Worse Than Corbyn
The scandals are real this time.
The scandals are worse now. Worse than anything under Corbyn. And that matters, because the entire case for removing Corbyn, for the purge, for the factional war that tore Labour apart, was that he was unfit. Unelectable. A liability. A threat to the party’s integrity.
So what do you call this?
Hiring corporate intelligence firms to investigate journalists. Paying APCO Worldwide thirty grand to compile lists of reporters, identify sources, discuss “leverage.” Appointing Peter Mandelson, named in the Epstein files, as US ambassador. Accepting £107,145 in freebies and hospitality between 2019 and 2024, more than any other MP. Designer glasses. Suits. Clothes for his wife. Operating a thinktank that failed to declare three quarters of a million pounds in donations and only reported itself after getting caught.
This is not loose talk at a rally. This is not a badly worded statement about foreign policy. This is the monitoring of journalists, the concentration of undeclared donor influence, and the appointment of compromised figures to high office. And it is happening at the centre of government, run by the people who claimed they were saving Labour from shame. That the adults were back in charge.
Under Corbyn, the scandals centred on atmosphere and association. A wreath laid at a cemetery. A mural he walked past. Links, however distant, with people who held unacceptable views. The Equality and Human Rights Commission found failures, but no evidence Corbyn himself was antisemitic. The outrage was not about what he did. It was about what people said he represented. Perception, inflated beyond evidence.
This is different. APCO’s reports exist. The Electoral Commission fine happened. The donations were not declared. The journalists were named as “significant persons of interest.” Mandelson’s links to Epstein are in the court files. Starmer’s freebies are in the register of members’ interests. Over a hundred thousand pounds. More than any other MP. This is documented.
And yet the response is silence. McSweeney will not comment. Simons will not comment. Labour Together will not comment. APCO will not comment. The party will not comment. Because what can they say? That it was proportionate to hire spies to track down a journalist’s sources? That investigating reporters is just how modern politics works? That £107,145 in gifts is normal? That transparency is for other people?
Under Corbyn, every minor infraction became a crisis. The media tore him apart. Labour’s right tore him apart. And they were relentless, because the project was not just to remove him but to destroy any possibility of the left holding power again.
Now the Labour right is in government, and the journalists are starting to turn. Not all of them. Not most of them. But enough to notice. The same outlets that ran protection for Starmer through the election are beginning to ask questions. Not because they have suddenly discovered their principles, but because the stench is too strong to ignore and the clicks are there.
But inside the party? Inside the unions? Silence. The same people who screamed about Corbyn’s unfitness, who demanded his removal, who briefed endlessly about his incompetence and his danger to Labour’s electoral prospects, are now running protection. The same voices that treated every Corbyn misstep as a constitutional crisis are suddenly measured, patient, still willing to give Starmer time. The hypocrisy is structural. They did not care about integrity. They cared about control.
This tells you what the fight was really about. Not electability. Not protecting Labour’s reputation. Control. The Labour right wanted power back, and they were willing to burn the party down to get it. And now they have it, and they are using it exactly as you would expect. To enrich their networks. To silence critics. To operate without scrutiny.
The worst thing Corbyn ever did was be weak. He did not fight back hard enough. He let the right undermine him. He allowed the narrative to be set by people who hated him. But he did not hire spies. He did not pay firms to investigate journalists. He did not appoint cronies with Epstein connections to high office. He did not take over a hundred thousand pounds in freebies from donors while claiming to represent working people.
Starmer has done all of that. McSweeney has done all of that. And the defence is not that it did not happen. The defence is silence.
Why the silence? Why the different treatment? Because this faction is aligned with the structures that matter. The donor class. The media networks that set the terms of acceptable politics. The institutional frameworks that decide what counts as scandal and what gets managed away. Corbyn threatened that alignment. Starmer restores it. And so the rules do not apply equally. The outrage is selective. The people who claimed to care about Labour’s integrity cared about power. And now they have it.
This is what they meant by electability. Not that they would govern better. That they would get away with more. Not that they were cleaner. That they knew how to manage the dirt. Not that they cared about accountability. That they knew how to avoid it.
And this is how Labour governs now. Not through argument or persuasion, but through the management of perception and the suppression of scrutiny. Not by winning consent, but by controlling the space in which dissent can be expressed. The same instincts that hired APCO to track journalists are the instincts running Downing Street. Technocratic. Opaque. Hostile to challenge. This is not a deviation. This is the operation.
It is much worse than Corbyn. And they are getting away with it.
Against capital, against empire, against forgetting.
Notes and essays from the wreckage of the present.
Plenty of reasons not to vote or support Labour now, isn't there? Not that I'm suggesting another Party to replace them. I don't trust any of them. Once they get together, the rot sets in.