Letter to the Labour Party

An invitation to take part in the Labour Party’s Christmas Prize Draw included this:

“It has been an incredibly transformative year for the Labour Party, and as a supporter, your energy, passion and enthusiasm is driving our party’s efforts to change the country.”

But it seems that the Parliamentary Labour Party does not want to change the country, or itself. It seems instead to be doing everything it can to return to the pre-Corbyn days.

Labour MPs really are an ungracious and ungrateful lot. Instead of taking some pride in having a leader that can draw the public in thousands, they sneer. Instead of thanking Corbyn for doubling their party membership, they carp and whine and refuse to support their leader in any meaningful way.

Do they have no respect for the views of party members or supporters? When they stood for election, were they aiming to represent their constituents, or their party, party and people appearing to be two very different things where they are concerned. And the membership is invisible.

They keep saying that, with Corbyn as leader, the party is unelectable – or rather that the idea of Corbyn as Prime Minister will make Labour unelectable. Have they totally forgotten that in 2010 the LibDems opted to go into a coalition with the Tories rather than Labour? A bad mistake by the LibDems, that almost wiped them out at the last general election.

But also unelectable was Labour, leaving the country to face the terrors of Cameron and Osborne alone. Can’t all those vicious, back-stabbing Labour MPs understand why so many people flocked to vote Corbyn in? He, or rather his aims and policies, are our last hope for a kinder, more equal and more peaceful Britain.

But no. They want to hang on to Trident. They support bombing Syria. They castigate Corbyn for not backing a ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy. God forbid that they should act as peace-makers when they can carry on fighting the ‘war on terror’, the illegal war their hero Tony Blair dragged this country into, with the result that the world is more unstable and terrorised every day.

And God forbid that the anti-Corbyn MPs should fight all out for the rights of those people who are poor, sick, disabled, homeless and, if lucky enough to have a job, knowing that job is insecure. Corbyn’s critics pounce on any perceived ‘error’, any misquoted statement, any little thing that screams ‘anti-establishment’ at them, Westminster junkies as they are.

As David Cameron, with his desire to sell arms to dodgy regimes and bomb Syria regardless of international law, is fast becoming a second Tony Blair, would those MPs be happier under his wing? It may end up the only place they can go. Because, if they succeed in ousting Corbyn from the leadership, they will lose not only those new members, all 183,658 of them, but old members who are tired of the childish infighting.

And what of those thousands of supporters, who are waiting in vain for a united party before they too become members? All gone and a party gutted; a party shamed by its lack of vision and petty bullying; a party that will have lost the trust of the people and offers nothing that will regain that trust. Is that what they really want?

Lesley Docksey © 19/11/15

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This post was written by Lesley Docksey