Continuing a long British
tradition of political protest, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn was
'egged' on Sunday.
A man described in news reports
as a “pro-Brexit protester” caught up with 'Jezza' outside the
Finsbury Park Mosque and slapped a raw egg down on his head, with the
words: “When you vote, you get what you vote for.”
The protester was arrested for
assault. The media was quick to assure us that the Labour leader was
unharmed after his ordeal. Labour shadow home secretary Diane Abbott
ramped up the hyperbole when she tweeted: “He punched Jeremy very
hard. He happened to have an egg in his palm. But it could have been
a knife.”
But the sticky situation Corbyn
found himself in was no more than what he deserved after selling out
his principals, his friends and his country twice last week in a vain
attempt to appease factions in his party who want him out.
First he declared his support
for a re-run of the 2016 referendum on leaving the European Union,
with reversing that decision as one of the options. With around
two-thirds of Labour-held or targeted constituencies voting Leave,
this effectively makes Labour unelectable.
Then Corbyn hung his political
ally MP Chris Williamson – a staunch defender of Brexit and
Venezuela's right to national sovereignty – out to dry, over his
defence of his party's position on tenuous allegations of
institutional anti-Semitism.
Corbyn's double betrayal has
only made things worse. Like sharks, it has given his enemies a whiff
of blood and driven them into a feeding frenzy.
Despite obeying an order from
Corbyn's office to make a grovelling apology for his public comments,
Williamson was suspended from the Labour group of MPs within hours.
The attacks on the leader and pressure for further betrayals on
Brexit – including a parliamentary vote to delay leaving
indefinitely or even cancel it – continue unchecked.
Even Corbyn's closest ally,
shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, backs a second referendum and has
hinted at joining a protest march in favour of it. Maybe he hopes to
be elected leader when the imperialist, Zionist, pro-EU wing of
Labour finally force Corbyn to quit.
The whole farrago has crippled
Labour as a serious opposition party to the Conservative government,
which now seems likely to get its treacherous Brexit-in-name-only
deal through Parliament after the Tory Eurosceptics softened their
opposition to the “backstop” clause that could keep us under EU
rules indefinitely.
Brexit mastermind Nigel Farage
has seized on this treason by the two main parties, both of which
campaigned at the last election on promises to honour the Brexit
vote.
Two weeks from now former UK
Independence Party and current Brexit Party leader will lead a march
from Sunderland, the first polling centre to declare a Leave majority
in 2017, to London, arriving on the March 29 leaving date.
The march route is close to that
of the 1936 Jarrow Crusade against unemployment. The organisers are
playing up that analogy. The Labour Party and Trades Union Congress
leaders of the day failed to support the Jarrow marchers, but local
Conservative party branches often welcomed them.
Today's Labour Party and TUC
bigwigs have similarly turned against their pro-Leave voters and
members outside the metropolitan areas, treating them like foolish or
naughty children who need a good telling-off and to make amends.
Labour has betrayed the working
class many times, starting with its support for the First World War.
But this time the stab in the back comes from a leader held aloft as
the great white hope of the left, a true socialist, a dangerous
Marxist.
Thankfully the people are
smarter than politicians and media give them credit for. Fortunate,
but not for Labour or Tories.
In Britain we still elect
individuals to Parliament, harking back centuries to before formal
political parties stood candidates. That's why the eight Labour and
three Tory MPs who resigned from their parties to form the
anti-Brexit “Independent Group” still hold their seats.
Perhaps it's time to return to
the early days of Parliamentary democracy, like Cuba did after its
1959 revolution, and stop the big party machines from foisting their stuck-up, metropolitan media-friendly, corporate-captured candidates on our constituencies.