Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I suspect Labour is finished as an electoral force until it can get past this Blair vs Corbyn binary.
On one side, I think the liberal/soft-left side of the party should recognise that, for all that Corbyn has a faulty understanding of capitalism and that this causes problems by encouraging a basically conspiratorial view of the world, the policies that have arisen from Corbynism are for the most part both feasible and popular, never mind how personally unpopular the man associated with them might be.
On the other, Corbynites need to stop using "Blairite" as a catch-all insult and to accept that the Labour government of 1997-2010 did a huge amount that was genuinely progressive and good, and that reducing this entire legacy to the single word "Iraq" is massively unhelpful and self-defeating. Further, plenty of good Labour MPs clearly don't fall neatly into either of these two opposed camps, and the fact of not being in Corbyn's inner circle doesn't mean these people are wholly devoted to the cult of Blair either. Or to put it another way, people who don't wake up each morning and think "How can I thwart Zionism today?" don't necessarily think the Iraq invasion and PFI in the NHS were great ideas.
Really, there are good things about "Corbynism" that can and should be separated from Corbyn (irksome as that may be to his supporters, but unfortunately necessary given public perception of him), and there are good things about "Blairism" that can and should be separated from Blair (less of a problem, I'd have thought, since the person who mainly cares about Tony Blair's public perception these days is Tony Blair).
And thirdly, Seumas Milne, Len McLuskey and Ken Livingstone, along with people who say "dOnT tRuSt yOuGoV, iTs ToRy pRoPaGaNdA" and anyone identifying as a fucking luxury space communist, should be put at the bottom of a very deep pit, sealed over and forgotten about.
On one side, I think the liberal/soft-left side of the party should recognise that, for all that Corbyn has a faulty understanding of capitalism and that this causes problems by encouraging a basically conspiratorial view of the world, the policies that have arisen from Corbynism are for the most part both feasible and popular, never mind how personally unpopular the man associated with them might be.
On the other, Corbynites need to stop using "Blairite" as a catch-all insult and to accept that the Labour government of 1997-2010 did a huge amount that was genuinely progressive and good, and that reducing this entire legacy to the single word "Iraq" is massively unhelpful and self-defeating. Further, plenty of good Labour MPs clearly don't fall neatly into either of these two opposed camps, and the fact of not being in Corbyn's inner circle doesn't mean these people are wholly devoted to the cult of Blair either. Or to put it another way, people who don't wake up each morning and think "How can I thwart Zionism today?" don't necessarily think the Iraq invasion and PFI in the NHS were great ideas.
Really, there are good things about "Corbynism" that can and should be separated from Corbyn (irksome as that may be to his supporters, but unfortunately necessary given public perception of him), and there are good things about "Blairism" that can and should be separated from Blair (less of a problem, I'd have thought, since the person who mainly cares about Tony Blair's public perception these days is Tony Blair).
And thirdly, Seumas Milne, Len McLuskey and Ken Livingstone, along with people who say "dOnT tRuSt yOuGoV, iTs ToRy pRoPaGaNdA" and anyone identifying as a fucking luxury space communist, should be put at the bottom of a very deep pit, sealed over and forgotten about.