Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Jeremy Corbyn's time is up

"Long Corbyn"? Are they stretching for a ridiculous "long covid" analogy, or do they really mean to give him a gangster nickname?
the former. lingering damage afflicting the host body still long after the disease / the politician has been expunged.
it's not a phrase Maguire has coined there. I can remember usage back all the way in 2020. for as long as long covid has been a thing.
this is the earliest I found just now “Long Corbyn” haunts Labour | TheArticle


it seems like a concerted effort to make the "long-" prefix the 21st answer to the "-gate" suffix for lazy political label over applied.
see e.g. The Tory party is suffering from Long Cameron
I don't much like it.
 
Shrodinger's call...

Both asking for Corbyn to be returned to the fold, and not asking for Corbyn to be returned to the fold.

The verbal gymnastics involved is going to be entertaining viewing.
I was thinking more a Moebius Strip, Escher painting, Ouroboros process of perma-expulsions. Everyone gets expelled until starmer realises he's expelled himself. Corbyn then sneaks back in and take over.
 
Hot off the presses, here's a post-mortem:
"This catalysed a series of discussions amongst the struggle-orientated part of the new Labour left. Our slogan became ‘Corbynism from Below,’ and we attempted to build a base that could support our counter attacking ambitions.4 This took the form of a kind of absurd reverse Jenga: we had a left wing leader of the Labour party, now we need to reinvigorate the rank and file of the trade union movement; to organise tenants; to build fundamental community infrastructure.5

I must have missed this vertical attempt to 'build a base' and 'reinvogorate the rank and file'. What form did this take and who exactly are this rank and file? Labour Party members?

I did laugh at this though

"To achieve this, these two leading intellectuals of the Corbyn period propose forming an alliance with the elements of tech capital against carbon-intensive industries and neoliberal finance". Who knew a partnership between Apple and Momentum would be the legacy of Jezza and co.
 
"This catalysed a series of discussions amongst the struggle-orientated part of the new Labour left. Our slogan became ‘Corbynism from Below,’ and we attempted to build a base that could support our counter attacking ambitions.4 This took the form of a kind of absurd reverse Jenga: we had a left wing leader of the Labour party, now we need to reinvigorate the rank and file of the trade union movement; to organise tenants; to build fundamental community infrastructure.5

I must have missed this vertical attempt to 'build a base' and 'reinvogorate the rank and file'. What form did this take and who exactly are this rank and file? Labour Party members?

I did laugh at this though

"To achieve this, these two leading intellectuals of the Corbyn period propose forming an alliance with the elements of tech capital against carbon-intensive industries and neoliberal finance". Who knew a partnership between Apple and Momentum would be the legacy of Jezza and co.
an alliance with ..... neoliberal finance
:thumbs:
 
"This catalysed a series of discussions amongst the struggle-orientated part of the new Labour left. Our slogan became ‘Corbynism from Below,’ and we attempted to build a base that could support our counter attacking ambitions.4 This took the form of a kind of absurd reverse Jenga: we had a left wing leader of the Labour party, now we need to reinvigorate the rank and file of the trade union movement; to organise tenants; to build fundamental community infrastructure.5

I must have missed this vertical attempt to 'build a base' and 'reinvogorate the rank and file'. What form did this take and who exactly are this rank and file? Labour Party members?

I did laugh at this though

"To achieve this, these two leading intellectuals of the Corbyn period propose forming an alliance with the elements of tech capital against carbon-intensive industries and neoliberal finance". Who knew a partnership between Apple and Momentum would be the legacy of Jezza and co.
Yeah, not read the book but that does sound like exactly the sort of big-brain idea you can imagine the likes of Gilbert and Williams coming out with. As for the other question... well, it's not mentioned by name but I suppose Acorn, for all its flaws, was probably the best attempt to do that... but I suppose it says a lot that out of the two footnotes that appear in that quote, there's one going to two articles saying "we ought to do this", and then one linking to an article from the US. I did like the phrase "reverse Jenga" for what the Corbynism-from-below lot were trying to do, though.
 
I think this was my favourite bit though:
The strategies of the working class today must be defined by our current experiences of working, renting and getting by. And yet all we can see around us are political strategies that have failed to adapt to changing conditions. To make matters worse, the advocates pushing for these strategies seem unable to even recognise the reasons for their failure. The state of the contemporary leftist debate on strategy was demonstrated during a primetime panel debate at The World Transformed earlier this year, which saw a prominent panellist spend most of the evening simply calling the audience members cunts.
eta: oop, that's from a different article in the same issue.
 
Last edited:
Does anyone remember Syriza and Podemos? Jeremy in power would've been similar. That's why we need to quit supporting politicians and political parties altogether.
 
Last edited:
Does anyone remember Syriza and Podemos? Jeremy in power would've been very similar. That's why we need to quit supporting politicians and political parties altogether.
i think you have forgotten all the shit the parliamentary labour party gave jc. him in power would have seen a very peculiar situation in which his colleagues actively sabotaged the major policy planks of a labour administration
 
Does anyone remember Syriza and Podemos? Jeremy in power would've been very similar. That's why we need to quit supporting politicians and political parties altogether.
Spain currently has a member of the Communist Party as Labour minister. Is she perfect? No. Nobody is. Is she making a tangible difference by reversing some of the PP's worst anti-labour measures? Yes. Is a PSOE government with a Podemos/Sumar junior partner massively preferable to a PP government? Yes. It's also no coincidence that within Europe it has been the Spanish government calling out Israel most forcefully over the last three months.

These things do make a measurable difference. It's childish politics to pretend that they don't. Does it mean we should prostrate ourselves at the feet of Yolanda Díaz? Of course it doesn't. She owes the voters, not the other way around. But by fuck, having a voice like that in a position of genuine power and influence is a very very long way from anything we can currently hope for in the UK, with two (very slightly) different versions of neoliberal managerialism on the table.
 
Spain currently has a member of the Communist Party as Labour minister. Is she perfect? No. Nobody is. Is she making a tangible difference by reversing some of the PP's worst anti-labour measures? Yes. Is a PSOE government with a Podemos/Sumar junior partner massively preferable to a PP government? Yes. It's also no coincidence that within Europe it has been the Spanish government calling out Israel most forcefully over the last three months.

These things do make a measurable difference. It's childish politics to pretend that they don't. Does it mean we should prostrate ourselves at the feet of Yolanda Díaz? Of course it doesn't. She owes the voters, not the other way around. But by fuck, having a voice like that in a position of genuine power and influence is a very very long way from anything we can currently hope for in the UK, with two (very slightly) different versions of neoliberal managerialism on the table.
Far too limited. If the failed system was replaced with a better political and economic structure so much more could be achieved and we wouldn't have to depend on labour ministers sometimes making things temporarily, slightly better for just some people while the system does much harm to others and holds the exploitative class system etc in place. Atleast, we could have independent, grass roots movements aiming to properly change things and challenge power and practice solidarity and aiming to bring about genuine socialism, but so much of the time that's not where the focus is.

And I personally think it would be nice if people were fighting to have a political and economic structure that didn't enable and empower the neoliberals and far right and lets them get their way, which is always what any type of bourgeois 'democratic' or capitalist system does.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom