CORBYN THE RAMSAY MACDONALD OF THE LEFT

I grew up in an age when changing your political allegiance was like changing the football team you supported, unthinkable. The world is more fluid now, though I find I still carry my allegiance to the Labour party as close as any football scarf. So for me, the slow, seemingly unstoppable destruction of the Labour Party feels like a former of torture.

It is tempting to blame everything on Corbyn and McDonnell, and both are the primary culprits  and extremely malign, but they could hardly have achieved this destructive exercise on their own. For make no mistake about it all those people, primarily from comfortable middle-class backgrounds, registering to vote Corbyn back in again know that this will destroy the Labour Party as it currently exists. What they imagine will happen if, and it looks likely that he will be, is re-elected is unclear. However, if they imagine that the PLP will simply declare, “the membership has spoken, let’s embrace Corbyn’s world view and jump over the electoral cliff together holding hands,” - they are seriously deluding themselves. Of course the hard left think the solution is simple, in a word deselection. This, however, will not be anything like as easy as they think and could end up in the law courts or triggering by-elections.

That the party will split seems to me now inevitable, the enmity between the two camps now an unbridgeable chasm. The form that this split will take is unclear, the central question being how many will refuse Corbyn's leadership and how many will remain in a rump Corbyn group.
The small group of pro-Corbyn MP’s will evidence the presence in parliament of an independent far left grouping committed more to Marx than Methodism for the first time since 1945. It is likely to be short-lived.
For the rest of those committed to a liberal and tolerant social democratic project, there will be a relatively short period in which to establish themselves as a clear, distinct and coherent alternative to the Conservatives. The alternative to the establishment of such a party will be one party rule for the foreseeable future.

Of course, Owen Smith could win, in which case the game changes yet again, though Labour's problems will be far from over.

Above all this Corbyn smirks with the puritanical certainty of a witch-finder General. The Ramsay MacDonald of the left, willing to destroy the Labour Party to ‘save it’ for his brand of socialism.


So it seems we are, as the Chinese say, cursed to live in interesting times. 

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