Cauterizing the Wound

Earlier this year, when the British general election was won by the Conservative Party, and the Labour Party was left reeling, I put up a posting, including a piece by Tariq Ali.   In that essay, Ali declared that the Labour Party, apparently mortally wounded, should be let bleed - his point being that the impending crisis of popular and party disaffection with Blairism, with 'New Labour' (which has in reality been the conquest of the Labour Party by neoliberal dogma) should be let come to a head.   The only change worth having at the Party would be radical change.

But even Tariq Ali probably could not have anticipated the extraordinary outcome of the leadership contest that would followed the resignation of Ed Miliband (son of the Ralph Miliband whose essay on Chile I posted on September 11).  Now the Party has, in Jeremy Corbyn, the most radical leader in its history, elected with a massive majority and mandate.  When one wipes from one's eyes the accumulated muck and mist of the alternately splenetic, triumphalist, crass, ignorant, hysterical or complacent commentary in the centre-right media mainstream, a leader of the greatest interest and potential is revealed.   Here is Ali reacting to Corbyn's victory - published in the London Independent and re-published on the Verso website:

The Most Leftwing Leader That Labour Has Ever Had

 

Conor