Ed McNally is a writer and trade unionist living in London. He was previously co-director of Labour for a Green New Deal.
Keir Starmer’s attacks on the Left show he’s desperate to reassert Labour’s role as America’s closest ally. But with events from Afghanistan to Ukraine showing the limits of US interventionism, British centrists are longing for a now-past age of neocon power.
Since becoming Labour leader, Keir Starmer has worked tirelessly to marginalize the Left through bureaucratic stitch-ups. But Starmer’s dirty tricks betray the hollowness of his project — and the game’s not up for the Labour left yet.
The Trump presidency briefly made liberals critics of US actions around the world — but now he’s gone, they’re back to believing America is the solution to the destruction it creates.
Keir Starmer’s disgraceful move to suspend Jeremy Corbyn as a member of the Labour Party doesn’t come out of a vacuum. It’s part of a much wider push to stifle political dissent in Britain by coercive means, in which Starmer is now complicit.
Owen Jones’s This Land promises to tell the story of the movement behind Jeremy Corbyn and his ultimate failure. While it offers important comments on the obstacles Labour faced, its strategic proposals are less convincing — watering down some of the principles that allowed for Corbyn’s initial victory.
Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader in 2015 as a veteran anti-war activist, only to have to spend the next five years apologizing for his supposed “racist allies” and “terrorist links.” The sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey shows how the space to criticize Israel has narrowed — but also how the Left has failed to defend its own right to call out injustice.
In his recent James Connolly lecture, Labour’s John McDonnell praised the Irish revolutionary as a formative influence on his politics. Connolly’s republicanism isn’t just of historical interest — it tells socialists how to think about democratizing society today.
Tory Brexiteers’ talk of a “global Britain” is a mere fantasy of returning to the glory days of empire. But even left-wing Remainers are pushing the case to maintain British military supremacy — and using it as a stick to beat Jeremy Corbyn.