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Edmund Griffiths

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27 Sep, 5 tweets, 1 min read

https://twitter.com/momentumbristol/status/1442547712897871875

What has to happen before we admit we now know what the strategic & tactical answer is

https://twitter.com/momentumbristol/status/1442547712897871875

Really doesn't seem as though everyone's quite taking seriously the fact that the best-case-scenario ideal daydream of the pro-Labour left actually happened & we can see what it achieved & what it didn't

The Labour Party was led for several years by arguably its most left-wing MP, a lifelong campaigner with close links to the left outside parliament; he was supported by a clear majority of the members & by a good chunk of the union leaderships

Generations of the Labour & Labour-adjacent left lived & died wishing for something like that

So I don't think it's quite on just to lapse seamlessly back into "we sent a message to the right, we can exert pressure, now we need to fight to get it into the manifesto", etc etc etc, as though none of that had happened

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More from @EdmundGriffiths

Edmund Griffiths

@EdmundGriffiths

28 Sep

I'm not talking abt Big Names With Platforms, who can be assumed to have known what they were doing re Sir Keir; but the fact large numbers of left-leaning members got duped does I'm afraid say something abt what the organized left had been explaining to people & what it hadn't

To many people on the left, inside Labour & out, it was transparently clear that Sir K was the candidate of anti-Corbynist revenge & authoritarian Blairism; but many other people, also more or less on the left, couldn't see it at all

So you have to ask: did the first set of people do everything they could have, in 2015-19, to help the second set become sufficiently politically aware that they wouldn't be taken for a ride like that?

Read 5 tweets

Edmund Griffiths

@EdmundGriffiths

16 Apr 20

Anger needs to lead through to clarity. The Blairites _hate you_, far more viciously than they hate the Tories, far more viciously than you hate them, & the only terms on which they will cooperate with you are your total submission. They'll let you pay your subs & do the leg work

The Lab left hasn't tended to act as though it gets that. Corbyn always behaved as though it was possible to reach an amicable working relationship with the Blairites. "We're all Labour." Nope: they would much prefer the Tories to win than a Labour Party they don't control 100%