Let me explain why Momentum's sweep of the Labour NEC elections has the elite and their media friends spooked, and throwing all kinds of sh*it at us today.... (1/2) It begins with Antonio Gramsci....
2/ Gramsci said taking power is not enough; behind the state, the elite have line after line of trenches with which to their defend privilege and enforced poverty and ignorance for the rest....
3/ Here's the relevant Gramsci writings... and for ppl who don't know him, almost every town in Italy has a Via Antonio Gramsci: he died in a fascist prison... people.duke.edu/~dainotto/Text…
4/ One of the last-ditch trenches to defend the British elite has always been the Labour Party. Not its members or even MPs but its machine, dominated by right-wing union leaders...
5/ But thanks to Thatcherism there are almost no right wing union leaders; so there's just the undemocratic & opaque NEC, HQ and Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC) - which traditionally stopped members influencing policy...
6/ From now on, it's not the left controls the party; it's that the Cold War stay-behind apparatus of the right does not. We might have a truly democratic conference; some reselections of MPs; and no-more witch hunts...
7/ The Tory party is always run by its elite core - that's why they can get by with a few 10ks of members. It "represents" the British elite - usually.... and that "usually" is important...
8/ If you watch Darkest Hour you can see what happens when the Tories can't/won't represent the interests of the whole elite: a clusterf*ck between pro-Nazi and pro-Empire factions...
9/ Brexit has produced something like that: UK business hates Brexit, and Labour wants the softest possible Brexit *as long as public opinion still supports Brexit* - while only 15 or so Tories even contemplate rebelling....
10/ So for some parts of UK business - not the blue bloods who run the hedge funds or the construction bosses but some... Labour is already the natural party of government; but...
11/ It is for the first time since Keir Hardie not controlled by a pro-elite grouping; the left is not totally in control but it runs the leadership, NEC, CAC, and conference...
12/ Hence all the scare stories, the slanders, the lies, the leaks - and that's just today (!) ....
13/ Most of all: Labour looks competent. @JonTrickett was on top of Carillion weeks ago; @RichardBurgon has a string of cases under way in the prison service showing he was on the case etc etc...
14/ Meanwhile the Tories have become merely an "administration"; paperclip monitors for a government with no real purpose other than to avoid stating the Brexit endgame. I feel sorry for the liberal Tories...
15/ A whole generation of Tories came into politics to do the "big society" or market driven regeneration, northern powerhouse etc; but there is no "Mayism". No guiding idea other than to stay in office until the Brexit process explodes...
16/ This is what explains the vituperation, lies and media panic about Labour (inc ludicrous manufactured stories about Corbyn's age)... take deep breath....
17/ For the first time in the history of the UK as a global power there is a possibility of a Labour government that represents the workers, poor and embodies internationalism. That's quite a big thing if you not used to it.
18/ Our biggest challenge is to maintain Labour as an alliance of social democrats, left-liberals, old-style Bennite socialists and radical leftists - and to turn it into a, or more accurately towards the, social movements..
19/ To see Labour shadow ministers pile into a privatisation and call for renationalisation, without equivocation, and with the backing of key professional groups and unions is unique in modern Labour history....
20/20 I will discuss some of this at the Clement Attlee Memorial Lecture on Friday night at @UnivOxford all welcome... univ.ox.ac.uk/node/2499
