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I'm incredibly proud to have been part of the Corbyn project. When he first stood I thought if we can just get someone on TV who says austerity is a failure then we've achieved something. But we've done so much more. Unfortunately ultimately we failed the final test.
I'm incredibly proud to have been part of the Corbyn project. When he first stood I thought if we can just get someone on TV who says austerity is a failure then we've achieved something. But we've done so much more. Unfortunately ultimately we failed the final test.
There are a host of long term deeper reasons that the Labour party has to contend with; the decline of our industrial base and trade unionism, the mainstream media, the erosion of socialist ideas in our communities etc. But we almost won last time so what happened this time?
Corbyn won the leadership twice, inspired hundreds of thousands to the membership and at the first attempt added millions to the vote after decades of decline. He gave Labour back a sense of purpose and turned us back into a mass socialist party again.
But we couldn't turn that into electoral success. We have to look at the lessons. Why were attacks on antisemitism and terrorism so effective for example? How do we avoid those problems without throwing potentially unpopular internationalist causes under the bus?
I believe antisemitism accusations should have been handled much more decisively with a robust rebuttal of accusations that didn't have merit but with a detailed illustration of an understanding of where good faith accusations and concerns were coming from.
On foreign policy and defence in general I think we were too timid. These areas are Corbyn's strength and although he wasn't always as cautious in the company he kept as he should have been we should have come out fighting for a very different kind of foreign policy.
On internal democracy we too often ducked the fight for fear of a few days bad headlines. We should have imposed much more discipline. Or at least some discipline! MPs were allowed to go on TV to give contradictory and confusing messages constantly.
On Brexit we inevitably lost leave voting seats by backing a second referendum. But it's difficult to imagine we wouldn't have lost remain seats if we hadn't. We never made the socialist case for a relationship with the EU one way or the other.
There's no doubt that a return to the centre ground on Brexit is what cost us and calls for a return to centrism will see Labour suffer the same fate as other centrist parties across Europe and the Liberal Democrats; irrelevance. We can't surrender the stage to the far right.
Labour must democratise internally to become a real members led organisation.
We must reach out to communities and engage with them.
We must democratise our unions and not be afraid of their strength.
This government is going to be tough but we must be up to the fight.
We must reach out to communities and engage with them.
We must democratise our unions and not be afraid of their strength.
This government is going to be tough but we must be up to the fight.
@threadreaderapp
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