1/ The Labour Party is the most adept vehicle at sucking the political lifeblood out of young radicals. Some leave, dispirited. Others spend a lifetime in a never ending faction fight - a dehumanising and *depoliticising* experience.

2/ Corbyn needs to be understood in a certain context. He is *not* a product of the Labour left. His rise to power in Labour was a product of a) the anti-war movement and b) the anti-austerity movement and post-2008 conditions.

3/ Because the forces of the left arrayed around these two pivotal - era-defining - questions, the possibility of taking the opening that Corbyn (a product of these movements) running for leader offered existed, and was taken.

4/ Indeed it is only because of the massive influx of new activism that Corbyn survived as long as he did. It was *their* defence of Corbyn and *not* the decades embedded Labour left, or (some) of the national media representatives now urging you to stay that achieved this.

5/ Remember at the height of the attacks on Corbyn after 2016. Who was it that was mobilising in parliament square? While Owen Jones was busy preparing to write an article *months* before the 2017 election undermining confidence in the Corbyn leadership. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/01/corbyn-staying-not-good-enough

6/ The point is that the future possibilities for the advance of the left are generally to be found outside of formal politics. That doesn’t mean that formal political representation doesn’t matter. It does. It doesn’t mean there’s no difference between Starmer PM and Tory PM.

7/7 But it does mean that extra-parliamentary politics has to be put above interminable, dehumanising, factional warfare. Here the left can exert influence on national politics, and develop the resources required to address the contradictions inherent in the Labour Party.