#SwindonsSundaySermon: Blue Labour is now in control – so surely the only option is Green?

“The only constant in life is change”, said Heraclitus. But the ancient philosophical dude with the slightly amusing name quite clearly didn’t know his capitalism from his colosseum because we always seem to find plenty of cash for wars that are never going to happen whilst millions and millions of British children are languishing in dire poverty.

Plenty for war, and fuck all for the poor. ‘Twas ever thus.

Labour is now the party of… war?

I don’t know about you, but I find it very difficult to get excited by the prospect of twelve new submarines whilst the government — a LABOUR government no less — is shafting disabled people for the apparent crime of being disabled.

There’s only one winner when any government announces an increase in defence spending, and that is the very same arms manufacturers that are already profiting from, and wilfully enabling genocide and violence around the world.

Is it not slightly absurd to see Keir Starmer dishonestly position himself as some sort of wartime Prime Minister? Britain is at war with its poor, not a foreign state.

Sabre-rattling Starmer would actually get away with this jingoistic nonsense if he had some credibility with the British public.

But even the most ardent of Starmer supporters would privately agree their leader is utterly despised and viewed as an untrustworthy, freeloading Tory that cannot be trusted by neither the left, the right, or the wishy-washy gormless shit in the middle of the political sandwich with their silly little Ukrainazi flags in their social media handles.

What a time to be alive!

I have no doubt you have heard of the right-wing faction, Blue Labour. If you haven’t, Canary journalist Steve Topple already had the measure of them a decade ago – as he wrote for the Morning Star.

The group describe themselves as part of a tradition of “conservative socialism”, whatever the fuck that is. They now found themselves allied with the populist right.

Keir Starmer’s faux patriotism and his repositioning of the Labour Party is very much in line with how Blue Labour thinks.

A recent article from Blue Labour, titled “What is to be Done”, is calling for Keir Starmer to legislate against promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.

Read that last sentence again.

You’re not imagining things. Blue Labour are foolishly believing they can encourage their Prime Minister to out-Reform, Reform UK, by promoting intolerance and discrimination.

What a time to be alive!

This is the sort of morally redundant outrage you would expect from a bunch of womb-controlling extremists like the Conservative’s ERG faction, or whatever they call themselves in these post-Brexit times.

Blue Labour. Isn’t that what’s called an oxymoron? I’ve only just realised that one of their leading figures is none other than Dan Carden. The last time I looked he was sharing seats at Anfield, the home of Liverpool Football Club, with John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn.

How did Carden go from “oh, Jeremy Corbyn” to a Blue Labour poster boy in the blink of an eye?

Vote Green?

I know the dwindling Socialist Campaign Group is beyond useless and thinks twenty signatures on a piece of A4 paper is worth a press release, but how can it be bad enough to force Carden into the arms of Blue Labour?

If there are any socialists left in the Labour Party, and by god they are few, isn’t it time they at least had a look at Zack Pokanski and the Greens? Taking a moral stand against Keir Starmer’s right-wing leadership is nothing to be ashamed of.

Sure, he’s got baggage, haven’t we all? I’ve called it out in the past, and accountability shouldn’t be beyond any politician of any political persuasion.

But who is best placed to take the fight to the threat of Farage and Reform? Starmer is clinging on to Farage’s coattails, Badenoch would happily serve under Prime Minister Farage, and are the Lib Dems still a thing?

Whilst no political party is likely to tick every single box of ideological purity, Polanski ticks a damn sight more than the rest of the Westminster establishment combined.

If we spend the next four years raking over something that Polanski said more than half-a-decade ago we may as well just polish the ministerial limousine and hand the keys to Number 10 over to Farage now – and that’s coming from one of Jeremy Corbyn’s biggest supporters.

The left should know better than most that when the corporate media weigh in with a relentless smear campaign against a political figure, it’s usually because they have got something worth saying.

Give Polanski a realistic chance to get it right before deciding he’s an anti-Corbyn establishment plant that’s lurking in the back pockets of some sort of Zionist overlords.

Spoiler: He’s not.

Labour: no need to hold your nose

I remember when I first started putting down my thoughts on paper for the Canary. Some of the responses from certain parts of the left would have you thinking I’d just signed up for the Israeli Occupation Forces and was being paid personally and generously by Gal Gadot.

Zionism is a dangerous poison, my friends, but when you start throwing the word around as if it was confetti you end up making yourself look like a bit of an arse, and inevitably, that does more to aid the Zionist cause than it ever will to dismantle it.

If you are on the left, and you held your nose and voted for Keir Starmer, more the fool you. Support a well established Green Party, potentially led by Mr Polanski, or even an independent left-wing movement that will work closely with other left factions, and you won’t need to pinch your nose anywhere near as hard the next time around.

Featured image via the Canary