Labour's Perfect Storm
A young Labour voter wrote a piece for The Guardian the other day in which s/he asked not to be patronised over her/his passionate support for Jeremy Corbyn to become the party's next leader.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/23/why-young-voters-favour-jeremy-corbyn
The article was written anonymously, for some unexplained reason, but in any event I would never patronise anyone and certainly not on the basis of their age although that cuts both ways obviously.
Which brings me to the young Labour voters' reasons for being passionate about JC, none of which are new or different because Jeremy has, of course, been preaching the same gospel for the past 40 or 50 years.
Yet at no time has Jeremy's political message resonated inside the Labour Party or beyond which is something that any Labour voter, young or old, ought to reflect upon.
The party's leadership contest has been opened up in what looks like an orgy of democracy, but in reality this is not true because more non-party members will be voting than full members thanks to the new electoral college which has increased rather than decreased the influence of Britain's union bosses.
If you ask me, the contest has plunged Labour into a 'perfect storm' and the search for a new leader is taking place in an anti-politics mood and without drawing any lessons from the party's crushing 2015 general election defeat.
And Ed Miliband hasn't exactly helped matters either by resigning as Labour leader and flouncing off on a succession of holidays, yet only weeks ago Ed was busy 'measuring the curtains' for his entry into No 10 Downing Street.
As for Jeremy, he's an unreconstructed municipal (town hall) socialist whose politics are driven by notions of class struggle in which the trade unions play a 'vanguard' role, despite the fact that the vast majority of ordinary union members don't share the politics of Britain's union bosses.
In fact less than 200,000 union members have registered to vote in the Labour leadership contest which is only around 6% of the 3,000,000 or so members who are entitled to vote by virtue of paying a political levy to the Labour Party.
Which means that the politics of Britain's union's bosses is completely unrepresentative when it comes to reflecting the views of ordinary union members.
So for any passionate supporters of genuine democracy out there, inside or outside the Labour Party, the writing is very definitely on the wall.
