Wake up Starmer!

We need you to stand with us, not the Tories

When I wake up, the first thing I see is this

It’s Anuerin “Nye” Bevan, a Welsh Labour MP and the founder of the National Health Service. Sadly, the modern-day Labour Party doesn’t seem to produce this kind of MP anymore. If by chance one starts to stick his head up (Jeremy Corbyn.) The posh boys running the Labour Party grab their public school cricketbats and hit him or her for a six. Adjust their school ties and sit back down for a nice glass of champagne and something from their Fortnum and Mason’s hamper.

You can be posh and still be a good member/MP or even Prime Minister for the Labour Party. Clement Attlee grew up wealthy as the son of a London solicitor. He went to public school (Haileybury College) and Oxford (University College.) Yet, his government in 1945 helped establish a state designed to create a land that was fit for living, after the horror of the Second World War. Tony Benn, one of my heroes and a big influence, had to fight to remain in the House of Commons, after inheriting his father’s title (Viscount Stansgate.) But that’s another story.

However, a great number of early Labour MPs came through the trade unions and given the name of the party it makes sense.

Things have changed. According to The Commons Library, 90 percent of the Labour MPs had been university educated. 21 percent had been to Oxford or Cambridge while 29 percent of Tories had been to Oxbridge. That’s rarified air. This research covers elections from 1979 to 2019. Not that a university education is bad. I have one, but it just seems like most of the current Labour MPs wear the same kind of suit the Tory MPs do, just with a slightly-different cut.

There is so much information in the above report, there are a number of articles will come from it.

1979 bought about the election of Margaret Thatcher, no need to discuss her misdeeds We are still suffering from their implementation.

1997 bought us Tony Blair (an Oxbridge-educated barrister) who pulled the Labour party to the right. I always thought the wrong Tony became PM. Although I do disagree with Benn’s view on the EU. Read Benn’s Arguments for Democracy and Arguments for Socialism. if you’re interested in what are among my influences. Another of my influences is Jesus as Benn said in 1980, “The Labour Party owes more to the teachings of Jesus than to the writings of Marx.” There was a current of radical Methodism running through the beginnings of the Labour Party.

For the sake of time and space, let’s skip ahead to Jeremy Corbyn, finally a proper socialist at the head of the party. But he scared the corporate functionaries in the Labour head office and out came the cricket bats and hence, we have Sir Keir Starmer.

Despite being named after Keir Hardie, one of the founders of the Labour Party, sadly Starmer has not lived up to his namesake. Starmer has already done an about-face on his 10 pledges, which included economic justice, social justice and strengthening workers’ rights and working with trade unions.

So Starmer removes Labour frontbencher Sam Terry, who spoke on transport for the party after Terry joined a picket-line.

Some night and it’s coming soon, Starmer is going to be woken up in the middle of the night, by the ghosts of Keir Hardie, Nye Bevan, and Tony Benn and they will show him a nightmare version of this country where there is no NHS, no protection for the workers and rampant uncontrolled greed by a small percentage of the country!

Starmer has written columns for the S**. One of Rupert Murdoch’s worst right-wing rags, which isn’t even fit to line a bird cage.

We stand on a precipice and we don’t have long before we trundle off into a gloomy future. I’ve joined Breakthrough Party

This is my last free entry in this substack. I’ll be setting up a subscription plan in the next few days. Most of the content will be free and a paid subscription won’t be more than a cup of coffee with some other subscription plans for those who can afford to be a bit more generous.

And finally, I steal from Roddy Frame “In this green and pleasant land, where we make our home, we make our stand!”

Thanks for reading and please