Monday 16 December 2019

The Demonology of Jeremy Corbyn

"What happened to Jeremy Corbyn wasn’t a character assassination, it was a character exposure. The press didn’t destroy Corbyn, he destroyed himself years before he took the leader’s job. The Tory press couldn’t have handpicked a more ideal rival candidate if they tried." So writes Oz Katerji, Mail hack for all of five minutes. Yet what he writes is true, up to a point. As far as the establishment goes, Corbyn was and is not acceptable. They buried him under a mountain of shit, and a load of it stuck. But how do we understand that demonology, a monstering so total that it cut through to millions of people to the point where you could ask why punters didn't like Jeremy Corbyn and they couldn't answer why. And more importantly, how can it be countered when the next leader faces the same? And what should Labour learn from the mistakes Corbyn made?

Jeremy Corbyn would not have been my first choice for Labour leader and, indeed, was not. But let's be clear, Jeremy Corbyn was the only left wing MP who could have got through the parliamentary party's gatekeeping and on to the leadership ballot, and precisely because he was an unknown quantity to large numbers of the left-leaning public he was able to draw hundreds of thousands into the party and transform it from an eviscerated husk into something much greater. Yes, Corbyn came with much baggage. It was one reason why I was sceptical and wrote about it at the time. The other, which powered my initial Corbyn-scepticism was the credibility factor. i.e. Steady-as-she-goes centre leftism is the only thing palatable to the electorate, and so following the New Labour play book we have to tail the electorate instead of persuading and offering leadership.

This was it then: too left wing and too compromised by past associations. All throughout the Labour leadership election, you expect plenty of mud to be flung and flung it was. Rather than confront the programme Corbyn put to the selectorate he was criticised and belittled using all the old smears and stratagems. Only Yvette Cooper had a go at critiquing Corbyn directly, but didn't lay a glove because she interpreted nationalisation as a straight up Croslandite swap of private managers for Whitehall staff, and not the wider democratic vision at the heart of a reconceptualised public ownership. And as it became clear he was going to win, the rhetoric ramped up and swamped straight forward political criticisms. Labour MPs quickly went to Tory papers and fed them all the attack lines later regurgitated in op-ed after front page after comment column. And so when the wider public started paying attention, the spin put on his record meant Corbyn came before them as a renegade who would do Britain in. From September 2015 through the second leadership contest to the outset of the 2017 general election, the perception stuck for millions of people not because they had made their mind up, but because the initial framing was reinforced daily by a collective press exercise in demonology, backed by the broadcast media and fed incessantly by Labour's scab tendency of MPs. And following the election in which Labour exceeded expectations, it wasn't long before it started all over again. These last two years were an exercise in de-legitimation for which many of those self-same MPs who put the boot in paid the price - a fitting fate if our people weren't going to suffer because of their petty blacklegging vendetta.

Yet this experience did show something. The powers that be threw the kitchen sink at Corbyn before the 2017 general election and it largely bounced off. Media power isn't total power. Nevertheless, I say largely because there is reason to believe that if the Tory party's generous little helpers in Labour's ranks hadn't tried undermining the left and were much more disciplined we could have won in 2017. Alas, they ensured it didn't happen and it will now forever inspire a cornucopia of what if fantasies. The lesson then, which really shouldn't bear repeating, is the media are going to come for whoever leads the party. They will demonise and scandalise, terrify and vilify whoever takes the top job. And while the next leader is unlikely to suffer the same degree of abuse Corbyn endured, they need to be ready for it and have an aggressive press operation in place to rebut, ridicule, and stamp on whatever nonsense comes their way.

In the hands of the Murdochs, the Mails, and the Melts Corbyn became a monster who wanted to nationalise everything, compromise the country's security, stick undesirables in the gulag, and run the country into the ground. And the job worked a treat, especially with those layers of the population whose situation is ontologically angsty. People will not countenance voting for someone who frightens them, and that is as true of Tory voters who trembled at the thought of Corbyn in Number 10 as it was Labour supporters fearful of what five more years of Johnson means for them.

Still, while Corbyn was subject to the worst press and broadcast coverage ever received by a leading politician, there are mistakes he and his team made that helped his opponents. The first was the perception of indecision on Corbyn's part. This was rooted in a desire to be seen as someone whose authority grew from consensus rather than control. The thing is with a parliamentary party in open revolt and letting the scab tendency run riot with their attacks, this not only sapped the will of thousands of activists but fatally damaged his standing with the public. For the punters at home hearing constantly about problems in the Labour Party, the failure to do anything about the complainers undermined faith in his capacity to deliver Labour's ambitious programme. The people around Corbyn were often accused of being Stalinist, and yet perhaps we should have seen a little more Stalinism and a little less tolerance of the intolerable. After the 2017 election there was a window of opportunity to give MPs who consistently undermined the party the heave ho, and it was an opportunity missed.

The second refers to anti-semitism. Corbyn obviously isn't anti-semitic, but should have anticipated the likelihood of attacks coming from that direction. After all, as an active promoter of the Palestinian solidarity movement he would be familiar with the false equivalences made between anti-semitism and criticisms of Israel. Yes, Corbyn was hamstrung to a degree by a party apparat who sat on cases because it was factionally convenient, by utter idiots who prized their right to be "provocative" above party discipline and the damage to the wider movement and, his own past associations and blind spots and, sadly, cases of allies looking the other way, but from the off there should have been zero tolerance and expulsions. Instead we had a situation where it's become a running sore, and where the previously moribund Jewish Labour Movement falsely claimed the party is infested and riddled with anti-Jewish racism. This was obviously damaging as far as the party's relationship with the Jewish community was concerned, and a number of good Jewish comrades were alienated from Labour as a result. It didn't have to be this way.

And there was the campaign itself. It's always difficult to impossible to raise criticisms during an election because, well, a political party is not a debating society. But the party did make some elementary mistakes. As idiotic as Johnson's Get Brexit Done mantra was, fixating on that plus his two other main proposals - recruit 20k extra coppers, and throw more money at the NHS - meant that on the trip from doormat to pedal bin those three simple messages easily translated. Labour on the other hand offered a smorgasbord of goodness. Yes, the manifesto had to be ambitious thanks to the scale of the challenges facing us. But it could have been sold better by returning to three key pledges and hammering away at them. The Tories don't overcomplicate things, and neither should we.

The second big campaign issue was timing. Shortly before the election some honourable members and Labour activists, me included, argued that we should not give Johnson his general election. The polls didn't look great, and Johnson was forced to backtrack on his foolhardy promise to get Brexit done by Hallowe'en. Instead of letting him stew, we helped extract him from the mire. Johnson went from being the prisoner of parliament to, now with his majority, its jailer. Where the left went wrong, and this is not entirely on Corbyn, was the belief in the transformative power of Labour's activist army. And yes, it was transformative in the sense of tens of thousands of people finding comradeship and forging tighter bonds in the face of struggle. A process, if you like, of cadreisation in politically testing circumstances. This has deepened the left's handle on the party, but wasn't enough to carry the election. The 2019 general election is a case study in the limits of voluntarism.

And lastly, Brexit. There was no easy answer here and Labour was caught in a perfect trap. Nevertheless, this could have been handled better. It is one thing to offer a second referendum, but quite another for a large chunk of the shadow cabinet to say they would campaign to remain come what may. This was completely unnecessary from the standpoint of stymieing the bleed of pro-EU voters to the LibDems and the Greens, but would have overly antagonised a layer of leave voters who subsequently "lent" the Tories their vote to get Brexit over the line. Johnson, sadly, was right to point out the absurdity of a Labour Brexit deal that no one who negotiated it wanted to support.

As the dust settles and we draw lessons from this election for what comes next, we have to be prepared to criticise our performance. Yes, the media did a number on the labour movement and were helped at every turn by a faction of wreckers who want to turn the clock back to the bad old days of crapping on workers and undermining our base. And yet, while Jeremy Corbyn was neither the messiah nor a very naughty boy. We have to take what was good, learn from the mistakes, and forge our path anew.

21 comments:

Speedy said...

I have always credited you with the insight to grasp Corbyn was a road to nowhere, although you quickly swept that under the carpet and loyally went with the flow once he was elected. Well-intentioned you may have been but it always seemed like a lot of hot air to me - once the historic mistake of Milliband to open LP membership to non-serious people, basically bourgeois dilettantes, had been made, it was game over for Labour.

Corbyn was the perfect fit for people with little at actual stake in the future, much like his Islington electorate. They could afford to put their principles before practice because whatever happened they would be okay, and so it will prove. Much the same with the extreme left outfits to which you used to belong - democracy affords a space for them, as the Labour Party afforded space for Corbyn in its 'broad church', but he should never have been elected pope.

Do not be in any doubt that should Labour elect a 'Corbyn without a beard' it will be Milliband 2 only worse. Prepare for another five years of hot air and wasted insight and predicting the end of Toryism while the UK moves practically and irrevocably further right, so by the time a 'moderate' Labour leader is finally elected they will be arguing for a version of 'Obama Care'. Labour is a party of government, not protest, but the protest movement has captured it and in its destructive narcissism - its anybody's fault but their own - will continue to betray the very people the Labour Party was created to nurture and remain the very best of allies of the right.

theOnlySanePersonOnPlanetEarth said...

There are 3 main weapons that the ruling class and its considerable army of servile lackeys (more about them soon) throw against the revolutionary left. Those who claim Corbyn isn’t revolutionary are incorrect, it is why the entire ruling class brought their full artillery to bear upon him. But the demonology is not just about this one individual but against the movement generally.

These weapons are as follows:

1) The revolutionary left will threaten your economic future. Your standard of living will fall rapidly and the only workable human system is capitalism.

2) The revolutionary left are traitorous and care more about foreigners than they care about you. They will try to undermine the very structures that keep you safe and secure against a dangerous world.
3) The revolutionary left are anti Semitic, their inferences about the Bankocracy and criticisms of Israel etc are code for something far more sinister.

In actual fact all three can be lumped under one category, namely pulling up the drawbridge and sod the rest. You could summarise it all under Fear.

Number 3 is a strange tactic but it seems to work. It works because of number 2, Israel is an imperialist bastion and undermining Israel would be undermining supremacy and by undermining supremacy you undermine the privileges of living at the imperialist core. It is a strange tactic because it asks, what is basically a ‘white’ supremacist mass, to be concerned about racism. It is testament to the power of propaganda and the ability of human beings to be extraordinarily duplicitous when it suits their needs. Humans have an amazing ability to dress up their amorality in all sorts of fine adornments, for example humanitarian intervention, which is basically gangsterism.

The attack on the left has already begun in earnest. I have watched the corporate news media with interest in the wake of the election and the focus on the anti Semitism problem has been notable. It is clear what is happening here, the ruling class now will do everything in its power to create the opposition they desire and put socialism back in the box where it belongs.

The army of servile lackeys will go to town on delivering this, from an ashen faced Caroline Flint parading around the corporate media as if her entire family have just been wiped out in a yachting accident, from John Mann’s witchunt of Palestinian sympathisers to the likes of Boffy and Denham delivering the amoral outlook of the ruling elite and their demonising of the genuine left.

The prediction is this, despite all Boffy’s bluster about Blairites and the Liberal Democrats he will steadfastly stand by them and throw the left to the wolves.

But where there is gangster capitalism and all its disgusting iniquities there will be a genuine socialist left making the argument for a complete break from this dehumanising hell.

Anonymous said...

Hey blog readers, let's look to the future. The likely options would appear to be:

RLB (solid socialist. Girl, northerner, and the obvious choice.);

Keir S (Soft left. Let's quietly do a Kinnock snr and segue to Blairism over time.);

Lisa Nandy (Kipper-lite chicken coup plotter and bendy-boned opportunist.); and,

Jess Phillips (Comedy candidate. Funded by the 1%. Just running to make Lisa N look like a socialist.)

It's RLB for me.

Boffy said...

"Yes, Corbyn came with much baggage. It was one reason why I was sceptical and wrote about it at the time. The other, which powered my initial Corbyn-scepticism was the credibility factor. i.e. Steady-as-she-goes centre leftism is the only thing palatable to the electorate, and so following the New Labour play book we have to tail the electorate instead of persuading and offering leadership."

That would have been even more disastrous. Brown lost badly in 2010, Miliband failed badly in 2015, Cooper would have failed badly in 2017, if even there would have been an election at that point. The politics of centrism is dead, because the material reality that underpinned it is dead. Politics reflects material conditions, being determines consciousness. Either a progressive social-democracy emerges to deal with the reality of material conditions, or reaction will do so.

Corbyn's Labour represented the former and Brexit the latter. ironically, this will now likely play out inside the Tory Party itself. Johnson represents the same kind of economic nationalism as Corbyn, just as Hitler represented that trend as much as Thalheimer. It is a representation of the material interests of large scale socialised capital in the age of monopoly. If progressive social democracy proves incapable of winning a majority for such a programme, in periods when that capital requires it, then it is implemented by authoritarian and totalitarian forces instead.

That is why Johnson is proposing large scale infrastructure spending and so on, like that of Hitler or as set out in the Mosely Memorandum. He will however, have to confront the real reactionaries in the Tory Party, who reflect its core base within the ranks of the small capitalists, whose material interests are antagonistic to such a course. They really do want a Minarchist state, a break-up of monopolies and the encouragement of 18th century style free market competition.

The former ultimately require the EU, which is why Johnson will attempt a BRINO, whilst the latter will try to force him into a catastrophic No Deal.

Boffy said...

2Rather than confront the programme Corbyn put to the selectorate he was criticised and belittled using all the old smears and stratagems. Only Yvette Cooper had a go at critiquing Corbyn directly, but didn't lay a glove because she interpreted nationalisation as a straight up Croslandite swap of private managers for Whitehall staff, and not the wider democratic vision at the heart of a reconceptualised public ownership."

But, this was always the problem with Corbynism as I had said at the time of his nomination. Those of us who have known him for 40 years knew about the dodgy politics based on associations with reactionary organisations such as PIRA, Hamas, hezbollah, the Iranian mullahs, RT and so on. Its why as I said it was more important to build a movement than to rely on the role of the individual.

And Corbynism continued in that vein. Instead of building a movement increasingly rooted in local communities and struggles, instead of building a mass social movement, it engaged in parliamentary cretinism STW type rallies and jamborees, supported by Momentum. It failed to set out clear policies around which campaigns could be built as the foundation of an election offering, and instead dumped a load of proposed Christmas presents on the electorate as bribes at the last minute that no groundwork had been done for. It meant these promises could then easily be misrepresented and rubbished.

far from tailing the working class as you suggest, what it required was a willingness to build a movement first, and as a requisite of then launching a serious campaign to win government office.

Boffy said...

"Nevertheless, I say largely because there is reason to believe that if the Tory party's generous little helpers in Labour's ranks hadn't tried undermining the left and were much more disciplined we could have won in 2017. Alas, they ensured it didn't happen and it will now forever inspire a cornucopia of what if fantasies."

But, we all know what would have happened. The Corbynbites represented about 20 MP's after 2017. That was a direct result of Corbyn failing to support democratisation of the party and mandatory reselection to ditch all of the Blair-rights prior to any election. There were 240 Blair-right, soft left and nationalist right Labour MP's. Had Labour won, the 240 would have ditched Corbyn at the first opportunity, probably lining up with the Liberals, Greens, Plaid, SNP and Remainer Tories in a National government, which would then have stopped Brexit.

The PLP would have installed Watson as leader, they would draw in some union backing, and given that the union barons generally err on the side of backing a LP that has a chance of winning, even UNITE and others would probably have eventually swung behind it. The courts would have given ownership of the party name, and apparatus to the PLP, leaving Corbyn leading a rump.

Anonymous said...

You didn't mention Angela Rayner. Her personal history makes her impressive, and she's very Northern, which generally goes down well with the Party. Dunno much about her politics though- she's supposed to be "soft left" but then so are Starmer and Phillips.

On another tack, does anyone have any inside knowledge of Bassetlaw? The swing to Cons there was far and away the biggest, with a 14,000 Con majority, the next biggest Con majority in previously Labour seats was 8,500. Did the former Labour MP for Bassetlaw John Mann actively campaign locally to undermine his would-be successor? I'm sure he would but haven't seen any specific reports.

BTW, Speedy, like most people who don't live there I suspect you've never actually visited North Islington.

Boffy said...

"The people around Corbyn were often accused of being Stalinist, and yet perhaps we should have seen a little more Stalinism and a little less tolerance of the intolerable."

You seem to have forgotten your history. Stalin aligned with Bukharin and the Right, and encouraged the Kulaks to get rich, as part of his campaign to destroy Trotsky and the Left Opposition. And,central to Stalin's theory of building Socialism in One Country was the concomitant commitment he gave to imperialism at the conferences at Yalta and Potsdam to undermine revolutions outside his sphere of influence, as part of his policy of peaceful coexistence.

Corbyn's Stalinist strategy was fully in accordance with those disastrous previous examples, just as was his essentially Popular Frontist agenda.

Boffy said...

"It is one thing to offer a second referendum, but quite another for a large chunk of the shadow cabinet to say they would campaign to remain come what may. This was completely unnecessary from the standpoint of stymieing the bleed of pro-EU voters to the LibDems and the Greens, but would have overly antagonised a layer of leave voters who subsequently "lent" the Tories their vote to get Brexit over the line. Johnson, sadly, was right to point out the absurdity of a Labour Brexit deal that no one who negotiated it wanted to support."

Nonsense, as Paul Mason has demonstrated. It was the continued pushing of the pro-Brexit line, even after it had been demonstrated to Corbyn by actual data that it was destroying Labour's support that led Labour into fifth and sixth place in the local and EU elections in May. Only after that and the reluctant drawing towards a Remain position did Labour start to claw back some of those votes it had lost to the Liberals, Greens, Plaid and SNP. But, as Paul says, too little too late.

It meant we had to spend time clawing back votes we previously owned, rather than spending that time consolidating that Remain vote, destroying the Liberals et al, and also taking the case against Brexit to Leave voting workers, so as to win them away from it. The underlying cause of defeat was the disastrous policy of spending three years putting forward a reactionary pro-Brexit line, having previously failed miserably to argue a convincing socialist internationalist case during the referendum.

BCFG said...

It should be noted by anyone daft enough to listen to the idiocy of speedy but this hard brexit Tory victory and the Trump victory in the USA is the inevitable outcome of Blairism and its arch socisl chauvinism.

These moments were born from Blair rule not Corbyn opposition.

What speedy wants is what the entire ruling establishment desire, he wants you to vote Tory no matter who you vote for. This is why he so readily falsifies history. He is but a shill for the ruling class.

Smart people already know this, people who have been paying attention to this far right racist know this but just in case anyone ignorant is reading, you have been warned about speedy.

I think RLB has already promised to throw the Palestinians under the bus, no socialist would ever or could ever do that. Still beggars can't be choosers! So I endorse her too!



Boff hits the Fan said...

Boffy is spinning so fast that I am feeling dizzy!

Boffy has one rule, no matter how wrong he always is he is always right!

And by the way Boffy is spinning so fast that some of his shit just happens to be hitting the fan!

Anonymous said...

Bassetlaw saw an egregious attempt to stitch up the nomination for a local "favoured son" of the leadership - every bit as bad as the worst days of parachuting in Blairite SpAdS. Have a google if you want to find out all the simultaneously depressing and hilarious details.

Speedy said...

I sometimes wonder if WTF is Dominic Cummings on meth. It would certainly explain a thing or two. It's no shame to be called a 'shill for the ruling class' by what must be the ultimate bourgeois dilettante, but I was curious about WTF and his 'paying attention' to my history here, so had a quick look.

I was impressed (actually surprised) to note I'd called both previous elections correctly (2017 - 'hung parliament if Labour get the vote out or Tory landslide') and Brexit 'When the history is written, I think a major factor in the exit from Europe (which seems on the cards) will be the crisis on the Left as much as the right - the failure of these parties to explain loudly enough why remaining in is in their interests.'

So for once, I agree with troll-features: keep paying attention!

Jonahran said...

I think the anti-semitism stuff was extremely harmful as I think it gave a load of winnably bien-pensant centrists a reason to listen to the right about the dangers of the left. It was also transparently mishandled at the highest level: Labour leadership challenge happens and party manages to sling out thousands of kids who voted Green but the second Corbyn comes in the party takes *years* to come up with an expulsion framework and even then has a slow investigation and appeals process? Nah... Nobody is buying that.

Of course, the deeper problem here is why Palestine features so prominently in the imagination of the British left that you get people who literally speak of nothing else. Internationalist Solidarity, yes but not when it seems to come from a place of racially-aggravated post-colonial obsession at a time when the party refused to back freedom of movement and was slow to respond to Windrush.

BCFG said...

Just to illustrate what a utter disingenuous far right fraud speedy is take this utterly risible quote,

“Prepare for another five years of hot air and wasted insight and predicting the end of Toryism while the UK moves practically and irrevocably further right, so by the time a 'moderate' Labour leader is finally elected they will be arguing for a version of 'Obama Care'. “

Throughout the early noughties Blair and Brown in speech after speech after speech lauded to the high havens the ‘wealth creators’ of the hedge funds and the city, they handed out award after award after honours to the banksters and the privatisers, for example Fred Goodwin.

Not only did New Labour embrace Thatcherism they extended it to every nook and cranny of the public sector, from neo liberal management principles, internal competition, public private partnerships, arms length management organisations, outsourcing of services to PFI. They introduced markets into every corner of public services, nowhere was free from neo liberal market discipline. New Labour absolutely were the architects for the privitisation of the NHS, it is they who encouraged US firms into the health market, they invited the vultures in.

New Labour invited into the public sector private form after private firm, for example house builders, cleaning firms, where staff were workers were tupied over on eventually much worse pay and conditions.

Corbyn represented a complete roll back on this.

But how does that lying toerag speedy present the history, he presents New Labour as the saviours and present Corbyn as the architect of this state of affairs.


Incidentally go back to speedys endless Muslim bashing, anti immigrant posts on this site, talk about being in tune with the very essence of Brexit!

Boff Hits the Fan said...

Boffy’s spin is so acute the level of mendacity is something to behold. This guy tesist time and space to make the facts fit his argument!

Boffy claims that socialists should not tail the working class and what is Boffy’s remedy for this? It is to ditch all those things that precisely didn’t tail the working class, for example opposition to war and uber economic nationalism, support for the oppressed etc. Boffy simply regurgitates all the corporate media demonization of Corbyn. When Corbyn engaged with the Palestinian movement Boffy doesn’t see a socialist championing the oppressed, he sees a terrorist sympathiser. When Corbyn engaged with Sinn fein Boffy doesn’t see someone genuinely trying to engage in a peace process, no he saw a capitulation to terrorism. When Corbyn engages in anti imperialism Boffy doesn’t see a socialist fighting against uber economic nationalism and all its destructive iniquities, no he sees a fool holding back civilisation.

Boffy’s remedy for not tailing the working class is to precisely tail the working class! He proposes that leftists ‘go into working class communities and deliver exactly what they want’. Isn’t this exactly what the Tories did? The masses spoke, we want our relative priviliege to be maintained thanks very much and oh, can you stop those immigrants polluting my air space with their funny looking ways.

“And,central to Stalin's theory of building Socialism in One Country “

Central to Stalin’s theory of building Socialism in One Country was to very precisely not build socialism in one country but to unite numerous and diverse nations into an economic block which he hoped would be a bulwark against the Western powers whose white armies had attempted to strangle the revolution at birth. The Bolsheviks invaded Ukraine in the 1920’s to provide the agricultural base for the soviet economy. Stalin’s reaction to the Ukrainian independence movement was not pretty incidentally!

The short term strategy of the Bolsheviks was not really to build socialism par se but to industrialise the economy to match the productivity of its Western enemies and at the same time acquire important strategic geographical areas to prevent Western powers sending their ships and planes to bomb the revolution out of existence. It was everything but socialism in one country.

BCFG said...

"here is why Palestine features so prominently in the imagination of the British left that you get people who literally speak of nothing else."

You despicable liar. We should ask the question why do the pro imperialists pretend that all we hear from the left is Palestine?

It isn't a deep question as we already know the answer!

We should also why the pro imperialists are so ready to lap up a blatant witch hunt and claim it in any way represents the truth.

Again not a deep question.

Dipper said...

Speaking as a very happy Tory ...

What we are seeing is the result of not one but two elections. To recap, we started off this year with May in charge. Her Brexit deal was revealed to be a Remainer's device for 'limiting the damage' and in effect shunting the UK into a siding of the EU where we could be kept indefinitely until Remainers could organise a 'people's vote' giving the electorate the choice of Remaining in the EU or Not Leaving. A very dispiriting prospect.

In May, Leave voters switched en masse to The Brexit Party. This destroyed the Remain-Tory position, resulting in May leaving, many pro-EU Tories quitting, and a Leave PM being installed. This made the Conservative Party unequivocally the Party of Leave. The GE just gone saw Leave voters en masse switch back and deliver a huge majority to a Leave Tory Party. This Tory party is different in policy, in support, and in approach to previous ones. It is pro-state expenditure, pro-working people. The government it reminds me of most is the Wilson one.

The Problem for Labour is that both wings are completely discredited. The left under Corbyn have been completely rejected. I cannot being to tell you of the number of working men I know who cannot stand Corbyn. The country is not at a point to accept a hard-left doctrine and isn't likely to be for the foreseeable future.

The centre group under MPs such as Starmer, Benn, and Reeve have staked all on being pro-EU and lost. It is likely that, contingent on Brexit not being a total disaster, Rejoining the EU will become a niche interest numbering somewhere in the 30% bracket. The records of centrist Labour means they have destroyed the bridges they need to reconnect with the voters they have just lost. This was blindingly obvious from 24th June 2016 and represents a major miscalculation.

My group of Tories have just one person who they think could put up a good fight against Johnson and that is Lisa Nandy. Everyone else, RLB, Rayner, Starmer, will get their records flung back at them over and over, and seem too tied to fighting (and losing) the last war to be a threat.

So, its up to you. Do you want to plot a route back to power via Lisa Nandy? Or do you want to continue fighting a losing position with Continuity Corbyn or Continuity Remain?


Anonymous said...

“But the second Corbyn comes in the party takes *years* to come up with an expulsion framework and even then has a slow investigation and appeals process”

Yes, lets come up with a quick expulsion framework (forget the The Chakrabarti Inquiry and any form of due process) and then proceed to implement quick investigations and quick appeals, let there be no time for evidence gathering, let hysteria rule the day!

This is the exact prescription for witch hunting, throw away all due process and proceed straight to the trials, and twist any utterance as anti Semitic. For example, when Marc Wadsworth made the point that Ruth Smeeth was collaborating with the Torygrap she turned this into a Marc Wadsworth said jews were conspiring. This is classic witch hunting tactics, infer every action is that of a witch!

Anyone giving credence to witch hunts is not be to taken seriously as being a champion of progressive politics. Jonahran is a fraud, just another Matthew Hopkins wannabe,

Jonarhan said...

Mate... If you live in the UK and your primary axis of political engagement is what is going on in Palestine then your priorities are out of whack. That's not leftism, internationalist Solidarity, or even an interest in foreign affairs. That's a weird obsession fed by a variety of occluded prejudices and subjectivities.

Anonymous said...

"If you live in the UK and your primary axis of political engagement is what is going on in Palestine then your priorities are out of whack"

But if your primary axis of political engagement is fighting to ensure that no UK government less than 100% supportive of Israel ever gets elected, you're a hapless victim of Corbyn's LP anti-semitism and deserve plenty of airtime and editorial space.

(Fortunately the Brit working class pretty much ignored all of this, though it probably lost some middle class votes - they were probs more bothered by his IRA ambivalence, certainly older voters. What did for JC was his acceptance of the Blairite/Starmer second referendum, a poison pill slipped into the manifesto. Goodbye Red Wall in the North, goodbye Bolsover.)