these election results also expose some massive problems with our left media ecology. the failings of the RLB & NEC campaigns were partly the result of, in hindsight, some massive & obvious problems internally which afaik no serious left media even tried to report on

the Centre Left Grassroots Alliance (CLGA) which has been working for decades to ensure unified left slates totally broke down in 2018 and wasn't properly put together again in time. I still don't understand exactly what happened

everyone inside the bubble knew this would be an enormous problem (and the warning signs were there for literally years), but nobody raised the alarm bells, nobody really did anything about it, and nobody outside had any idea what was going on

and the RLB campaign seemed to be set back by a full month of massive & quite vicious internal factional disputes variously between Momentum/McDonnell/LOTO/Unite, and I suspect this contributed a lot to crippling its internal cohesion, strategic vision, etc

I don't think any serious left media even attempted to cover it, so the only way anybody could get a hint of what was going on was through personal rumours, anonymous briefings to the Times, or hyper-sectarian & dubiously-sourced Skwawkbox - the only left media to even mention it

obviously part of the reason this stuff gets ignored is legitimate concerns around airing embarrassing, sensitive internal problems publicly - clearly it's a difficult task to deal with and needs handling thoughtfully - but letting it all get swept under the rug is no answer

we've had an absolutely disastrous - perhaps even world-historic - defeat, and it was in part a result of what should have been obvious & preventable problems, but which almost nobody even knew about, and which even fewer people understood

you just cannot run a mass socialist movement without some semblance of democracy, and you can't run a democratic political project without some way of keeping your people properly informed about what is going on, about how decisions are being made & also about what's going wrong

there's lots of reasons for these problems, lots of it structural, and it is genuinely difficult to know how to handle this kind of stuff. it also takes proper resources to do serious, consistent reporting - resources that most left media simply don't have

but it's also about a lack of strategic focus - this stuff generally just isn't taken seriously as a priority, the importance of covering it not taken seriously compared to the potential for embarrassment

but frankly it's also in part because most Corbynite media has never been very independent. it's absolutely tiny, close-knit networks or people, mostly based in London & extremely close personally, politically or organisationally to the Labour left politicians & bureaucracy

if you know anyone in a bureaucratic job personally, you'll know that understandably working in those positions often inclines you to being extremely averse to airing dirty linen publicly, and they will normally advise others towards extreme caution on these kinds of question

and if your friends, comrades, lovers are all being hired for jobs in the party, in Momentum, in the big unions, that will normally tend to rub off on you, skew your perspective, incline you towards caution and away from anything that may be embarrassing for them

and yes, there are obviously legitimate worries and dangers in exposing ourselves in this way, but we need to have ways of critically and democratically examining our own problems and processes - the alternative just sweeps problems under the rug and stores them up for later

@leowatkins91 often points out that the right wing press do actually understand this. yes, lots of media in this country is servile & partisan, but when the Tories have problems or they alienate their own base, the Mail, Telegraph etc will point this out and let them correct it