Jeremy Corbyn MP, former leader of the Labour Party
Group calls for more MPs to join and vows to campaign on issues such as austerity and two-child benefit cap
Jeremy Corbyn is to form an official parliamentary alliance with four independent MPs who were elected on pro-Gaza platforms – issuing a call for more MPs to join.
The group will have the same number of MPs as Reform UK and the Democratic Unionist party, who each have five MPs, and more than the Green party and Plaid Cymru on four.
Promising to fight austerity and campaign on issues including the winter fuel allowance, the two-child benefit limit and arms sales to Israel, the group also explicitly invited MPs to join them, a reference to seven rebel Labour MPs suspended by the party for voting to axe the two-child benefit cap.
Corbyn, a former Labour leader, was elected as an independent MP for Islington North after being barred from standing as a Labour candidate at the last election. The group will also include the MPs Shockat Adam, Ayoub Khan, Adnan Hussain and Iqbal Mohamed.
The MPs said: “We were elected by our constituents to provide hope in a parliament of despair. Already, this government has scrapped the winter fuel allowance for around 10 million pensioners, voted to keep the two-child benefits cap, and ignored calls to end arms sales to Israel.
“Millions of people are crying out for a real alternative to austerity, inequality and war – and their voices deserve to be heard. As individuals we were voted by our constituents to represent their concerns in parliament on these matters, and more, and we believe that as a collective group we can carry on doing this with greater effect.
“The more MPs who are prepared to stand up for these principles, the better. Our door is always open to other MPs who believe in a more equal and peaceful world.”
Sudanese refugees in Chad. Over 10 million people have been forcibly displaced in over a year of war in Sudan. Photo: Wikimedia commons
Famine looms in Sudan, forcing people to flee to neighboring countries, while talks between warring parties and a UN envoy are still under way in Geneva
The governments of 15 Arab and African countries issued a statement on Tuesday, July 16, expressing their deep concerns regarding the escalating food security crisis in war-torn Sudan. The countries included the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Morocco, Mauritania, Chad, Comoros, Guinea-Bissau, Benin, Seychelles, Senegal, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Mozambique and Nigeria.
The statement came as a reaction to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report, which was published on June 27, 2024. “Fourteen months into the conflict, Sudan is facing the worst levels of acute food insecurity ever recorded by the IPC in the country,” the report said, pointing out that more than half of the population in Sudan have experienced severe hunger, which makes Sudan the world’s largest hunger crisis.
The number of starving people is estimated at 25.6 million people, with 14 areas at the risk of famine including greater Darfur, Greater Kordofan, Al Jazirah and some hotspots in Sudan’s capital Khartoum. Many starving Sudanese people have been reportedly fleeing Sudan to seek asylum in neighboring countries due to hunger and looming famine.
The countries who issued the statement expressed their concern about what was set out in the IPC report as a “stark and rapid deterioration” in food security, and its dire impact on the safety and well-being of civilians, including thousands of children, who have suffered from severe acute malnutrition.
According to a Save the Children report published on July 7, due to the war in Sudan 30% of children are acutely malnourished and 20% of the overall population is facing extreme food shortages.
Since the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) began in April 2023, the destruction caused by the fighting resulted in a sharp decrease in the agricultural production, and therefore a hike in food prices and food scarcity. The hunger crisis in Sudan has been further deepened by the severe restriction on the movement of food and aid convoys due to the ongoing conflict.
Reiterating the United Nations Security Council’s call from June of 2023, the countries urged all the parties to the conflict to ensure immediate, safe, and unrestricted access to civilian humanitarian aid. They also called on the conflicting parties to adhere to international humanitarian law and to comply with all relevant Security Council resolutions.
The statement also addressed foreign actors requesting them to stop providing armed or material support to the parties involved in the conflict and to refrain from any action which may ignite the conflict. Furthermore, it called on the international community for immediate and coordinated international response to tackle the urgent needs of the affected Sudanese population. The countries encouraged the international community to scale up the humanitarian assistance it provides, and to support the IPC recommendations for increasing nutrition interventions, restoring productive systems and improving data collection.
While the humanitarian situation in Sudan is constantly deteriorating, talks between a United Nations envoy and delegations from both conflicting parties continue in Geneva this week. The talks started last Thursday, focusing on humanitarian aid and the protection of civilians.
There were a few “promising signs” emerging from Monday’s talks in Geneva, the Representative of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Sudan, Shible Sahbani commented. “Let’s wait for the coming hours and days, and we hope that if we don’t get a ceasefire, at least we can get the protection of civilians and the opening of humanitarian corridors,” he added.
TWO peace activists were arrested at the weekend while attempting to deliver a letter to a Suffolk air base stating the opposition to an anticipated return of US nuclear weapons there.
Some 110 nuclear bombs were stored at the Lakenheath base until they were removed in 2008 after strong and constant protests.
But earlier this year, documents surfaced from the United States Defence Department detailing a contract to build defensive shelters for Lakenheath’s “upcoming nuclear mission.”
On Saturday, five women walked through the gates of Lakenheath, intending to deliver a letter to the base commanders, asking them to stop the nukes from returning.
Police stopped the women and two sat down peacefully, vowing to stay until a base commander could meet with them. Both were arrested and taken to Bury St Edmunds police station.
Protest against nuclear war outside Westminster Abbey, London 2019 | Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing via Getty Images
What’s the difference between the defence policies of Labour and Conservatives? Spoiler alert: there isn’t one
Days after Rishi Sunak announced the country would be going to the ballots, Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg released a campaign video in which he declared “security is at the forefront of this general election”.
It was a grand claim, but an astute one. Sunak and Keir Starmer have indeed spent much of the past six weeks fighting over who is leading the party of defence, while the subject has also dominated headlines (or it did until Nigel Farage re-entered politics and made the election considerably more about immigration).
From existential concerns about the size of the British army to debates about who supports Trident (and who doesn’t) and the shock announcement of the possible return of National Service, you’d be forgiven for thinking the election is less about voting red, blue, green or yellow, and more about what shade of camouflage you’d prefer your leaders in.
But how, exactly, do Labour and the Tories differ when it comes to matters of defence? And how will rising fears from politicians and pundits over threats from Russia, Iran and China affect British politics?
Early on in the election campaign, Labour leader Starmer declared his the ‘party of national security’ – a sentiment echoed by his shadow defence secretary, John Healey, who said “Labour is now the party of defence.” Their claims came weeks after Starmer took to the pages of the Daily Mail, not his natural ally, to proclaim: “We will back our Armed Forces. We will back our nuclear deterrent. We will back Britain.”
This messaging appears to be working. That same pro-Tory paper reported in March that Labour is now more trusted than the Conservatives on defence, with voters reportedly associating the latter with cutting military spending, not increasing it.
This is all quite a reversal. For a time, much of the media painted Labour as actively hostile to the military. It led to the BBC even asking “Has Jeremy Corbyn ever supported a war?” And, in 2019, when a video emerged showing members of the British parachute regiment firing at a poster of the then-Labour leader at a target range in Kabul, it seemed to reflect a wide sentiment that the military and the left were no longer friends.
Matters military, it was long felt, were best left to the Tories. After all, in 2021, a Byline Times analysis found that 91% of the veterans who sit in either the House of Commons or the Lords were Conservatives. Of the 44 veteran MPs, 40 were Conservative, while only 2 were Labour.
It was not always thus. The 1945 General Election, for instance, held as an army of men returned home from World War Two, saw a massive victory for Labour in the UK. Labour won decisively with 393 seats, the Conservatives securing only 197. Labour’s emphasis on social reform clearly resonated with those who had served – the promise of a better country for those who had been ready to die defending it.
It could be that Starmer is seeking to reignite this spirit, where national defence and the left are not deemed antithetical. And there are some canny election reasons for this.
At Action on Armed Violence, we analysed the locations of the ten arms manufacturers based in the UK that have received the highest value and quantity of domestic defence contracts over 2022/3 – finding a significant Conservative bias. The ten firms have 130 locations (listed offices or factories) across 94 parliamentary constituencies – 67% of which are represented by Tory MPs. Labour represents just 16% of the seats.
Of the 20 constituencies with two or more arms manufacturers present, 14 were held by Conservative MPs and just three by Labour. But predicted voting data suggests the Tories will hold onto just two of them on 4 July, while 13 will switch to Labour.
It is no wonder the Starmer wrote in the Mail: “With Labour, the defence industry will be hardwired into my national mission to drive economic growth across the UK.” If polls are to be believed, the military-industrial complex is about to be painted red – and it’s no coincidence that at least 14 prospective MPs standing for Labour today are ex-military.
Where does this leave the Tories, then? Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) is frantically coming up with new, harder-right ideas to separate the party from Labour. Its National Service ploy, Sunak claims, is “to strengthen our country’s security”. Exactly why battalions of 18-year-olds on Salisbury Plain will make the UK more secure than its nuclear arsenals is not clear.
As for other differences, while the Conservatives focus on defence spending and global strategic engagement, Labour emphasises European alliances and a broader security perspective. The Liberal Democrats and SNP, meanwhile, both advocate for strong European ties and proactive foreign policies, and the Greens prioritise environmental security.
In truth, though, there is seemingly not much to distinguish Labour and Conservatives when it comes to matters of defence. As with Starmer working to avoid the red-tops claiming the nation is not safe in his hands, Labour has been deafeningly silent on issues such as the inquiry into Special Forces’ extra-judicial killings in Afghanistan, the widespread concerns about misogyny, sexual assault and systemic racism in the British military.
When there is not so much as a camouflage fag paper between the defence policies of the right and the left, the danger is that there are no oppositional voices of any merit. And, in a world where sentiments of war seem to be spreading much faster than sentiments of peace, this lack of critique could easily lead us all to very bad places indeed.
Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria board a plane at Stansted Airport in Essex, England, July 9, 2024 as they head to Washington DC to attend a Nato summit
LABOUR has spent its first week in power signalling a changed approach from the Tories — a national wealth fund for infrastructure projects, a reset to devolution with a new council of the regions.
In Washington Keir Starmer’s purpose is different — to show his “cast-iron commitment” to continue the last government’s subordination to US foreign policy, co-ordinated through the Nato military alliance.
This was never in doubt — Starmer is merely affirming Britain’s role in the US-led imperialist bloc as every postwar Labour prime minister has before him.
There are good reasons, though, to regard British foreign policy as every bit as disastrous as domestic policy in recent decades.
On one level the Morning Star can agree with Starmer’s lines at the Nato summit — yes, the world is getting more dangerous.
Two current major wars, in Palestine and Ukraine, show a real capacity to expand into wider conflicts and drag in other powers.
Both relate, in different ways, to the major fault line in international relations, that between the US and the old European colonial powers on one side, and the rest of a world in which that transatlantic bloc carries less and less weight.
Starmer’s speech, calling on Nato members to spend more on their militaries, follows the Western convention of presenting the alliance as guarantors of a “rules-based international order” which is under threat from rising “authoritarian states.”
In reality, the arms race is driven by Nato. Not only does the United States spend more on its military than the next 10 countries put together, the Nato bloc taken together is responsible for 75 per cent of all military spending worldwide, though it comprises just 12 per cent of the world population and 30 per cent of its GDP.
Three-quarters of all arms spending is not, in Starmer’s eyes, enough. Though Labour opts to stick to arbitrary Tory spending rules overall, it promises billions more for the military: raising the defence budget to 2.5 per cent of GDP entails a rise from £64.6bn to £87.1bn, a £22.5bn increase in spending annually. By contrast, axing the two-child benefit cap to lift hundreds of thousands of kids out of poverty is something Labour says it cannot afford: the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates this would cost £3.4bn a year.
Nor can Nato’s claim to spend this money defending a “rules-based order” stand scrutiny. Last month saw Julian Assange secure his freedom after years of persecution in British jails for exposing the war crimes of “the empire,” as the US bloc is widely known in the global South.
Britain has been alongside the US in ripping up international law with wars of aggression against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, conflicts whose consequences persist in ongoing conflicts and refugee crises today. Today’s militarism risks igniting a new world war with China, the principal economic and technological rival to the US. All in the name of upholding a global system of unfair trade treaties and unfettered corporate access to resources that keeps a majority of the human race in poverty, is wrecking ecosystems at an accelerating rate and is destabilising the climate into the bargain.
Nothing could be more important than stopping this war. Those who claim the troop build-ups are a deterrent ignore history, not just that of the first world war but recent history: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine followed the expansion of Nato to its borders, its encirclement by US bases and a whole series of enormous Nato military manoeuvres — the “Defender Europe” exercises — simulating war against it. Unsurprisingly, frightening Russia did not prevent war but provoked it, feeding a parallel rise in nationalist militarism there.
The drive to World War III will not be challenged by the opposition Conservatives, or by more than a handful of MPs. But its consequences if unchallenged are unthinkable. So a real opposition must be built outside Westminster.
