“La sabiduría de la vida consiste en la eliminación de lo no esencial. En reducir los problemas de la filosofía a unos pocos solamente: el goce del hogar, de la vida, de la naturaleza, de la cultura”.
Lin Yutang
Cervantes
Hoy es el día más hermoso de nuestra vida, querido Sancho; los obstáculos más grandes, nuestras propias indecisiones; nuestro enemigo más fuerte, el miedo al poderoso y a nosotros mismos; la cosa más fácil, equivocarnos; la más destructiva, la mentira y el egoísmo; la peor derrota, el desaliento; los defectos más peligrosos, la soberbia y el rencor; las sensaciones más gratas, la buena conciencia, el esfuerzo para ser mejores sin ser perfectos, y sobretodo, la disposición para hacer el bien y combatir la injusticia dondequiera que esté.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES Don Quijote de la Mancha.
La Colmena no se hace responsable ni se solidariza con las opiniones o conceptos emitidos por los autores de los artículos.
Once party’s most rebellious member, leader calls for unity
Labour feud combines with Tory leadership fight amid Brexit
U.K.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn made his name by defying party discipline.
Now he’s asking his lawmakers to toe his party line. With little
success.
Corbyn has clung to the leadership during the week
following the U.K. vote to leave the European Union, in which dozens of
his front-bench team quit, he lost
a no-confidence vote by a 172-40 margin and a slew of party grandees
called for him to go. He has vowed to run again if a formal leadership
challenge emerges -- most likely from his former business spokeswoman,
Angela Eagle, who has spent the week gathering support.
Jeremy Corbyn
Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg
Long
at the left fringes of the party, Corbyn was the single most disloyal
lawmaker when Labour was in power from 1997 to 2010, voting against the
government 216 times during the administrations of Tony Blair and Gordon
Brown, according to Philip Cowley, professor of politics at Queen Mary
University of London. Corbyn began last year’s leadership election as a
200-to-1 outsider before surging to a surprise win with 60 percent of
the vote in the wider party.
The
leader’s refusal to go is “extraordinary given the extent to which
there’s outright civil war in the party,” said Andrew Russell, professor
of politics at the University of Manchester. “There’s been a complete
breakdown in the functioning of the parliamentary party.”
Both Parties
Labour
has dissolved into open conflict at a time when the ruling
Conservatives are also in disarray, mired in a leadership contest to
replace Prime Minister David Cameron. Boris Johnson, the initial
favorite, ruled himself out Thursday after former ally Michael Gove
declared for the job. Britain is thus without
either an effective government or a functioning opposition even as the
EU presses for a quick start to formal Brexit negotiations. Three Hours That Turned Boris Johnson From Winner to Also-Ran
“The
public will find it incredible that at the very time that this
government needed to be held to account the most, we turned on
ourselves,” said Barry Gardiner, one of the minority of lawmakers to
stand by Corbyn. He said he welcomed Eagle’s plan as the “right way” to
challenge the leader, rather than the no-confidence motion on Tuesday.
Angela Eagle
Photographer: Jack Taylor/Getty Images
To
those who know him, Corbyn is following his conscience. He himself said
on June 26: “I am not going to betray the trust of those who voted for
me -- or the millions of supporters across the country who need Labour
to represent them.”
Left’s Cause
“His raison d’etre is to
advance the cause of the left within Parliament,” said Rosa Prince,
author of his biography, “Comrade Corbyn.” “His duty, he would see it,
is to remain in power so that the left keeps control of the Labour
Party.”
Corbyn’s opposition to renewing the country’s nuclear deterrent, Trident,
and history of sharing speaking platforms with supporters of Hamas and
Hezbollah, groups the U.S. and the EU consider to be terrorist
organizations, have put him at odds with many Labour lawmakers. On
Thursday, at the publication of a report investigating antisemitism
within the party, he further alienated the country’s Jewish community
with a remark that the president of the Board of Deputies of British
Jews, Jonathan Arkush, said appeared to “establish some sort of
equivalence between Israel and terrorist groups such as Isis,” a term
for Islamic State.
“Our Jewish friends are no more responsible for
the actions of Israel or the Netanyahu government than our Muslim
friends are for those of various self-styled Islamic states or
organizations,” Corbyn said. His office later said he was referring to
Islamic countries rather than the terrorist organization.
Campaign Absence
Corbyn,
a long-standing Euroskeptic who followed the pro-EU party line during
the campaign, waited two months before making his first big speech
against leaving, and took a vacation in the campaign’s closing weeks.
Instead of hearing a pro-EU message from their party leader, Labour
voters were confronted with a daily diet of Cameron’s squabbling
Conservatives, who were split down the middle over the vote, and a
strong anti-immigration message from the U.K. Independence Party.
Corbyn
clung on even after a bruising meeting Monday in which lawmaker after
lawmaker stood up to call for him to quit. Former Foreign Secretary
Margaret Beckett was audibly emotional on a BBC radio interview
Wednesday when she described voting against Corbyn, the ninth leader
she’s served under.
First ‘No’
“Never in my wildest dreams
did I imagine that I would be casting a vote of no confidence in the
leader of the Labour Party,” Beckett said, her voice faltering. “I have
been loyal to every single one of them with their different views and
approaches.”
The current situation for Labour has sparked memories
of 1981, when four moderate party members, including two
parliamentarians, broke away to form the Social Democratic Party because
they felt Labour had been seized by the militant left. The party had
just committed to a withdrawal from the EU’s predecessor, the European
Economic Community.
“There are so many parallels, and the SDP
experience was so bruising for them all, that they don’t want to go down
that path again,” said Prince, Corbyn’s biographer. Why Britain Is Saying ‘Adieu’ to the European Union: QuickTake
Even Cameron called on
Corbyn earlier this week to “for heaven’s sake man, go,” because it
wasn’t in the national interest to have him as opposition leader.
If
he doesn’t quit, lawmakers can only unseat him in a leadership
election, facing the mostly same party faithful who resoundingly
delivered him the top job 10 months ago. A YouGov/Times poll of those
members published Friday found 50 percent would vote for him
again. Corbyn also was buttressed this week by a joint statement of support from 10 trade unions, while hundreds of grassroots campaigners took to Parliament Square to attend a rally in his favor.
If
Corbyn wins again, a rupture is likely, said Gardiner, the lawmaker:
“If we’re still as split as that after a contest has taken place, then I
do think we may well see parliamentary colleagues feel that they have
no alternative but to set up a separate party.”
