Imminent elections in France, the United States, and the United Kingdom are affected by two long-running concerns: Palestine and the decline of the West. Responses to them will also affect the 2025 elections in Australia.
Here, ALP voters are already being lured to listen to the Coalition’s siren song of nuclear power, Sinophobia, and refugees, and to turn away from progressive policies on climate, housing, education, health and child care, while the mainstream media is warming them up for war. The United States too is wafting further off into ultra-right territory, and Trump as president, rather than declaring AUKUS a ‘bad deal’, could embrace it when he knows Australia’s paying for everything,
In post-Brexit UK, which is in the economic, social, and political pits, and the conservatives are expected to lose on 4 July, three political activists have been motivated for decades by concerns about foreign and military policy. Their like does not exist in Australia. George Galloway, leader of the Workers Party of Britain, who has stood for different parties in four electorates four times, is now MP for Rochdale; the Rt. Hon. Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour party from 2015 to 2020, is standing as an independent for Islington North, which he represented from 1983 until 2024 when Labour expelled him; and Craig Murray, a former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan and activist for multiple causes, is up as an independent for Blackburn. None can challenge Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer QC as the next prime minister. Starmer, Corbyn’s successor, who was knighted for his work as head of the Child Protection Service and Director of Public Prosecutions, is such a staid figure he seems more like a Tory. (He formerly co-headed Doughty Street Chambers, the human rights law firm that for years has defended Julian Assange). If Corbyn and Murray join Galloway as MPs however, all three can be expected to apply their long-held principles with interesting results, at least in Parliamentary debates.
George Galloway, who won a by-election in February 2024, told Starmer his victory was ‘for Gaza’. An advocate of a one-state solution for Palestine for five decades, he was expelled by Labour in 2003 for opposing the UK joining the US-led coalition for the Iraq war. The following year, he said the party was a ‘blood-spattered, lying, crooked group of war criminals’, and called George W Bush the world’s ‘biggest terrorist’. He went on to stand successively – but unsuccessfully – for Respect and the Workers Party, and twice as an independent. In 2014, he abstained from a vote in Parliament to formally recognise Palestine because it also included recognition of Israel. A year later he backed long-time unionist and Labour stalwart Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour leadership in 2015.
Jeremy Corbyn too has a long list of causes: in opposition to the Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq wars, fascism, and apartheid, and in support of gay rights, the Campaign against Nuclear Weapons, United Ireland, Sinn Fein, Stop the War Coalition, and Palestinian statehood. As prime minister, said Corbyn, he would not authorise the use of nuclear weapons. ‘I do not believe the threat of mass murder is a legitimate way to deal with international relations’. By 2015 ‘Corbynmania’ had displaced Tony Blair’s New Labour, and Corbyn experienced a landslide victory to become labour leader, with his popularity compared to that of Justin Trudeau in Canada and Bernie Sanders in the US. With the hashtag #jezwecan and the slogan JC4PM he adeptly deployed social media to reach young voters, and reduced Labour membership fees to 3 pounds.
Corbyn opposed David Cameron’s move to bomb Syria in 2015. He faced a ‘mutiny’ from the Army in 2015 for wanting to scrap Trident and reduce the armed forces and NATO, which in 2014 he called ‘an engine for the delivery of oil to the oil companies’. ‘You can’t put a maverick in charge of a country’s security’, responded his military critics. In 2019, British paramilitary soldiers in Afghanistan used an image of Corbyn for target practice. A Eurosceptic, he took an ambivalent stand on Brexit in 2016, but favoured Remain, and a cabinet revolt followed. Although Corbyn was re-elected to lead the party, Labour’s support at local elections fell in 2018, and after losing 60 seats in 2019, he resigned, and later was expelled from the party, to be replaced by Starmer in 2020.
Despite Corbyn being Jewish and condemning anti-Semitism, his Labour enemies led a campaign against him for having in 2012 and 2017 called for an investigation into Israel’s influence in UK politics. He considered declaring Hezbollah a terrorist organisation was a ‘big historical mistake’, since both it and Israel committed acts of terror. He promised that under his leadership, a Labour government would recognise Palestine as a state. A leaked internal report on anti-Semitism in 2014-2019 was used by Labour to displace him as leader. Galloway declared that the Israel Lobby had ‘destroyed the Labour Party. It’s an amazing achievement’.
Craig Murray’s central current issue is Gaza and the prospective genocide. As Ambassador in Uzbekistan, he got up the noses of the Foreign Office, MI6 and the CIA over his reports on human rights violations, including intelligence obtained under torture by the Karimov government in the early 2000s, stating that between 7000 and 10 000 people were held captive by its ‘fascist regime’. He reported that the US used Uzbekistan as a rendition site during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, for which Jeremy Corbyn supported him in 2007. Having left diplomacy, Murray backed Welsh and Irish separatists and the Greens in England. He stood three times for election as a Liberal Democrat or independent, in 2009 using the slogan ‘Put an honest man into Parliament’. A sceptic about Russia being responsible for the Skripal poisonings of 2018, he is a vocal supporter of Julian Assange.
These three pro-Palestinian activists may achieve results. Starmer, under pressure from Muslim voters, and having at first refused to back a ceasefire in Gaza, has since pushed for it, and has pledged to have Labour recognise a Palestinian state, over any Israeli veto. A major Labour donor has reportedly influenced the change. Galloway won Rochdale, and Labour has had local election reverses in Blackburn, where Murray is standing. Corbyn has longstanding support in Islington North.
Where are their Australian Labor counterparts?
Dr Alison Broinowski AM is a former Australian diplomat and a member of Australians fr War Powers Reform