Breakaway MPs hope that smearing Corbyn will obscure the fact that they are remnants of an old political order bankrupt of ideas
By Jonathan Cook
February 22, 2019 "Information
Clearing House"
- The
announcement by seven MPs from the UK Labour
Party on Monday that they were breaking away
and creating a new parliamentary faction
marked the biggest internal upheaval in a
British political party in nearly 40 years,
when the SDP split from Labour.
On Wednesday, they were joined by an eighth Labour MP, Joan Ryan, and three Conservative MPs. There are predictions more will follow.
With the UK teetering on the brink of crashing out of the European Union with no deal on Brexit, the founders of the so-called Independent Group made reference to their opposition to Brexit.
The chief concern cited for the split by the eight Labour MPs, though, was a supposed “anti-semitism crisis” in the party.
The breakaway faction seemingly agrees that anti-semitism has become so endemic in the party since Jeremy Corbyn became leader more than three years ago that they were left with no choice but to quit.
Corbyn, it should be noted, is the first leader of a major British party to explicitly prioritise the rights of Palestinians over Israel’s continuing belligerent occupation of the Palestinian territories.
‘Sickeningly racist’?
Luciana Berger, a Jewish MP who has highlighted what she sees as an anti-semitism problem under Corbyn, led the charge, stating at the Independent Group’s launch that she had reached “the sickening conclusion” that Labour was “institutionally racist”.
She and her allies claim she has been hounded out of the party by “anti-semitic bullying”. Berger has suffered online abuse and death threats from a young neo-Nazi who was jailed for two years in 2016. There have been other incidences of abuse and other sentences, including a 27-month jail term for John Nimmo, a right-wing extremist who referred to Berger as "Jewish scum" and signed his messages, "your friend, the Nazi".
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