SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
rishi sunak
Independent Corbyn Wins Reelection as Labour Ends 14 Years of Destructive Tory Rule
The former Labour leader issued a warning to the incoming government of Keir Starmer: "Dissent cannot be crushed without consequences."
Jul 05, 2024
Former U.K. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn won reelection as an Independent on Thursday against a candidate from his erstwhile party as Labour—despite its unpopularity under incoming Prime Minister Keir Starmer—ended 14 years of disastrous Conservative rule at the national level with a landslide victory.
Corbyn, who last year was banned by Labour's governing body from running as a party candidate in the 2024 elections, kept the Islington North seat he has held since 1983 with a 7,000-plus vote margin over local Labour councillor Praful Nargund.
Corbyn used his victory statement to send a message to Labour, calling his win "a warning to the incoming government that dissent cannot be crushed without consequences" and "that ideas of equality, justice, and peace are eternal."
"Tonight, we celebrate. Tomorrow, we organize," said Corbyn. "The energy we have unleashed will not go to waste. We are a movement made up of all ages, backgrounds, and faiths. A movement which can win with and for people all over the country."
In 2020, Corbyn was suspended from the Labour Party following the publication of a government watchdog report alleging that, under his leadership, the party failed to adequately handle antisemitism complaints. Corbyn apologized for the failures while defending himself from relentless attacks, saying at the time that "the scale of the problem was dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media."
"Labour has won by default because of the Tories' implosion, not because of enthusiasm for Starmer or his Tory-lite policies."
Starmer was elected Labour leader in April 2020, and he has since moved to stifle the party's left faction with what critics have described as "deeply anti-democratic" tactics.
Oliver Eagleton, an assistant editor at New Left Review, wrote in a New York Timesop-ed earlier this week that since the inception of his leadership, Starmer has engaged in a "merciless crackdown on the mildest forms of internal dissent."
"He expelled his predecessor, blocked left-wing candidates from standing for Parliament, proscribed various socialist groups, barred politicians from joining picket lines and introduced antidemocratic rules for leadership elections. He has also demanded a stifling level of ideological conformity," Eagleton wrote. "Lawmakers who criticize NATO face instant expulsion, and members who oppose Israel’s actions are cynically accused of antisemitism."
"This purge has turned Labour into a mirror image of the Conservatives: obsequious toward big business, advocating austerity at home and militarism abroad," he added. "It has also foreshadowed how Mr. Starmer would operate in Downing Street. He has said he intends to retain the Public Order Act, which places unprecedented restrictions on protests and makes it easier to lock up activists. He has described climate campaigners as 'contemptible' and 'pathetic,' pledging to impose harsh sentences on them. He has even backed a proposal to punish protesters who vandalize monuments with 10 years in prison."
Labour's landslide victory Thursday was a reflection of widespread discontent with nearly a decade and a half of Tory rule and the deep unpopularity of Conservative leader Rishi Sunak.
"Fourteen years, five prime ministers, four election cycles, two U.K.-wide referendums, and a global pandemic: a lot has happened since the Conservative Party entered coalition in 2010," The Guardiannoted Thursday. "But there are other, bigger figures on voters' minds: 7.6 million people on waiting lists for hospital treatment in England (three times the 2010 figure); 3% of Britons having to use a food bank, all while the cost of a weekly shop, household bills, and mortgage repayments is rising."
The advocacy group We Deserve Better said in a statement following Thursday's election that "this is a hollow victory for Labour, which is taking power as the most unpopular incoming government in U.K. political history, with the lowest vote share won by any single-party majority government."
"It's unprecedented for an opposition party entering government to have several of its leading politicians unseated, and to actively be losing votes across the country. Labour has won by default because of the Tories' implosion, not because of enthusiasm for Starmer or his Tory-lite policies," the group said. "Nationwide, Labour's vote share is lower under Starmer than it was under Jeremy in 2017 or even Blair in 2005. The Greens have triumphed by increasing their MPs from 1 to 4; Labour was trounced by Jeremy Corbyn in a historic victory; and several other independents have unseated Labour bigwigs or come close to doing so.
"Labour's heartlands are rebelling against them before they've even taken office," the statement continued. "Voters have sent them a clear message on Gaza, the climate, and austerity measures. Labour will continue to haemorrhage votes to pro-Palestine and socialist independent and Green candidates if they don't listen to their base."
Keep ReadingShow Less
UK Voters Send 'Shout' for Change to Tories as Labour Sweeps in Local Elections
"We are probably looking at certainly one of the worst, if not the worst, Conservative performances in local government elections for the last 40 years," said one analyst.
May 03, 2024
Nearly two weeks after the British Conservative Party pushed through a proposal to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda in what one lawyer called "performative cruelty" in the name of winning the general election expected later this year, the local election results announced throughout the day Friday made increasingly clear the ploy hadn't worked.
Elections expert John Curtice projected the Tories could ultimately lose up to 500 local council seats as vote counting continues into the weekend, following elections in which voters cast ballots for 2,661 seats.
The Conservatives have lost around half of the seats they are defending Curtice told BBC Radio.
"We are probably looking at certainly one of the worst, if not the worst, Conservative performances in local government elections for the last 40 years," the polling expert said.
Curtice added that if the results were replicated in a general election, Labour would likely win 34% of the vote, with the Tories winning 25%—five years after the right-wing party won in a landslide in the last nationwide contest.
Labour leader Keir Starmer said the results represented a decisive call for "change" from British voters, particularly applauding the results of a special election in Blackpool South, where Labour candidate Chris Webb won nearly 11,000 votes while Conservative David Jones came in a distant second with just over 3,200.
Webb's victory represented a 26% swing in favor of Labour.
"That's the fifth swing of over 20% to the Labour party in by elections in recent months and years. It is a fantastic result, a really first class result," Starmer said. "And here in Blackpool, a message has been sent directly to the prime minister, because this was a parliamentary vote, to say we're fed up with your decline, your chaos... your division and we want change. We want to go forward with Labour."
"That wasn't just a little message," he added. "That wasn't just a murmur. That was a shout from Blackpool. We want to change. And Blackpool speaks for the whole country in saying we've had enough now, after 14 years of failure, 14 years of decline."
The Conservatives also lost ground in the northern town of Hartlepool, where they lost six council seats. The region swung toward the Tories after the party led the push for Brexit, the U.K.'s exit from the European Union.
A similar result was recorded in York and North Yorkshire, which includes the area Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak represented as a member of Parliament.
"Yorkshire voted for Brexit in 2016," wrote William Booth, London bureau chief for The Washington Post. "But long gone are the days when many Conservatives want to stand before the voters and extol the advantages of leaving the European Union, which has been, in most sectors, a flop."
Sunak, added Booth, is "betting that immigration is still an issue with resonance and has promised to 'stop the boats,' the daily spectacle of desperate migrants risking their lives on rubber rafts trying to cross the English Channel. Sunak's government plans to fly asylum seekers arriving by boat to Rwanda. No flights have taken off yet. But the Home Office last week began a self-proclaimed 'large scale' operation to detain asylum seekers destined for removal."
The Labour Party has called Sunak's Rwanda plan a "gimmick" and said it would reverse a Tory policy blocking refugees from applying for asylum.
Average wages in the U.K. last year were "back at the level during the 2008 financial crisis, after taking account of inflation," according toThe Guardian.
"This 15 years of lost wage growth is estimated by the Resolution Foundation thinktank to have cost the average work £10,700 ($13,426) a year," reported the newspaper in March. "The performance has been ranked as the worst period for pay growth since the Napoleonic wars ended in 1815."
Analysts noted one setback for Labour in Oldham, where the party lost some seats in areas with large numbers of Muslim voters to independent candidates, costing it overall control of the council.
Arooj Shah, the Labour leader of the Oldham Council, told the BBC that the party's support for Israel in its bombardment of Gaza was behind its losses.
"Gaza is clearly an issue for anyone with an ounce of humanity in them, but we've asked for an immediate cease-fire right from the start," said Shah. "We have a rise of independents because people think mainstream parties aren't the answer."
The losses "should be a wake-up call for the Starmer leadership: Every vote must be earned," said the socialist and anti-racist group Momentum. "That means calling for an immediate arms ban to Israel, calling out Israeli war crimes, and delivering real leadership on climate."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Shameful': UK Conservatives Push Through Plan to Deport Asylum-Seekers to Rwanda
"The U.K. government could literally pay every refugee a £30,000 annual salary for life, and it would be cheaper," said one critic. "We're burning money just to enjoy the cruelty."
Apr 23, 2024
Legal and human rights experts on Tuesday said the British Conservative Party's decision to push through a bill allowing the government to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda—effectively overriding last year's Supreme Court ruling—represented a "desperate low" from lawmakers eager to exploit migrants ahead of elections expected later this year.
"A lot of this is performative cruelty," Daniel Merriman, a lawyer whose clients have included some asylum-seekers whom the Tories tried to deport after it first introduced its plan in 2022, toldNPR. "The elephant in the room is the upcoming election."
After a prolonged debate, the unelected House of Lords cleared the way to pass the Safety of Rwanda bill early Tuesday morning, after dropping several proposed amendments including one that would have required independent verification that the central African country is a safe place to send migrants.
The House of Commons then passed the bill, and King Charles III is expected to formally approve the legislation in the coming days.
The bill requires courts and immigration officials to "conclusively treat the Republic of Rwanda as a safe country" to send asylum-seekers, even though the Supreme Court ruled in November that people deported to the country would face a significant risk of refoulement, or being sent back to the countries where they originally fled persecution or violence.
The Conservative government signed a treaty with Rwanda last December to strengthen protections for asylum-seekers, including a provision that partially bans Rwanda from sending people back to their home countries.
But the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) called on the U.K. to abandon the plan and instead "take practical measures to address irregular flows of refugees and migrants, based on international cooperation and respect for international human rights law."
"The new legislation marks a further step away from the U.K.'s long tradition of providing refuge to those in need, in breach of the Refugee Convention," said Filippo Grandi, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees. "Protecting refugees requires all countries—not just those neighboring crisis zones—to uphold their obligations. This arrangement seeks to shift responsibility for refugee protection, undermining international cooperation and setting a worrying global precedent."
"The U.K. has a proud history of effective, independent judicial scrutiny," Grandi added. "It can still take the right steps and put in place measures to help address the factors that drive people to leave home, and share responsibility for those in need of protection, with European and other international partners."
Dorothy Guerrero, head of policy and advocacy at Global Justice Now, noted that "disastrous foreign and economic policies of successive governments have contributed to the need for people to seek refuge."
"These same people's lives are continually used as a political football, after years of being scapegoats for bad government decisions," said Guerrero. "Statements from politicians are now even more blatantly devoid of any pretense of care for human rights. We will not stop pushing for a change of course, with safe routes to seek asylum in the U.K. so that people no longer have to risk their lives in the Channel."
"The passing of the Rwanda Bill is a shameful day for the U.K.," she added.
Hours after the legislation was passed, French officials announced that at least five people, including a seven-year-old child, had been killed while attempting to cross the English Channel, bound for the U.K. in an overloaded inflatable boat.
At The New Statesman, associate political editor Rachel Cunliffe wrote Tuesday that the tragedy reveals "the flaws of the Rwanda plan," which proponents say could deter migrants from seeking refuge in Britain.
Proponents of the Rwanda plan will inevitably point to today's disaster as further evidence that strong measures are needed to address the issue of Channel crossings. They will accuse Labour and opposition parties of ignoring the human cost of letting this crisis continue and argue that lives are at stake if the government does not act.
[...]
The reality is that a substantial number of people who pay people traffickers large sums of money to crowd them on to a tiny boat do so because they feel they have no other option. Fleeing war and persecution, they are desperate. And so they are prepared to take desperate measures. Measures that sometimes lead to tragedy, but which are deemed necessary given the hopelessness of their situation.
It is hard to see how the threat to send a tiny fraction of those who arrive (Rwanda has said it will only take 150-200 migrants) changes this calculation.
The Labour Party, which is leading Conservatives in polls ahead of the expected elections, has vowed to scrap the legislation if it wins control of the government later this year, and critics have expressed doubt that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will actually secure deportation flights before Britons vote.
One flight was grounded in June 2022 after the European Court of Human Rights intervened, and on Monday the OHCHR warned aviation authorities that they would risk violating international law if they allow "unlawful removals" of asylum-seekers to Rwanda.
Critics have also pointed to a finding by the National Audit Office that the deportations would cost £1.8 million ($2.2 million) per person.
"The U.K. government could literally pay every refugee a £30,000 annual salary for life, and it would be cheaper than sending them to Rwanda," said David Andress, a history professor at the University of Portsmouth. "We're burning money just to enjoy the cruelty."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular