Mick Hartley

Nick Cohen – Jeremy Corbyn is being driven by the ‘left-behind’ middle class:

This is the way it always goes on the far left. When he warned in 1904 about the Bolsheviks’ claim that they and they alone represented the working class, Leon Trotsky saw that “the organisation of the party substitutes itself for the party as a whole; then the central committee substitutes itself for the organisation; and finally the ‘dictator’ substitutes himself for the central committee”.

Little has changed. The leader-worship of Labour members is a sign that they do not want and will not be granted independent thought. Just before Momentum won all the elections in Hornsey and Wood Green, one of the largest Labour parties in Britain, a devotee read a poem in praise of Jeremy Corbyn to inspire the assembled activists. It was as if they were in North Korea rather than north London. This was not some pathetic aberration. The aptly named Shoestring Press found 50 authors willing to fill an entire book with poems for Jeremy.

It's true. Coming up to the first anniversary of its publication, and currently sitting at no. 586,361 in the Amazon bestseller ranks.

Writing Labour members off as initiates in a personality cult, however, is a little too easy. There are deep social reasons why men with disgusting views, which go back into the dark heart of communism, now control the opposition. If Trump and the Brexit campaign triumphed because they won the left-behind working class, Corbynism triumphed because it won the left-behind middle class. The Economic and Social Research Council reported that 56% of Corbyn’s Labour party members are graduates and 70% professionals – ABC1s in the jargon of marketing departments….

Less understandable or forgivable is the nature of today’s middle-class backlash against a status quo that is rigged against them. The acceptance of the heirs to the Stalinists Trotsky warned against at the top of Labour, the rigging of debates, the censoring of thought and the infantile cult of the personality around Corbyn are blocking out serious politics. Living political movements argue. The Labour left has the look of a morgue about it. The left is only really alive when it denounces “Blairites”. When you want answers to the questions it and the country faces, you meet only silence.