A Lion In The Den

I would have loved to have been able to have voted Labour in 2019. But Jeremy Corbyn had capitulated to Keir Starmer over a Brexit for which no one seriously doubted that he himself had voted in the referendum, a capitulation without which there would have been no General Election until 2022, when there would have been another hung Parliament, quite possibly with Labour as the largest party.

Despite his status as the single most consistently anti-racist MP ever and as, at that point, the single most important anti-imperialist politician in the world, Corbyn had denied BAME, migrant and refugee experience by subscribing to the IHRA Definition, and its provisions had been used to expel Jews and others who had been party members in good standing even under Tony Blair.

Corbyn was hinting at a preference for Greenery over his very deep ties to the miners and others. And Corbyn was flirting with the Government's policy, which is now the law in all but name, of a gender self-identification that was and is a denial of material reality itself.

In any case, it was obvious that Corbyn would have been able to do almost nothing against a Parliamentary Labour Party that was fanatically pro-austerity and pro-war. So I stood as an Independent. What else could I have done? What else will I be able to do in 2024?

But there is more to politics than parliamentary elections. And today, another resident of Lanchester has become the President of the largest education union in Europe. I know, because he has said so publicly often enough, that he agrees with me, and I with him, at least about Brexit, about the IHRA Definition, and about gender self-identification. Remember the name. Daniel Kebede.