Posts Tagged ‘Jon Lansman’

Three reasons why Jennie Formby should not become General Secretary of the Labour Party

11/03/2018, 10:29:48 AM

by Rob Marchant

Following the abrupt resignation of Iain McNicol – apparently not fallen on his sword but pushed under a bus by the party leadership (£) – there are currently two candidates to be Labour’s General Secretary: Unite’s Jennie Formby and Momentum’s Jon Lansman.

While this might be reasonably likened to choosing for your leader between Ghengis Khan and Pol Pot, there is always a least worst option and, in these difficult times, it is important to take note which it is.

Here’s why Formby should not be General Secretary.

One. Jennie Formby is not so much a supporter of the Palestinian cause, as a fully-fledged anti-Israel campaigner who has been demonstrated to have, let’s say, controversial views.

To explain: two years ago, she “outraged” an NEC meeting by questioning Baroness Royall’s suitability to lead the party’s investigation into anti-Semitism at Oxford University Labour Club (later suppressed from publication), on the grounds that she had previously visited Israel. It seems remarkably close to the 2011 questioning by Paul Flynn MP whether it was right for a British Ambassador to Israel to be Jewish, for which he was rightly vilified.

The logic of the first is a mirror image of the second: if you are Jewish, you cannot be trusted to be objective with subjects involving Israel. If you are pro-Israel, you cannot be trusted with to be objective with subjects involving Jewishness. In either case, it plays to the old trope about Jews and untrustworthiness.

Given that the usual criticism from the anti-Israel lobby is that of conflating Jewishness with Zionism, it seems strangely ironic that Formby should here be doing precisely that. Anti-Semitism, quite obviously, is a wholly separate phenomenon from whether or not a person supports Israel.

Then there was the 2015 NEC meeting where, the Times of Israel reported, she promoted the idea that G4S should be boycotted for conference security on account of its Israel links, a vote which was passed with only around half the NEC present. She then stated that it was not a boycott of Israel, which the minutes later showed it clearly was, according to the newspaper.

Finally, we might note that, although Momentum has been extremely slow to take action against anti-Semites in its own ranks, Lansman is, after all, Jewish himself and has acknowledged there is a problem to be solved within Labour. Rather cleverly, Formby has of course recently condemned anti-Semitic attacks on Lansman, thereby conveniently diverting attention away from any criticism of her in that respect.

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The Monday column: When will Momentum strike?

13/11/2017, 10:00:44 PM

There was a good reason why the Roman Senate forbade the army from entering the city. Armies have a single purpose: to dominate and control. That’s what armies do: They march forward and vanquish enemies. Or there’s not really much point in having one.

From the grand events of antiquity to the humdrum affairs of Labour’s internal politics.

Momentum, Jeremy Corbyn’s Praetorian Guard, was created out of the remarkable insurgency that propelled him to the Labour leadership back in 2015.

It made sense for the Corbnyintes to try and bottle that enthusiasm and organisation, but Momentum was, from the very beginning, created as a standing army outside of the party’s control.

A back-up plan. If Corbyn was usurped by his internal opponents, Momentum could rely on hundreds of thousands of members and graduate into a new left-wing political party.

But June’s general election result has made Corbyn unassailable. His critics have withered. There is no realistic threat to his position, which begs the question: What is Momentum now for? Does it find itself without a purpose, or is it preparing the cross the Rubicon and seize control of Labour’s internal workings?

There have been skirmishes over the past few months, with local branches and constituencies across the country falling under the hard left’s influence. Meanwhile, Momentum’s founder, Jon Lansman, is currently running for a seat on the party’s National Executive Committee.

And while it’s likely that a swathe of moderate councillors will be replaced by Momentum supporters next year, robust local government regulations will prevent the hard left from being able to force through illegal budgets and the like.

But Momentum has bigger ambitions and the mandatory reselection of MPs remains the Holy Grail.

So far, Jeremy Corbyn has been incredibly cautious about triggering a full-on civil war with his MPs over this, but if Theresa May presses ahead with the parliamentary boundary changes for the next election, Labour MPs will, de facto, face mandatory reselection.

Indeed, if she wants to bequeath a once-in-a-generation advantage to her party on the way out of Number Ten, Theresa May will allow the Boundary Commission to proceed with its work of cutting the number of constituencies from 650 to 600.

A full-on offensive to replace moderates with true-believing Corbynites will be too great for Momentum to resist. The resulting schism with the party’s moderate wing will cripple the British centre-left for a generation.

Can Momentum resist the urge to dominate and control?

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Next May’s elections will be the test for Corbyn. If he fails, its up to the PLP to act

22/10/2015, 05:12:53 PM

by David Talbot

We are told that “something amazing happened” over the summer of 2015 in British politics. That the election of Jeremy Corbyn had “blown politics wide open”. As if it needed further reinforcement, the American actor Shia LaBeouf was said to exclaim “British politics just got very exciting”.  It is of course billed as the new politics, but is very much the old machine-style politics just with a Twitter handle.

Plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery after all, and after years of railing against Progress – a party within a party, we were so vehemently told – the left have their new vehicle: Momentum. Its raison d’etre was codified on the hallowed pages of Left Futures, now the Corbynistas headquarters, where the veteran Bennite Jon Lansman rather gave the game away,

And it will also campaign inside the Labour Party to change it into the campaigning organisation we need, rooted in communities and workplaces, a truly democratic party with polices to match the needs of the many not the interests of the few.

This is a positive outward-looking agenda and that is as it should be but there is a defensive agenda too. The fact that those who were threatening a coup until days before Jeremy’s victory stopped doing so when they saw the size of his majority does not mean that they have all changed their minds.

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