Labour Party: Sometimes you kick, sometimes you get kicked

The current Labour Party is compromised by what you could call an acute case of 'false friends.' While many in the Party, and especially those like the Iraq war's promoter Tony Blair, have closer ties to the Conservatives than to Jeremy Corbyn, they can still freely pretend to be 'allied' spokemen who care about the 'Labour Party.' To be frank, they would not care at all for Corbyn's Labour Party, preferring the more securely bourgeois 'adversary' in the Conservative Party. But this is the only 'Labour Party' and Labour Party authority structure that currently exists. Many in the Labour Party still support the monarchy and showing obeisance to them, for what it's worth. Hence, the attempt to portray this all as one, coherent Party is actually just to allow the Party to undermine itself 'from the inside.' And many of the Party's participants, politicians, 'celeb' backers, and sources of funding, would much prefer to avoid even the possibility of targeting the 'rigged economic system.' Nonetheless, if all of these can claim some sort of artificial unity with little political basis, it means that the Party's stance is compromised and it is subject to continual internal obstacles. When this is the case, going further to tackle other obstacles can be difficult - at least before settling down.

Corbyn's position is often acknowledged to be insecure - the Party apparatus has been heading in a different direction for a while. Hence, they increasingly find themselves having to carve out some sort of niche to secure their politics. In addition, they have unsurprisingly faced attack from their own Party and the corporate or state media, and hence taken on a slightly isolationist tendency which has kept them secure. It can be difficult to write a sentence when, during the latter half, the pen takes on a will of its own and 'like a creature by love possessed' starts spewing out attacks on what you just wrote. At the least you could reserve a paragraph for yourself, as the radical elements of the Corbyn campaign have attempted, but then the rest is left free to contextualise and attack this. At the least they can get across their message and preserve it in a hostile political climate, hence opening the door to this for more radical tendencies if they'd like.

However, by resigning their opposition have at least allowed them the chance of consolidating their political place. The opposition to Corbyn cannot simply manifest, but would need notable re-organisation due to the indiscipline of its representatives. This hence allows for the task of Corbyn's movement, along with holding fort, also to involve utilising their organised nucleus to promote their politics' continuity while other tendencies are forced to remain disorganised. This is hence an era where the emphasis should be on aggressively carving out a place in British politics, and not on hoping for success when anything near radical politics has been sermonised against for decades. Needless to say, a somewhat marginalised and subversive political view should not condone the situation of allowing every major organisation to attack it. That would be suicidal, and hence Corbyn - who associates with such ideas in part because they have become important to his setting up a siege mentality - is really under no pressure to leave. Their campaign is subject to constant adversity from even 'moderate' liberal areas, and this adversity will press radical elements to consolidate themselves. Others, such as Owen Jones, who are only pseudo-radicals and media figures, will of course turn aside in the name of 'labour' requiring yet further bourgeois illusions hampering them. That is their vocation, after all.

In the post-Trump era, then, the US left is perhaps worse placed than ever to formulate its movement. The more they express their generic outrage at Trump's election, the more they pick up unwanted allies extending even to Hillary Clinton. The more the outrage, the more they express a clear preference for the Democratic alternative - and become appendages of the avowedly moderate, liberal Democratic Party. Hence, they can easily be undermined, or are if you like held on a strict leash. As such, it will take clarity to return to a task which is not that different under Trump to recent periods of interference in the Middle East and various cuts at home. As for those who find Trump a shocking new phenomenon, but consider Blair and the Iraq War leaders to be leftist saints, we need only observe that their stance on this issue can seem cheap.