Helen Lewis, Toby Young and Momentum

Everybody should watch this week’s Sunday Politics. Why? Many reasons, but let’s focus on the ‘debate’ on Momentum. Sarah Smith had no problem with Toby Young comparing Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters’ overwhelming dominance in the Labour Party today to the violent fascistic Britain First gaining a stranglehold on the Conservative Party. What does that say about the presenter of the BBC’s flagship politics programme on Sunday?

To give her some credit, even ultra Blairite Helen Lewis pulled Toby Young up at this point. But her defense was somewhat lackluster. I could attribute self-serving motives to her, but — since I can’t read her mind- I won’t. Nevertheless, I don’t think she is fit to be a Labour Party member, assuming she still is. Why don’t I simply congratulate the comrade for defending Momentum against Toby Young, a daft Tory who was among the first of that lot to apply to become a Labour supporter to willingly pay cash to lumber the alternative to the Tories with the electoral liability they idiotically assumed Corbyn would be? I don’t do that because of all the other things Helen Lewis said.

Firstly, Helen Lewis compared Momentum unfavorably to Progress because it morphed from the group that campaigned for Jeremy Corbyn to win the leadership first time round. So what? Helen says this group is not based on ideas or politics, merely a personality cult. I think the left needs to examine the pros and cons of this allegation.

Jeremy Corbyn admits he finds the “Oh Jerermy Corbyn” chant and the merchandise bearing his image deeply embarrassing. Other politicians who told you that would be suspected of lying. With Corbyn we know it’s true. If he dislikes the ‘cult’ paraphenalia why does he put up with it? I don’t think it is healthy any more than he does, but given the problems Labour’s leader faces with an intensely hostile Parliamentary Labour Party he allows the ‘adulation’ to continue as a means of setting limits on the betrayal of those MPs determined to topple him the very first chance they get.

While I dislike the ‘Corbyn cult’, I have myself joined those chants simply because I know how much it pisses off Tom Watson and the rest of the Blairites. Seems a little childish I know, but who doesn’t love to sight of Blairites squirming in the morning?

The Jeremy Corbyn ‘cult’ will become dangerous if Momentum relies on the personal qualities and decisions of one man regardless of how much we like and trust him. He is the last person who wants that. He knows he is not god. And he knows he can’t live forever. He also knows that his one head is not nearly as good as that of six hundred thousand Labour Party members, all of whom are less than the sum of their parts.

Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters need a lot more than him gaining the keys to 10 Downing Street. Of course we need that, but we also need hundreds of Labour MPs worthy of the name. That is why we can’t survive without preparing to select the best candidates for the next general election. The overwhelming majority of today’s lot are underwhelming on steroids.

Momentum is no personality cult regardless of the trapping, the endless image of Labour’s leader as Twitter avatars etc. Momentum is a democratic socialist broad church that is preparing for generations of leaders, democratic spokespersons who don’t blow their chance when offered airtime on television or radio.

Labour’s relative poor polling (relative given the state of Theresa May’s shambles of a goverment) is directly caused by the almost total censorship of Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters on BBC, SKY News, Channel4 News, ITV and Channel5. This censorship is reinforced by collusion between the extremist Tory editors at all the news networks and the Blairite MPs and ‘journalists’ giving voters no reason to hope for a better future. Only social media allows Corbyn to sustain any support in defiance of this censorship. That and mass meeting and demonstrations, and events like his appearance at Glastonbury.

A second reason Helen Lewis’s characterisation of Momentum was absurd was her repetition of the lie about this organization turning a blind eye to anti-Semitism. She repeated this smear in the same breath she attacked the organization as being controlled by one man – a man she knows happens to be a Jew. What a pity Sarah Smith didn’t see fit to expose the contradictions in Helen’s case.

What about anti-Semitism? We do need to talk about this. Anti-Semites are not Jeremy Corbyn supporters anymore than misogynists are. Defending Palestinians is not racist. Defending ethnic cleansing, an apartheid state’s state terrorism, collective punishment of all non-Jews is racist. To the extent Palestinians associate all ‘Jews’ with Zionism, they are careless at best, but it is a carelessness that needs to be seen in the context of the theft of their land and human rights by a Jewish state for a Jewish people which by definition is as racist as a Protestant state for a Protestant people, Muslim state for a Muslim people etc.

In Britain when I find people defending the Palestinian by means of anti-Semitic rhetoric, I pubicly question their motives, and if I’m not satisfied, I’ll unfollow, and in most cases block. If they hide behind anonymous Twitter accounts, it’s natural to wonder if they are who they claim to be. I smell a rat. If they pose as supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, they do so while knowing he will expel them if they ever summon the courage to identify themselves, and rightly so. In all probability, such ‘Corbynites’ are paid by the British state to pose as Jeremy Corbyn supporters, doing that in order to discredit him and the entire left of the Labour Party. If Theresa May and Amber Rudd knowingly waste my tax payers money on police spy agent provocateurs in order to corrupt the democratic process, then I want them both to resign. And in such circumstances I want them to stand trial for abuse of power and breaching the human rights and civil liberties of the entire electorate.

And if Sarah Smith or any other BBC employee is wasting my license fee in wilfully protecting racist police spy infiltrators into Momentum, I hope before too long they are also identified, sacked and prosecuted for corrupting democracy.