No I like it and support it. I’m not a Momentum member though, nor do I plan to be. The PLP no longer reflects the membership, but honestly it hasn’t for a very, very long time. Blair radically changed the party and centralised control, and what we’ve seen with the election of Corbyn is not entirely, as the paranoid PLP would have us all believe, a trotskyist coup, but a return of a lot of old Labour members and an influx of younger activists as well. Sure, the SWP (what little of them are left after their concerted effort to make themselves into nothing but poison and an embarassment to the left for the last ten years or so), and ex-SWP are involved with Momentum, as are the Sparts and probably some tankies (Militant), but we’re talking about small numbers. But with loud voices and effective educated activist strategies granted.
I’ve been around left wing activist groups and anarchist groups all my life pretty much and I’ve heard Corbyn speak many times in many settings. I remember specifically in the 90s being at a large public meeting when Clause 4 was dropped by the party, party members were standing up, expressing their disgust, and ripping up their membership cards. Corbyn was on the platform with other speakers and was pleading with the members not to give up, not to leave. He is commited as anyone I’ve ever heard to socialism via a parlimentary route, he is no revolutionary, he is no trotskyist.
My take is that it’s bitterly ironic that the first time he toes the line and compromises by supporting the vote to remain, when I think his heart has always been in a Left-Brexit (much like his mentor Tony Benn… sort of supported) has undone him. Now I don’t agree with his politic but I’m old enough to realise/compromise that there is no fucking way we can allow a Tory Government to negotiate Brexit without an organised challenge on every point. Corbyn is the only person I can see in the Labour party who genuinely would push for a different solution. The PLP is so paranoid, so terrified of disappearing into the wilderness, so nervous about never forming a government again that they are pushing the ‘what worked last time button’ which was Tory-Lite. They’ve completely forgotten that a breeze block in a suit with a face painted on it would have beaten the Tories when Blair came to power. The tories were that hated, that anything, anyone who seemed to have a plan would have won.
What they fail to see is the polarisation that they have caused in the electorate which the Tories have accelerated. You can actually bring up genuine socialist left wing ideas with people now without them looking at you like you’re some odd anachronistic thought bubble thats slipped through a portal from the 1970s. This is what the Labour party should be capitalising on, but it’s MPs don’t have the background or experience to do so. They are more out of touch than the Tory front bench, you just have to look at that ‘WTF did I just watch’ Launch of Angela Eagles campaign today to see that. They are unfamiliar with the environment around them because they’ve fallen completely away from the basic activisim of the past, not even Trade Union activism, they’ve actively stayed out of some Industrial disputes.
I’m not for one second suggesting a return of old labour, god no. But what Corbyn wants and is suggesting is not that, he is genuinely trying to make the party more reflexive and responsive to the ideas of it’s members. They have a better idea of what works than the PLP can have, also the CLPs too need to have a stronger voice. The voices that were shouted down, stripped away, demonised and isolated by New Labour.
Yes, a lot of MPs need to be deselcted for the party to function going forward, but what will most likely happen is the party will split. A new SDP bascially, and this time it may bring some tory moderates with it as well. It will amount to our version of the US democratic party. BUT… not as many as people think will go, or need to. If you look at a lot of Labour MPs history you’ll see a strong socialist, union based tradition. When they see the party move that Overton window more left, and they hear encouragement from the contacts the CLPs are making in their constituencies they’ll discover their old passion for the ideology, the real politic and pull into line
