Thread by @KJ_Harrison

Some home truths on lessons of #GE19 & the way forward for the #AntiEstablishment #left

“The real lesson of this is that no” [#Labour ] “leader unable to decisively defeat” [the] “Labour-right would last very long.”

True, but 1st you have to see the necessity of routing them

https://twitter.com/JohnWRees/status/1211395862770925570

You have to name the problem & be *willing* to confront it before you find out if you’re *able* to do so. The problem is that you can’t build an anti establishment party under the same roof as pro-establishment enemies & the Labour-right ARE implacable pro-establishment enemies>

yet there was never any recognition of this from the leadership, still less any serious effort on their part to openly confront & oust them as such. On the contrary, war criminal Blair remains a Labour Party member, the outrageous liar Margaret Hodge remains a member whilst >

countless socialists were sacrificed & ousted to appease the right (which it never did, it only encouraged them to attack all the more). Corbyn didn’t lack courage, strength, nous or principles, he was the best of the Labour-left leadership. So what happened?>

The most charitable interpretation, which I don’t subscribe to myself is that he lacked the support of his close allies to openly launch what would, even with their support have been an extremely difficult & exceptionally bitter struggle to oust all of the Labour right >

& essentially re-found the Labour Party as an exclusively anti-establishment socialist party, to unite the various strands of the party (outside the Labour right) with opposition to the 1%. >

However, a more plausible explanation in my opinion is t Jeremy had at least some illusions in the Labour-loyalty of the PLP centrists and does not share our analysis of the fundamentally treacherous nature of the Labour-right in relation to the left. >

The lesson should have been learned after the chicken coup had shown the treachery, class collaboration & anti-democratic methods of the right & totally enraged the membership. The routing of the coup & subsequent leadership challenge was the time to have seized the moment >

but the advantage was never pressed. That historic opportunity has now been lost, perhaps permanently.

However, the ruling class weren’t afraid of Corbyn as one man, they were afraid of his influence within the movement behind him & its political, economic and electoral>

potential. That movement was crucial to Corbynism and is more important than ever to the future of the radical left now. It is now clear that the Labour Party will be electing a leader wedded to a right-moving dynamic of triangulation>

& either toward or rabidly for, a large scale witch hunt of the left using weaponised anti semitism smears. It would be a tragedy if the tens of thousands of enthusiastic activists either dropped out of politics with disillusionment or slowly accommodated themselves and were >

pulled to the right as has happened previously after the Bennites we’re defeated in the 1980’s. Those staying in a Labour Party accommodating to or enthusiastically embracing pro-establishment campaigns & narratives, likely moving to shut the anti establishment left out from >

leaderships & serious influence *permanently* need to explain by what methods & strategy they can resist a PLP who will soon have the whip hand & many of the big levers of party power & how that fits what is of the utmost importance>

to preserve the radicalism, activism & enthusiasm of many 1,000s of socialist activists. We need a big grass roots political initiative which can attract Labour & non Labour socialists into joint work supporting each other & building working class resistance to Tory rule.