Will it be possible to reclaim this husk of a party? Or is it time or a completely new one…?
1 Like
It’s a meaningless rump. The PLP members are mostly bourgeois careerists who, behind their masks, dislike and hold disdain for the proletarian main strength of the original party. Most of the PLP belong in the official tory party, which represents their true preferences most closely.
There is currently no authentic Labour party in P’minster. The rank-and-file membership, which numbers thousands who joined in hope at the time of Corbyn, are slowly waking up to the fact that the current ex-Labour party isn’t remotely the one they joined, and with Woodentop in charge it has no hope of ever veering back in that direction.
Some sort of creative destruction and ground-up reform is essential before that whole social-democratic tranche of the British populace who need a real Labour-style party to represent them can hope to get re-enfranchised into what passes for democracy in P’minster. Currently, they are disenfranchised, with no meaningful representation in the current miserable fake.
Whether that has to be a new party, with the eventual death by dwindling of the current article, or whether it has to be a messy, years-in-the-wilderness civil war of all the members, to re-make a new Labour that actually represents with commitment and true passion the interests of it’s constituents, it looks like being a longish haul. FWIW, I can’t see much promise in George G’s partyette, nor - increasingly - in George himself, who seems to be be withering into a dry old crust of his former self. (Happens when you get into your sixties…) But a new party of some kind to replace the current moribund shell is needed. Expect a longish, toxic hiatus, under the tories.
2 Likes
Second that. But the real lesson is, if party politics has any future, it is no good assuming ones opponents will fall into line no matter how clear it is that rank and file support the leadership. The PLP has repeatedly shown it is full of snakes, brought and paid for, and ultimately loyal only to the Crown and its many state apparatuses. Starting again must be the less painful option.
Personally I have given up on ‘democracy’ but I’m conscious that elections have real consequences and the elected, or the anointed ones at any rate, have very real power, not least the monopoly over coercion and violence.
Wherever hope may lay, it is for sure not in Starmer nor the Blairite cabal pulling strings.
2 Likes