And if those are the options presented then Labour is dead. Maybe I am not being clear enough.
WE NEED SOMETHING DIFFERENT!
We don’t need another Corbyn, trying to make 1970s politics work in in the 2020s. We don’t need another Blair, trying to make 1990s politics work in the 2020s, We don’t need Blue Labour, trying to make 1930s politics work in the 2020s.
WE NEED SOMETHING DIFFERENT!
We need to look at how the world has changed since then. Labour losing places like Hartlepool and the rest of the Red Wall isn’t about woke politics, it is about young people who would vote Labour moving to the big cites, where the universities are, where the jobs are. What is left is an aging population in a deteriorating town, a town that will only get worse as the replacement for EU money doesn’t appear. Labour is to blame for this as much as the Tories, but it isn’t the usual dogwhistles that are the problem, it is the constant move to the right, where everything becomes a zero sum game, where there have to be losers as well as winners. How the fuck did that become acceptable to Labour? Why?
I have been told by that I am not working class, apparently having grown up in a terraced house in a Northern England town alongside people who were labourers and shop assistants isn’t enough anymore. The new definition appears to be cishet white English small business owners, if we are to believe the press. Trans people are not working class, even though as a group we are mostly precariat. Disabled people are not working class, unless we are to be brought out as a prop to show how difficult working class carers have it, we certainly aren’t meant to have any ideas because that would be ungrateful (Mental playlist: Spasticus Autisticus by Ian Dury). Students aren’t working class, because the working class should all be barely literate. People in big cities aren’t working class, because cosmopolitan elites or some bigoted bullshit. And now the hatred of the wrong kind of working class starts to appear. People probably think because I live in Oxford I am rich or a university professor, let’s just ignore that a couple of streets away from me someone starved to death when they were cut off their benefits and that my finances are a constant juggling act (I need to pay my bills, but I can’t have too much money otherwise I will be cut off my disability benefits and then I also won’t be able to pay my bills). I could probably be used in a study for why people feel disillusioned with Labour, but instead I am invisible and that is by design. People don’t want to hear what I have to say, because the truth will hurt a lot of people just like it hurts me every day.
WE NEED SOMETHING DIFFERENT!
We need to move past the belief that any left winger is a Corbynite, we need to move past the idea that Labour can win with milder versions of Tory policies. We need a party who actually looks at where this country is going and will do something to stop the inevitable catastrophe.
If you are looking for a name, I can’t give you one. I can give a list of people who I don’t think it should be, from all across the political spectrum of the party, but that won’t be helpful. I do have ideas on where to go, but the Labour party won’t listen to me, the old ideas are too entrenched and mine are too fringe.
WE NEED SOMETHING DIFFERENT!
After some days of dealing with the internal Labour bullshit I think that the anarchists have the right idea. I know I was already sympathetic to that view, but having been told that I need to grow up because of that it is shocking and depressing to find that local and national politics are even more childish, schoolyard bullshit with bullying and petty fighting. Maybe I wasn’t the one who needed to grow up.
At this point I am expecting a stalking horse, although one who would be acceptable to the soft left and soft right should they manage a Corbyn and actually win a leadership challenge. I honestly don’t expect the next Labour leader to become prime minister, the damage of the last couple of years needs to be repaired and that won’t happen overnight. A caretaker leader is needed.
