Momentum Mori

The Labour leadership election....

Here’s a test of your memory; can anyone remember the post Brexit referendum constitutional crisis we were all tearing our hair out over a couple of months back? You know, that anarchic episode when the suophilic First Lord of the Treasury decided to spend more time in his counting house, counting all his money, rather than white water rafting the ship of state over the post EU rapids to be dashed on the rocks of oblivion below. Surely you can recall the moral delirium of the Tory leadership election; the unspeakable, loathsome weasel Gove holes avuncular gobshite Johnson’s campaign below the water line leading to a free for all among puissant social inadequates. The Abominable Dr Fox secured last place by an impressive margin, while sexting Stevie Crabb the priapic canting, Christian cock-end fell on his simple sword of truth. And then there were three; the unspeakable, loathsome weasel Gove and the delusional leaderene Leadsom, barking at the heels of monochrome May. And then there was one. And then there was no more constitutional crisis, as the Tories had absorbed the body blows of Brexit, returned; remade and remodelled; as the party of complete bastards the world over, where austerity and oppressive intolerance exist hand in glove as methods of social control.

Just for a second there, I thought we’d had them; that there was going to be some manner of social breakdown, whereby a general election was the least likely way of ensuring the profound change that was going to come, but they’re smart those Tories. The fascist bastards have shaken off the threat of implosion and look impregnable in every way. Brexit; you don’t really believe it’s ever going to happen do you? Not in the way that the headbangers from UKIP and that unspeakable, loathsome weasel Gove envisioned anyway. The Tories are just happy they’ve been granted a free hit to go about turning the whole of the country into one big Wallsend meets North Shields theme park; the underclass living off cider and takeaways, blaming their lack of jobs, shit housing, lousy schools and crap health on their next-door neighbours in the private rented sector, who’ve arrived from Syria and Afghanistan, to work for minimum wage in menial jobs the indigenous post-civilisation bevvy and kebab addicts are too unhealthy and too detached from ordinary life to countenance. This is the real legacy of Cameron; the Big Society he harped on about. Reality is the world is fucked, I’m telling you.

Meanwhile, the one person whose election as leader of the Labour Party gave us all some actual hope for the future has been repeatedly abused, traduced and denigrated by the elected members he was chosen as first among equals from. Three months ago, the Tories didn’t have a leader, though neither did they have a leadership election. Meanwhile Labour has a leader, but is also having a leadership election we don’t need. And this is causing me no end of personal and political turmoil. You see, I think Jeremy Corbyn is a wonderful bloke; a principled, articulate, intelligent, traditional Socialist, but I also think he’s bloody appalling as leader of the Labour Party and I’m half sorry, half relieved to finally say that in public.

Let me just say that Jeremy Corbyn has reignited the rank and file of our party. We’ve gone from being a talking shop source of funding for election broadcasts, back to being a movement, where membership is rightly seen as a badge of honour. In July 2015, I attended a rally for Jeremy Corbyn at the Tyneside Irish Centre and he totally blew me away with his disarming honesty and frank, unapologetic arguments for a better society. I’d rejoined the Labour Party after the 2015 General Election, precisely because I wanted to be involved with taking the party back to its core values and principles; making us a movement once again. Without question, Jeremy Corbyn stands for the policies and philosophy I regard as being traditional Labour ones. His mere presence as a figurehead has acted as a touchstone whereby half a million people and more have engaged with our movement, ready to share their energy, passion and enthusiasm to shape the movement’s vision for a better life for all. However, all that effort and positivity isn’t worth a thing, when there are something like 230 Labour MPs, even so-called radicals such as Chi Onurah who is proving to be one of the hardest faced, Blairite careerists imaginable, hell-bent on pursuing their own agenda. They have successfully destabilised and undermined Jeremy Corbyn’s role in the parliamentary Labour Party and standing among the chattering classes. In the Blairites’ world, the opinions of ordinary members and the leader himself only exist so that they may be discredited and abused at any given opportunity.

But what of the limited patsy who has put up against Corbyn? The right wing know that Owen Smith is merely an easily manipulated useful idiot, prepared to take on the role of the fall guy responsible for Corbyn getting an even larger landslide mandate than last time. Smith is a vacuous non-entity, harvested from the same stagnant pond of neo-liberal, power at all costs New Labour smarm and spin that Angela Eagle crawled out of and then right back in again. Let’s be honest; the New Labour cabal know they are going to lose, but they don’t care. Their mantra is the Anti-Socialist ABC; anyone but Corbyn. The possibility of another 1981 SDP style series of mass defections can’t be ruled out post leadership result; no doubt plans are in place for the establishment of a party of Pro EU, compassionate capitalists led by Chuka Umunna or some other hideous poster boy for the grandchildren of Cool Britannia. You may say “good riddance,” but I don’t.

I rejoined the Labour Party because it is the only legitimate mass workers’ party in this country; suggesting that people should quit the party because I disagree with them is as nonsensical as the right wing pretending that there’s an enormous number of Trotskyists who’ve rediscovered a taste for entrism crawling all over the place. There isn’t and there aren’t; SPEW have about 500 members, nearly all of whom are weak, emotional failures who enjoy being told what to think by Kim il-Taaffe. The massive increase in Labour Party membership is both organic and a product of our times. New members haven’t come from a background of devout conformism; they’re part of a freewheeling semi-anarchistic post-ideological culture that joined up because they believe in Jeremy Corbyn. Democratic Centralism has as much of a place in the modern Labour Party as Sharia Law has. Unfortunately, Corbyn worship can only take us so far and it is up to us as members to ensure the movement is about all of us, not just one man.

Jeremy Corbyn is probably as uncomfortable and frustrated with the cult of personality of his worshippers as he is with the refusal of his opponents to discuss things on a mature, ideological basis. Then again, Jeremy Corbyn never expected to be elected leader in the first place. The archetypal back bench voice of the under privileged and disenfranchised simply doesn’t have the skill set to run the party in the way the Blairites, the right wing media and the capitalist class want it to be run. Corbyn isn’t a natural leader and he shouldn’t be the leader, because the idea of leaders is wrong per se. We need a more collegiate approach to running the party, where the importance of a figurehead is greatly reduced. Otherwise, Labour will continue to tear itself apart and be ridiculed by the capitalist press; we’re not very good at playing their games, so we should play by our own rules.

I’ve been sent my security codes to vote for leader by email, though I had been holding out for a postal vote. I know it costs more that way, but voting by email doesn’t afford one the chance to voice disapproval over the whole business by returning a blank ballot paper. I simply wouldn’t vote for Smith, so I’ve given my faint-hearted support for Corbyn as leader, because he is legitimately our leader and the overwhelming choice of rank and file members. However, the debate is only beginning; what the Labour Party really needs is not a leadership contest, but a root and branch reform of the party’s internal organisation and structure. Then, and only then, will our ideas lead the way, rather than our leaders fall by the wayside.