Posted by Jon Lansman

This week’s vote of no confidence has no constitutional basis.

CorbynLast year Jeremy Corbyn won a quarter of a million votes of Labour members, supporters and affiliates.

On Tuesday, he lost in a ‘vote of confidence’ due to the votes of just 170 people who never supported him in the first place, and many of whom have been actively undermining the Labour Party’s choice of leadership ever since. Those MPs are not listening to the vast majority of their members.

Ordinary Labour members need to be absolutely clear that the vote of no confidence by Labour MPs has no standing under Labour rules; it’s window-dressing a thoroughly undemocratic coup with a made-up attempt to look democratic. Continue reading →

Left take strong lead in election for Labour’s national executive

Inside Labour NEC electionsAlthough the final nominations have not yet been published in the election for constituency representatives on Labour’s national executive, the left moved into a decisive lead this week. Although nominations, most of which have been made by constituency delegates elected prior to the Corbyn surge of last summer, are likely to understate the left’s support in an OMOV election, left candidates still occupy 6 out of the top eight places and seem likely on this showing to win at least 5 of the 6 places available.

The current position is as follows: Continue reading →

Labour must unite to voice the anger of a working class revolt against political elites

workers unitedMost Labour voters who backed Brexit did so because of the greater insecurity and drop in living standards they have suffered because of the effects of neoliberalism and austerity.

It was, as Owen Jones wrote a “working class revolt against the political establishment” achieved through the “furious, alienated working-class votes” cast against “the lack of affordable housing; the lack of secure jobs; stagnating living standards; strained public services” albeit seen through the prism of immigration and in a country divided between regions and nations, between generations and between metropolitan centres and their peripheries. Continue reading →

Statement on my BBC Radio 4 interview

Lunch with

Yesterday, the BBC aired an interview with me as part of its occasional “At lunch with…” series. The full episode was 18 minutes long and a shorter version appeared on the PM program on Radio 4.

In the interview, I said that under the New Labour project, we alienated millions of our core voters, who have gone over to other parties or to not voting. I then said that Jeremy Corbyn could win them back. This statement has been presented by some as criticism of Jeremy by saying he could, rather than has already, won back these voters. My comments were not a criticism but a statement of how important Jeremy’s leadership is to the party. He can win back these lost voters, and we are on a path to do so but we are not complacent about the task ahead. Continue reading →

Labour and the Jews: from ethnic cleansing to truth and reconciliation

97i/16/huty/6851/17Who is responsible for the Middle East conflict? And how do we help resolve it? We can do no worse than to begin by looking at Labour’s own history.

On this day in 1944, Labour’s annual conference was taking place in London. A week before D-Day and two weeks before V1s started hitting London, the Allies were making progress through Italy and were bombing targets in France in preparation for the invasion. And amidst all that, Labour delegates were focussed on “The International Post-War Settlement“, on how to build a post-war world.

They knew about the Holocaust though they had not yet really understood its magnitude. And in building a new world, they were prepared to contemplate some drastic measures. I recently purchased a copy of the NEC statement which was agreed at the conference. It included, in a section headed “Palestine”, the words I found profoundly shocking when I first read them: Continue reading →