As a British Indian, I find it very difficult to vote for Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party
- In Politics
- 02:45 AM, Dec 10, 2019
- Pav Sharma
This election is the most divisive and polarising one in the last decade. Stoked by the issues of Brexit, austerity cuts, immigration, the NHS and national debt to name a few, no one can argue that this Thursday will decide the fate of our nation.
Corbyn, once seen as incapable of leading the Labour party, is now a formidable force, rallying the masses and harnessing social media to his advantage. Is this because people are just fed up of the incumbent government’s failure to deliver on key issues? At least for the youth, it’s not uncommon to be surrounded by Corbyn-admiring peers and role models. Grime music icon, Stormzy, pledged his support for Corbyn and he was duly acknowledged by the latter for ‘fantastic effort’ as he encouraged fans to vote”. Corbyn, the softly spoken, grammar school educated politician, has managed to strike a chord with popular artists in a way that no other politician could. With the help of influential personalities, this now angelic messiah for the Labour party, has been adorned by thousands of social media likes, comments and mentions and commanded the loyalty of the youth. Whether it’s his demeanour, radically socialist policies, or a lack of trust in Boris, one cannot ignore Corbyn’s momentum.
He has successfully harnessed notions of social justice, equality and human rights. When phrases like these enter sentences and headlines, it is beyond music to our ears - it becomes a deafening anthem.
There are plenty of reasons, other than being told by a musician, to vote for Corbyn. His stance was commendable when he campaigned against the 2003 Iraq war and voted against the British involvement in Libya. His “manifesto of hope” promises to build 150,000 new council homes a year and provide free personal at-home care in England for over-65s. He wants to review the retirement age for people in hard manual jobs and boost a 5% pay rise for public sector workers.
Yet, despite all of this, I can’t bring myself to cross the Labour box on the ballot paper. Behind the smokescreen, Corbyn is actually poles apart from the young working-class vote bank. He and his party have repeatedly failed to combat xenophobia, especially against the Jewish community. But most importantly, on arguably the biggest political crisis in modern British history - Brexit - Corbyn remains on the fence.
Manifestos are not really worth the paper that they are written on. This strange concept of politicians scrambling to put together a manifesto to lure voters, knowing full well that many will either forget and the public cannot hold them to account for breaking promises, has always baffled me. Corbyn may have voted against British military involvement in Iraq and Libya, but he also voted against British Military involvement in Afghanistan (the home of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban). He also voted against the Terrorism Act 2000 (introduced by Labour). This act gave the police the power to detain terrorist suspects for up to seven days and created a list of proscribed terrorist organisations. Similarly, he also voted against the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 which allowed foreign terrorist suspects to be detained indefinitely. More recently, he said that Terrorists should 'not necessarily' serve a full jail term.
I suppose it can be said that Corbyn has consistently felt strongly against the policies of his own party and others that relate to anti-terrorism laws and perhaps, as his supporters say, he is not pro-terrorist but is rather pro-human rights. All of the above, however, combined with Corbyn’s apparent “soft spot” for extremists harms Corbyn’s credibility as a potential Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Corbyn not only accepted money from Iran to stand alongside IRA convicts on Iranian national television, two weeks after the IRA had killed five people in the 1984 Brighton bombing but he also told Parliament that “what comes around goes around” in relation to the September 11th Terrorist attacks in New York. For Corbyn, Hamas and Hezbollah are his “friends” and he will jump up to defend the anti-semetic Raed Salah and invite him “to tea in Parliament.”.
But, the democratically elected Prime Minister of the largest democracy in the world, Narendra Modi seems unworthy of the same respect from Corbyn. Corbyn continued to call for Modi to be banned from visiting the UK. During Modi’s first visit to the UK as Prime Minister of India in 2015, Corbyn embarrassingly succumbed to meeting with Modi only on his final day in the UK. Corbyn’s behavior against the Indian Prime Minister became one of the very first nails in the coffin of Indian origin support for the Labour Party.
At the recent Labour party convention in September 2019, the Labour party passed an emergency and controversial motion stating its position on the Indian territory of Jammu & Kashmir. This was in response to a historic and fully democratic constitutional revocation of Article 370 by the Indian Parliament.. Article 370 was an archaic piece of legislation that gave Kashmiris special rights, separate from other Indian citizens and also disadvantaged women and minority groups - hence the move to revoke it, was seen as progressive. However, this celebration of democracy by a sovereign and integrated India was turned into a ‘human rights’ issue and the Labour Party leadership ignorantly and arrogantly passed a “motion”, blatantly undermining India’s bid to unite its people in bringing peace and equality to the region. This thoughtless, knee-jerk reaction from Labour has ironically has caused rifts in the Indian community, here in the UK. Once again, the West butting in, trying to ‘fix’ situations in other countries - an interestingly colonialist mentality. Following on from this, the Labour party chairman, Ian Lavery, admitted that the motion was offensive towards Indians, India, and that Jammu & Kashmir “is a bilateral matter between India and Pakistan in which Labour will not interfere”.
Leicester, despite being more than a 45% British Indian population, the Labour Party snubbed Sundip Meghani, and bizarrely brought in Corbyn’s close aide, Claudia Webbe. Aside from notoriously defending Ken Livingston after he compared a Jewish Journalist to a Concentration Camp Guard, she also chaired the emergency motion on Kashmir. In Birmingham, there is ‘Free Kashmir’ graffiti popping up, increasing tensions between communities here.
One cannot but empathise with British Indians, who have been sorely let down by the Labour Party leadership. Recent India Inc polls suggest British Indians moving away from Labour. But why is this? The leadership’s overt hostility towards India, and a pro-seperatist stance. The same seperatist which have
So here we are. On 12 December 2019 the UK is set to potentially make Corbyn our Prime Minister. This is barely 13 days after a terrorist killed two innocent people at London Bridge. This is the same terrorist who had once set up Terror camps in Kashmir, only for the Labour party to oppose India’s right to defend itself against such terrorism.
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