Is Corbynism "populist"? @proftimbale & @JakeTW91 on the curious character of Labour's populism, which "looks inwards within the party itself, with potentially damaging implications for the link between MPs & their constituents". labourlist.org/2018/11/corbyn…
2. This "inward populism" has a longer history on the Left, which needs to be better understood. It draws on a serious argument about the character of British democracy, which was best summed up by Corbyn's mentor, Tony Benn. 
3. Britain, Benn argued, was not a properly functioning democracy at all. It was “the last colony of the British Empire”, still governed - undemocratically - by a colonial elite. What was needed was “comparable to a national liberation struggle".
4. For Benn, the only real democracy in Britain was the internal democracy of the Labour Party & the trade union movement. It was here that the battle for democracy would be fought & won - & then spread outwards by placing MPs under the authority of the party conference & the TUC
5. That idea became central to the London Left in which Corbyn was formed intellectually. During the miners' strike, in 1984, Corbyn argued that "Tory law" could never be binding on the trade union movement, which had its "own source of legality’.
6. So Corbynite visions of democracy have a history, which we need to understand. They’re intellectually serious, but have profound implications for our parliamentary system and for those outside the party. We should decide with our eyes open whether that is what we want. [ENDS]
