The Last Temptation Of Corbyn

As Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana move to create a new party the comrades from the project offer their views on the value of this party.

Comrade Chris Haws

Jeremy Corbyn did do the right thing by leaving the Labour Party, but his new attempt at a new Left party is going to be as pointless as his time as Labour leader. He is weak and malleable, like gold, but less valuable. The only value he has is for the likes of the Daily Mail and the Express, who see him as a prominent member of the left and a powerful enemy of Britain and US imperialism. He is no such thing. His obsession with social mobility is a seemingly egalitarian attempt to allow us to play the capitalist game of competition versus cooperation. But still, his portrayal in the above media will not turn people towards genuine socialism but further away from it to Reform and their splinter group Advance UK. (Not to be confused with a disability housing charity.) His cohorts are worse: they have stayed in the party that stabbed their leader in the face and promote foreign policy, which supports the USA and Israel. Corbyn is guilty of this as well. You may get bored of hearing this, but supporting a party that supports American foreign policy is contrary to supporting British workers’ rights and the rights of Palestinians and other poor people abroad, as it is the same system oppressing them that is oppressing us now. I did join the Labour Party when Corbyn was up for leadership. Naively, I thought that real change would come. However, I learnt much quicker than Sultana, Burgon et al that Labour wouldn’t, couldn’t and never has, opposed the establishment that causes our miseries. Prominent Ex-Labour members should know better and must have known better before they picked the right time to leave. When I left for the Workers Party of Britain, again hoping for positive change, I encountered George Galloway, a man I never particularly liked as he came across as a political showman or what would now be called a virtue signaller. Despite this, his rhetoric and the supportive words of his inner circle convinced me to join. After joining his party, standing for local election twice and supporting his campaign to be MP for Batley and Spen, I realised a few things. Galloway, though I never agreed with all of his views, seemed to be a teller of truth against the lies of the state. Yet all he is, is an obfuscator worse than a virtue signaller. Just a man who tells whatever part of the truth suits his agenda. He is a sensitive man with a sensitive ego who, according to his own cronies, does not want to hear negative things about his own great self. He is a man who has no real will to change the system, but to use the system and use we who are disaffected by it to increase his fame and fortune. The whole system of capitalism does this; it encourages the exploitation of the many for personal gain. So claiming to oppose it whilst doing exactly what the system was designed to do is hypocritical and even worse than the ruling class defending its own system. I also learnt that our current democracy does not work. Not only does mass media propaganda keep smaller parties out, but the establishment will prevent anyone opposing it to become ineffective even when they have political power. Our current system needs removing and replacing, not changing from within. Otherwise our children will be repeating all of the above.

Comrade Luke Whittle 

Zarah Sultana’s dramatic departure from Labour could have come straight out of a Shakespeare play. The birth of yet another social democratic party, ‘Arise’ signals the desperation of a system in its dying days. 

The fact is that social democracy isn’t going to arise anytime soon – anytime at all in fact. It has always been a concession used to shepherd workers to remain within the pens of the capitalist system, to keep them deluded that they wield some influence and to maintain their willingness to be exploited.

The system itself, with its fading pretence of democracy must find new ways to keep the faith and this latest distraction is aimed at diverting workers away from the idea of proletarian revolution. No individual, be it Jeremy Corbyn, Liz Truss, Nigel Farage or even Jesus Christ, who manages to win at the ballot box has the power to influence the system in a way that benefits the working class. Liz Truss is a good illustration and she wasn’t even on the side of the working class, just a different set of the ruling class. When she tried to make reforms, state institutions such as the Bank of England intentionally crashed to cause a panic and force her ejection. This would also happen in the unlikely event of Corbyn’s success. Leaders and individuals who do not bow to the wishes of the ruling class find themselves assassinated, discredited or ejected. See our previous article on this matter.

Even so, Jeremy wouldn’t save anyone. His priority is to massage the system, to deliver a kinder capitalism (an oxymoron by any other name), and to always entice people back within it. He, Zarah and other social democrats doing the ‘anti-Labour’ pose, would join Labour again if it suited their purpose because they and theirs benefit from the system (look up Sebastian Corbyn if you don’t know).

We need to remind ourselves that those snivelling opportunists like Corbyn and Sultana stand in the way of class consciousness and, ultimately the realisation that our only salvation is proletarian revolution. We need to break this long-overdue cycle.

Comrade Ian Foster

St. Jeremy of Islington has decided to set up a Labour Party mark II, a new addition to the contemptible roster of British imperialist political parties. Corbyn, in parliament, is part of a group of 5 independents, the other 4 being elected under a pro Palestine banner, now joined by Zarah Sultana who has defected from Labour to help set up this latest endeavour to lead the workers of Britain down the dead end of social democracy – again! 

Corbyn prides himself on his record as a pro-Palestine campaigner, making many ethical critiques of savage Israeli policies. However, there is a huge contradiction at the heart of Corbyn’s utterances on Palestine: he is what I would label a constitutional Zionist. He carefully aligns with UN directives on the status of Palestine, including the 1949 Resolution 273 that de facto recognised the state of Israel, as well as the UN resolutions that have enshrined that unworkable monstrosity, the two-state solution, in international law, thus revealing beyond any shadow of doubt that he loyally serves imperialism.

 “Social democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism.” — Joseph Stalin

Stalin’s point is that social democracy is not the antithesis of fascism; both are policy tools for shielding capitalism and blocking a revolutionary move to socialism. The ruling class turns to fascism when the bourgeois state faces existential threat. Concessions, always temporary, under social democracy are granted by the ruling class only when compelled by the balance of forces. Those conditions do not exist today, only the rising strength of revolutionary working-class politics and a powerful communist party in a time of crisis could shift the balance and force concessions. Reformism cannot, by design, deliver what British workers need: the working class as the ruling class, a planned socialist economy and the end of capitalism.

Comrade Red Rick

Ever since Corbyn meekly stepped down as leader of the Labour Party after his disastrous 2019 campaign, there has been a rumbling amongst the Labour left who supported him, urging him to break away and start his own party of the ‘left.’ Jeremy Corbyn, being a true Labour man, would never have done anything to disrupt the applecart of the so-called Labour movement. He was spat on and cast aside by the new Labour leadership, but still he sat on the back benches until 2024, when he ran as an independent. No change in politics, no fear of losing his seat, now simply the quiet minority in the back of Parliament.

Fast forward to today, and Zarah Sultana has released the news that she is leaving the Labour Party after 14 years (remember that number) and is joining Corbyn in this year’s coalition of the left. Every year, we hear of one group or another attempting to unite the ‘left’ and form a party to rival Labour, continuing this futile attempt to reform a capitalist system using a bourgeois framework. Only this time, the neutered pet of the left, Corbyn, has decided to throw his hat in the ring. It will undoubtedly gain more attention than previous efforts, but as ever, it will lead the workers down a merry road, and away from actual, revolutionary change.

Jeremy Corbyn was in the Labour Party for 50 years. That’s five decades in a reactionary, imperialist party. Whether he spoke out against issues or not, his presence helped give the Labour Party a leftist veneer and corralled the workers back into the pen of social democracy.

Zarah Sultana’s service to imperialism has only lasted 14 years, meagre in comparison to Corbyn’s lifetime of service, but still more than enough time to understand what Labour is, and to help maintain the false narrative of it being an “opposition.”

Labour is not a party of opposition. There is no party of opposition, as all are working in the service of British capitalism. Social democracy is a blunt tool that strikes no blow, or does no harm, other than to the workers of Britain. Corbyn, Sultana, Abbott, McDonnell, Benn, Skinner, Byrne, Carden, and many others have all accepted the imperialist pound in service to the ruling class. Any new party they form will be infected with the same poison of social democracy, which cannot and will not achieve the emancipation of British workers.

Comrade Vikki Harper

“One year on from the election, this Labour government has refused to deliver the change people expected and deserved. Poverty, inequality and war are not inevitable. Our country needs to change direction, now. Congratulations to Zarah Sultana on her principled decision to leave the Labour Party. I am delighted that she will help us build a real alternative. The democratic foundations of a new kind of political party will soon take shape. Discussions are ongoing – and I am excited to work alongside all communities to fight for the future people deserve. Together, we can create something that is desperately missing from our broken political system: hope.”

So said Jeremy Corbyn recently and if that statement does give you hope, we are sorry for your delusion and urge you to dig deep and analyse this more deeply. 

Let’s unpack the bullshit, deluded rhetoric and wake ourselves up to reality because it is only when we are fully conscious that the transformation in our material conditions, begins. 

This Labour government has refused to deliver the change people expected and deserved.

THIS Labour government, like this one is an aberration and those that came before were different, better, for the working class. No Labour government (no party within the capitalist system of social democracy) has ever delivered the changes that people expected and deserved. The myth that Bevan’s LP gave us the NHS ignores the truth about why. To dig deeper, read about the true history of our Labour Party and determine if it has ever represented the needs of the working class

Poverty, inequality and war are not inevitable.

Under capitalism, of course they are! The system is based on the insatiable and infinite growth of capital, which inevitably necessitates exploitation of the many by the minority, and wars to steal and control what belongs to others. The system works exactly as intended and for Jeremy Corbyn to suggest otherwise means he is either naive or manipulative. Regardless, his garden path is the direction of travel for those who follow in pursuit.

Congratulations to Zarah Sultana on her principled decision to leave the Labour Party.

Principled! After 14 years of awareness that she was part of a party of the imperialist class. And who is Corbyn to offer comment when he never took that decision independently (he had to be kicked out) even after the illegal, immoral, Iraq war. Zarah has made the move now out of opportunity; it has nothing to do with principle. 

Together, we can create something that is desperately missing from our broken political system: hope.

Hope doesn’t pay the rent, feed the kids, house the homeless, treat the sick. Nor is hope a weapon against the system that is drowning us in misery, poverty and injustice. Hope is the weapon of those who want the system to remain, because it works fine for them. Hope is a tactic that keeps you strung along for another five or ten years fighting for an illusion. 

What is desperately missing from our broken political system is change! Baby and bathwater to be thrown and replaced with a new socialist system that works for us!

What we must fight for is a change in our material conditions, to build a planned economy that works for us, the workers. We certainly won’t achieve either within the prevailing corrupt system of capitalism no matter who is in government – surely we have had enough rounds in the capitalist ring, being punched drunk by social democracy to know it will never allow reform from within!

Comrade Alexander Mckay

Jeremy Corbyn happily sat within the Labour Party throughout the Kinnock, Blair, Brown and Miliband eras. He sat on the backbenches and uttered ineffectual protests as Kinnock sold out the National Union of Mineworkers, Blair unleashed the hell of the Iraq war, Brown bailed out the banks and Miliband did nothing of consequence. As the Labour governments of Blair and Brown waged a relentless class war upon the working class, Corbyn would mumble a protest but tell the working class to keep voting Labour anyway. This is the essence of what Corbyn, Zarah Sultana and other social democrats are really all about. They were in the Labour Party to present the illusion of choice, the illusion that voting Labour would “strengthen the left” but in reality their role was to push angry workers down a Labour Party cul-de-sac. Now we’ve reached the point where the Labour Party is openly despised by the working class and is likely to lose the next election. Elements of the left wing have realised that the game is up so are finally breaking with the Party. The destruction of the Labour Party can only be a good thing but destroying the form does not matter if the content of the politics remains the same. Corbyn, Sultana and their group are social democrats, meaning they want to reform the system and hand reforms to the working class. As a communist I am not interested in reforming a system that is so transparently rotten as British imperialism. I am not interested in some petit bourgeois reformer handing my class a few more crumbs and telling us to be grateful. I want to see the working class take its true place as the ruling class. To cast down the parasitic British capitalist class into the mud where they belong and to start the process of building socialism. This will never be accomplished by the feeble politics of Corbyn and Sultana. At best they are a useless distraction and at worst they are a deliberately created source of controlled opposition. We do not need such ‘leaders’, we need to fight for socialism and that can only come from destroying the current system including the den of inequity known as the Palace of Westminster that is so beloved by reformists such as Corbyn.