THE PEOPLE HAVE LOST THE CONFIDENCE OF THE LABOUR PARTY

‘Some party hack decreed that the people
had lost the government's confidence
and could only regain it with redoubled effort.
If that is the case, would it not be simpler,
If the government simply dissolved the people
And elected another?’
Berthold Brecht

Man is a social animal and consequently the human condition, for anyone who does not fall into the category of sociopath or psychopath, involves a life of negotiation, making compromises that are sometimes, and sometimes often, uncomfortable. This can be frustrating, on occasions even humiliating. Of course there are some things you should not compromise, basic principles you must establish for yourself. Still you rarely get all that you want.

In politics negotiation and compromise are the very heart of the matter and when people get tired of compromise the door is opened for fanaticism. Thus after having lost an election, one it desperately needed to win, great numbers of Labour supporters[1] have lost confidence in the electorate, they feel badly let down. Now in a fit of pique have decided that the problem was too much compromise, a lack of true blooded socialist fundamentalism was what was missing. The thinking being, “If the electorate was too stupid to recognise what was good for them, well that was too bad, we are going to stick to our socialist principles.” Listening to Corbyn these people feel liberated, years of Blairite compromise, revisionism, temporising and the limitations imposed by the discipline of seeking to appeal to a wide electorate are lifted and the air filled with idealism, sincerity, certainty. With such certainty however comes contempt, contempt for anyone who does not share their passion for the bearded prophet.


Now I have already expressed my opinion about Corbyn’s unsuitability to lead the Labour Party, these concerns are exclusively related to foreign policy and the company he keeps.[2] I now believe that the cultist zeal that attends Corbyn is as great a threat to the Labour party as the entryism of the early 1980’s, supported by Corbyn’s great friend Tony Benn. When people start to hail fundamentalist messiah’s I start to get nervous.
The nature of any cult is unswerving loyalty to the cause, the ability to call white black or defend the indefensible. As the constant whataboutary, denial, and deceit that has attended Corbyn’s association with anti-Semites and organisations like Hamas attest. These associations, along with his apologia for Putin, should have red lights flashing in the head of any progressive. The fact that so many on the left happily brush these matters aside unfortunately speaks volumes about the state of progressive politics in this country today.

However Howard Jacobson expresses it most succinctly 'why can’t we oppose the inequities of a society weighted in favour of wealth, and all the trash that wealth accumulates, without at the same time having to snuggle up to Putin, pal out with Hamas, and make apologies for extremists?'






[1] There is another group, Socialist Workers Party and those Like Lindsay German and the Stop The War Crowd who want to see social democracy destroyed. They are not the primary concern of this piece, I have dealt with their malignancy elsewhere.   

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