IT IS hard to understand the self-destruct buttons Labour seems intent on pressing at the moment.

I don’t blame loyalists for springing to the defence of Keir Starmer’s lukewarm leadership. It is what you do when the party is under attack. My embarrassment is over the tactical grounds on which they choose to do so.

At the Labour conference, it was cringeworthy to see a legion of MPs proudly waving their Union Jack underwear (OK, flags) in front of the nation’s press. It reminded me of a childhood moment when some sort of royal visit took place in Liverpool. We were given flags, lined up along the route (for hours) and told to wave enthusiastically when the cavalcade went past. I can only recall feeling cold and bored and just as hungry at the end as at the start.

Of course, Reform’s appeal to ultra-nationalism needs to be countered. But it won’t be done by flag-waving. Nor will it be done by lurching to the right.

If the flags were an embarrassment, the intention to ban peaceful demonstrations and to force computerised ID documentation on everyone comes straight from a totalitarian playbook. Labour MPs who derided both now line up to sing their praises.

Brecht had it right

Most painful of all is that, for all of its hostility to Nigel Farage, Labour appears to dance more to his tune than anyone else’s.

Farage’s embrace of freedom and democracy is nothing of the kind. His appeal is to ignorance and prejudice, and poverty. It is what the far right did in Germany and what it always does in a crisis. Bertolt Brecht’s Anachronistic Procession captured this better than anything:

As from many a southern valley
Voters left their houses to rally
Forming a disjointed column
Underneath two banners solemn

Whose supports were all worm-eaten
Their inscriptions weatherbeaten
Though its gist appeared to be
Freedom and Democracy.

Then the faceless trust directors
Those men’s patrons and protectors:
Pray, for our arms industry
Freedom and Democracy!

As for those parliamentarians
Who in Hitler’s day were Aryans
And now pose as barristers:
Freedom for such gifts as theirs!

Misinformed, in misery
See its baffled bourgeoise
Standing where their houses stood
Lacking certainties and food.

Brecht spared no-one. His long poem warned of an era dominated by the spectre of six malign influences — oppression, plague, fraud, stupidity, murder and robbery.

Britain is some steps short of this. Trump’s US is further down the path. But this is where the procession is heading.

The vision thing

The real problem facing Labour isn’t the absence of charisma but the lack of vision. Labour inherited a collapsed economy, looted by the Tories, their cronies and the corporately corrupt. But the Chancellor then told the poor they would have to make do with less.

In areas stripped of amenities, jobs, housing or prospects, this was a gift to the populist right. All they had to do was play the poor off against the dispossessed and revel in the social disintegration that followed.

Waving the flag is no answer. Nor is paying homage to the rich and powerful. Yet this seems to be Labour’s response to the corporate colonialism demanded by Trump and his AIPAC sponsors.

I don’t care if Andy Burnham is planning a leadership challenge or not. The points he makes about Labour having trapped itself in a culture of ignorance and intolerance are absolutely right.

All those MPs suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party were suspended for standing up for Labour values; for siding with the poor rather than the corporately rich. A leader of any calibre would open the doors and welcome the rebels back in.

Starmer’s problem is that he is a prisoner of the cabal that has taken over the Labour Party. Social media focuses on the malign influence of “Mossad” McSweeney, but the occupation runs far wider. The whole party machine has been taken over by “purgers.”

Moderate councillors, objecting to cuts in winter fuel payments, were debarred from standing for re-selection. Constituency parties found themselves limited to a choice between the bland and the brain-dead for parliamentary candidates. Delegates to Labour conference, wanting to at least debate the genocide in Gaza, found it had been declared a taboo subject.

And instead of a frontal attack on the concentrations of wealth and power, Labour has chosen to criminalise protesters and introduce surveillance legislation that will strengthen the corporate control over citizens. And the party wonders why it is behind in the polls.

Humanity vs the lobbyists

You have to wonder where Labour has been in October 2025. The flotilla of human rights activists taking food to Gaza was kidnapped at sea by IDF soldiers; piracy, a breach of international law.

Across the planet, there have been the most stupendous rallies calling for an end to the slaughter of Palestinians. La Repubblica estimated that one million Italian people turned out in protests. Amsterdam was a sea of peace activists.
Across the world, it has been the same; protests everywhere … including in London. But only in Britain are pacifists and peacemongers being redefined as the problem.

Our scenes were of blind pensioners arrested and carried away by the police. Old men and women in wheelchairs were arrested and charged for opposing acts of genocide. Jews in the protests, denied the right to grieve both for the people in Gaza and the victims of the synagogue attack in Manchester.

And amidst Labour calls to suspend protests, no-one even mentioned the arson attack that followed, on the mosque in Peacehaven (sic) or the ethnic cleansing of Gaza that continues unabated. Real politics is being defended far more from outside Parliament than inside. And it is from here that a different debate must begin.

Redefining the enemy

At least the Green Party puts “wealth taxation” at the centre of debate. But that’s not enough. It’s the connection between wealth and power that matters.

Starmer’s reliance on his sponsors is far more limiting than any political shallowness. Kowtowing to Trump makes it ten times worse. This is how Gaza has come to symbolise the nihilism behind our drift into corporate feudalism.

To escape, we must shake off the smears of convenience, embracing a new politics of inclusion and eco-socialism. Let’s begin with the smears.

I can understand the insecurities of Jewish communities in Britain. Anti-semitism is only ever a step or two behind anti-immigrant mobilisations. But the biggest threat of resurgent anti-semitism comes from Benjamin Netanyahu, AIPAC and the Israeli far right.

Israel can’t starve a population to death and pretend it is just pursuing terrorists. It can’t carpet bomb a whole province and convince anyone this isn’t genocide.

It can’t allow settlers to forcibly occupy Palestinian houses and pretend this isn’t ethnic cleansing. And it can’t have IDF snipers putting bullets in children’s heads, claiming it just stops them from growing up to be terrorists.

This is the mindset propelling Israel towards a rogue state. And, as Channel 4 has just revealed, it is what makes Britain’s recent boost in arms exports to Israel look both hypocritical and criminal. Is it the government or the protesters that should be proscribed?

A Home Guard for the ether?

Much as we used to laugh at the Dad’s Army TV version of the British Home Guard in the last war, there is now an urgent need to look at how ownership of the internet and the media is being used to subvert today’s democracy.

Trump has already put US media outlets into the hands of those loyal to him (or AIPAC). He wants the same moguls to own Britain’s IT communications (and surveillance) systems. This brings us back to Brecht.

Freedom and democracy will never be protected if they are corporately owned. So it is with the internet. We have drifted a long way from the vision (freely gifted) by Tim Berners-Lee. The World Wide Web is increasingly dominated by bots and billionaires, whose primary aims are to disinform and disempower.

Politically, we face the same challenges today over democratic control (and accountability) of the ether as previous generations faced over controlling their feudal lords.

Trump’s visit to Britain was to pave the way for his Dark Lords of the internet. Digital ID is just a part of this. Neither will aim to end poverty, promote inclusion or repair the planet. Only a genuinely radical movement from the grassroots will do so.

That’s why we must side with the protesters. A new World Wide Web of social consciousness is taking to the streets around us. We need to join it, fill it with compassion and kindness, and build a different future.

Maybe, just maybe, this will help Labour remember that this was its role too.

Alan Simpson is a former Labour member of Parliament (1992-2010) for Nottingham South.