The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 3rd April 2020
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 3rd April 2020
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
JEREMY CORBYN took part in his final Prime Minister’s Questions as Labour leader last week. Boris Johnson paid tribute to Corbyn’s “sincerity and determination to build a better society”, whilst the Labour leader warned the Prime Minister not to deliver his political obituary because he will not stop campaigning for social justice in the future.
“My voice will not be stilled,” Corbyn said. “I will be around. I will be campaigning. I will be arguing and demanding justice for the people of this country and indeed the rest of the world.”
Whether that voice will still be heard on Labour’s front-bench largely depends on who will take his place. Corbyn says he’d like to be Shadow Foreign Secretary. That might be too much to swallow for Sir Keir Starmer, the bookies’ favourite to become the next Labour leader.
Of the three contenders, Starmer, a lawyer turned politician, is the darling of the Labour Remainers who, even now, still dream of reversing Brexit. Rebecca Long-Bailey poses as Corbyn’s successor whilst Lisa Nandy’s problem is that she is largely appealing to the same constituency within the Labour Party that Starmer has already sewn up.
Labour’s voice has, so far, been overshadowed by the coronavirus crisis. Although Labour and the unions have clearly been involved in informal discussions with the Government at a national level over the emergency, the new Labour leadership now needs to reflect the voice of organised labour on the street as well as parliament in the months to come