{"id":5646,"date":"2015-09-14T11:39:45","date_gmt":"2015-09-14T10:39:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=5646"},"modified":"2015-09-14T16:15:59","modified_gmt":"2015-09-14T15:15:59","slug":"a-new-kind-of-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=5646","title":{"rendered":"‘A new kind of politics’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Jeremy Corbyn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s election as Labour leader with a mandate which dwarfs that given to Tony Blair 21 years ago is the most extraordinary event in the 45 years I have been a party member. To say it is a victory for hope may sound trite and cliched, but it is really the only explanation for what has occurred. This sweeping victory in all parts of the Labour electorate \u00e2\u20ac\u201c including the full party members \u00e2\u20ac\u201c is, I believe, three parts optimism and one part repudiation of the \u00e2\u20ac\u015bNew Labour\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 past.<\/p>\n

 
\nThat is where all the talk of Labour heading back to the 1980s is so misplaced. The hundreds of young people who thronged Unite headquarters every evening during the campaign to phonebank for Corbyn have no great interest in that now distant decade.<\/p>\n

 
\nThe times they recall with a shudder are more recent \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the Iraq war Blair led us into and which many of them marched against while still in school; and the economic crash of 2008 caused by the bankers and City institutions New Labour so recklessly indulged. The line from New Labour nostalgics that \u00e2\u20ac\u015bwe won three elections\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 misses the point for millions. For all the positive reforms, it is a past no one wants to return to. This much is beyond doubt \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Blairism is dead and unmourned.<\/p>\n

 
\nBut mostly the tens of thousands flocking to engage with Labour are concerned about the future. Corbyn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s message \u00e2\u20ac\u201c one they have never heard from a frontline politician in their lives \u00e2\u20ac\u201c speaks to their hopes and aspirations.<\/p>\n

 
\nHe offers an alternative both in style and substance. Mainstream politics has for a generation been conducted in terms of a managerial minimalism within tightly drawn parameters. It has become almost democratically impermissible to advance ideas that buck the free-market, deregulation, privatisation and austerity consensus.<\/p>\n

 
\nThe Corbyn campaign has thus been an oasis in the desert of neoliberal politics \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which is why the establishment, including the Labour party establishment, have been so vicious in their attacks. The task now is to re-fertilise the surrounding landscape.<\/p>\n

 
\nMany of Corbyn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s policies have an appeal that reach out far beyond the left. To those who don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand why the poor should pay for the bankers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 blunders and believe the tax burden should be more fairly distributed. Or that a rebalanced economy less dependent on financial services \u00e2\u20ac\u201c offered by all parties but delivered by none \u00e2\u20ac\u201c makes sense.<\/p>\n

 
\nRailway renationalisation draws enormous support. And a politician whose foreign policy does not involve immediate recourse to Bomber Command, but treats refugees as humans, speaks for many more people than the attacks on Corbyn would indicate.<\/p>\n

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Common enemy\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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True, he has a mountain to climb. The Tories are out to remake politics for good by dismantling the Labour movement. Their trade union bill, to be debated today, aims to make strikes impossible, reduce trade unions through a byzantine system of regulations to some sort of industrial advisory bodies and marginalise our involvement in politics, starving the official opposition of funds as they do so.<\/p>\n

 
\nThey are so intent on this agenda that the most basic rights, including free speech and freedom of association, are imperilled. Everything the Tories can do to rig the political system \u00e2\u20ac\u201c more appointed peers, fewer elected MPs, constituencies redrawn on the basis of an electoral register missing millions of the young and the poorest \u00e2\u20ac\u201c will be attempted.<\/p>\n

 
\nThis is the enemy the reborn Labour party is facing. The intensity and severity of David Cameron\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s authoritarian attack will, I believe, help Corbyn in one respect. It will push all elements of the Labour movement and all parts of the party together in the face of the common enemy. I am convinced that there will be no purges or witch-hunts, contrary to alarmist media speculation. Not only would that be against Corbyn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nature, it also runs counter to his intention to democratise Labour policymaking, and include members and supporters more closely in determining the party\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s priorities.<\/p>\n

 
\nThat is indeed a new kind of politics. The age of the conviction politician willing to offer socialist alternatives to the status quo, and confident enough to say we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to take our broken society as an immutable given, is breaking. It may not be the French revolution, but it is a blissful dawn to greet.<\/p>\n

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