The Establishment Feared Corbyn’s Internationalism
Above all, the British establishment feared Jeremy Corbyn because he advocated forcefully for socialist internationalist foreign policy. This anti-imperialist politics was the first casualty of Keir Starmer's Labour Party leadership.
Former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn stands in front of a Stop the War Coalition banner during a protest outside the Polish embassy in London on November 20, 2021. (Hollie Adams / Getty Images)
For the British establishment, the most intolerable element of Corbynism was its opposition to imperial intervention. Though the Tories tried to close the gap with Labour on domestic policy — floating plans to end austerity and put workers on company boards — their stance on overseas issues was resolute: facilitating the assault on Yemen and occupation of Palestine; bombing Syria and doubling deployments to Afghanistan; forging alliances with Gulf dictators and saber-rattling against Russia. On each of these points, Jeremy Corbyn’s dissenting position anathematized him in Westminster.
Accordingly, anti-imperial politics was the first casualty of Keir Starmer’s New Labour revival. The party is now marching in lockstep with the Conservatives: backing more defense spending and tougher sanctions against rival states while trumpeting its “unshakeable” commitment to NATO. Maximal support for Israeli ethnic cleansing is the new bipartisan norm. As Corbyn’s former political adviser Andrew Murray wrote in these pages, the Labour leadership has embraced a “warmonger internationalism,” stacking its foreign policy team with cheerleaders for the military ventures of the Tony Blair years.
Internationalism, Not Moralism
Opposition to such jingoistic reflexes has, thankfully, outlasted the Corbyn experiment. Stop the War Coalition and Palestine Solidarity Campaign have recruited a younger cohort of activists since the 2019 election, invigorating the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. Left Labour MPs such as Apsana Begum and Zarah Sultana have condemned the atrocities of the multibillion-pound arms industry, refusing to toe the party line on weapons sales. And the United Kingdom’s socialist media sphere, fronted by Novara and Tribune, continues to publish spirited takedowns of liberal interventionism and rebuttals of Israeli hasbara.
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