Resist The Coup

No one on the Left should take any pleasure in the latest machinations of the media huddle that persecuted Jeremy Corbyn, much less give them any assistance. With Cabinet and closely connected insiders letting it all out in The Sunday Times, then an attempted coup in the Conservative Party is clearly underway. But to whose benefit?

The 2019 General Election established that the General Elections were now decided by the people and places that had decided the 2016 referendum. Those had voted for Corbyn in 2017, delivering a hung Parliament when the London media had unanimously expected a Conservative landslide, and they would have voted for Corbyn a second time if he had stuck to his Bennite guns over Brexit.

Accordingly, and made possible by Brexit, the Budget of March 2020 has ended the era that began with the Budget of December 1976. The Centre is the think tank for this new era. Please give generously. Keir Starmer would put things back, but there is not going to be another General Election until 2024, and in any case he has started out with only the poll rating with which Corbyn had ended up. So there has to be a coup now.

And here we are. Resist. If necessary, take to the streets and resist. Boris Johnson or Rishi Sunak must remain Prime Minister until there were a Leader of the Opposition who upheld family and community values by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty.

A Leader of the Opposition who recognised that social solidarity was an expression of personal responsibility, that personal responsibility was protected by social solidarity, that international solidarity was an expression of national sovereignty, and that national sovereignty was protected by international solidarity.

A Leader of the Opposition who defined equality and diversity as economic equality and class diversity, as regional equality and regional diversity, as the equal sovereignty of diverse states, and as equal respect for diverse opinions within a framework of free speech and other civil liberties, including due process of law, with the presumption of innocence.

A Leader of the Opposition who understood the leading role of the working class in the pursuit of economic equality, the leading role of the working class and of the youth in the pursuit of international peace, and the need to maintain unity within and between them, including against separatist tendencies in England, Scotland and Wales.

A Leader of the Opposition who was determined to build One Nation, with an equal emphasis on the One and on the Nation, using Brexit as a double opportunity, both to reorganise the British economy under State direction, and to begin to develop a fully independent British foreign policy, including in relation to the United States, with military force used only ever in self-defence.

And a Leader of the Opposition who appreciated the leading role, in the building of One Nation, of the people and places whose votes had decided the outcomes of the 2016 referendum, of the 2017 General Election, and of the 2019 General Election, namely the rural working class, and the industrial and former industrial communities that were either outside the metropolitan areas or peripheral to them.

In many ways, Johnson does need to get his act together, and very quickly. But we must be clear that we would not stand for a nightmare General Election between Starmer and someone like Dominic Raab. Still less would we stand for it four years into a Raab or similar Premiership, with all the damage that that would already have done. Resist. If necessary, take to the streets and resist.