Thread by @fromarsetoelbow

Of course, you could ask why such a situation - an utter disconnect between the PLP and the membership - arose, but that would mean accepting that what is unprecedented in British party politics is representative democracy.

https://twitter.com/shaunjlawson/status/1309565353727590404

That parties are organised conspiracies against democracy is not Marxist provocation but orthodox political science. They are mediative, both in the sense that they represent popular interests in the domain of formal politics & that they constrain what is deemed representable.

Parties tend to adopt democratic practices in policy formation when they feel confident that their membership is dominated by a narrow base in tune with the apparat. This is why centrist parties are often happiest with reselection & conference mandates, eg the Lib Dems & SNP.

When the base widens, they become less comfortable with democracy (eg the Young Liberals in the 60s). Their commitment to it is often inversely correlated with their popularity. They also risk alienating voters when their base doesn't expand to match (eg the LDs in 2010).

Parties of the flank, where there is a long tail, are much more guarded about democracy, less because they think they'll be pulled to the extremes than because they fear being restrained from opportunistically tacking towards the centre, which is the instinct of the apparat.

The solution is a managed democracy in which the membership are only consulted when the decision is a foregone conclusion (eg the Tories). Labour's problem in 2015 was a failure of party management (compare 2007), which is ironic given the charges subsequently levelled at Corbyn.

Corbyn's failure cannot be solely attributed to his own limitations, any more than the PLP & the liberal media's support for Starmer reflects his actual abilities. Rather it reveals a more worrying failure of democracy as the party system has failed to represent social changes.

This isn't to suggest that the wider electorate "got it wrong" in 2019, but that you cannot interpret a 32% share of the vote as grounds to marginalise the Labour left & the social interests it represents from the range of acceptable politics.

The idea that Labour is now in better shape "under new management" shows the persistence of the idea of the party as political firm (did anyone in Labour read Crouch or Mair?). It is this, as much as the flag-waving & exclusives in the Sun, that gives rise to a sense of deja vu.