General Election.

I remember back in the elation of the victory in '97 my friend coming to me the morning after, all pumped up ''we did it''. This was a French/Spanish woman who had taken part in the '68 uprising in Paris and whose father had lost his leg fighting the fascists in Spain in '36.
To say she was left wing was a massive understatement.
I just looked her in the face and replied ''you don't really think things can only get better do you?''. Within weeks the F1 tobacco advertising scandal hit the news. Massive Labour donor Bernie Ecclestone had received an exemption from his mate Tony Blair.
Same old same old just a different boot on your neck.

I get what you are saying though I do tend to resent being lazily labelled a Corbynite. My opinions and values existed long before he came to prominence and remain long after he is fading back into insignificance. My sojourn in the party was pretty much because I agreed with much of the policy direction in the 2017 manifesto. If Starmer had clung on to most of that as he pretty much promised the members when touting for our votes, not only would I not have any fucks to give about Corbyn right now but I would still be in the party.

I think for myself so please desist from trying to make me out to be some sort of Corbyn cult follower. That is both intellectually lazy and dishonest. I am a policy man, not a personality man, an independent thinker, not a tribalist. I ask that you respect that because I know you are open to reason and unlike many at the other place are not on a deliberate wind up..

Other than that though, it is true that you are unlikely to persuade me as I have made my position clear.

But I will say in response to your simplistic assumptions about where people stand politically that it is far more nuanced and complicated than in your summary. Often the very same people can be very right wing on some issues and very left wing on others. Majority opinion tends to be pretty right wing on certain issues, eg support for the monarchy, patriotism in general, security issues, law and order, defence, immigration, etc. Yet majority opinion tends to be pretty left wing on other, mostly economic issues. Policy by policy, polling revealed that most of the economic policies in Labour's 2017 manifest were supported by large majorities. So it is not true that Labour needs to abandon all that wholesale to be elected. It simply needed to think of ways of making it credible and affordable by costing everything effectively. Where Labour perhaps needed to be much closer to the centre or even right of centre, was in those policy areas where majority opinion is very right wing.....of those areas, immigration is itself almost always a top 3 concern lately, so it is in areas such as this where the party needs to appeal to Tory voters and has more to gain than lose by doing so. Though of course in any race to be the most nasty to foreigners, it can never hope to out-nasty the likes of Suella Braverman, and shouldn't try

Fair enough. Apologies for my oversensitivity on the matter. And yes I have called you a Blairite many times before so probably shouldn't complain. But a more accurate term for me is democratic socialist. Or left wing liberal. I am happy to refrain from calling you a Blairite. Would Labour leaning centrist be more accurate?

I definitely agree that public services and economic stability matter a lot to many people, which is why economically popular left wing policies need to be properly costed in a way that is credible. And I will point out the obvious fact that a desire for better public services often lies behind the popular desire for greater public ownership of essential services. People have utterly lost faith with the notion that private is always good and public bad especially when they look at public transport, the railways, and gas, electricity and water. And the diminution of social housing and expansion of private rental accommodation in it's place has hardly been seen to have made things better for the mass of tenants.

It is all about responding to popular left leaning desires in a way that is economically credible.

But Labour is sadly unlikely to do that, not because it wouldnt be popular but because they want the wealthy elites onside, and these wouldnt like it.

One last thing. I do hope you are not being wilfully disingenuous when you talked of us losing the 2017 election by a vast majority. We actually almost wiped out the Tory lead in 2017 and gained seats for the first time since 1997. And the popularity of the manifesto policies were a big part of that. Of course we were up against the unpopularity of Corbyn amongst older voters and were up against the issue of Brexit.

By 2019 Corbyn had had antisemitism as an issue effectively weaponised against him whilst Johnson was promising to get Brexit done whilst promising an end to austerity. The 2017 policies were never the problem as you would know if you checked out the polling on them. It was everything else, made worse in 2019 by too much added on that was not well costed.

As is clear by a reasoned analysis of what took place, we lost for many reasons, but largely in spite of popular policies, not because of them. You centrist types however seem to feel an emotional need to believe that the policies were to blame because you don't like them. But show us the polling evidence for this assertion when I can show you polling evidence that shows the popularity of those policies, and have done so many times before. If you really want to insist upon me doing so yet again, I can. 

Antisemitism was a problem in the party but the extent of it was grossly exaggerated for the purposes of weaponisation.

I saw this happen locally a lot on spurious charges against people who were in no way antisemitic. Anyone who was more centrist saying anything similar tended to never be challenged.

The furore stopped almost immediately when Starmer became leader. Did all these antisemites suddenly disappear in a puff of omnipotent smoke overnight? It speaks volumes about what was going on.

Yes there were those like Berger who were on the receiving end of disgusting antisemitism, much like Abbott is on the receiving end of obnoxious anti-black racism. But a lot of it came from people who were not even party members, and I do not discount the possibility of some of these being agents provocateur. Genuine cases of antisemitism of course should have been dealt with far more robustly but as the leaked report indicates, a part of the reason they were not was because those charged with investigating it were far more focussed upon waging a factional war against so-called "trots" in the party, by which they meant anyone on the left.

I can speak of my local experience of left wing comrades frequently being suspended for supposed antisemitism, usually because they spoke out against Israeli oppression of the Palestinians and land thefts and suchlike. They were almost always cleared after many months but it kept happening, with one local centrist councillor virtually ignoring his duties as a councillor to spend his entire time trawling social media looking to dig up dirt. In my own experience of individuals I knew personally I can categorically state that there were no antisemites in my local party of any political persuasion, but left wingers were forever being labelled with this false slur. I tend to assume that my own party was likely to be representative of the party more nationally unless given compelling reasons as to why it wouldnt be,

One possible difference from my own former local party and the party more nationally, is that there were no Muslims in my local party, at least not any who ever attended meetings. I cannot rule out the possibility of Muslims, due to strong feelings over Palestine, being more prone to possible antisemitism but I cannot know. But I do not think they form a large percentage of the membership.

So yes, antisemitism in the party existed and still exists. But the extent of it in the party does indeed appear to have been exaggerated and I repeatedly saw with my own eyes false accusations of it being weaponised for factional reasons. And most of the antisemitic abuse some Jewish MPs endured actually came from people who were not even party members and could have been anybody, including agents provocateurs.

So like others you are believing in a carefully crafted false reality built around a much smaller truth. I was in the party. I saw what was going on and had contact with members up and down the country via party forums. And I speak from experience.

The problem was that people with an agenda were weaponizing and exaggerating the issue for politically motivated reasons. And this was not confined to opponents of the Labour party in the media or in politics, but also by actual party members as a way of destabilising the then ruling faction whom they opposed.

I agree the issue, even if blown out of all proportion by internal and external enemies needs to have been seen to be addressed. Corbyn, recognising it as a problem but knowing how it was being grossly exaggerated didnt take it seriously enough. He failed to grasp that just because he knew the issue was being weaponised and grossly exaggerated, that what his potential electors were being led to believe actually mattered. He should have been far more proactive on the issue. He had the lifelong habit of ignoring with contempt lies and exaggerations as being not worthy of him wasting any of his time on, whilst failing to understand that it would bite him hard on the arse if it became established as hard reality in the public mind. He needed to be seen to act on genuine cases of antisemitism in the party with an iron fist whilst robustly challenging the lies and exaggerations and publicly defending MPs like Luciana Berger from antisemitic attacks from outside the party. Sadly for him he did not effectively do any of this.

Incidentally, I have said exactly the same thing to you that Corbyn was suspended for on the grounds of supposed antisemitism, and you acknowledged the truth of much of it. Yet neither you nor I are antisemites. Thats the kind of Kafkaesque situation the Labour party is at right now.

As for allegations of antisemitism in the party and the investigation into them, the whole process was far too slow and cumbersome, but the disciplinary process itself was not of Corbyn's creation. It was already in place. But most of those in charge of the process went rogue from the moment of Corbyn's leadership election victory, and sought to spend most of their time working against the left wing leadership whom they frequently referred to as "trots". They spent so much time focussing on this factional war against the left that actual investigations into antisemitism were placed on the back burner. When the leadership intervened to try and get them to get their asses into gear as ever more incoming flak over the antisemitism issue was landing all around, this was leaked as the leadership trying to interfere with investigations.

I have a copy in my possession - in full - of the leaked report of the issue that many of us in the party got hold of and shared with each other and which the party has never made public. Some of the supposed disciplinary team aside from constantly calling us trots and commies were saying hugely disgusting things, including racist and misogynist commentary about Diane Abbot, and naming certain left wingers whom they disliked as people who ought to be set on fire. Of course that latter they didn't actually mean literally we would hope, but is an example of their malice. For too long they were allowed to get away with focussing on their factional war instead of investigating antisemitism even as their enemies were getting increasing flak for the failure to speed up investigations that those charged with the task were failing to do.

Corbyn's problem was that he was too weak, trying to be too nice to everybody. He should have came down like a ton of bricks on those responsible and replaced them with people who would not abuse their positions for factional reasons but would instead focus hard on genuine cases of antisemitism in the party. He himself should have also been far more robust in his condemnation of antisemitism, whilst coming down hard on those in the party constantly sowing discord and division, and on everyone weaponizing the issue for dubious politically motivated reasons. A prime example of the latter was Margaret Hodge who was single-handedly responsible for as many complaints of antisemitism as everyone else put together, yet most of those she was complaining about turned out not even to be party members, and most of the few that were, the complaints proved to be bogus upon investigation. Yet she was all over the media being viewed as some sort of authority on the subject. And after her hurling a tirade of foul mouthed abuse at the leader had triggered talk of disciplinary action against her, she disgracefully compared the prospect with the fear of the Gestapo coming to arrest her in the night, a comparison which I know many Jews found offensive.

Understand that the very kind of people behind all this sort of crap are now the ones in charge of the party and you will grasp how difficult I will find it to ever vote for them.

There was definitely a large influx of new members who voted. I don't doubt that a few of them were extreme left entryists in some places but there were no bona fide extremists in my local party. The ones in my locale were often left leaning idealists who had never been active before or former party members who left in droves in the Blair years returning. I myself only joined after Corbyn got elected so was not one of the ones who joined to vote for him. I did not join because he was elected but because i thought the policy agenda would be something worth campaigning for under him. The 2017 manifesto could easily have been the sort of thing I would have come up with myself if tasked to do it.

As for momentum in my area there was one guy in particular who was always trying to motivate the rest of the left and was the one who kept putting his name forward for elections and kept being knocked back. Needless to say, most of the attempts to smear with antisemitism were aimed at him, though he was a flawed character, mostly on an ego trip. No cause matters more to him than himself.

As for most of the rest of the local momentum people they were pretty much idealistic left wingers, and were far more ready to put the groundwork in when it came to canvassing and knocking on doors. Large numbers of the established members rarely ever bothered, and rarely ever showed up at meetings unless the call went out to try and outvote the left on something. As for momentum trying to deselect MPs it never happened in Plymouth. My constituency had and still has the Tory Johnny Mercer as an MP, so there never was a Labour MP to even think of deselecting. The other main Plymouth MP was and is Labour - Luke Pollard. Most of us on the left did not really trust him, due to little things he let slip about what he really thought from time to time. He became known as someone who would be supportive in public but be ready to plot for change behind the scenes. He once let slip internally that he thought all of us on the left were antisemites, which is a kind of McCarthyite way of thinking. However he was supportive of the party publicly and did not seek to damage it's electoral chances publicly so there was never any move to deselect him.

There was however much anger and bitterness on the left for those MPs who sought to sink the ship because they didnt like the captain, people like Chukka Umunna and Ian Austin. Had one of them been an MP down here we would no doubt have done our best to deselect him. They deliberately sought to weaponize the antisemitism issue against their own party to do it maximum damage because they didn't like the ones then in charge. Many left the party in the end to openly oppose it, a few ended up in the Lib Dems eventually. On standing down as an MP in 2019, Ian Austin urged his constituents to vote for the Tories. We on the left saw them as treacherous scumbags who saw the Tories as a lesser evil than their own party and acted accordingly. We feel their primary reasons for being in Labour were both self-interested careerism and to try ensure that the party never became a serious threat to the economic status quo. When it did they sought every means to prevent it coming to power. Feelings ran and still run high against them. But far from all of them left the party. Others who were complicit in the attempt to sink their own ship to drown the captain, are the very faction in control of the party right now. Which is why the left are being driven out on any pretext.

Which is also another set of reasons why I cannot vote Labour. After all I have seen and experienced, feelings run deep. It is almost that I expect the Tories to be like that but to have found that Labour is shocked and sickened me to the core. There would need to be serious changes at the top for me to reconsider. But like most other democratic socialists and social democrats who have lost faith in Labour, I firmly believe they will never let that change happen. We on the left mostly accept now that we have lost the party for good and need to lend our support elsewhere if we want a single iota of hope for meaningful change at any point in the future. The party formed to champion the interests of the working masses has been stolen from them to serve the interests of affluent middle class aspirational metropolitan liberals. At least that is how it seems to us.