This is a Facebook post from 22 Nov 2019 that I wrote for ‘real’ friends only at the time but I want to share with a wider audience now. I had expounded all my views widely and loudly on Twitter at the time, and continue to do so, but had not written a contiguous piece like this until old friends from different parts of my life – school, university, music, various jobs – who were now working in the City in the financial services sector, started openly questioning Labour Party policy and the Shadow Cabinet simply on the basis of already discredited allegations against Jeremy Corbyn. As an independent, I went in to bat for the only plausible option to get and keep Boris and his “kippered” Conservatives out of power at the time:
“I wrote a version of this on another friend’s timeline in response to questions about the current antisemitism scare in UK political parties and whether to vote Labour in this election, on general policy grounds or to stop Brexit:
Although I am an independent, I personally know many characters in Labour – activists, MPs, MEPs, peers, and LOTO – particularly all my Jewish friends in Jewish Voice for Labour, Socialist Jews, and other independent left wing Jewish groups like Jewdas, and they’re all supporting and out campaigning for Jeremy in particular and Labour in general around the country, or left wing candidates that support Palestinian human rights. Jeremy has in many ways been the staunchest and most steadfast antiracism campaigner on the planet, imbued with Jewish socialist ideals and a close friend of all the key Jewish left wing activists and thinkers in the UK and around the world for decades. The entire antisemitism debacle is purely a deeply political (not religious or cultural) attempt to dislodge Corbyn and change Labour Party policy (which strongly supports Palestinian social and human rights) by those of all religions and none who support the obtusely far right wing and brutal policies of the Israeli Government. In most ‘Brexit marginals’, the only way to push back from the far right precipice of Brexit, the current Conservative/Brexit/UKIP/BNP and other populist thug parties, and to end austerity which is decimating millions of lives, is to vote Labour wherever you can to ensure remaining through a now vital second referendum based on a safer Brexit divorce deal than the cataclysmic mess the Conservatives have devised that will verifiably cause the UK to implode. The Labour divorce deal would at least not completely undermine every ounce of UK sovereignty and would keep the UK Union together, so if Leave did win a second ref based on a Labour divorce deal, it would be a massive hit to the UK, but not the verifiable disaster of the Conservative deal.
LibDems are coming out with complete tosh about Labour, but that’s to pull in Conservative votes. They have to sound extremely negative about Labour to reassure Conservatives their ‘continued austerity’ votes are safe with Libdems. But the Libdems will have to work with Jeremy after the election and already look bloody stupid in having slagged him off and now having to capitulate, the kind of blatant, rather dense, two-faced politicking that got them hammered in 2015/17. Libdems’ obvious recent tactic was simply to mop up TIG/CHUK MPs and eliminate that threat by pandering to the pro-Israel far right agenda favoured by many former TIG/CHUK MPs that is completely contrary to Libdem policy that supports the rule of international law and a left wing agenda for human rights and social rights for all oppressed peoples, including all in occupied Palestine. Having the dire, deeply disloyal, unreliable careerist dweeb Ummuna as a spokesman is a very stupid error and does nothing to promote solid, dependable, ethical Liberal values, as it were.
There is much about the internal workings of the Labour Party that I really dislike such as the virulence of that sub-sect, Socialist Action, but Labour as a whole under Jeremy would be more beholden to and respectful of Parliament and the sovereignty of our democratic institutions rather than corrupted vested interests and the power of the Executive than any previous Govt for the last 30 years or more. This is what those that oppose him are desperate to gloss over and stop you recognising – their merry corruption, vested interests and nest feathering that Jeremy has actually campaigned against in Parliament because he supports our sovereign representative democracy.
So vote tactically in your area to Remain and scupper the grotesque, deeply sinister Brexit Conservative leadership, but particularly vote Labour under Jeremy wherever you can, to clean up our democratic institutions and reestablish a fully functioning and vital welfare state, human dignity, deliverable action against the global climate disaster and Remain through a second referendum.
And I realise for all my mates in the financial services sector that voting Labour under Jeremy feels a bit like teeth pulling, but basically you have to weigh up what is the bigger disaster, falling out of EU and continuing the abhorrent trend of attempting to starve large sections of the population, or paying tax to the state instead of insurance to private companies to ensure your families AND all other families have the quality and quantity of services like a strong NHS they desperately need and rely on? Think about it.”
Ellie Merton 