Can Corbynism survive without Corbynism? We have our fullest answer to that question in Rebecca Long Bailey’s opening pitch for the Labour leadership published in Tribune today. A few of its main threads illustrate not just how divorced Corbynism is from contemporary political culture but from a decent understanding of Labour party history.
“The election result was devastating,” she begins, “but with the climate crisis spiralling and the far-right on the march, we must regroup for the struggles ahead.” The Tory party has indeed reinvented itself, but not, as the over-worked language of twentieth century fascism would have it, into a party of jackbooted thugs committed to mass violence, but into a force driven by a neo-Gaullist take on social democracy – Johnson’s “boosterism” or levelling up.
