This Is Your Legacy, Mr Corbyn

Since when did Labour Peers run the party? What is this, the Lib Dems? Bernard Donoughue, a sound opponent of anti-industrial Malthusianism, is a disappointment. But there is at least one reassuring absence. And there are things that could be said about the records of several of these people in relation to Tony Blair's wars. Never mind the two who were selling peerages under Blair. Or the one who, in a former life as a Conservative MP, invented the Poll Tax.

But the real point is to wonder what they think that they have to complain about. Jeremy Corbyn has accepted the unsubstantiated existence of widespread anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. He has taken with complete seriousness the self-appointed "community leaders" such as the Board of Deputies, the Jewish Leadership Council, and the Chief Rabbinate (of whom?). He has accepted the IHRA Definition, and he has submitted to the authority of the EHRC to enforce it as if it were the law of the land.

Under Corbyn's Leadership, Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker and Marc Wadsworth have all been expelled from the Labour Party, something of which Tony Blair could never have dreamed. Nobody expects that the Labour Whip will ever again extend to Chris Williamson. Pete Willsman has been suspended for having dared to mention something that had been caught on film. Both Labour Party membership and the Labour Whip can now be refused or revoked at the mere stamp of the Israeli Ambassador's foot.

Over the last four years, we have all come to recognise that this is vintage Corbyn. He has overlooked his supporters by appointing his enemies to frontbench and other positions. He has permitted a free vote on Syria. He has whipped an abstention on Trident, which there is absolutely no suggestion that a Corbyn Government might scrap, while there is more chance that Donald Trump's America might leave NATO than that Corbyn's Britain might do so. Corbyn has never brought the arming of the Saudi war in Yemen back to the floor of the House of Commons for another vote.

Corbyn's housing and transport policies go nowhere near far enough. He has done nothing to bring into the mainstream the Modern Monetary Theory that saw Stephanie Kelton designated as Chief Economist for the Democratic Minority Staff of the Senate Budget Committee, hotbed of Trotskyism that that is. Nor has Corbyn done anything to bring into the mainstream the Universal Basic Income that has been accepted even by the Adam Smith Institute.

Corbyn supports gender self-identification, and he sides with neoliberal capitalism on the issues of drugs and prostitution. He has allowed, and even caused, the dissipation of his initial following among the young male victims of anti-industrial economic policy and of belligerent foreign policy.

Corbyn wants a Customs Union with the European Union, possibly even at the price of accepting its State Aid rules. He is open to a second referendum on EU membership. He has accepted some of the Government’s baseless and collapsed claims about Salisbury, Amesbury, and Douma.

Corbyn has acted against the social and ethnic cleansing of Labour Haringey, but he has failed to secure justice for the 472 Teaching Assistants in Labour Durham. He has reacted wrongly, but very much as his internal party critics had wished, to the provocative extension of a State Visit to President Trump. As surely as he has failed to defend Chris Williamson, Corbyn has failed to defend Kelvin Hopkins.

And Corbyn has failed to insist that Julian Assange not be extradited to anywhere under any circumstance, which is the wedge issue that is being used to define a pantomime Left that would be acceptable to the official media for the purposes of pretended balance.

That brings us to Laura Pidcock, a Deputy Leadership challenge by whom would be completely meaningless in policy terms. She shares every single one of Corbyn's failings. No signatory to today's advertisement in The Guardian, an amusing throwback to when they and it were both relatively important, would have any policy reason not to vote for Pidcock. In which case, there is no point to her.

If this Deputy Leadership Election were to happen, then the two thirds of Labour Party members who supported Chris Williamson ought to abstain, along with all supporters of Lexit, all those who at least accepted the result of the referendum, every proponent of Modern Monetary Theory, every proponent of the Universal Basic Income, everyone who believed that women did not have penises, and everyone who opposed the extradition of Julian Assange.

Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration. I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up. I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.