Now we know Labour’s golden rule: Jezza’s pals are never guilty
IT WAS a sparkling evening. The cream of the Corbynite Left – including the great man himself – gathered beneath the stained, halfarched window of Daunt Books in Marylebone to celebrate the launch of Baroness Chakrabarti’s new feminist tome Of Women.
According to the publishers, Of Women ‘outlines what needs fixing and makes clear, inspiring proposals about what we do next, putting women’s rights at the centre of the progressive political agenda’. And I presume that’s what the Shadow Attorney General focused on as she circulated among her guests, rather than the fact that she’d just spent the previous 24 hours touring the nation’s broadcast studios defending a man whose own written work includes such memorable prose as ‘ Dirty perv who dreams of b***ing birds’.
Jeremy Corbyn was also sticking rigidly to the progressive line.
‘A vital book on how we bring about gender equality,’ he tweeted. What he didn’t tweet was how he’d spent his own week promoting gender equality by refusing to take any action against Jared O’Mara, arguing it was‘ a shame’ he’d resigned from the parliamentary Women and Equalities Committee, and then refused to meet with one of his MPs to discuss fresh allegations of sexual abuse.
Speaking to Labour MPs, there is genuine anger at the way the O’Mara issue has been handled. Not just because of the nature of his offences, but because of the perceived double standards surrounding his selection. Everyone who stands for the party is asked if there is anything in their past that could bring Labour into disrepute, then signs a formal contract stating they have given full disclosure of possible past misdemeanours.
These can include anything from previous ownership of several houses, to youthful immersion in London’ s pharmaceutically enhanced club scene.
‘That’s been enough to bar a lot of people from seats ,’ on eM P explained to me, ‘but because Jared was the Momentum candidate, they just overlooked all this stuff.’
Of course they did. This past week has exposed what really lies at the heart of Jeremy Corbyn’s malign project. Not idealism. Not romanticism. Not even – if you bother to dig deep enough – the molten heat of radical socialism. No, Corbynism is instead bound together by the rancid glue of selfinterest and hypocrisy.
I actually can’t board the tumbril transporting O’Mara to the gallows. His comments posted on the internet were disgusting but, in the social media age, ancient. The decision to suspend him appears to be based on a single, angry altercation with a former acquaintance, the details of which he contests. To my eyes, these are not hanging offences.
But to the Corbynites, they should be. They are, after all, self-appointed vigilantes of Britain’s progressive morals. ‘The Labour Party will continue to proudly stand with the LGBT community against intolerance, homophobia and transphobia, wherever it is found,’ Labour’s leader boldly proclaimed in Pink News in June. ‘It’s 2017. This sexism must be consigned to history,’ he raged after a newspaper published a photograph of Nicola Sturgeon’s and Theresa May’s legs.
What he really meant, of course, was that Labour will take a stand everywhere except its own back yard. Sexism must be consigned to history, unless it’s Labour sexism. In which case it must be rationalized or whitewashed.
Racism. Homophobia. Misogyny. Once Labour’s stance was zerotolerance when confronted with this triple-headed hydra of prejudice. As it still is, unless the alleged perpetrator is an acolyte or ally of Jeremy Corbyn. At which point the attitude becomes: ‘Well, maybe a little bit of tolerance.’
If you want to know what a Cor- byn government would be like, cast aside your crystal ball. Look instead to the O’Mara affair. Or Clive Lewis ordering a Labour conference delegate to ‘get on your knees, bitch’. Or Ken Livingstone’s obsession with linking Hitler and Zionism. And observe the following.
Firstly, the extent to which Corbynism is built upon a golden rule – t here are no rules. Not for Corbynites. Rules are to keep the plebs in order and his opponents at bay. They do not apply to the children of the revolution.
SECOND, whatever Corbynites do is morally defensible, simply because it is Corbynites doing it. Even in those rare instances where the actions may appear indefensible, there is actually a very robust defence. Namely, that those highlighting the offence in question are ‘weaponising it’ in an attempt to target Corbyn and derail his historic mission.
Call it the Corbynite Nuremberg defence – especially given the everexpanding charge sheet of Labour anti-Semitism.
And encompassing it all is a final truth – that the 2017 Labour revolution is not a revolution at all. The objective isn’t to smash the establishment, but supplant it. Replacing the old patriarchy with a new one – the Left’s patriarchy – is the goal. ‘Jeremy is the absolute boy,’ his devotees chant as they grind away to their Acid Corbynism, and laugh as his MPs deliver that instruction to get on their knees.
Which, by and large, the Labour Party is agreeing to do. The Livingstone inquiry rolls on without resolution, 1 8 mont h s after his comments. The O’Mara inquiry is expected to reach a similarly indecisive conclusion – ‘these things never go anywhere if the leadership doesn’t want them to,’ an MP admitted to me. And the mantra ‘do as I say, not as I do’ will remain Labour’s new unofficial Clause 4.
‘I’m not a fighty person. But sometimes you have to pick a side,’ Baroness Chakrabarti said in a recent promotional interview for her book. And she has.