by Rob Marchant
It is now taken as accepted everywhere in British politics, with the exception of some parts of the Labour Party’s rank and file, that Labour cannot win an election with Corbyn at the helm. You can attempt to argue with this premise, but you’ll find few allies outside of the echo chamber of party activists and three-pound associate members who voted for him.
This leaves sensible members with two options: engage and hope things get better, or reject and look for a new plan. Many MPs are, in good faith, choosing the former option.
But as Ben Bradshaw MP must have seen on Tuesday night, any decent attempt to play ball with the new leadership seems doomed to end in the frustrating realisation that it is hopeless. MPs in the Parliamentary Labour Party looked on in dismay, as the party’s flagship economic policy did an unceremonious U-turn.
Within two weeks of its announcement.
And here is the problem with “wait and see”: with every day that passes, the political situation gets progressively worse, not better. It is not enough to merely let Corbynism burn itself out, or let it be comprehensively defeated in five years’ time. Here’s why.
One. The obvious: the general shambles of the party’s policy and appearances on the media is undoubtedly further damaging the party’s image, to the extent that that is still possible. Corbyn has the worst ratings of any incoming leader since such polling began in 1955. This alone is enough to make waiting and seeing untenable.
Two. It will not be long before our local parties are infiltrated by the hard left. Once this happens, it will be hell to get them out, as Labour discovered in the 1980s. A number of members have already reported anecdotally to Uncut that they suddenly don’t recognise their local parties any more.
Three. Once happened, cleaning up the local parties cannot even start while there is not a party HQ carrying out a systematic campaign to do so, as happened with Militant. Shortly the new leadership will be installing their own General Secretary and their people in party HQ, making this kind of campaign impossible for the foreseeable future.
Taken together, it is not difficult to deduce that “wait and see” is not only complacent but dangerous. The party is, by any analysis, in an existential crisis. Those MPs must now consider whether they will live to regret their passiveness, in the face of the combination of incompetent politics and too-competent political organisation.
There are people who will pooh-pooh this as scaremongering. Those people should read their twentieth century history: this is how the far left operates. If you think that “Momentum” will be a benign movement, like David Miliband’s Movement For Change, think again. As the Times’ Oliver Kamm noted yesterday, “Momentum is an entryist organisation that’s parasitic on the Labour host”. Do we really not remember what that did to us and how long it took to recover.
Moreover, there are a great many reasons to think that the situation is considerably worse this time than in Neil Kinnock’s tenure. Not least of these is that Kinnock was not close to Militant, and neither was Foot, an ardent anti-totalitarian. They were on the outside, but Jeremy Corbyn is well to the left of both. On the inside.
No, it is not a case of an attempt by the far left to take over the leadership, it has already been taken over: the lunatics took over the asylum a month ago. The only question is whether the remaining people who care about the Labour Party as an electoral force can manage to wake up, realise what has happened and act.
Rapidly.
Rob Marchant is an activist and former Labour Party manager who blogs at The Centre Left
Tags: Jeremy Corbyn, Labour leadership, Momentum, movement for change, rebellion, Rob Marchant
But Rob, your article should have started where it stopped: with the “how?”
How are you going to get 100,000+ of the sort of people Labour is now telling to sod off and vote Tory to join/rejoin?
How are you then going to persuade them to attend joyless party meetings month-in, month-out, without fail?
How are you going to get them to stand for internal party office or as candidates for elected office when they’ll be forced to go out on doorsteps to defend the indefensible or unpalatable?
How are you going to train them in the arcane arts of party rules and standing orders so they’re as adept at manipulating proceedings as the Trots are?
Where is the funding, the background support, the political education coming from?
These are just the first five questions of a long list – and this is what it’s going to take. Because while there’s nothing the hard left does better than split, its second-best skill is organising – and there’s nothing on the right of the party that can do the same: certainly not Progress. And not Labour First – at least not yet.
I respectfully suggest that too many on the right of the party regard Labour as something more than it is. A political party is simply a vessel that exists to organise a set of commonly-held values into an election-winning force. It is not – sorry to break it to a lot of you – “a moral crusade”. It is not a partner or a child or a best friend. No one is “born into” the party. It doesn’t unite the human race any more than The Internationale does. It is simply a construct for left of centre human beings to coalesce around. When it stops being that – and it has – fighting to remain part of it seems, to any onlooker, to be odd behaviour indeed.
There is no binary choice here: it isn’t either accept a Labour Party dominated by Trots or fight hopelessly and unrewarded for decades within a party dominated by Trots. There’s a third option: leave these worthless, demagogic, ridiculous, out of touch, tasteless, weird, deluded, unpatriotic, illiterate, innumerate, cowardly, trolling, no-life, often mentally ill nut-jobs and find a different way to serve those who need a credible alternative to this Tory government and who don’t hate their own country.
There’s a world beyond the Labour Party. Quite a lovely one.
There really is nothing either Labour wing has to offer at present. Take this fiscal nonsense from Osborne the only people who support it are your side of Labour [abstaining = de facto support as vote which put Corbyn here on stiffing the poor] & fringe monetarists [nutters] basically – arguably Osborne knows it’s ridiculous too but he’s battering you so why stop. Even the FT’s Economists & JP Morgan’s say it’s idiocy.
Corbynites talk to their own reality and so do your wing. Osborne just notes what people understand and pins rhetoric and sometimes policy to that. He has no intention of closing the deficit but will give the impression with punishment beatings for the poor whilst handing out subsidy to everyone from George Lucas to the NFL to INEOS – something he has in common with SNP and as of today McDonnell! Come up with a program for Govt you can sell then remove Corbyn. Point was Burnham, Cooper and Kendall weren’t winning anything either. There are not 20,000 hard left in the UK and almost none joined Labour so it is ridiculous to claim party is being over run by Hard Left.
If your idea of Hard Left [idiotic phrase] is what Corbyn is proposing [Austerity lighter] you are probably licking a window. The real worry is that here is someone who has sat in effectively a sinecure for 40 years and never shown any real desire to lead now does.
Labour need to start organising the message and statements and aiming them to the public not at (whichever faction runs it). However if you cannot support Corbyn’s Hard Right/Osbornesque/Austerity Lite/Centre Right [pick one] economic policies what do you support? Anything? Just playing politics following Osborne’s agenda?
This piece demonstrates Labour’s problem a faux left right obsession when it’s hard for those outside to determine the difference only that you are divided and hopeless. BTW Labour’s suicide note in reality was when 315 MPs endorsed Brown.
Adam, there is a world outside the Labour Party, but it is a feature of our political system that the electorate is supposed to be able to pick between alternative potential governments at each election. As long as the offical Opposition is dysfunctional the electorate is denied that option.
So it important for the country that some party offer a plausible alternative to the current government. If not Labour, who?
While Rob Marchant is right in arguing against caution he doesnt seem to realise that 60,000 of the £3 voters have since joined the Party. That shifts Corbyns support among Full Members from around half to something nearer 60%. The New Majority have a perfect right to elect representatives & candidates who align with their views.
Any attempt to reverse The Lefts victory is going to take years of persuasion.
Any action that Moderate/Centrist Labour MPs take has to be Democratic, “Coups” are unacceptable. Mps against The Majority could go into a sort of internal exile but that would look like sulking, surely the only honest alternative is to resign The Labour whip & either become Independents or join another Party ?
“echo chamber of party activists and three-pound associate members’ You mean the thousands of enthusiastic people flooding into the Labour party?
“It is now taken as accepted everywhere in British politics, with the exception of some parts of the Labour Party’s rank and file, that Labour cannot win an election with Corbyn at the helm”
It was “taken as accepted” that he didn’t have a chance in the leadership contest too.
There’s a lot going to happen between now and the next election. Like GFC part 3.
“Wait and see” is the only option right now short of splitting the party.
@Rob
1. He was elected leader by a massive majority nobody could call themselves a democrat and usurp Corbyn after two weeks. I didn’t vote for Corbyn but anybody moves against him and I bloody well will.
2. This is McCarthyite drivel. Most CLP meetings would be unrecognisable if a couple of people turned up. You do love to throw in completely unsubstantiated claims into your diatribes.
3. “cleaning up the local parties” – the Labour right are ever so offended at being told to join the tories yet here you’re advocating the kicking out of how many members?
And there is bugger difference between Momentum and MfC except of course people have actually joined Momentum. Quoting some neo-con hack doesn’t bolster your case!
If you really believe this drivel then you are as deluded as the next Corbynista but if you’re just looking for a job at HSBC then you need some zingers.
Maybe both Rob and Ben Bradshaw should ponder a little on why he obtained less than 10% of the deputy leader vote and went out in the first round. Perhaps Rob, a little bit of introspection is called for on why New Labour is not only distrusted by large parts of the public, but now also by the Labour Party membership. Rob, maybe ask yourself why Kendall only got 4.5% of the vote. If the Labour Party is looking for saviors it shouldn’t bother that much looking towards you.
Paul Barker has summed it up in numbers. They are bad now and as more Trots join, along with naive but well intentioned largely young people new to politics, the figures can only get worse. The MP as well as council candidates, are selected by the membership however out of touch that membership is with the country.
“Why wait and see is a fool’s strategy”. True. Let’s start with the 21 traitors who abstained last night on the charter vote. Time to mobilise to get them OUT OUT OUT. DESELECTION!! Come on, JC, time to bring in mandatory reselection at any time in any constituency! Let’s get the ball rolling, my old son….>>>>>>>>
Here’s the list of the Tory Scabs who call themselves Labour MPs
Fiona Mactaggart
Rushanara Ali
Ian Austin
Ben Bradshaw
Adrian Bailey
Shabana Mahmood
Ann Coffey
Andrew Smith
Simon Danczuk
Jamie Reed
Chris Evans
Graham Stringer
Frank Field
Gisela Stuart
Mike Gapes
Margaret Hodge
Tristram Hunt
Graham Jones
Helen Jones
Liz Kendall
Chris Leslie
Kinnock was not close to Militant, and neither was Foot, an ardent anti-totalitarian. They were on the outside, but Jeremy Corbyn is well to the left of both. On the inside.
Is he bollocks. He’s no more left wing than Harold Wilson.
Get a f**king grip.
Full story of the Tory fifth column Scablist at labourlist.org
http://labourlist.org/2015/10/who-abstained-on-the-fiscal-charter/
It is too easy to say that Labour “can’t win an election under Corbyn” and therefore we must get rid of him etc etc. Where is there a shred of evidence that Labour could obviously have won under any of the three losers in the leadership election? Jeremy Corbyn won fair and square under a system that was strongly supported by the right wing of the party as an antidote to the perceived threat of union block votes delivering the “”wrong” result. I find it hypocritical in the extreme that the people who say that the party must learn from the general election defeat do not seem to think that the party must also learn from the defeat in the leadership election of three candidates who did not inspire enough people to vote for them.
And so it starts, a list of “Tory scabs” from Sean, otherwise known as the MPs who voted for what was the party’s stated policy till 2 weeks ago till our idiot Shadow Chancellor made a u-turn! I lived through the abuse of the Militant Tendency era and it was not pretty, this time I am not hanging about I resigned 3 weeks ago.
Rob, OK so I voted Conservative at the election. I wanted to vote Ukip but we happen to have a superb MP (Steve Barclay) and I want to keep him. Anyhow, round here it is all Conservative anyway.
I want to say that your article hit right home to me. I am old enough to remember the Militant thinggy and dear old Neil Kinnoch as he then was – a decent well meaning man.
Yesterday in parliament, I looked on the News at the face of Mr Corbyn. He is trying to market himself as a decent, friendly, kindly old granddad who is only concerned about the poor etc etc. What I saw was the face of a very angry, sour old man.
Watch out! We have on our hands much worse than Militant here. We are onto Hugo Chavez, possibly even Bob Mugabe. And we have all those very angry University people who were expecting to get to the top and who found themselves unemployable and unable to survive when they graduated. Things do not look good at all.
I suspect a lot of people will drift off to Ukip while another lot will drift into the LibDems.
As I’m a finger licking good liberal democrat `I’m loving it`
This all reminds me of a Hollywood movie. Scream comes out is a success, and is followed by Scream #2, 3 etc.
Except this has a longer interval between remakes, Militant #1 was a huge success. Militant #2 has been long delayed but is bigger and better**. and as befits a true Marxist democracy with added deselections promised.
** better for the Tories – of course as any sensible observer would surmise. Will they beat their last record of 17 years in power?
Far too far in the future to make any forecasts..
Sean, nice to see you’ve benefited from the coaching offered by Comrade Vishinsky. A great future beckons for you in the Party.
I am inclined to agree with Adam Grey, that though there is often a sentimental attachment to the labour party, once its brand name is again destroyed by the hard left there is little point in staying around and wasting energy fighting the destruction, let them destroy it.
I think the most likely way for a new party to grow is once the de-selections start if a de-selected MP with a large personal vote is willing to resign and stand as an independent then a new party can start to grow from that. The worse the situation with corbyn gets the more likely labour voters will be to switch especially with a well-liked sitting mp. A de-selection would create a high profile situation where a new party could emerge.
The Corbyn supporters are cult like in their behaviour. Hard left groups have always been like cults, so one giant one is bound to cause problems. Corbyn, though, is old, and not up to the job, so some of his support will disappear. While waiting for this to happen a new organisation is needed, not to discuss policy but to sort out tactics, its either hope for a fast collapse of the leadership team, which is not impossible, or organise to form a new party. My preference, in some ways, is for a new party, as then at least the hard left will no longer think they have a right to keep on trying to take it over. Though if the collapse of corbyn is quick it might be possible to rescue Labour.
But without those who see that corbyn is a disaster for labour organising nothing will happen except more mess.
Jonathan Da Silva,it’s not morntum, encouraging people,some outside the party to join, such as Galloway, it’s the fact they’re endorsing Militant style deselection ideas.
Paul Barker,many £3 voters joint didn’t back JC for leader
Danny Speight look At the 500 pRty members who voted Bradshaw first choice,Watson second, my family included, and I know people who thought Bradshaw would be best, but voted for Stella to stop Watson winning
Tafia it was Wilson who let militant infiltrate the party and nearly destroy it
Andrew Smith did not abstain, he voted with John McDonnell and against the Tories.
But in any case, is calling Labour MPs “Tory scabs” for voting the line that they were given two weeks ago, or indeed even without the change, part of the new, kinder, politics? Seems like there was more tolerance for dissenting views under previous regimes …
“Fiscal responsiblity acts are instruments of the fiscally irresponsible to con the public… We have to debate this vacuous and irrelevant legislation before us, but it begs the question: why did the Chancellor feel the compelling need to introduce it? Why is he the first Chancellor in our history that feels he needs an act of parliament on top of a budget statement? There are only two explanations. Either he doesn’t trust himself to secure sound public finances, or he knows the public doesn’t trust him to secure them.” George Osborne, in Commons, about the then Labour Chancellor’s attempt to bring in a Fiscal Responsibility Act.
Roll forward 5 years and John McDonnell has now adopted Osborne;’s position and Osborne ahs shifted to Alistair Darling’s.
@Reconstruct Another Blairite smear. Tory Party Membership that way >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> follow the arrows……to the right….where you belong…..in your natural home.
Sean, Water off a duck’s back, mate.
Who’d want to belong in a party with the spitters, the haters, the street-thugs? Don’t you understand how unattractive you appear to outsiders?
How? is the right question.
You either need a plan to take back control of your party organisation, quickly, or you need to be prepared for results much worse than 1983, which is what is needed to bring the membership back to its senses, or you have to get enough MPs out of the party and into a new one that Corbyn is no longer the Leader of the Opposition because the new party has more MPs than Labour.
Pick one and do it.
“Kinda” Politics…..
https://lizzysalander.wordpress.com/2015/10/15/kinda-politics/
I agree with this article and also what Adam has contributed. I feel I have nothing in common with the hard left who are currently dominating the Labour Party – I dislike their aggressive behaviour, use of bad language and cyber bullying.
There is room for a new centralist party – yes it will be difficult but not impossible – there are moderate unions and also businesses who would support a moderate party. A party fit for the 21st century – there are more and more self employed people and small business being established – who do they vote for?
Didn’t you write this article last week, Rob? And the week before, and now you come to mention it, the week before that too, and… I suppose it saves time, but it’s tiresome for the reader. In response to your points.
1. You keep repeating the same things (Corbyn’s a failure, he’s unelectable, the party is in crisis, and so on) in the hope that people will believe you. The party’s image – that is to say, what the right-wing media says about it – is, I’m sure, a very great concern to ‘communication consultants’ and the like. However, the Labour party has grown enormously because of Corbyn’s campaign and his winning the leadership.
2. The hard left, the trots, the body snatchers, ze Germans – everyone, it seems is invading the Labour party, taking it over, making into the SWP writ large according to the reality challenged on the Labour right. It’s time for you lot to get a clue. You are the ones who are out of step with the membership; you are the small, and soon to be irrelevant if you keep going on like this, minority; the election, where a pitiful 4.5% of voters (5.5% of members) chose your preferred candidate, proved that beyond doubt.
3. The existential crisis. Membership has almost doubled since the election defeat; we now have over 370,000 members. If this is a crisis, can we have one every year please. You never mention this, and I’ve not once seen you compare it to the shrinking and ageing Conservative Party membership. Instead here you are, like a low-rent Peter Mandelson, dutifully parroting the narrative laid out by the right-wing press.
And yes, there will be changes in the party’s power structures, to take them out of the hands of a small minority who are considerably to the right of the membership. On this point you are right to be worried; your time is almost up. The party, on the other hand, is going from strength to strength.
A break away party of social democrats was tried before and led to successive Tory victories. Even in the worst period of entryism people like Healey stayed in the party.
For better or worse the Labour has been and still is the only electoral vehicle for progressive social change. It has always been a coalition of sometimes incompatible interests (with its fair share of faddists and fruitcakes, for which read Orwell).
By all means organise against what you disagree in within the party, but don’t hand the 2025 election to the Tories on a plate, 2020 having been lost already with this lot in charge.
Mike said: “By all means organise against what you disagree in within the party, but don’t hand the 2025 election to the Tories on a plate, 2020 having been lost already with this lot in charge.”
Between now and 2020 there will be even more entryist lefties from the SWP and other fringe left wingers in the party. Momentum will ensure that. In the Kinnock days the leadership fought Militant. Corbyn is a different kettle of fish, he will ensure every fruitloop lefty spitting egg throwing angry crusty from here to eternity is welcome in the party.
When Labour lose in 2020 this will result in a lurch furter left, ensuring 2025 is lost. By 2030 Labour will be totally dead as a party.
Oh I did I mention, I’d put a tenner on a list of Blairites for deselection is in existence already:
“Here’s the list of the Tory Scabs who call themselves Labour MPs”
Gotta agree with the substance if not the way its put. Labour Right (well in this case neo SDP) can’t talk about loyalty etc and then go an squib it when something they don’t like. Also, on the substance its as poor policy as the Welfare Bill was.
I just don’t get the fiscal fetishists. Its not economically rational and it hurts Labour people.
Now, defence and security is another matter. A rebellion to support the US alliance or democracy and freedom makes a lot more historical and moral sense.
Mike By all means organise against what you disagree in within the party, but don’t hand the 2025 election to the Tories on a plate, 2020 having been lost already with this lot in charge.
They were lost the day Gordon Brown took Office. Nothing to do with Miliband (who increased Labour’s vote), Corbyn (who has near on doubled Labour’s membership and slashed it’s average age (which was decrepit) or anything else.
The trouble makers, the ‘awkward squad, the people making Labour unelectable or whatever are actually the rump New Labour – who, like an abusive partner that has been rejected, are refusing to accept the new reality and are refusing to accept the will of the party membership. Fine – but they forget that by the exit election virtually all of them will have a significantly more left -leaning CLP than that which selected them to start with. And they will expect a significantly more left-leaning candidate – or they dispose fo the one they’ve got and replace him/her.
@reconstruct, I am NOT YOUR mate, sunshine. If you smear people with hyperbole, my old son, don’t expect compliance. Vishinsky was Stalin’s henchman and responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent people.
“Who’d want to belong in a party with the spitters, the haters, the street-thugs? Don’t you understand how unattractive you appear to outsiders?”
Street-thugs? Were you around in the miners strike in 84/85 when the uniformed variety (state street thugs) beat the living daylights out of the coalfield communities and all given a nod and a wink by the likes of Blair and his Neo-thatcherite chums. Let me tell you what is unattractive. A Labour Party committed to austerity against the most vulnerable and poorest people of this land. WE have had enough of Blairite Thatcherism. We are mobilising against it. You can fight with us against it or you can continue to support the parliamentary rabble who continue to want to implement it.
@Rob Marchant
If Marchant typifies the LP manager then we have two initial and fundamental tasks to complete asap
1. Eject the Tory Scablist from our CLPs and replace them with people who reflect the new vibrant membership of the CLPs
2. To reorganise the party machine/administration so that it follows and implements the broad wishes of the party membership and does not follow the wishes of the current intake of PLP traitors who effectively vote for austerity against working class communities by abstaining.
Tafia, the Tories didn’t Qin in 2010 dyer 13 years in power we were always going to be unpopular,and Ed miliband increasing labour a vote wa Lways going to happen with the libdems in power,seeing their vote split
How many affiliates of unite have had their labour membership paid for by the union, how many £3 voters who still members of the greens or Trot groups just joined, how many on the right of the pRty have left
Sean,
I shall answer your question. First, I am a West Yorkshire man, and I know Barnsley etc very well – I’m prepared to bet it’s more my stamping ground than yours. Second, during the miners strike I was in Cardiff, from time to time going to to see what was going on in Maerdy – (I doubt you know where or what that is – look it up). So I was also in Cardiff when thugs/murderers dropped a concrete block on David Wilkie and killed him. And I was on the march outside the jail after that, too.
Where were you, then, incidentally?
And I can remember when Normam Willis, then GenSec of the TUC, had a noose dangled in front of him, too. Remember that? Care to comment?
I have no respect for the left’s street thugs, an no respect for their apologists. From your posts, I count you among them.
Sean, I want to add one thing. The actions of the thugs in S Wales disgraced and betrayed the miners and their communities then, disfiguring and demoralizing the communities from which they came. And in that, they ultimately helped contribute to the miners’ defeat. Just as the haters/thugs will contribute/are already contributing to the defeat of the labour party. Consider.
John P Reid. We’ve been through this before. Just because you obviously don’t like the way the voting system works in this country does not detract from that fact that the tories were the biggest party and formed the major portion of the government – ergo they won the election.
There is no other measure of who does and does not win a UK General Election other than who forms the government – and that was Cameron.
@reconstruct Full of presumption, aren’t you? Not indicative of an intelligent approach. Why assume that I do not know the geographical location of Maerdy? Mr Wilkie’s regrettable death was a result of driving a strikebreaker to his mine. In other words – sad as Mr Wilkie’s death was – he was facilitating the breaking of the strike.
I do not give a pig’s fart where your “stamping ground” is if you are stamping out Blairism in the LP, I will oppose you. It could be in Alma Ata for all I care.
And where were you when the police thugs and state intelligence services were doing their dirty work against the Miners and their support groups? As a delegate on my local trades council, I was an active supporter of the Miners’ struggle throughout.
You write “And I can remember when Normam Willis, then GenSec of the TUC, had a noose dangled in front of him, too. Remember that? Care to comment?”
My comment : he should have stuck his neck in it. And we could have proceded to hang the traitor. It wasn’t Thatcher and her police thugs which defeated the miners. It was the complicity of the TUC and the Kinnock Leadership.
You are an apologist for the capitalist system and its state power. And now I see that you blame the struggling miners for their own defeat which is the very worst kind of apologia. Striking workers have the right to mobilise against scabs and I will always defend that right, regardless of any unfortunate deaths.
I see that you do not categorise the police as “thugs” which speaks volumes. Your whole approach is a manifesto of despair which merely serves to support the Tories in their dirty work today. A fundamental problem with the Labour movement is that it contains individuals who want to serve (or compromise with) capital and its state power rather than organising for its overthrow.
PS This is no cliche. Today, such individuals would feel more comfortable politically inside the Tory or Lib Dem Party. Socialism is claiming the LP as its own. Those who oppose socialism are in for a rough ride. Especially the PLP and their sycophants in the CLPs
PPS . And I write this in all sincerity : The Tory wing of the LP and the six-figure salaried, trade union executives are – to use a previously deployed phrase – the “enemy within” our movement today. We need a totally revolutionised movement to prepare us for the battles and struggles ahead.
Sean,
Your comment of 3.20pm reveals you as a man indulgent of violence, up to death, to those who disagree with you, up to and including the general sec of the TUC. Goodbye.
The contributions from Sean show very well what Labour Centrists can expect if they stay in the Party. Others have pointed out the problems of starting a new Party in The British context, save yourselves a world of pain & join us in The Libdems. You would all be very welcome.
@Sean: Bless, how nice to hear from you comrades again, it’s been a while. You keep going, matey boy, that’s exactly the stuff we want to hear. Of course, the ‘we’ there is folk like me who don’t vote Labour.
Incidentally, is anyone else finding it faintly risible that the most disloyal and unreliable backbench Member, ever – what was it, 500 times he voted against the Whip – is now all hurt and stunned when the Parliamentary representatives of the great party he’s now leading fail to, um, vote the whip?
@Sean
Are you actually a Corbynista? Because the crap you come out with is more like some sock puppet parody designed undermine Corbyn than support him.
This filthy Tory blog should be shut down. Or have the words Labour removed from it. Its a rival to Conservative Home, call it Conservative uncut, the voice of the Tory fifth column in the Labour Party.
“Mr Wilkie’s regrettable death was a result of driving a strikebreaker to his mine. ”
No, it was the result of a concrete block being deliberately dropped on his car.
Well, how nice to be unpopular with the Tory Wing of the LP (and even a solitary Liberal Democrat). If my posts were popular with these Neo-Thtacherites, I just might consider a holiday.
Anyway, one by one…..
@reconstruct For the record and purposes of clarification. I am for a peaceful transition to socialism. But only on condition that the state power of capital permits us such a peaceful transition. The lessons of the Paris Commune of 1871 and of Chilem September 1973 weigh heavily and must not be forgotten. If the state power of capital goes to war against the people of this land, the people have the historical right to mobilise for defence. I am certainly not advocating violence against anybody and I refute the implications of your post. The remark about te Gen Sec of the TUC was merely illustrative; obviously the noose was a political statement with which I agree and not a suggestion that the highly-paid Norman should be hanged. Try to avoid being a silly-billy. I have made my thoughts clear as regards the death of Mr Wilkie. They are respectful and measured. But he should not have been facilitaing scabs in their strikebreaking activities. Reconstruct obviously agrees with scabbing. Moreover, I think that you will find that those with buckets of bllod on their hands are the likes of Blair and Thatcher with whom you are in agreement in your cant and humbug.
@Paul Barker You will find lots of your political associates here. In fact, I dare say that some are more right wing than you are. You might have to join them in the Tory Party
@Henrik Henrik, sunshine, you have one jackboot on and are reaching for the other one. We know that you don’t vote Labour because you are obviously a Tory or Ukipper or even something worse. Daily Mail website that way>>>>>>>>>
@Chris But you would think that about any socialist who supports the Corbyn project. So I won’t take it personally. I will continue – with others in my CLP – to continue with what has to be done.
@Robboh. In solidarity and agreement, comrade.
@Richard T I have made my position very clear on this question. It was a regrettable and unfortunate death. But I am not going to condemn striking workers for mobilising against scab labour. You will, of course, be pleased that the incoming anti trade union bill is going legalise strikebreaking and illegalise all those workers’ activities which oppose it. Mr T, the likes of you will only be satisfied when this land is without trade unionism or when it is so legally shackled as to render it completely ineffective. There is a name for a worker without the right to strike and to mobilise against scab labour : SLAVE!!
@henrik PS And try to be consistent sonny, and use the same idiotic handle as you do on Labour List. It makes you look like a total dick.