This 7 September 2016 parody music video from Britain is called UB4Corbyn – “Red Red Line”. It is inspired by British reggae band UB40 endorsing Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour leadership election. The melody is from the UB40 song Red Red Wine. It says about itself:
Red, red line – defend workers’ rights
Let’s not forget that we still need them so
Red, red line – environmental protections
We’re not doing all we can
Down with Monsanto! Down with Monsanto!Life’s not fine for the ninety-nine per cent
Finances in the red
That’s just wrong, so let’s find
A solution that’s Labour-ledRed, red line – I’m not stepping down
Work with me while the Tories are tearing apart their own blue heartLife’s not fine for the ninety-nine per cent
Public services are a mess
No surprise when they’re privatised
So let’s reclaim our NHSRed, red line – education
We need class sizes under thirty
In every school
That would be cool
Oh, and scrap Trident
We were right to vote for Corbyn before and we will be right to do it again, writes CHELLEY RYAN: here.
This 4 September 2016 parody music video from Britain says about itself:
The Owen Smiths – “I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish”
My rally was silent
There was nothing, no one, nothing around for miles
I doused my leadership campaign
With a host of spurious claimsI started something, I pitched myself as a radical
When I’m really not so radical
Hair brushed and parted
Clinical me, clinical me, clinical me
I started something and no one’s buying itI grabbed the bull by the horns
Uh, turns out I was a stalking horse
And I spannered my leadership campaign
When I abstained on the welfare billI started something, I pitched myself as a radical
When I’m really not so radical
Hair brushed and parted
Cynical me, cynical me, cynical me
I started something and no one’s buying it
This 4 September 2016 parody music video from Britain says about itself:
The Owen Smiths – “Soft-Leftists of the World Unite”
Learn to love me, I’m a regular bloke
Even if at times I misspoke
Did I mention I’m a radical?
But not so radical that you couldn’t be aspirationalSoft-leftists of the world, unite and take over!
Soft-leftists of the world, let’s take over, over Labour, move it centreLearn to love me, I’m a regular guy
I’m the man, I’ll tell you for why
I’m a radical, but not too radical
Take my word for it, you cannot win anything with CorbynSoft-leftists of the world, unite and take over!
Soft-leftists of the world, let’s take over, over Labour, move it centreI’m not New Labour or Blairite, my credentials are airtight
Shadow cabinet crashes down, a week is a long time in politics
Try living in the real world, we must be corporate shills
But before I began, I was beaten before I even beganSoft-leftists of the world, unite and take over!
Soft-leftists of the world, let’s take over, over Labour, move it back to the centre
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
Saturday 10th
posted by Morning Star in Britain
Bakers’ leader allowed vote in leadership contest after appeal
by Luke James
Parliamentary Reporter
BAKERS’ union leader Ronnie Draper vowed to fight the Labour “purge” yesterday after having his suspension lifted in time to vote for Jeremy Corbyn’s re-election as leader.
Mr Draper (pictured) discovered that he had been readmitted to the party shortly after attending an appeal hearing with party officials yesterday afternoon.
He told the Star he had been “very hurt” by the suspension and was “absolutely delighted” that it had been overturned.
“Now I’m going to do what I can to get these other thousands of people back into our party,” he vowed.
The BFAWU general secretary was controversially suspended two weeks ago for using the term “traitor” in a tweet about opponents of Mr Corbyn.
At the appeal meeting, he said he would avoid using such terms in the future and stressed his loyalty to the party he’d been a member of for over 40 years.
“Irrespective of whether we’ve been right-wing, left-wing or in the middle somewhere I have gone out and actively campaigned for the election of a Labour government,” he said.
“I might not necessarily have liked who the Labour leader was but I’ve gone out and campaigned for them.
“Now that we’ve got what I see as the best opportunity for working-class people I’m going to go for it hell to leather, supporting Jeremy in every way I can.”
Labour revealed this week that a total of 3,107 members or registered supporters had been suspended, expelled or denied entry ahead of the leadership contest.
Now Labour has refused an application to become a registered supporter — because the applicant had written for the Morning Star.
A letter sent to Christine Lindey informed he application had been denied “on the grounds that you have publicly supported the Communist Party” and referenced an article she had written for the Morning Star.
The article, which was subsequently re-posted on the Communist Party’s Culture Matters website, did not make any reference to any political party.
Morning Star editor Ben Chacko said: “We know that thousands of people are being unfairly purged in this leadership election, but this is absurd.
“Christine is effectively being banned from voting because she wrote for the Morning Star, something Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn did weekly for 10 years and something which many Labour MPs past and present from all wings of the party, from Tony Benn to Liz Kendall, have done too.
“Labour ought to stop its overexcitable enforcers trying to concoct reasons to disenfranchise people and make sure those responsible for these disgraceful purges are held accountable to the membership.”
http://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-f103-Reinstated-Draper-Ill-still-fight-purge#.V9WA0TWZ0dU
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Monday 12th September 2016
posted by Morning Star in Britain
by Peter Lazenby
Northern Reporter
HUNDREDS of supporters turned out to greet Jeremy Corbyn at rallies across Yorkshire at the weekend.
The Labour leader attracted a full room of supporters at the historic council chamber of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) headquarters in Barnsley on Saturday.
Following tradition, Mr Corbyn gave a second speech to a crowd of 300 who had been unable to get into the council chamber.
He then visited the former mining community of Featherstone in West Yorkshire, which suffered a drastic economic decline following the closure of its coalfields in the 1980s.
Addressing a crowd of 1,000 people at Featherstone Rovers’ rugby stadium, Mr Corbyn said: “The closure of the pits was not a rational decision on economic grounds.
“It was a decision by a Tory leader to destroy the voice of the mineworkers, the voice of the trade unions and the political voice of the working class in Britain.”
Among the supporting speakers was Beth Paramor, a Momentum supporter and Labour town councillor from Todmorden in West Yorkshire who also spoke at a Morning Star benefit concert at the Trades Club in the Calder Valley.
In Barnsley Mr Corbyn met activists from the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign, who want a public and transparent inquiry into the so-called Battle of Orgreave in June, 1984, when armoured police attacked striking miners picketing the Orgreave coking plant outside Rotherham.
Mr Corbyn backed a letter earlier this year to the then home security Theresa May calling for an investigation into the brutal attack by police.
In Featherstone the Labour leader met three women school cleaners from Kinsley Academy in Wakefield, West Yorkshire.
The three — Leslie Leake, Marice Hall and Karen McGee — are on indefinite strike after their jobs were transferred from Wakefield Council to cleaning contractor C&D Cleaning Group.
The profit-hungry privateer slashed their pay to the minimum wage and abolished sick pay.
http://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-7e14-Hundreds-flock-to-support-Corbyn-across-Yorkshire#.V9Z8FDWZ0dU
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Monday 12th September 2016
posted by Morning Star in Britain
OWEN SMITH was slapped down by one of his most senior trade union supporters yesterday after calling for a second referendum.
The Pontypridd MP said there will be a need for an “extra democratic moment” to ratify the decision to leave once the terms of the Brexit negotiations were clear.
He also told the Andrew Marr Show that he could seek to lead Britain back into the EU if Labour wins the 2020 general election.
But Tim Roache, general secretary of the GMB union which is backing Mr Smith, told Sky News he did not agree with that position.
“I think that boat has sailed, I think democracy has determined that we are coming out of Europe,” he said.
A spokesman for Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign said: “This is further proof for how poorly the Owen Smith campaign is going.
“He has made a second referendum on the EU a core part of his campaign and today one of his chief backers has rejected the policy.”
http://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-7c99-Smith-criticised-by-GMB-for-vowing-to-rejoin-EU#.V9Z8mDWZ0dU
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Monday 12th September 2016
posted by Morning Star in Britain
by Conrad Landin in Brighton
LABOUR’s “purge” of new members and supporters makes a mockery of the party’s claim to be a “democratic” socialist party, a union leader suspended for his social media comments said yesterday.
Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union general secretary Ronnie Draper received a hero’s reception at the National Shop Stewards Network fringe meeting at TUC Congress.
He was suspended for retweeting comments posted on Twitter but reinstated after lodging an appeal.
Mr Draper urged union activists to fight to defend less high-profile members who find themselves in a similar position.
“What I’ve seen over the past few months is not a democratic party,” he said.
Public-sector union PCS president Janice Godrich told the same meeting that Labour was making a huge mistake by turning away newly politicised young people. And she said it was “completely unjustified” that some affiliated unions were supporting Owen Smith’s leadership challenge in spite of having “the same anti-austerity policies as Jeremy Corbyn” affirmed through their own policy-making structures.
Ms Godrich said reselection of Labour MPs should be regarded as a “basic democratic right.”
She accused sitting MPs of cynically “crying victimisation” because they resented being challenged on being “the second I of British capitalism.”
Rail union RMT leader Mick Cash said Labour MPs had “gone on holiday” from opposing the government’s policies “when we need opposition more than ever.”
http://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-633a-Labour-is-going-against-democracy#.V9Z9QDWZ0dU
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Monday 12th September 2016
posted by Morning Star in Features
The party machinery refuses to tell thousands of members why they’re frozen out, writes CHARLEY ALLAN
IAM still trapped in “purge-atory” — neither banned from voting in the Labour leadership election nor given a ballot paper, allegedly because of admin error.
And I’m not alone. Although Labour has rubbished online claims of up to 100,000 missing ballots, it refuses to reveal the real number.
Why not? It knows exactly how many people are in my position — we’ve been calling, emailing and filling out forms enough, asking what’s happened to our votes.
Why weren’t our details given to Electoral Reform Services, which is running the election, in the first place?
How many names were originally sent to the company? How many members have asked for their ballots to be reissued? How many have actually received reissued ballots?
A panel report presented to Labour’s national executive committee (NEC) on Wednesday doesn’t answer any of these questions, but claims that 3,107 “rule-breakers” have so far been purged.
Its numbers don’t really add up but the party refuses to discuss them directly — instead referring me to the Press Association’s summary which gives the same total.
When I asked the press office how many people were still waiting for a vote, it said it wouldn’t provide a “running commentary” on the election — then hung up when I suggested it was already doing so by releasing these figures in the first place.
The reports claim that the NEC is still considering another 1,616 cases.
But thousands more have simply slipped through the cracks, we’re led to believe, and members must ask for a reissue — which may or may not arrive in time.
I never had a chance to ask Labour my other questions, such as why hasn’t the full purge list — with names and reasons — been given to Jeremy Corbyn or the NEC, as requested?
And who selectively leaked the most “extreme” cases of social-media rudeness, much of which hardly qualifies as abuse?
How can the party retrospectively proscribe words such as “traitor” when Corbyn opponents including former Blair official John McTernan and Portsmouth councillor John Ferrett have called their leader the same on Twitter without losing their right to vote?
Why isn’t the NEC following Shami Chakrabarti’s advice to “uphold the strongest principles of natural justice” by giving purged members full reasons for their disenfranchisement — plus the right to a speedy appeal?
What’s the logic behind expelling members for year-old retweets in support of another party’s policy while letting a Labour lord get away with giving millions to the Lib Dems?
Does the published purge figure include members who have cast a ballot only to see it taken away for unspecified “comments made on social media” — as experienced by Isle of Wight pensioner and life-long Labour voter Jacqui Bartram this weekend?
How did the six-month retrospective membership freeze date discourage “entryists” — as claimed in court — when the door was wide open to anyone who could afford £25 for a vote?
And on the subject of entryism, when will Ashfield MP Gloria de Piero be sanctioned for encouraging Sun readers to sign up to the anti-Corbyn struggle?
Meanwhile, some good news. Michael Foster, the party donor who called Corbynistas “nazi stormtroopers,” has finally been suspended for abuse — though he’s comically complaining that “the rule of law is being ignored” — while two high-profile members have had their votes returned.
Ronnie Draper, general secretary of the BFAWU bakers’ union, and Harrow councillor Pamela Fitzpatrick have both had their suspensions lifted without any appeal hearing. And some Scottish Labour members have been saved by the grace of their own general secretary, who hasn’t taken kindly to London’s heavy-handed approach to this “autonomous” party.
But what about members without as much clout? Draper advises them to write directly to general secretary Iain McNicol and the party’s Compliance Unit — the beefed-up band of “witch-hunters” who are still advertising for more staff.
McNicol has staked all his political capital on this corridor coup — and the left’s clean sweep in recent NEC delegate elections means his position is even more precarious post-party conference later this month.
His most recent show of contempt for members involves giving the green light to conference’s official brochure, which features three photos of deputy leader Tom Watson but none of Corbyn.
This pathetic picture-purge sparked the inspired #JezSelfie hashtag, which soon started trending on social media.
Many of the wonderful snaps on display seem to be shot while the credits rolled on Thursday night’s BBC Question Time, as mobile-brandishing members mobbed the stage to thank Corbyn while giving Owen “no mates” Smith the cold shoulder.
The hustings in Oldham saw the best performance yet from Corbyn, who looks more like a PM in waiting than ever.
He nailed the regular referendum accusation against him with: “If we’d simply said everything in the European Union was perfect, I suspect we’d have got less votes to remain.”
But Smith provoked groans by claiming his “integrity” prevented him returning to Corbyn’s shadow cabinet.
There was loud applause for a member of the audience who pointed out: “If he was a true Labour member he would serve under any Labour leader” — before joking that this must mean Smith was “in the wrong party.”
Smith complained this was “abuse” because “it’s implying that I’m not Labour. I’ve always been Labour and I will always be Labour.”
But his silence over the purge of party members speaks louder than any hollow claims of loyalty.
And his string of “Owen goals” betray a latent misogyny at odds with modern Labour values.
Last week he told the Mirror about meeting his wife at school: “1,200 boys, three girls and I pulled Liz. So I must have something going on — that must be leadership.”
The Labour right is already washing its hands, admitting that Smith is just meant to weaken Corbyn ahead of next year’s challenge by David Miliband, who looks like he plans to parachute into Jo Cox’s Batley & Spen seat.
But if the best the centre-left can come up with is someone who sees women as prizes, boasts about his sexual prowess and excuses casual sexism as “banter,” then it should throw its weight behind pioneering equalities campaigner Corbyn as quickly as possible. Whatever happens at conference after the result, unity will be the only game in town for true Labour — let the rest go purge themselves.
http://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-6ad1-Labour-purge-numbers-simple-dont-add-up#.V9b2pDWZ0dU
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Monday 19th September 2016
posted by Morning Star in Editorial
OWEN SMITH complains that it would “not be a conciliatory gesture” if Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn proposes a shadow cabinet elected by the whole party.
If Corbyn were “serious” about uniting the party he would adopt a shadow cabinet elected solely by MPs.
There are a number of things Smith himself could do if he were “serious” about uniting the party or keen to be “conciliatory.”
He could refrain from threatening the mass expulsion of members of Momentum or insulting the thousands of loyal Labour Party members who comprise its membership as “parasites.”
If he’s worried about a “party within a party” — not that Momentum has pretensions of being any such thing — he might reflect that the right of the party also organises itself, in outfits such as Labour First and Progress.
He might condemn the witch-hunt of suspected Corbyn sympathisers that has seen thousands suspended, or the heavy-handed repression of branch activity we saw over the summer with meetings banned and whole local parties suspended based on unsubstantiated accusations of wrongdoing.
Perhaps if members weren’t learning the hard way that the existing party machine is determined to stop them exercising their right to participate, they wouldn’t need to join Momentum.
And in fact, most of them haven’t anyway, with the organisation’s 18,000 members a small fraction of the party’s half a million plus.
These no doubt sincere opinions from Smith, like those of some other MPs, speak volumes for his sense of entitlement.
Like aristocrats of the old school, they see ordinary people as passive and obedient, only whipped up into wickedness and rebellion by nefarious outside agitators.
So mass membership support for Corbyn is because arms are being “twisted” by a troupe of ageing Trotskyists — a position which doesn’t really explain why hundreds of thousands of people are joining Corbyn’s Labour Party in the first place.
And so Corbyn is plotting to deepen divisions between MPs and the membership by proposing to give the latter a voice in shadow cabinet elections.
The logic of Smith’s position is that the party would be less divided if the members had no power.
In the sense that British politics might be less divisive if we scrapped this democracy lark and restored the divine right of kings, he may have a point.
But the “crisis” Neil Kinnock laments in the Labour Party is a reflection of broader social currents. It is not the creation of Corbyn and would not be resolved if he were defeated by the right.
The elite can turn a deaf ear to popular discontent. It did so as Labour lost millions of working-class votes in the Blair years.
Since the bankers’ crash, the Establishment’s continued pursuit of policies which are deeply unpopular with the public — from fawning on the bankers to continued privatisation of public services — have widened the gulf between rulers and ruled.
If, in the unlikely event of Smith winning, he went on to remove the right of members to vote for the leader, to purge Momentum activists and to re-establish the unquestioned supremacy of MPs over the rest of the party, he might create a superficially less divided party.
But he would do nothing to speak to the millions who have made it abundantly clear that they are sick of the status quo.
Labour would cease to “reach out” and would become just another out-of-touch Establishment party with no answers.
After that?
Labour might be outflanked to the left, like the moribund social democratic parties of Greece or Spain.
It might be outflanked by a far right exploiting public anger at elites, as is happening in France.
But it would cease to be an alternative, and squander its chance to shape the future of our country.
http://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-39c7-Smith-is-no-unity-builder#.V-B5HDWXEdU
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Tuesday 20th
posted by Morning Star in Britain
Labour rival admits he wasn’t ready to challenge Corbyn
by Luke James
Parliamentary Reporter
OWEN SMITH began laying the ground for a likely defeat in the Labour leadership election yesterday after claiming he did not want to challenge Jeremy Corbyn.
Angela Eagle triggered the contest before the Pontypridd MP elbowed her out of the way to clear the path for a head-to-head with Mr Corbyn.
But he is expected to suffer a heavy defeat when the results are announced at Labour conference on Saturday and got his excuses in early during an interview with the Guardian.
He said: “I wasn’t in favour of there being a challenge.
“But once a challenge had been made then I felt I needed to stand because I felt that I had something to say about the future of the Labour Party, and a lot of other people in the PLP felt that about me, which is why they asked me to stand.”
Asked whether he would have liked Mr Corbyn to be given longer as leader, he added: “Yes, is the honest answer.”
Labour MSP Neil Findlay, who has led Mr Corbyn’s campaign in Scotland, said the timing of the admission — on the eve of close of polls — was “rather strange.”
He said it highlighted how Mr Smith had been “appallingly advised” by MPs who urged him to challenge Mr Corbyn but didn’t support him during the campaign.
Mr Findlay told the Star: “All through this contest I have felt that Owen has been badly advised by colleagues who I don’t believe had his or the party’s best interests at heart.
“The people who have teed him up for this have disappeared into the sunset and left him hanging there.”
Meanwhile Mr Corbyn’s re-election campaign surges ahead with a final rally in east London tonight, with shadow chancellor John McDonnell, shadow health secretary Diane Abbott and former NUT general secretary Christine Blower.
The two factions of the party could be set to clash at Labour’s national executive earlier today over plans to give MPs the power to elect the shadow cabinet.
Mr Corbyn’s supporters will argue for an amendment which would see a third of posts elected by MPs, a third by the leader and a third by members.
“I think there has to be a widening of the franchise,” Mr Corbyn told Radio 4’s Today programme.
http://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-98cd-Smith-Corbyn-deserved-longer-as-leader-before-coup#.V-DvhjWXEdU
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Tuesday 20th
posted by Morning Star in Britain
NO PARTY election contest is complete without a Q&A on the Mumsnet website it seems and Jeremy Corbyn was the latest leader to receive a virtual grilling.
Here are four things we learned:
Jeremy is a globe trotter:
“I have many political influences, from my mother and father and also as a late teenager living and working in Jamaica and travelling throughout Latin America, I could see the dreadful levels of inequality there.”
Jeremy has most recently read Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart but his all-time favourite is Ulysses by James Joyce despite finding it very hard to understand:
“I first read it as my companion on a complicated series of trains travelling from London to Marrakech.”
This man’s not for dunking:
“I’m totally anti-sugar on health grounds, so eat very few biscuits, but if forced to accept one, it’s always a pleasure to have a shortbread.”
Jeremy’s late mother, Naomi, was a school careers adviser who encouraged girls to work in the male-dominated science and engineering sectors.
“Recently I held a reception for engineers in my office, and one lady who came had been persuaded into engineering by my mother and wanted to thank her,” he said.
http://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-e84f-Corbyn-The-man-behind-the-beard#.V-DwLTWXEdU
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