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I respect anyone who chooses to stay in their party & fight. But party loyalties don't break easily: for me, leaving felt like a small bereavement. So when it happens, a party should ask questions of its own conduct, rather than just smearing its opponents' motives. [THREAD 1/5]
Too often, the Corbyn Left seems immune to self-doubt and baffled by the concept of honest disagreement. The response to criticism - on Brexit, Anti-Semitism or anything else - is to trash its motives, invoke dark conspiracies & call up the Cyber-Corbz for an online beating. 2/5
Parties have always been unstable coalitions & across history they have been pulled apart & thrown together in new formations: from the Peelites in the 1840s, breaking the Conservative party to repeal the bread tax, to the creation of the Lab Party by exiles from Liberalism. 3/5
Sometimes an earthquake goes off that redraws the whole landscape of politics. When the tectonic plates stop moving, the survivors stand where they always did - but they now find themselves separated from former neighbours by new oceans, rivers and mountain ranges. 4/5
If significant bodies of opinion feel they have no voice within the established parties, they have the right, in good conscience, to look elsewhere - & to try to bring others with them. That's not treason. That's democracy. And in that lies the hope of a better politics. [END]
