPs who have betrayed the Labour Party.’ By which, the messenger meant those who have ‘betrayed’ Jeremy Corbyn should be thrown out by their constituency organisations. Events in the Labour party have been moving rapidly in recent days. Early in the week, it was thought Angela Eagle, who has resigned her position along with scores of other shadow ministers, would challenge Corbyn. Yet in the past 48 hours, she has halted her campaign.
It is now being suggested she was fearful of being deselected by Momentum hardliners in her own Wallasey constituency. There is plenty of online animus evident towards her. On the Wallasey Momentum Facebook page a petition runs: ‘We wish Angela Eagle to resign as MP of Wallasey, as she does not represent our constituents’ views and our wishes. She should have supported Corbyn, not resigned. Keep Corbyn. Eagle Resign.’
But opposition to Angela Eagle is not confined to internet vitriol. Even the deputy chairman of Eagle’s constituency party, Paul David, said this week: ‘Jeremy Corbyn hasn’t been given a chance to be a good leader. ‘If you are being stabbed in the back all the time by your own people on the Labour benches, it’s very hard to get your message across.’
WHILE much of the focus on Westminster has been on the battle for the Tory leadership, it has been an extraordinary week of internecine warfare, vitriol and intimidation for Labour. At the centre of this maelstrom is Momentum, the hard-left ‘praetorian guard’ of Corbynista activists which appears to have virtually taken control of the Labour Party.
The organisation was set up in October last year, four weeks after Mr Corbyn was elected leader. It says it ‘ exists to build on the energy and enthusiasm from the Jeremy Corbyn for Labour Leader campaign, to increase participatory democracy, solidarity, and grassroots power and help Labour become the transformative governing party of the 21st century’.
Now, Momentum is being credited for a surge in Labour Party membership. This week the Left-leaning Huffington Post website reported it had been told that 60,000 new members had signed up to Labour in the past week. This huge number, which takes Labour’s membership to around 450,000, is seen by Corbyn’s allies as proof of his rising support among the grassroots. Activists have been encouraged to join because if there is a leadership election, the rules say that Corbyn must be on the ballot. Once again the membership, rather than Westminster MPs, will decide who wins. This week I have trawled through hundreds if not thousands of messages posted online by Momentum supporters. The impression formed is that this is no less than a fanatical personality cult. These people brook no criticism of Mr Corbyn. Labour deputy leader Tom Watson has called Momentum a ‘rabble’, and former Labour Home Secretary David Blunkett dismissed it as a hard-Left ‘text-a-crowd’.
There is little point in Momentum denying this given that the evidence is there for all to see. Take, for example, this week’s Twitter feed of its Essex branch. It seems devoted to propagating a Labour civil war.
Referring to the Labour MPs who supported the no-confidence vote against Mr Corbyn this week, Essex Momentum wrote: ‘ Dozens of present “Labour” MPs will not be Labour candidates again. They have badly mis-calculated.’ Mr Corbyn’s right-hand man, the shadow chancellor John McDonnell, has encouraged Momentum members to protest against anti- Corbyn Labour MPs whom the hard Left refer to as ‘Red Tories’.
Some trolling victims have felt sufficiently concerned to call the police. Former shadow education secretary Lucy Powell was told online to kill herself after leaving Mr Corbyn’s front bench, while another MP who resigned over Mr Corbyn’s leadership received an email threatening to kill their child.
Vicky Foxcroft, meanwhile, a Labour whip, reportedly received a call to her constituency office which said: ‘If you don’t support Corbyn I will come down to the office and kick the f*** out of you.’ Ms Foxcroft is MP in Lewisham, south London. In next door Lambeth, Momentum held a meeting on Wednesday to put activists on a ‘war footing’ against the expected ‘coup’ against Mr Corbyn. This meeting was reportedly chaired by Marlene Ellis, suspended by Labour last month after comparing Zionists and Nazis. The following day, Jewish Labour MP Ruth Smeeth left the launch of a report into alleged anti-semitism in the Labour Party in tears, after being harangued by a Momentum activist who allegedly used anti-Semitic language. Jeremy Corbyn, who was present at the launch, is said to have stood by as she walked out.And yesterday, footage emerged of Mr Corbyn joking with the activist, Marc Wadsworth, shortly after Mrs Smeeth was abused.
So who is behind Momentum’s spiteful and sinister attempts to keep Mr Corbyn in power? It is being run from a borrowed office in the headquarters of the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association union, next to Euston station in London.
Its public face is a very unlikely Corbynista, so much so that one associate jokingly described him as the ‘Brideshead Bolshevik’ after the gilded youths in Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited.
JAMES Schneider, 28, is the son of a multi-millioniare financier. The floppy-haired Master Schneider spent his formative years floating between a £7million home in fashionable Primrose Hill, and a house on a Scottish country estate. Like Mr Corbyn’s hectoring neo-Marxist spin doctor Seamus Milne, a Guardian journalist, Schneider attended top public school Winchester College. He then went up to Trinity College, Oxford, before dabbling in journalism.
It is of some wonder to many traditional Labour supporters that Mr Schneider was president of the Liberal Democrats at Oxford, and was neither a Labour voter at the last election nor a party member. On May 10 last year, however, three days after Labour’s crushing general election defeat, Mr Schneider signed up. Soon he was organising 17,000 volunteers in support of Jeremy Corbyn during his leadership campaign.
Now he does the rounds of television studios. He acted as warm-up man for Mr Corbyn when he addressed a rally in London on Tuesday and deals with membership and social media issues.
Whatever his credentials, James Schneider has been singularly ineffective in curbing Momentum’s more unpleasant members. So when will all this bile end?
Anyone hoping for Jeremy Corbyn to stamp out these bullies should not hold their breath.
The Daily Telegraph reported earlier this month that Momentum founder Jon Lansman was seen four times in May using a desk in Mr Corbyn’s rooms in Parliament.
Labour MPs said the revelation proved the group is ‘working handin- hand’ with Mr Corbyn and demanded that the party leader ‘come clean’ about his control over the group.
It is worth recalling an article by the then new leader Jeremy Corbyn in the summer of 2015, in which he wrote: ‘I don’t do personal abuse – I want to lead a more inclusive and united party. After all, when the dust settles we are all still Labour.’
Tell that to the Momentum trolls. Besides, when the dust next settles, Labour might not exist as a meaningful party at all.