Massive blow to Starmer as 72 Labour members QUIT for Corbyn!

Right, so an absolutely massive story has broken today, in a possible sign of things to come under Keir Starmer’s leadership, if you can call it that, as 72 members of North Islington Constituency Labour Party have now quit in order to support Jeremy Corbyn and have done so in a brutal takedown of Starmer’s antidemocratic conduct, issuing a scathing joint letter stating saying that the imposition of candidates, the lack of consultation, the prevention from selecting their own candidate was too much and coming as this move does following the resignation of fifty Labour members over Faiza Shaheen being blocked from standing, and resignations from the party having happened up and down the country in other areas as well as a result of candidate impositions and arbitrary blocks being placed on favoured local candidates, Keir Starmer might be riding high in the polls and be on course for a parliamentary majority, but what exactly will be left of the Labour Party, which is collapsing at a grassroots level to a degree never before seen?
Right, so huge news breaking today and a massive blow to Keir Starmer’s hopes of installing a Labour loyalist off the back of 40 years of Jeremy Corbyn’s hard work, as 72 members of North Islington Constituency Labour Party or CLP, including a dozen members of the Executive Committee, an overwhelming majority of the executive who run the CLP, which will throw the Labour election campaign into disarray there and deservedly so in my view, have today issued a jointly signed letter of resignation telling Keir Starmer exactly what they think of him, his candidate Praful Nargund and the antidemocratic war he seems intent on waging against the membership itself. Words have not been minced. The letter reads:
‘A plea from resigning and former members of Islington North Labour Party: Vote for Jeremy Corbyn. Independent.
Dear voters of Islington North.
We have been proud members of Islington North Labour Party for many years. Together, we have campaigned on a wide range of issues from defending the local number 4 bus routes to saving the local hospital’s A&E. These campaigns have united members from all sides of our Party and we are proud of the collegiate atmosphere that we have created. In many ways, Islington North CLP was the genuine broad church that the Labour Party claims to be.
This year, we have been denied the right to choose our own candidate for the General Election. Not a single person in Islington North has had a say. We believe in democracy – and the people of Islington North deserve an MP who believes in democracy too.
Jeremy Corbyn has dedicated his life to this constituency. We hear on a regular basis from people how Jeremy has been there for them in their time of need, whether that is housing, education or anything else. He has always worked in partnership with our progressive Labour Council, both as a Labour MP and as an Independent MP.
We have been proud to stand alongside Jeremy over the course of ten General Elections. This year, we will be campaigning for him as an Independent for Islington North. Many of us have already resigned or been expelled from the Labour Party as a result. Those of us who are still in the Party know our support for Jeremy will result in the termination of our membership. We do not take this decision lightly, but it is time to take a stand in the name of democracy and justice.
We will campaign on the same principles we have always had. That includes ending all our privatisation of our NHS in order to restore the principle of free, public and universal healthcare.
Jeremy has always been an honest, brave and principled voice. We need that voice now, more than ever. We implore Labour voters to support Jeremy Corbyn as an independent candidate and vote for him on the 4th July.’
It is then signed by all the members who have resigned, which as I mentioned, include people involved in the running of North Islington Constituency Labour Party, the very people running Labour’s election campaign in that constituency and most of them have just quit to back Corbyn. The CLP chair has gone, though she quit just over a week ago as it happens, for having been caught campaigning for Jeremy already, but also leaving the party have several of the vice chair’s, the CLP Secretary, which is actually the most important of all, CLPs simply can’t operate without a solid secretary, and it won’t help asking the assistant secretary because he’s gone too. The Communications and Social Media officer has quit, the environment officer has quit, the Women’s Secretary has quit, the BAME office has quit, the LGBTQ+ officer has quit and when you look through the list of other names who are signatories to this, you’re looking at people who run ward branches within the CLP, smaller administrations than the CLP itself but report to it, and ward chairs, vice chairs, treasurers, organisers and they’ve gone, walked, Labour has lost them, they’ve all gone to Corbyn and all because Keir Starmer functionally is an undemocratic control freak who could not bring himself to allow Jeremy Corbyn to stand in the seat he has represented for 40 years, went above and beyond to get a motion passed at the National Executive Committee specifically singling him out as a member who was barred from standing for parliament. Not only did he block Corbyn from standing but the CLP was forbidden from selecting him as well, but they were also stopped from selecting anyone else as the NEC - which Starmer always defers to, to excuse himself and as if it has nothing to do with him, despite him as Party leader very much sitting on the NEC – then imposed on the CLP a private health CEO who made millions through the sale of a majority share of his and his mum’s IVF clinic chain to US healthcare interests, as the Labour candidate. He has about as much in common with the common man, with ordinary working class people as Rishi Sunak does. That mention of the NHS and hospital campaigns was deliberate, because Praful Nargund is not the sort to campaign for that, where Starmer’s Labour want more private health inclusion and will happen if Starmer’s health minion Wes Streeting gets his way, Nargund will be fully supporting it, ets face it, all imposed Labour candidates will, Starmer’s aversion to democracy, also taken a swipe at in this letter is exactly why he made sure the only pliant candidates ever get selected, a party of yes men who will never challenge him and given any kind of supermajority, there will be little opposition to him on the opposition benches either, making the message these resignees are making now all the more important and not merely to those voters in Islington North, but nationwide if you think a vote for Labour is where you want to go.
The mainstream media are predictably doing damage limitation for Starmer. Here’s a tweet by Robert Peston:
‘Many of the executive committee of Islington North’s Labour Party have just announced they are resigning from the party so they can campaign for the expelled former Labour leader. It is difficult to know if this will be seen as good or bad news by Starmer, since he says he takes pride in exiling Corbyn. Either way, this general election is especially messy for Tories and Labour.’
Messy it is, Starmer takes pride in expelling Corbyn though and his pride, ego and arrogance, his controlling, undemocratic nature have just seen his own local party in that constituency blown wide open. I don’t know if those remaining can cobble things together between them, the loss of decades of organisation and campaign experience however is going to be a blow they may struggle to put back together though, since so often it is the case that where the Labour right expect the Left to sit down, shut up and know their place, come election time, they know it is so often the left that are out there campaigning and door knocking, not that that has been the experience for Praful Nargund, a man who has been elusive in the extreme, seemingly of the belief enough people still think Jeremy Corbyn is the Labour candidate that he’ll pick up ‘mistake’ votes. The biggest issue for Corbyn has been that new message that he is standing as an independent, and ensuring enough people know that, so that they vote in the full knowledge that he is no longer Labour’s pick and this news, which is reverberating through mainstream and social media this afternoon will certainly help get that message out to more people.
Starmer did Corbyn dirty as has happened to so many other good candidates because they happen to actually be democrats and actually be socialists and the picture in Islington North has been replaicted elsewhere, with local Labour organisation falling apart and that is all on Starmer. Whether you are a Corbyn fan or not, I’d hate to wake up on the 5th July when we know we’re going to have a Starmer led government, to discover I accidentally voted Jeremy Corbyn out and ended up voting for a guy who will be grinning at the thought of not saving our NHS, but flogging off still more of it. If you want to stop that, if you want to join this last week of Corbyn’s campaign to make sure more people know a vote for Labour is not a vote for Corbyn, you are absolutely needed still. To get Corbyn re-elected will be to give Keir Starmer a bloody nose on a day where he will almost certainly be celebrating. We need opposition voices to what he’s going to bring, you don’t get much more vociferous than Jeremy’s. Cheers folks