Mick Hartley

Nick Cohen doesn't mince words, or spare the feelings of his fellow journalists:

Seumas Milne remains on the staff of the Guardian and Observer while Labour pays him to work as its director of strategy. As a colleague on leave, he has the right to be treated with a gentleness journalists would not usually extend to spin doctors who do not enjoy his advantages. I therefore write with the caution of a good corporate man and the cheeriness of a co-worker when I say Milne could not do a better job of keeping the Tories in power if rogue MI5 agents had groomed him at Winchester College, signed him up at Oxford University and instructed him to infiltrate and destroy the Labour party.

He is what the far left becomes when it crashes through the looking glass. Milne defended Stalin’s one-party communist state but is now turning England into a one-party Tory state. He says he fights for the working class and dispossessed, while ensuring the continuation of a rightwing government that will protect the interests of his upper-middle class. He says he is a socialist but bends the knee and doffs the cap to Putin’s capitalist kleptocracy. He says he is principled, but what is striking about Milne and the rest of the Corbyn “insurgency” is their vacuity. For what is the far left now? What does it want? It will tell you at length what it is against, but what is it for?…

The further you peer into it, the deeper the L-shaped hole becomes. Corbyn is against imperialism, except when the imperialist is Milne’s Russia. He wants to stop Trident but said we should still spend billions building worthless submarines without nuclear warheads to keep the unions happy. The cowardice of it all is shameful. But consider the political advantages. Three-quarters of Labour members are middle class and just over half have a degree. A practical programme of redistribution would not only hurt the super-rich but them too. Large numbers would hurt enough to think again about giving Corbyn support. Instead of asking them to bear pain, the 21st-century far left allows them to enjoy socialism without tears. Contrary to Stalin’s apologists, it maintains you can make an omelette without breaking eggs…

Vacuity leads not only to political impotence but political fear. Uncomprehending hatred fills the empty space where policy should be and brings with it the threat of violence that hovers above Labour like yellow cigarette smoke in a Munich beer hall. It was thought that the killing of Jo Cox might alter the mood. But the misogyny, homophobia, antisemitism, death threats, rape threats and insane conspiracy theories against Labour MPs endure. The foul climate shows that Corbynism has sociopathic consequences. When his supporters believe that all they need do to oppose austerity, the bankers, etc, is to say they are against them, then, by definition, their opponents cannot have honest objections, only evil intentions. Like sin, they must be purged.

If you are going to fight the heirs of communism, you should not accept Marxist theories of historical inevitability. Labour has vast problems but it does not need to be reduced to a rump of seats in London and Lancashire. Millions want the parliamentary opposition Labour’s founders promised. They need it now when the right has taken the opportunity the far left has gifted them to go on the rampage. There is one prediction about the Labour party I can make, however: if Corbyn does not go, and Labour does not change, it is inevitable that the whiff of violence will be replaced by the stench of its death.

It's at CiF, but – no doubt wisely - comments are disabled on this one.