The leaked report said there were people in the party machine who would rather wreck the party than see the left win an election. Now, at least one of those people appears to be blackmailing the party with the threat of financial ruin unless it purges the left. đŸ€” https://twitter.com/ta_mills/status/1287352539105636353
Why do parts of the party right engage in wrecking? Because if the Labour left ever was electorally successful, it would do severe damage to the basis on which the party right claim they must lead the party: that they’re the most politically skilled and ‘electable’ people in it.
A left-led Labour Party with some real prospect of electoral success is, to such people, an even greater danger than one with no such prospect. They have to make their own prophecy come true - the more politically lucid among them realise they *have* to engage in sabotage.
This is the only way to coherently explain the tactically-timed wrecking we saw repeatedly across 2015-20, but especially after June 2017. Psychologically, yes, upset egos, entitlement and so on played a role. But there was a concrete political interest always underlying that.
The possibly irreversible (?) move to OMOV to elect the Labour leader makes it imperative to reduce the weight of the left in the party membership. Back when the leader was chosen only by MPs (until 1981), left-wing members could be used by the PLP & then ignored. Less so now.
It is naturally preferable for the party right if left-wing members exile or purge themselves from the party voluntarily, out of disgust, alienation, etc. It save them the embarrassment, risk, and controversy involved in resorting to more openly repressive methods.
https://twitter.com/leowatkins91/status/1287374005088014336?s=21 And if this sounds ‘paranoid’, I should stress it took me a long time to realise it myself. It isn’t a conclusion I came to eagerly or quickly. But there really can’t be any meaningful ‘unity’ with these people. They can only be fought and defeated. https://twitter.com/leowatkins91/status/1287374005088014336
One metric of success in really changing the Labour Party, then, is the deselection of these people, and their voluntary self-exclusion - whether that’s followed by them joining the Lib Dems, Tories, or corporate lobbying - as so many of them do when they finish being MPs.
But it isn’t the only metric of success. It’s not enough just to change who’s in the various party positions. We have to change the structures those positions are in, and the relations between the (small number of) people in formal party positions and the people outside them.
Call it building a Labour Party ‘for - and *of* - the many, not the few’.
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