TRAITORS!
(Or: And lo, the imploded party did implode once more…)
As if the Left wasn’t having as disastrous enough a time as it was yesterday we heard that both the Left List and the Respect Coalition (or was that Respect Renewal? I don’t think anyone really knows any more) seem to have suffered such a substantial defection that the appear to have almost vanished from the political landscape. Worse still the traitors abandoned them not to form some third party {which would at least have been amusing} but instead went to Labour.
{Or “New Labour” as the hard-core socialists would put it. Not that they thought Old Labour was left enough either…}
That article fails to make it entirely clear but those Respect members were three parts Left List/SWP and one part George Galloway/Respect Renewal. This sort of a disaster could well be enough to finish both the Trotskyite party and assorted Galloway-tolerating leftist party and I imagine it may well. How exactly they feel about being deemed less desirable than the Labour Party has yet to be heard but some degree of humiliation is appropriate. Prepare yourselves, however, for some desperate, snarling spinning from the SWP’s Central Committee.
Their understanding of the split as a right-left schism with the SWP upon the left has, however, been thoroughly punctured. According to the SWP the Labour Party are crypto-rightist Neo-Conservatives interested in dismantling the welfare state via Neo-Liberalism who are entirely committed to neo-colonialism, yet all of their Left Listed councilors have opted to join it? Inexplicable.
There has been numerous references, hints, or allusions to a “Left Party” formed along the lines of the German party of the same name, which has enjoyed increasing success of late. The Campaign for a New Worker’s Party has, of course, always been keen on this idea but an increasing number of individuals have stated an inclination towards something fresh and left, including at least one union leader. This event will give such an suggestion momentum but it is also possible that both groups will continue to hobble onwards.
Hopefully, though, they will realise the futility of this pathetic spectacle and put an end to it. The scale of their failure considered what follows in the aftermath can scarcely be worse.
Leave a Reply