Posted by Mark Seddon

The Corbyn effect isn’t going away

This article first appeared in the Boston Globe in October 2016, reflecting Jeremy’s second leadership victory. We are republishing it in the wake of the General Election as a prescient analysis of the mistakes that his critics made in underestimating ‘the Corbyn effect’.

The election of Jeremy Corbyn last month as leader of the Labour Party — for the second time in a year, this time with an increased majority — continues to baffle and infuriate his enemies both within and without his party, as it does the serried ranks of Britain’s commentariat. Even The Guardian newspaper, for so long the Bible of the typical left-leaning British liberal, has been vehement in its opposition to Corbyn. Its strictures weren’t just ignored; a proportion of its readership is angry and gives every impression of feeling betrayed.

How is it, critics ask, that a majority of Labour’s membership — now over a half million — should go against the bulk of the parliamentary party and most of a shadow Cabinet that had resigned en masse in a failed attempt to defenestrate their leader? And what of the increasingly strident warnings of a former Labour leader, Tony Blair, who helped win general elections for a party that has spent rather too much time in opposition over the decades? Continue reading →

We must not let this act of cowardice succeed

 

Corbyn addressing a support Rally outside Parliament

Barely ten months ago, I urged my branch, the New York City Labour Party Branch, to first nominate and then vote for Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party and for Tom Watson as his deputy. In this I was supported by longtime New York Labour activist, journalist and Tribune columnist, Ian Williams.

I cannot speak for the reasons of others in doing so, but for me, Jeremy Corbyn represented the best chance for Labour to finally move on from the New Labour years, to campaign against austerity instead of meekly accepting it and to re-engage with the many traditional Labour voters who had turned their backs on us. I supported Tom Watson because I believed that he represented another and honourable wing of the party and would be loyal to the new leader. Harold Wilson would always maintain that Labour needed; ‘two wings to fly’. Before any attempts are made to pigeon-hole such support, neither Jeremy or Tom come from the Tribune stable. Continue reading →

Help save the Gay Hussar and give co-ops a bost

Gay HussarIs it madness to want to save a 60-year-old restaurant, the Gay Hussar in London’s Soho, because of fond memories of goulash, fierce argument and good humour – and to want others to have similar experiences? The late Tom Driberg tried famously to persuade Mick Jagger to stand as a Labour candidate there; Victor Sassie, longtime maître d’, whose claims to Hungarian parentage were diluted by his less trumpted familial links to Barrow-in-Furness, witnessed libidinous former foreign secretary, George Brown, fall outside in the gutter. Even in my time, Tribune dinners were attended by among others, Michael Foot, Barbara Castle, Kenneth Clarke and the late Lord Rothermere, who, having been kissed by journalist Nick Cohen, took himself and Foot off for a nightcap at the Ritz.

A group of us, call us devotees, have formed a co-operative to buy the restaurant, having invested time and money in the place – the latter often courtesy of our employers – over many years.

We think we are in good company. Continue reading →

Is Britain being held to ransom by trans-national companies and billionaires?

blackmailIf you cut through the hysteria currently being generated by the Murdoch echo chamber that is the Sunday Times and the Daily Mail whose hatred of trade unions knows no bounds, there is a stubborn truth that no amount of air-brushing will do away with. It is that Jim Ratcliffe, the billionaire owner of the vital national asset that is Grangemouth, has been prepared to hold the country to ransom, and in organising an old fashioned Victorian lock-out, has been quite prepared to close the plant down altogether. In order for this not to happen, the workers at the plant have been obliged to agree to all of his miserable terms. Continue reading →

Who trusts Cameron to keep the lights on?

light bulbSo Britain’s first major nuclear power station construction in a generation – at Hinckley – is to come courtesy of the French state owned EDF energy company and Chinese state owned interests. In return for providing up to 7% of Britain’s energy needs, the French and Chinese will be guaranteed fixed rate electricity price deals, which are double current prices.

This jaw-dropping deal has been trumpeted by David Cameron and George Osborne with the sort of platitudes that a Sixth form student can see through. For, if it all goes belly-up, and if Messrs Cameron and Osborne have got their sums wrong, British consumers will end up helping to subsidise French taxpayers and the Chinese state by paying through the nose for energy for years to come. Continue reading →