The Cult of Corbyn: Meaner Politics, a More Ugly Society

No longer reflects current view – No longer affiliated with Labour 

Upon realising the consequences of pioneering the atom bomb Oppenheimer bemoaned “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” This state of inconsolable regret is how I feel as somebody who first-preferenced Jeremy Corbyn a year ago. Having lost two general elections, the party of equality and social justice – my party, the Labour Party had to do something new. Sick of spin, weary about war and hungry for honesty and authenticity, with a lot of reservation, I cast my ballot for Corbyn. What was the worst that could happen? Perhaps if we leaned left we could even win back Scotland. We were promised a “new politics,” “a kinder politics,” a “straight talking, honest politics.” We were duped.

On the floor of a Virgin train the bearded intellectual spoke: “Today this train is completely ram-packed. The staff on the train are absolutely brilliant, working really hard to help everybody. The reality is there’s not enough trains, we need more of them and they’re also incredibly expensive. Isn’t that a case for public ownership?” My goodness the man came across as both a saint and a man of the people. Was this Gandhi’s reincarnation?

The truth is the entire scene was faked. No conspiracy contortionist can explain away the CCTV pictures showing all the empty seats. This shatters the claim that he is some type of political puritan, unspun and immune from exaggeration or fabrication. In reality, Corbyn has a very uneasy relationship with the truth.

A political pinnochio, he lied about being ahead in the polls before the “coup” and about attending over 120 pro-EU events. In reality he did no more than ten. The man stutted and stumbled his way through one of the most important debates of this country’s history. Given how Corbyn (not unlike Clegg) owed his mandate mainly to young people, why was he so half-hearted in defending the European Union which so many of us wanted to remain a part of?

Ultimately Corbyn has never been a supporter of the EU. From the backbenches he has opposed every single treaty. His closest comrades such as brother Piers and long-time friend Tariq Ali even said he was a closet brexiter. Lacking the pragmatism to properly pretend and lacking the principle to say what he really believed, the man escaped an entire week of referendum warfare to go on holiday! When the result came so did his true colours in his call for the invocation of Article 50.

Us lefties are always sniding about politicians ‘selling their souls.’ Wining and dining with business executives and placing their individual aspiration above the interests of the nation, this supposedly explains the inability of politicians to be open and honest with the public. Surely now we had a politician free from this constraint, we would get somebody able to speak plainly? Wrong again. Corbyn refused to say he’d defend a NATO ally under attack from Russia and has refused to condemn IRA terrorism. Is there something our dear leader is not telling us?

The bottom line is that Comrade Corbyn is intellectually chained to a political tradition that is completely alien to the British public and even most of his supporters – revolutionary socialism. When this contagion is found among children it is cute and among teenagers it is usually a phase. However, to know that it is being played out in the mind of the leader of the opposition in one of the most powerful countries in the world is actually dangerous.

Believing in radical change is not necessarily a bad thing if your proposals are progressive and constructive. Corbyn’s revolutionary tendencies are subversive and destructive. Evidence of where his real allegiances lie can be seen in who he appointed as his director of strategy and communications – Seumas Milne. A Maoist at school and something of a Stalinist throughout his university days, he is now 58 but his views have changed little. Indeed the first paper the Labour Party press releases anything to is the Morning Star – a rebranded version of the Daily Worker. During the Cold War this was Moscow’s mouthpiece in the West, applauding the show trials and covering up the purges.

But since the Soviet Union has collapsed, the PRC has embraced the market and the “working class” has been something of a disappointment, who can fulfull the Marxist prophecy of the overthrow of capitalism? In the 80s and 90s this revolutionary violence came from the IRA. It is hard to believe that Corbyn’s position is that far away from the views espoused by his Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell:  “Because of the bravery of the IRA and people like Bobby Sands we now have a peace process.” Given the terrorist group killed well over a thousand innocent men, women and children, the Corbyn clan cannot hide behind the mask of some principled pacifism. Why then was Corbyn unable to give a straight-talking, honest answer to the question of shoot-to-kill in the event of a Paris-style massacre?

Corbyn’s dodging and dithering surrounding the issue of Al Qaeda/ISIS type terrorism can only be understood upon analysing the views expressed by his inner circle. Mr Milne described the Lee Rigby affair as “the predicted consequence of an avalanche of violence unleashed by the US, Britain and others.” 

This theory of ‘blow back’ which is also espoused by Stop the War, the group Corbyn helped found and has chaired is extremely dangerous. It means if Britain were to suffer such an attack, his response would be based on the underlying presumption that ‘we had it coming.’ This view is actually racist in nature implying that Muslim men of South Asian, Arab and African descent cannot control their own anger, have no independent agency and will inevitably blow themselves up.

Just as numerous Republican politicians who have crusaded against gay rights such as Larry Craig have been found to be secretly gay themselves, it is interesting how self-professed “anti-racists” have revealed themselves to often be the most racist of all. Not only has the virus of anti-semitism infected the party, if you’re an ethnic minority and in any way free-thinking and refuse to toe the party line, you are dismissed as an “Uncle Tom” or somehow not a “real” person of colour. The abuse and intimidation meted out by the Corbynistas has caused Labour constitutency meetings across the country to be temporarily suspended.

Far from answering Occupy and creating a party of the 99%, Corbyn’s leadership has given the green light to the 0.1%. Alongside the well-intentioned, the party has become infested with conspiracy fanatics, 9-11 truthers, trotskyists and anti-semites. Far from marching us towards the promised “kinder politics” and “more caring society,” the Corbyn cult masks the harbinges of a meaner politics and a more ugly society. We must boot Corbyn back to the back benches and his goons back to their basements and blogs. Only then can we win the trust of the public as the party of progress.

Copyright © 2016 Tal Tyagi. All Rights Reserved.