In recent months, we’ve seen a spree of Twitter accounts ‘reluctantly’ cutting up their Labour membership cards. They claimed they’ve been forced to leave the party over Jeremy Corbyn. So Labour members hatched a plan to prove just how unreliable such claims can be. And centrists are really not going to like it.
I reluctantly resign
The card-cutting sham became even more transparent with the bogus #ResignForChris campaign. Anti-Labour troll accounts began posting images of a cut up Labour membership card, claiming they’d resigned over the treatment of Derby MP Chris Williamson. The problem was they kept using the same image. Although some occasionally rotated it a little so it looked fresh.
It didn’t take long for left-wingers to spot the ruse and immediately begin the fightback.
To all those saying cut up your Labour membership card for whatever reason…. at least have the decency to take a photo of YOUR card and not use a library picture, I have NO intention of cutting mine up. pic.twitter.com/0RQZ3CAJrt
— 𝑁𝑖𝑐ℎ𝑜𝑙𝑎 ♎️ ⚖️🦋🌹 (@Ms_Nichola) July 31, 2019
https://twitter.com/alanweaver1957/status/1156646193071624193?s=20
I have cut up my labour membership card in exactly the same way as everyone else and on the same table, currently there are 1000’s queuing behind me to do exactly the same thing #resignforChris #LabourAntisemitism #LabourParty pic.twitter.com/HT63TaWlI1
— Jonny B ג'וני ברהם (@jonnybraham) July 31, 2019
Anything centrists can do, the left can do better
Leftie Twitter realised that what centrists did so badly, they could do well. And so began a new spree. This time, it involved ‘centrists’ quitting the Tories and Lib Dems over, well, all the awful things they’ve done over the last decade:
With heavy heart I must resign from the @LibDems as I can no longer reconcile myself to the years we propped up the Tories enabling austerity & Brexit.
My membership card looks like this one plagiarised from the internet.
In other news I’ve joined the Labour Party. pic.twitter.com/UTpiBZZdI0— Foxie’s Rant (@FoxiePunkFolk) August 1, 2019
It is with deep joy & half a packet of wine gums, that I have cut up my Lib Dem membership card, because although I’m doing OK, I’ve decided that other people matter too, and no one in my country should be suffering the misery, fear and degradation of austerity. pic.twitter.com/znCu6e4KMn
— Lynneth1000000 #FBNHS BLM 🏳️🌈 🕊 ⚖️ 💙 🍉 🌻 🌎 (@Lynneth1000000) August 1, 2019
The smearing of Jeremy Corbyn
Just one year into his leadership of the Labour party, Corbyn had become the most smeared politician in UK history with 75% of media reports about Corbyn misrepresenting him.
Corbyn’s socialist premiership would break the near half-century dominance of one political ideology: neoliberalism. And this has made him two very powerful enemies. The media class – serving the interest of billionaire oligarchs. And the political class – right and ‘centre’ – because socialism represents a threat to both. Since the arrival of Blair’s New Labour, middle class centrists had been able to vote in their own class interest while masquerading as progressives. But the arrival of Corbyn created a problem, because the New Labour chickens had come home to roost. Only radically rebuilding the welfare state and public services will help address the chronic poverty and job insecurity facing Britain today.
Centrists could vote to end austerity, re-invest in the NHS, and renationalise the public services failing due to botched privatisations. But they’d have to vote against their class interest to do so. Their taxes may go up slightly. They may lose their peerage if Corbyn abolishes the House of Lords. And it turns out that for most of them, their own privilege matters more. Rather than admit this, to themselves or anyone else, they conjured the smears. And this gave them reasons to hate Corbyn that have nothing to do with policy.
These smears have become so baseless and contradictory as to be laughable. They didn’t so much jump the shark as launch it into space on the back of a unicorn. So mockery is precisely the correct response. Endless, bountiful mockery.
Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/ Twitter
