After the disaster of the general election, Labour figures of a certain age started pointedly sharing on social media a video of a conference speech. An ineffectual pacifist who didn’t genuflect enough to patriotism – Michael Foot then, Jeremy Corbyn now – led the party to oblivion, and allowed in a horde of far-left “entryists”, who brought the party into disrepute. It’s an open secret that the pro-People’s Vote wing of the Labour left is dominated by members or ex-members of Trotskyist groups such as Mason’s old outfit, Workers’ Power. In fact, it makes more sense to compare Corbyn to Kinnock rather than to Foot. Even though, by 1997, a general election victory seemed an open goal for Labour, just to make sure of it the new leader ingratiated himself with the media that had destroyed his predecessor.

Source: The Guardian December 27, 2019 09:56 UTC