The Most Read 16 of 2016

2016 was awful, but it turns out awfulness does wonders for reality-based socialist blogging. Page views surged to 936,000 over the course of this year, working out at roughly 78,000 a month, or 2,500 a day. Enough, Google informs me, to make a princely £28.10/month were I to AdSense this place up to the eyeballs. Still, it's good to know there's still a solid audience 10 years into this game. The old Facebook page could do with more likes though (hint, hint). 

The collapse of the mainstream centre left into liberal virtue signalling and covering for Saudi Arabia in Parliament, and too much of Corbynism in thrall to conspiratorial thinking means there is a space for small independent bloggers and pundits to get to grips with what's happening and offer analysis-based diagnoses, no matter how unpalatable they might be. And, with any luck, that gap is going to widen as increasing numbers start looking for comment that's a bit more thoughtful. Either/or self-indulgence was so 2016 - 2017 belongs to critical thinking and nuanced argument. Well, it would if there is any justice.

Want to know what the most read posts of 2016 were? Of course you do.

16. Race, Class and Donald Trump
15. Ken Livingstone, Labour and Anti-Semitism
14. Why is the BBC Silent about Tory Electoral Fraud?
13. After Neoliberalism
12. Top 100 Independent Tweeting Bloggers 2015
11. Is Corbynism a Social Movement?
10. Why the Establishment Doesn't Get Corbynism
9. Splitting the Labour Party
8. Jeremy Corbyn in Stoke-on-Trent
7. What is Happening to the Labour Party?
6. Against the Corbyn Coup
5. EU Referendum: What Would Trotsky Do?
4. Jeremy Corbyn's Prime Ministerial Speech
3. Jeremy Corbyn and the SWP
2. Why I Voted for Jeremy Corbyn
1. Reluctant Corbynism

There is a theme that dominates this list, but I can't quite grasp what it might be. Can you?

With lists in recent years typically dominated by more lists, bonking, and far left shenanigans, politics, real politics has come to the fore. And about bloody time. 2017 is going to be difficult and fraught year as the Brexit disaster beds down, Donald Trump assuming office and rattling his super-manly sabre, a rolling wave of far right success in continental elections and, yes, a few more beloved celebrities are probably going to leave us. The outlook is bleak, but I will be here chronicling it all and offering my two penneth.

Instead of my usual tradition of digging up (relatively) unappreciated posts, I'd like to pay tribute to two of my comrades who passed away unexpectedly this year. Eddie Truman and Lily Jayne Summers were among the finest human beings I've ever had the pleasure to associate with. Their passing is felt everyday, and we owe it to their memory to dust ourselves off and keep fighting for a better world. After all, if these comrades were still with us it is what they would be doing.