Considering the last fortnight, it takes something special to make Keir Starmer and Morgan McSweeney look like exemplars of competence. Just a quick reminder of where we are in the Your Party crisis. Zarah Sultana's faction, annoyed with the snail's pace of the project and the conference arrangements worked out seemingly behind her back, opened a membership drive. Only to have it disowned by Jeremy Corbyn and the four Gaza Independents. Sultana's reply complained about being frozen out, and another communique from the Corbyn camp said they had reported the affair to the Information Commissioner. Archie Woodrow has done the honours in supplying the time lines, and his superlative guide to the hidden differences behind the Your Party project is required reading. Things have settled down a bit today, with prominent supporters in Wales and a new grassroots initiative each fielding their takes. Sultana has endorsed the latter while Sky News reports on reconciliation efforts. Your Party might be in the toilet but no one's pulled the chain. Yet.
There's nothing much to add except for hundreds of thousands of would-be supporters, the outbreak of collective joy that occasioned this summer's announcement that a new party is but a memory. Recrimination, anxiety, and disappointment is now filling the vacuum left by this unseemly falling out. As Woodrow writes in his overview of Your Party's factional balances, there is an abundance of control-freakery and secrecy. It's tempting to locate this in the desire of a handful of people around Corbyn wanting to secure paid positions and influence in the new party, and plenty have made that inference. But this is secondary to the politics of our shadowy movers and shakers. And what are these politics? Fundamentally, it comes down to what they think the new party should be.
For the Corbyn wing and its (understandably) reluctant leader, the desire is obviously a mk II Labour Party. One with a touch more democracy and better politics, but ultimately Labourist in orientation and method. The "sexist boys' club" Sultana criticised has centred the formation of the new party on the honourable members - Corbyn and the so-called Gaza Independents. From the off, the MPs have had a privileged say over the party's direction, and are looking to preserve their autonomy and standing within it. This is hardly the grass roots democracy Corbyn promised over the summer, and is concerning when it's very clear that apart from Gaza, the politics of the independents are barely Labourist, let alone socialist. But that suits a Labour mk II fine, which thrives on a politics of the lowest common denominator.
Some have asked why Corbyn wants to co-habit with the independents in a new party. Is he not aware of their positions on landlordism, LGBTQ issues, and cousin marriage? Of course he is, but Corbyn's ethical socialism predisposes him to a politics of diplomacy. This is a politics of moral outrage at the evils of the world, and believes in the essential dignity and goodness of human beings. Capitalism is obviously damaging and cruel, and there is an ethical imperative to build something better - a position everyone can get behind, because everyone benefits. Socialist morality abstracted from a materialist appreciation of power and politics, in Corbyn's case, helps explain his decency and willingness to engage with people most wouldn't touch with a barge pole. Why can't we all get along is the principle by which he's lived his political life, and he reciprocates the friendship and loyalty shown him by others. Karie Murphy, for instance, is often criticised as a gatekeeper and an authoritarian, but she stayed in the trench with Corbyn until the end. Small wonder she's part of the inner circle, alongside Len McCluskey who did everything he could to get Corbyn readmitted as a Labour MP. Unlike Starmer, who bins off allies when they become an encumbrance, the fusion of the personal and political in Corbyn means he can never be as mercenary. Regardless of how damaging his allies might be for whatever project he's involved with. Where the Gaza Independents are concerned, while Labour "oppositionists" to Israel's genocide have been few and far between, they have been resolute and faced down Westminster and media hostility. On paper, who would not want to make common political cause with such courageous people?
Corbyn-as-figurehead is the glue that keeps this faction together. Unity where their common interests are concerned, and diplomatic silences over political differences. Which makes Corbyn ideal to lead a broad church that stretches from the far left to anti-LGBTQ "traditionalists", as long as no one talks about difference or, horror of horrors, politics. This is where his keen interest in community organising comes in. While laudable in and of itself as a means of implanting the new party into our communities, activists so engaged will build trust and solidarity through good works. Disagreements would simply wither away and not matter because action takes precedence.
Sultana's faction has a different objective. They are not looking for a Labour mk II, and want to establish a radical left party. Indeed, in her interview with Novara on the topic, she said her preferred name for the new party would be the Left Party or The Left. In other words, quite similar to several continental left-green parties and broadly congruent with Zack Polanski's trajectory. She has argued for putting "class issues" front and centre, while maintaining it should be a socially liberal party. I.e. Mirroring the vast majority of the class it seeks to organise in the age of immaterial labour. Obviously, this party isn't a place for landlords or those whose politics seek to sow division, regardless of how good they might be on questions of war and peace. And she's impatient with the bureaucratic obstructionism and foot dragging given the state of political affairs. Whether you agree or disagree with her positions, at least Sultana has been open about her vision and what the new party should be like. Can you say the same for Corbyn?
These are the fundamental differences between the two broad camps, and the reason we've reached this impasse is because one side - Corbyn's - would rather not have a "divisive" debate about the party's character. The problem is when you stifle politics, they find other, more damaging ways of finding expression, and it ends up scarring those doing the repressing. The situation we're in means Corbyn is the only politician with sufficient social weight to bring together the left and refound it on a mass, as opposed to a sectarian basis. But the more he delays, the more his associates are given free reign to arrest this process, the more his standing will diminish to the point where the moment could be lost. But the situation can and must be retrieved. Open the membership, put the party on a firm financial and organisational setting, regularise the already-existing branches and fora, and let's have this founding conference where the purpose and politics of our party can get thrashed out.
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25 comments:
Although I respect Corbyn as a principled and moral individual, as a politician his track record is that of individual success rather than as a leader. His leadership of the Labour party failed, and this new venture has already failed. It doesn't matter why, what matters is that he has proven himself to lack the ability to lead an effective group to challenge the forces that dominate our political system.
He seems almost childishly naive in thinking he can ignore the fundamental differences in values and ideology within this already fractured coalition. He was too weak and trusting when he was Labour leader, and let the right consolidate control and oust him because he lacked the ruthlessness and decisiveness needed. He isn't going to change. He's an admirable human, but a terrible leader.
We need to get all or as many orgns & individuals to support a single campaign to push to take control and launch Your Party - with or without Sultana & Corbyn.
There's a few disparate campaigns but we need a unified one: #launchyourparty
PS: post this article Sultana has announced intention to sue for defamation. She will help blow it up with this self-indulgence.Corbyn no better.
We cannot be surprised and should have expected it. The new feature is the crisis before it is founded. RESPECT, Socialist Labour Party, Socialist Alliance, etc. all waited till they had got going before expelling, shunning, splitting, disappearing. Can we expect 2 Your Parties in 2026?
Dare I say, the Corbyn team's leadership of party happens, so to speak, twice. First as tragedy...
I agree with everything you say in this post, but it was obviously written before Sultana's announcement that she was (at least) threatening to sue the other five MPs - an act which would pour her reputational capital down the drain. I wonder how YP (OP?) can possibly go any further. Is there a third leadership faction we can talk to?
What is the social base of this new party one has to ask ? Traditionally the marxist Left always used to describe fascism as a violent mass movement of the essentially individualist petty bourgeoisie, "human dust", bound together as a mighty political movement on a deliberately broad, often self contradictory programme of deeply reactionary ideas and tropes, with all the decisions left to the Leader and his lieutenants. The Socialist movement , in contrast , was meant to be mainly based on a profoundly collectivist working class, already organised by capitalism in solidarity by their working lives in pit, steel mill, etc.
The mass organised, classical, physical production based, working class has never been bigger, globally, but it has simply disappeared in financialised, back office functions, service industry UK, and the rest of the West. The" immaterial production" based middle class, in jobs which are generally unorganised and individualist, are no social basis for the creation of a disciplined socialist party. The priorities of this identity politics obsessed middle class Left will never mesh with those of the mass of the poorer UK working class. The shambolic disaster of Your Party in its non launch has shown that , even before this party has revealed what its policy mix is, and it will be priorities deeply unattractive to the mass of ex Labour voting working class people I can guarantee, the project has foundered because of clashes of individuals at its top.
PS (and in reply to Geoff): back in 2015 I voted Corbyn/Watson, on the grounds that one was a good figurehead and the other was a good hatchet-man, and the leadership needed both. I knew then (I think a lot of us did) that Corbyn's leadership was going to have to be a collective project - he very obviously wasn't a capital-L Leader, nor did he want to be. Later on, I placed a lot of blame for the failure of Corbyn's leadership on the failure of people who should have worked with him, and should have plugged the gaps in his leadership skillset - Watson not least. Which was correct as far as it went - but the lesson I didn't draw, and should have done, is that we should never rely on Corbyn as a leader again. At least, not without making very, very sure that he had the right team around him this time. Too many of us, myself included, saw Sultana's "new party" announcement and thought "Jeremy and Zarah, yeah, that ought to work" - not "Jeremy, he's a lovely guy who usually gets the big questions right, and he still has lots of name recognition, but IS THIS RIGHT? WILL IT WORK?". We ken the noo.
Agreed
I'm getting flashbacks to the Scottish Socialist Party's self-destruction. Why do what passes for the leadership of the left keep doing things like this? Every step forward is followed by two steps backward.
«Which makes Corbyn ideal to leas a broad church that stretches from the far left to anti-LGBTQ "traditionalists", as long as no one talks about difference or, horror of horrors, politics.»
Indeed Corbyn during his Labour leadership was trying so hard to maintain party unity, but that is not bad politics: in a first-past-the-post system parties *must* be coalitions and that works as long as the groups in the coalition have fundamentally compatible or even simply distinct interests, here is a very wise description by Grover Norquist (notorious USA right-wing strategist):
http://www.prospect.org/article/world-according-grover
“The modern Reagan Republican Party, the modern conservative movement, if you want to know what it's going to do … imagine a table and around it are all different groups. And on the issue that brings them to politics, not on everything, but the issue that moves their vote, what they want from the government is to be left alone. Taxpayers -- I run Americans for Tax Reform -- don't raise my taxes. The Second Amendment community -- I'm on the board of the National Rifle Association -- leave our guns alone. Four million members of the NRA, five million guys with concealed-carry … they don't go knocking on doors saying you should own guns; they don't insist public schools teach books with titles like Heather Has Two Hunters. They just … leave us alone and we're happy. The home-schooling movement, now about two million students, maybe 600,000 parents; the property-rights movement, particularly strengthened after Kelo; the business community that doesn't want subsidies, they just want to not be taxed and not regulated. [...] But on the issue that moves their vote … they want to be left alone to practice their religion and raise their kids in that faith and not have schools throwing prophylactics at the kids and stuff. That's why the right, in the conservative movement and the Republican Party, we're able to have evangelical Protestants, fundamentalists, and Pentecostals, who don't agree theologically, and conservative Catholics and orthodox Jews and Muslims and Mormons who don't agree on who's going to Heaven and why, but understand that if they're gong to be able to raise their kids and go to Heaven, the pagans over there have got to have the same political freedom to go to Hades.
Around the table you've got Pat Buchanan and others who look and see all the fissures on secondary and tertiary issues, and he's right. But on the vote-moving primary issue, everybody's got their foot in the center and they're not in conflict on anything. The guy who wants to spend all day counting his money, the guy who wants to spend all day fondling his weaponry, and the guy who wants to go to church all day may look at each other and say, "That's pretty weird, that's not what I would do with my spare time, but that does not threaten my ability to go to church, have my guns, have my money, have my properties, run by my business, home-school my kids.
[...] Spending's a problem because spending's not a primary vote-moving issue for anyone in the coalition. Everybody around the room wishes you'd spend less money. Don't raise my taxes; please spend less. Don't take my guns; please spend less. Leave my faith alone; please spend less. If you keep everybody happy on their primary issue and disappoint on a secondary issue, everybody grumbles … no one walks out the door. So the temptation for a Republican is to let that one slide. And I don't have the answer as to how we fix that. But it does explain how could it possibly be that everyone in the room wants something and doesn't end up getting it because it's not a vote-moving issue.”
The crucial point here is “But on the vote-moving primary issue, everybody's got their foot in the center and they're not in conflict on anything.”. BTW there need not even a single “vote-moving primary issue” for all coalition groups: if they have non-overlapping primary vote-moving interests a government of that party can further those interests too.
«They are not looking for a Labour mk II, and want to establish a radical left party. [...] putting "class issues" front and centre, while maintaining it should be a socially liberal party.»
But that is a "broad church" coalition too and usually it involves incompatible interests: those for whom left-wing class interests are the vote-moving issue are often socially illiberal, and those whose vote-moving issue is being socially liberal as a rule have right-wing class interests. Indeed social liberalism has been very astutely used by right-wing class interests as a distractive and divisive tactic against people with left-wing class interests.
Also there are very few socially liberal vote-moving issues left (divorce, pill, abortion, non-discrimination, gay marriage, ... are all done) and they involve ever smaller grievance groups so social liberalism is a vote-moving issue for a much, much smaller constituency than 50 years ago.
«They are not looking for a Labour mk II, and want to establish a radical left party. [...] putting "class issues" front and centre»
The main issue with left-wing politics in the UK is that politics has «"class issues" front and centre”» for a large part of the working-class and their class issues are centred on property, that is they are right-wing class issues, and they vote for rentier-friendly parties like the Conservatives, New Labour, Reformn UK, LibDems; there is no more class-aware person than a property-owning middle-class voter, as they believe that they are in the same class as the Duke of Westminster, even more likely so if they are pensioners and are on a fixed income, or an income from tenants or from stock investments.
So without a clear and effective strategy to address the mass-rentier vote «a radical left party. [...] putting "class issues" front and centre» is a losing proposition.
The problem the working-class politics has to solve is how to persuade working-class voters with property or pensions to value more their interests as workers and less their interests as rentiers.
A related problem is that the vast majority of "progressive" leaders or potential leaders (academics, trade union officials, party officials, intellectuals, government officials, ...) are rentiers themselves and so many seem very attached to their class interests too (and thus are keen to talk about social liberalism and a lot less keen to talk about class politics).
As reported in a previous comment on this blog:
«I raised the problematic policy on my CLP Facebook group. I was stunned by the support for the policy from the countless landlords who were Party members! "I can't afford to give my tenants a rent holiday" "This is my pension, I'll go bust" etc etc. Absolutely stunning. I had no idea how many private landlords there were in the Party. Kinda explains a lot...»
And now a new self appointed "group of activists from all sorts of campaigns, trades unions, etc" , has sprung up from who knows where, backed by that active bandwagon jumper , Owen Jones, called "Our Party" , supposedly intent on saving the Your Party farrago, via grass roots mobilization and internal democracy ! A bit of a giant credibility problem there I think. Are Our Party going to be asking for our subscriptions too ?
Not often, but not unknown, for me to agree with a Blissex post, but on this I do. I too fear that the potential audience, and voter support, for the very middle class Leftie priorities in policy likely to be offered by this Your Party/Our Party cohort, is quite small - probably pretty much identical to that of the Greens. If you want those sorts of policies just join with or vote for the Greens, under their born again Leftie, and blatant opportunist new leader, ex hypnotherapist and Lib Dem councillor, Zak Polanski, and leave the Your Party farce to be stillborn.
Let's start with the mandatory observation that Jeremy Corbyn is almost certainly a nice and personable man. And it should go without saying that his basic human decency, gentle humour and self-deprecation stand out in stark contrast to a Labour Party that as presently constituted rewards the worst personalities, tendencies and types of behaviour.
I'm sure Corbyn was a good dad, he seems like a loving husband, he runs a nice allotment, has broadly humane views, and at times at least has been willing to take some very unpopular positions, especially regarding foreign or military issues.
So that all said and out of the way, I will also say that I am thoroughly, absolutely and completely sick of the man and the entire backroom of advisers and trade union lifers that comes with him. I realise he is now at a relatively advanced age, but I find his dogged inability or refusal to learn any political lessons or draw relevant conclusions from experiences that directly affected him more than obtuse. It is reprehensible at the present moment.
Even when he was leader of the Labour Party, I found his constant emollience to his most vicious adversaries less a sign of personal gentleness than a kind of complacency perhaps enhanced by nearly 40 years in the cushy position of London Labour MP. It was obvious to nearly everyone - and I'm sure to plenty of those close to him, if not the man himself - that the factional war being waged against the left-wing of the LP and the influx of new members was being treated as existential by the right. They were not going to give up, relent, play fair, or agree to compromise - they said as much at almost every opportunity.
(Cont!)
Despite all that, Corbyn essentially put the maintenance of the 'big tent' fiction of the LP above the success of the political programme he was meant to be dedicated to. Given how frequently he has spoken of the poverty and blight afflicting Britain, the long-term effects of poverty, especially on children, the managed decline of the NHS, rampant inequality and its poisonous effect of every aspect of social and political life, climate change, and the dangers of global war in a period of renewed imperialist conflict - and how he would speak of these issues as presenting some of the most serious challenges humanity has faced in many years, what is the justification for effectively hobbling your own political project for the sake of being nice? How can a man who claims to understand the reality of modern poverty and the danger of world war be so complacent that he privileges his own comfort and conflict aversion over actually achieving what he was elected to achieve? What is the point of entering politics as a leftist if not to struggle against the ruling class? What is the point of mobilising a mass movement and politicising thousands of people, especially among the young, if you intend to avoid doing anything that might discomfort the architects of the very conditions you claim to want to alter?
And just to be clear, I do not consider his close coterie any better. They almost all have complicity in what I described. Ignoring serious political issues and privilege partnership with the Independent MPs over developing a democratic mass membership is, frankly all too characteristic of the latent anti-democratic tendencies and preference for skullduggery common among hardened trade union stalwarts.
And none of this should be taken to suggest Zarah Sultana is any better. Her ambitious, impatient efforts to bounce Corbyn seem less motivated by a desire for giving substance and forcing him to stop dragging his feet, and more to do with securing her own position as co-leader.
I'm not saying there is no place for electoralism or attempts to legislate change through parliament, but the kind of weak social democracy or disoriented pseudo-leftism offered up by the people 'leading' Your Party is not ever going to be capable of addressing much less serious fighting against the government or the reality of capitalism in 2025. Same goes for Zach Polanski.
I was slightly surprised the RCP, SWP and CPUK were (cautiously) supportive of this whole diversion. How many years of failure, I wonder, before the strategy of pressuring the Labour Party from the left is generally accepted to be a dead end? It's been decades now; maybe there is a date pencilled in at which point they will abandon the various wheezes that involve consorting with the Labour 'left', working the trade union bureaucracy, or front groups protesting issues detached from an actual political perspective. Or maybe they will just find new ways to sell the same old ideas as a fresh form of hope.
The thing about "primary vote-moving issues" is that what we think is influenced by who we listen to, and we may believe things that are fundamentally wrong, or contradictory, or both.
Why do gun-fetishists, bible-bashers and landlords think that less government spending is good for them? Because they are constantly told it, and they see tax as a pure loss to them. But, all the evidence shows that lower tax societies tend to be more unequal, and less equal societies have more crime, worse health, lower class mobility, more poverty, worse educational outcomes, weaker institutions, worse infrastructure and so on. In reality, they may find that less spend makes their life worse.
The bigger question is why do they think what they think? They are not born with a view of how the world works. Their theory of politics is not inherent, it is developed over time by all the ideas they are exposed to and the influence of others. Some of whom spend vast sums in pushing a particular viewpoint and control much of the media.
So, the opinions that align into vote moving issues are not spontaneously arrived at by individuals, but rather carefully cultivated to suit the interests of those who most benefit from how those ideas are used.
If you think those socially liberal vote moving issues are done, Blissex, then you haven't been paying attention.
"Conservativism" is done - completely chewed out from the inside; today's conservative is a frothing reactionary with a head stuffed full of Fox News brain poison. The basis of their politics is the promise to roll back all social progress of the last 70 years, under the fantasy that doing so will magically undo the economic rot which has accumulated over the same period. And the unifying issue of socially liberal politics is preventing that from happening.
If Starmer gave any indication that he actually intends to protect those things - instead of fidgeting and looking the other way while they're being dismantled by certain of his "friends" - then he wouldn't be the political dead duck that he currently is.
Nothing profound to say, but as someone so fired up by the original announcement, how the F*CK can they have wasted this opportunity? 850k people chomping at the bit and this is how it pans out? Might as well get my reform lapel badge and giant England flag now, so I'm not sent to the camps under Big Nige in 2029
Well, so much for that.
It's clear that Sultana has the fire and drive to actually lead the new entity, while Corbyn's friends (and his indulgence of them) are a serious political liability. The only thing that Corbyn really has left to offer is his name recognition.
Were Corbyn to cut his dodgy mates loose and publicly hand his torch to Sultana, then take a back seat, then Corbynism mk II might have a fighting chance. But chances of that happening...? He'll let his enemies-held-close drag him down again.
Corbynism mk I was never about the man's leadership abilities, or even really his personal politics, but about his credibility as truly representing the interests and ethics of the majority, in a moribund political field stunk out by the rotting corpse of Thatcherism and the betrayal of Blairism. There was simply nobody else on offer who had any credibility at all as someone who would look out for the mass of rentier-serfs, never mind extricating the country from endless fawning complicity in foreign atrocities. And he did appear to recognise that, hence the slogan of the time. But now someone else has to take up that mantle.
"Inability or refusal to learn any political lessons or draw relevant conclusions from experiences that directly affected him more than obtuse. It is reprehensible at the present moment"
Could it be more the latter - a refusal ? I notice a lot of well meaning people think he's just naive, but how can he spend most his life in the Labour, an establishment party, and not know what time it is ?
I think his real loyalty is to the Labour Party, not the working class or anti imperialism, and as a social democrat, he wants a nicer version of capitalism, not the building of socialism.
Can those who self describe as socialist and JC supporters see that, or will they forever line after Corbyn and some mythical thing called 'Old Labour' ?
Good points, Anon 09:17. Corbyn, and the entire cohort of Left Labour MPs, not just now, but throughout the existence of the Labour Party, have with only a very few exceptions, even if starting out as socialist firebrands, eventually been absorbed by the clubby, very well remunerated, environment of The Commons. Jeremy Corbyn has had over 40 years of, extremely well remunerated , life as a Lefty MP , able to pontificate endlessly, to mass applause, in the moralistic way he does , without risk to himself that the Commons tea room and related comfy lifestyle would ever be at risk.
Likewise all the other 'radical' Parliamentary Lefties I can think of, and certainly including John McDonnell and Diane Abbott . That so many people have now apparently fallen for the appeal of quite obvious opportunists like Sultana , or wannabe MPs, Zach Polanski, or indeed that old reprobate grifter , George Galloway, or indeed the current ex-Blairite shapeshifter mayor of Manchester , Andy Burnham, just demonstrates how easily misled most on the Left are, - exactly equivalent to the equal gullibility of the desperate , confused people, now falling for the bollocks spouted by those grifters of the radical Right, Farage and Yaxley-Lennon . Hard to see a way through this regular organisational disaster in new party formation for us on the Left.
I agree with this. It is pretty clear by now that Corbyn had to be dragged kicking and screaming even to the point of tentatively announcing Your Party's existence. Making a definitive break with the Labour Party in the sense of organising an entirely separate entity, developing policy, gathering members, meetings and all the rest is just not in the man's politics. He may have been kicked out of the Labour Party under Starmer, and the media liked to crow about his 'disloyalty', but fact is Corbyn never came close to leaving of his own accord - not even during the Iraq War. The LP's shift to the right may make Corbyn appear to be some kind of hard leftist, but he is comfortably within the parliamentary umbrella of Old Labourism.
Younger figures like Sultana or Zach Polanski will of course also never draw serious political lessons from their experiences or the material reality of class society as experienced by the contemporary working class. It is not because they are too stupid to do so. It is because they do not want to have to reckon with the potential actions and responsibilities that would follow from those conclusions. So they affect a state of permanently astonished faux naivety. They resolutely refuse to advance beyond the secondary school level politics of wondering why 'we' can't just put our minds to it, share things a little more fairly, and make sure society gets a good lick of paint every so often.
Long story short - they are not socialists, they are not Marxists, they are bourgeois politicians or media influencers entirely oriented towards bourgeois society. At this stage in the game, I no longer believe people with such views can seriously believe that capitalism is capable of reforming itself. I think, instead, they are doing some kind of political equivalent of Three Card Monte or hiding the ball under the cups, keeping them moving, hands blurred, flapping their lips, distraction, distraction, is it here, is it there, nobody knows, roll up, roll up. As such, I do not consider them allies - whatever they might occasionally profess rhetorically, they are loyal agents of the bourgeois capitalist state whose role it is to disorient, disillusion and drain the energy from sections of the population that are otherwise coming into radicalising conflict with the prevailing conditions.
These are the reasons why it is not just sectarianism to reject these amorphous, opaque left(ish) organisations or putative parties. Following the link our gracious host provided to the article detailing the arguments taking place behind-the-scenes of (Not Actually) Your Party, it was striking how many of the names were familiar and how incestuous is that coterie of Old Labour and trade union apparatchiks. These are the exact same people who endlessly capitulated to the Labour Right and indisputably paved the way for Starmer's wave of reaction, sprinkled with a few thrusting new left grifters on top.
To place any trust or hope in such figures, much less their vapid political opportunism, is worse than a distraction. After the experiences of the last 10-15 years, there is no excuse - certainly not for pseudo-left groups or parties like RCP and the SWP. The former only recently announced that we have entered a revolutionary period of struggle the demands an organised vanguard worker's party. A few months later, and apparently a new soft-left parliamentary vehicle for otherwise Labour and trade union lifers like Corbyn and Len McCluskey is the road the socialism. What a difference those months must have made!
It's all just nonsense from people who have essentially made their careers misleading the working class and/or carrying water for strategically useful illusions in the potential for parliamentary reformism. In a country that cannot even adequately regulate its sewage-spilling private water companies, much less nationalise them, much less nationalise anything else.
The working class needs leadership, it needs well-articulated political perspectives, and it needs organisational support. This ain't it. As much as I might ridicule the SWP or RCP for jumping yet again on the Corbyn bandwagon (really more of a wonky wheelbarrow), I do have some sympathy for the mass sign-ups and expressions of interest among regular people. Insofar as it demonstrates the enduring, in fact growing, appetite for serious political responses to the times and an increasingly radical mood among significant sections of the population, I even take it as a good thing (though obviously following the leadership of Corbyn or Sultana is not). Unfortunately, though, serious left-wing analysis or leadership has been intentionally and almost totally purged from public life so many people have no experience to judge what they are being presented with. All of which makes Corbyn's absolute refusal to learn anything, ever, from any experience, all the more repehensible.
Thanks to the last couple of anons. I'm anon 09:17 by the way.
"Corbyn had to be dragged kicking and screaming"
Exactly, and I hear it was the same with Galloway.
"fact is Corbyn never came close to leaving of his own accord - not even during the Iraq War"
Yet, despite this fact, many of his supporters seem to think he's an anti imperialist. The guy was telling people to vote Labour even when his party was plundering Afghanistan and Iraq, and he was all the while involved with 'Stop The War Coalition', an organization that's never actually done what it says.
"All of which makes Corbyn's absolute refusal to learn anything"
Is it really that, or that his loyalty is to Labourism ? Wasn't the man once a trot, and doesn't that momentum lot still have a lot to do with things ?
The last four Anons seem very resolute in their conclusion that none of Corbyn, Sultana, Galloway, McConnell, Abbott, Polanski, Burnham, or nameless figures in almost equally nameless minor left parties, have what it takes to be the saviour of the British left.
Did they forget anyone?
Who does that leave?
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