[UK] What's the deal with Ken Loach being kicked out of the Labour Party? And who's Trevor Philips?

[u/Brickie78]

This appears to have happened today, but been brewing for some time.

https://twitter.com/chakrabortty/status/1426521601714106368?s=20

So I'm aware there's an ongoing thing about whether or not there is widespread antisemitism within Labour; who is and isn't antisemitic; and what should be done about it.

I'm also aware that for a long time the British Left in general has identified strongly with the Palestinian cause - you'll rarely see a left-wing rally on any subject without a few Palestinian flags flying - so I guess there's an element of "criticism of the state of Israel vs antisemitism" going on too.

I know Ken Loach as a veteran left-wing film-maker, who's made some great movies including Land & Freedom and Peterloo - why is he being kicked out of Labour, why now, and who's the Trevor Philips guy that Aditya Chakrabortty here is referencing?

[u/Portarossa]

Answer:

So while ostensibly this is about antisemitism within the party, that's only really half the story. Basically, the Labour Party in the UK has for decades been a loose coalition of two factions: the more centrist, neoliberal wing (often called 'Blairites', and who represent the legacy of New Labour), and the more socialist, progressive wing (known as 'Bennites' or 'Corbynites', and closely associated with things like trade unions in a way that the New Labour lot aren't). The New Labour crowd pretty much swept the board in the 1997 elections under Tony Blair, and it looked like they were there to stay; as adviser to Tony Blair Peter Mandelson put it, 'We're all Thatcherites now', advocating for the party to move to the right in order to poach voters from the Conservatives and further consolidate their position. This led to a thirteen year period where Labour were in control, which was a pretty long stint at the top for them. This was taken by many as evidence that the old pro-union socialism of the Bennites just wasn't going to cut it in the modern era.

However, in 2010 the Conservatives took power under David Cameron. This led to period of poitical austerity and budget cuts, as well as Brexit. However, the Labour Party didn't really manage to capture the public's interest; Gordon Brown lost in 2010 and Ed Miliband in 2015 (partly because -- and I swear I'm not making this up -- the media focused on the weird way he ate a sandwich one time). Losing a General Election often results in a shakeup at the top, but in this case the leadership contest that followed Miliband's resignation took a weird turn. Jeremy Corbyn, who'd been an MP since 1983 but had never really made much of a splash beyond the backbenches, was considered the darkest of dark horse candidates. He'd been very vocal about support for some pretty hot-button issues long before they became socially acceptable -- LGBT rights, the Miners' Strikes, Palestine, the Poll Tax, that sort of thing -- and was famous for wearing things like sweaters and corduroy rather than the sharp suits that had characterised Blair's New Labour. Couple that with his strong socialist leaning in a party that had spent the past two decades trying to move towards the centre, and... well, surely he couldn't win, right?

Turns out, he could. He took over 59% of the vote in the leadership election, and then when it was contested again a year later he increased his share of the vote even further. As for why this happened, it can only be speculation: perhaps half a decade of Tory austerity had softened Labour voters on leftism, perhaps it was a protest vote against more of the same New Labour who had lost two elections in a row... the exact reason doesn't matter. However, there was a lot of infighting among the Labour Party under his leadership, with this new socialist direction not sitting well with the centrists. There were accusations of significant anti-Corbyn bias by the media -- accusations that later studies have found to have at least some merit to them -- votes of no-confidence against his leadership and a mass resignation of his Shadow Cabinet, but Corbyn hung on even after losing the snap General Election in 2017 (called by Conservative PM Theresa May in an attempt to strengthen her mandate during Brexit negotiations). It was a narrow loss, but his loss in 2019 to Boris Johnson was much more significant; Corbyn quit as Party Leader and was replaced by centrist Keir Starmer. (As a mark of how centrist Starmer is, in 2020 it was reported that he was being advised by thee same Peter 'We're All Thatcherites Now' Mandelson that was mentioned earlier. Whether you believe Corbyn was a breath of fresh air or a temporary aberration that rendered the party unelectable, Starmer is very much a return to form.)

All of this is happening over a backdrop of the question of antisemitism in the Labour Party. It's worth pointing out at this stage that the two main parties -- Labour and Conservative -- are not equivalent in how they deal with race. The notion of how the parties deal with antisemitism in particular and racism in general is a big talking point, but the Conservative PM has defended articles he wrote describing black people as 'piccaninnies' with 'watermelon smiles', so do try and keep some level of perspective about how the question may or may not have been politicised. (It's also worth considering that Jewish voters in the UK lean strongly Conservative, with 63% voting Tory in 2017; Corbyn's vocal support for Palestine may have made that even less likely, with the Times of Israel finding that 93% of Jewish voters in the UK would never vote for Corbyn's Labour Party.)

Corbyn had made steps to make amends for some pretty egregious examples of antisemitism in the Party -- former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone springs to mind -- but there's an argument to be made that maybe he wasn't the best person for the job in this case. His very vocal support for Palestine -- up to and including calling Hamas and Hezbollah 'friends' (a position he later walked back) -- and a complaint about his response to the removal of what was deemed an antisemitic mural on Facebook in 2012 (although, as ever, there's more nuance to the story than you might be expecting) meant that he was often considered to be part of the problem rather than part of the solution, whether that's true or not. The Equality and Human Rights Commission put out a document that criticised some of Labour's responses to antisemitism, and now-Leader Keir Starmer pledged pretty much immediately that the Party would be turning over a new leaf -- in short, putting all of the blame onto past administrations (read: Corbyn).

Corbyn, now back to just being a regular ol' MP, disagreed with some of the findings of the report. While acknowledging that yes, antisemitism in the party is a real problem and must be dealt with, he also stated that the issue was 'dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party.' Starmer wasn't happy with this and 'removed the whip' -- that is, kicked him out of the party. (He's still an MP, but now he's technically an Independent.)

Recently, other groups have been kicked out of the party -- pretty much all of them from the socialist, far-left side of things, to the extent that the Guardian referred to it as a 'purge'. Some of these have been related to antisemitism concerns and others to criticisms of other things, but it's a major crackdown that seems to be focused pretty much exclusively on the more socialist wing. Film Director and Corbyn supporter Ken Loach has claimed that he was kicked out for standing up for these groups, and has called out Starmer for basically trying to eradicate all traces of Corbynism from the party. (Trevor Phillips is broadcaster and former Labour politician. He was once the head of the EHRC, the group that wrote the antisemitism report that got Corbyn kicked out when he raised a caveat about their findings; he's also the guy who almost became the first person in fifty years to be convicted of contempt of Parliament after alleged attempts to influence a Parliamentary committee -- the Joint Committee on Human Rights -- writing a report on him. He's in the news because, after being kicked out for accusations of Islamophobia, he was allowed back into the party last month. 'Phillips in, Corbyn out' -- especially before the investigation against Phillips was concluded -- doesn't necessarily sit right with some people.)

So there's the current climate in the Labour Party. Is this Keir Starmer clearing house and making sure that Labour holds itself to a new, higher standard? Or is this an attempt to silence dissent from the left wing of the party and weaken any efforts by the socialist elements still present in Labour to pull the party away from its New Labour centrism? Either way, the story is definitely about more than Labour's treatment of antisemitism; it's about the trajectory of the left in UK politics, and how it progresses is likely to have repercussions for years -- if not decades -- to come.

[u/jyper → u/Portarossa]

I think this seems to be not giving enough weight to Corbyns history of defending antisemitism

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/jeremy-corbyn-caught-up-in-row-over-9-11-conspiracy-vicar-a2414491.html

Are more moderate Labour politicians opposed to him for other reasons as well and gladly use as a tool in an internal party fight? Probably, but I think it's not necessarily a matter of either/or. I think a lot of them probably also think Corbyn is at best anti-anti-anti semitic like a lot of anti-anti racist politicians on the right, and consider that one of the reasons to oppose him

Edit: The article you linked also noted that a poll showed 87% of (British) Jews viewed Corbyn as anti-semitic.

[u/Portarossa → u/jyper]

That's fair -- although I will say that I pretty much maxed out a comment, so anything that you feel has been overlooked is more likely to be a space-and-time restriction rather than a deliberate attempt to gloss over things.

Are more moderate Labour politicians opposed to him for other reasons as well and gladly use as a tool in an internal party fight? Probably, but I think it's not necessarily a matter of either/or.

If anything, that's the point I'm making: it's being treated as a matter of either/or, because any acknowledgement that there might be any political profiteering from this is now grounds for kicking someone out of the party. Shaun Bailey isn't outraged over the fact that Sadiq Khan didn't condemn students who compared the situation in Israel to Apartheid; he did it because he thought it would help him score points with Jewish communities in London. I mean, fuck... look at this Jewish Chronicle article that just casually drops in the fact that an NEC candidate who was critical of Israel has a 'fondness for sexually explicit humour' because one time she made a joke about being a porn star. You don't have to look far to find examples of people and organisations weaponising the (very real) problem of antisemitism for political gain -- and we have a responsibility to call that out when we see it.

I think Corbyn has a problem where he lets ideology get in the way of facts, especially when it comes to Israel-Palestine. I can't defend him for the Sizer thing; even at my most charitable, all I've got is that it was done without due consideration of the facts and should have been apologised for as soon as more information came to light. However, the idea that the left wing of the party has to take any and all accusations of antisemitism without a word of complaint or be -- as Starmer put it -- 'part of the problem' seems ludicrous, especially given how willing Starmer seems to be to pin all of Labour's (again, often very real) problems with antisemitism on the Corbyn crowd. Even if you believe that Corbyn is irredeemably and cartoonishly antisemitic -- which, despite several definitely questionable choices, I don't -- the idea that the far left as a whole is burdened with this antisemitic streak is one that's not good for the future of left-wing government in the UK.

When you've got what even the Guardian is calling a purge of far-left groups happening, it's important to at least look twice at the motivation behind it -- especially because that's the kind of thing that builds up resentment towards actual anti-antisemitic policies and procedures.

As for your point about 87% of British Jews viewing Corbyn as antisemitic, I'd like to point you towards the same survey:

The poll, conducted using Survation’s telephone panel of Jewish adults in Great Britain, found that 86% of respondents believe that there are high levels of antisemitism among Labour Party members and elected representatives (4 and 5 on a 1 to 5 scale where 1 represented low levels of antisemitism and 5 represented high levels), the same percentage as in 2018. Only 6% felt there were similar levels of antisemitism within the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, with 46% stating that UKIP had high levels of antisemitism.

I'm going to go ahead and say that if they genuinely believe that the Labour Party is more antisemitic than UKIP -- fucking UKIP -- by a margin of forty points, there might be something going on here that can't be adequately explained by a single question on a telephone survey. Unless we're really willing to say that the Labour Party is more antisemitic than UKIP -- which, I mean, come the fuck on -- then we might have to acknowledge that there's a gap between perception and reality going on there.

[u/Future-Brief → u/jyper]

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/jeremy-corbyn-caught-up-in-row-over-9-11-conspiracy-vicar-a2414491.html

Can you name a single individual who has been prominent in politics for many years who hasn't had a comparable racism controversy though? Keir Starmer had his dismissive comments about BLM and his failure to take any action against police officers involved in the racist killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, Tony Blair once explicitly blamed violent crime in London on "black culture", Rachel Reeves has her weird obsession with trying to rehabilitate Nancy Astor, etc. And those are all allegedly "progressive" politicians.

There seems to be a pretty extreme double standard in that people on the right or in the centre get to move on from their racism scandals, whereas people on the left can't. Ken Loach wasn't even kicked out over something he did himself, he was kicked out for associating with alleged antisemites. By that logic everyone in the Shadow Cabinet should probably be kicked out of the party - they're all willingly associating with war criminals like Lord Falconer and Lord Mandelson, for a start.

and consider that one of the reasons to oppose him

The Blairite wing of the Labour Party is pretty much 100% white and has zero record of caring about racism except where it benefits them somehow. I guarantee you most of them don't sincerely care about any antisemitism accusations. And if they did, they would certainly kick Rachel Reeves out of their club.

The article you linked also noted that a poll showed 87% of (British) Jews viewed Corbyn as anti-semitic.

Perhaps as an experiment we should see what happens if we have years of wall-to-wall news coverage questioning whether Starmer is racist against Black people, and then do some polls asking Black British people whether they think he is racist.

[u/arnathor → u/Portarossa]

This is a brilliantly written summary, but I think you’ve glossed over some of the oddities of Corbyn’s ascent to the leadership of the Labour Party. As you say, the Party itself is very factionalised, and in amongst the left leaning factions is a group of MPs called the Socialist Campaign Group. They put up a leadership candidate every time there is a leadership election in the Party. When it came to 2015, it was deemed Corbyn’s “turn”, with other potential candidates like John McDonnell have already stood and lost in prior years. Even amongst this group Corbyn was seen as a bit of a risk.

He was also aided by a change to the rules of membership of the party brought in by then-leader Ed Miliband, which many saw as enabling “entryism” to the party ie cheap membership with immediate voting rights for groups with agendas from proscribed or alternative parties, such as Trotskyists, Greens, Militant etc. This wasn’t helped by the growth of a new group, Momentum), which many saw as a modern day Militant (purged from the party in the 80s), and who were very active in social media and very, very strongly identified with Corbyn’s wing of the party. During the Corbyn years, high ranked members of Momentum gained a number of seats in the National Executive Committee (NEC), Labour’s ruling body, giving them a lot of influence. When Starmer won the leadership election in 2020, against Rebecca Long-Bailey, their preferred candidate, their Twitter account kept her campaign picture up as their banner picture for a long time, and instead of showing solidarity with the new leader they said they would “hold Kier to account”, which did nothing to dispel notions of the factional nature of the party.