ska invita
back on the other side
I don't particularly follow your assumptions but I get the gist . It sounds chariceture to me, but I'm not going to argue it, I'm not invested.I clocked your comment and thought about it while listening to Lewis being interviewed on Novara media last night (think the interview was earlier in the week).
He was abysmal. ‘A level’ cultural race theory combined with liberal popular frontism. His position is basically the same as Paul Masons (iirc Mason backed him for leader before swinging behind Starmer once CL couldn’t get the votes to go onto the ballot). Put simply: large sections of the working class - especially those not in cities, not young and not possessive of a postmodernist understanding of the world - are lost to ‘the left’. They are nativist/racist and beyond the pale.
Instead he proposes a liberal alliance of Labour, Liberal Democrat’s, Greens and Nats, the need for PR and coalition. Oddly, the young thrusting dynamic radical viewers of Novara lapped it up.
So you might be right therefore, that if Labour loses in 2024, that the approach he represents might be where Labour ends up. It’d be the settlement Blair and Mandelson always wanted: albeit cloaked in identity language.
My impression is Clive Lewis isn't much of a heavyweight thinker, he's quite a normal guy really. Ex army too. Maybe he can get tripped up on this or that but I think he is quite heartfelt... Not cut from cynical cloth.
I don't know his opinions on many topics, but he hasn't shied from being critical of Starmer, he was broadly supportive of Corbyn, and if his every man charm carries through he might rise to the top of a bland field. That's about the sum of my impression of him.
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