Yes, I have rejoined the Labour Party. Dave Osler - a bloke who has spent most of the last decade arguing and working for a new political party to the left of New Labour, even writing a book making an extended case as to why such a party is essential - is now member L0093001 of Hackney North and Stoke Newington CLP.

All of the jibes I have used to take the piss out of Labour-supporting friends and family, all of the wisecracks in Labour Party plc, can now be thrown back in my face. Be my guest.

I am now in the same party that sent British troops to Iraq, the same party that scrapped student grants in the single most socially regressive piece of legislation introduced by any UK government since 1945.

I am in the same party as a sucession of racist semi-Stalinist and fully-Stalinist home secretaries that have repeatedly limited civil liberties. The same party my boss. I am a little sell-out careerist bastard. Take me out and have me shot.

There is even a good argument that journalists that speak their minds shouldn't join political parties in the first place. I certainly haven't had a very happy time in them over the last 25 years. I guess I just never did learn to keep my trap tactically closed, and don't suppose I ever will.

So here's vow number one: holding a Labour Party card won't shut me up. I think it is a reasonable requirement of party membership not to call for a vote in favour candidates of other parties. Other than that, I will think and say exactly what I would have thought and said if I wasn't in the Labour Party, especially when it comes to the politics of the Labour Party itself. Those that know will testify that I don't do diplomacy.

My political agenda inside New Labour will be the political agenda of this blog. I advocate working class-based democratic socialism, grounded in an ecumenical reading of Western Marxism, and taking in the ideas of feminism, ecosocialism, anarchism, radical liberalism and libertarianism where I feel those schools of thought have something relevant to say.

I favour such concepts as expanded trade union rights, a dramatic extension of public ownership and workers' control, left libertarian social policies that would cause instant myocardial infarction among Daily Mail leader writers, and a foreign policy that consistently promotes democracy and sustainable development. Capping everything else, I am clear that the environment is the most important issue facing humanity today.

In short, all the sorts of messages New Labour absolutely doesn't want to hear. If I have any success at all in gaining a hearing, I expect that the apparatchiks will try to shut me up. OK. If I am expelled, so be it.

But vow number two: I will be politically accountable every step of the way. I will explain my political thinking, and be willing to listen to the counter-arguments.

And I do know I have a heck of lot of humble pie to eat on this one. I have since 1995 advocated the creation of a 'party of recomposition' in Britain, and been involved with various attempts to build one, notably the Socialist Labour Party and the Socialist Alliance.

I suppose I finally realised the wheels had come off that project when the SWP unilaterally decided to ditch the Socialist Alliance and launch Respect. as I said at the time:

'Revolutionary socialism in England signed its own suicide note last week, and it came in the unlikely shape of a billet-doux to George Galloway. The overwhelming majority of the far left south of the border has lined up behind a project that seeks not so much to put the working class in the saddle, as Orwell expressed it, but to put a £150,000-a-year Saudi-bankrolled crypto-tankie into Strasbourg. Bang goes the Trotskyist neighbourhood.'

Notice I said 'England'. I did have hopes that Scottish Socialist Party would prove a more viable model. This summer's implosion has disillusioned me, in the literal sense of the word.

It was a short step from the realisation that Trotskyism is finished in Britain to the realisation that Trotskyism is largely finished internationally. There are perhaps one or two countries where something worthwhile could ultimately emerge from the wreckage. The Ligue Communiste Revolutionaire in France and the New Socialist Group in Canada have at least shown themselves capable of new forms of thought and new forms of organisation. But broadly speaking, the far left has failed to understand how global politics has changed over the last two decades.

It remains ossified in a strange twilight world of chop-logic, centred around the correct application of analyses of the world of 70 and 80 years ago to the world today. You can read more of my thoughts on this here.

It is not that there will not be future revolutions. The increasing social polarisation generated by the global neoliberal project makes that certain. But Trotskyist parties won't be leading them anywhere, any time soon. In practice, the top cadre of the major tendencies are well aware of this. That is what makes Respect - to some extent - rational opportunism.

Islamism will be a factor in world politics in the decades to come. If you are going to ditch the working class as the centre of your political universe, best to go with the flow. The same can be said of the efforts of the Grant international to ingratiate itself with Hugo Chavez.

The failure of the entire tradition of 'socialism from below' to win any real social implantation anywhere in the world condemns it to irrelevance. It is now reduced to small numbers of people commenting from the sidelines. Not the ideal situation. But better than the Faustian pacts some groups have elected for instead.

Just to make it clear, then, I am not joining the Labour Party as an 'entrist'. I am not affiliated with any Trotskyist organisation and won't be signing up to any of the surprisingly numerous entrist tendencies that are still active inside Labour.

I am not joining the Labour Party on the basis that either it can be converted into a revolutionary party or that a revolutionary tendency can be built within it. Both those ideas are evidently infantile.

Nor will I be trying to 'reclaim New Labour from the Blairites', because I don't think that can be done. The many reasons why that is impossible are aptly summarised here.

It's even quite likely I won't find myself in alignment with the backward Stalinist-influenced rump that today styles itself 'the Labour left'.

The present Labour left is sectarian, clique-ish, and utterly unable to understand the modern world. Essentially, it still conceives of socialist utopia as a nationalised gas industry, much as if globalisation, the collapse of communism, political Islam and global warming had never happened.

As a result, it automatically fails politically, because its backward-looking bureaucratic outlook condemns it in advance to fail. That is why it lost the battle with Blairism without even putting up a serious fight. It couldn't even advance a viable alternative set of ideas.

I will, of course, be backing the John McDonnell leadership campaign, even though I am well aware that it has no chance of success. Its strength is its tacit recognition of some of the themes above, and the need to involve socialists both inside and outside the Labour Party in the reinvention of relevant democratic socialist policies for today.

If it can win even a very narrow layer of a few hundred people to that project, it clearly represents the most viable strategy for even limited leftwing advance that is currently available in the UK.

That is, of course, a limited horizon. But then, these are times when limited horizons surely trump strategic dead ends.

Blogging Brownite MP Tom Watson has just posted this tit-bit:

'Friends tell me that Jeremy Corbyn - pictured - is on the verge of throwing his hat into the ring for the deputy leadership. I don't know why he doesn't go the whole way and stand for the leadership. He has more humour than John McDonnell.'

If the story's true, that's excellent news. Can I hereby declare myself the first Labour blogger to endorse the new hard left dream ticket?

Yeah, yeah. I know that the last time the left challenged for both jobs, Benn and Heffer secured just 12%. And this time round, it's not even sure that McDonnell and Corbyn will make it onto the ballot papers

Even so, the contest - if it does take place - should constitute an important barometer of Labour Party feeling. Every percentage point over the 1988 tally is well worth fighting for.

Looks like Jeremy Corbyn (pictured) probably is going for the Labour number two job, if this story on Guardian Unlimited is anything to go by. Asked directly if he is considering standing, the Islington North MP answered:

"Nothing's decided until the new year. But there needs to be an anti-war candidate.

Mr Corbyn - who is backing Mr McDonnell for the top job - refused to say whether the two men had spoken about a combined ticket, saying merely he had not spoken to the Hayes MP "for a couple of days".

Unusually mealy-mouthed for Jeremy. But I think we can take that as a 'yes'. By the way, help a Labour Party newbie here. The vote is by STV, right? So it makes sense to say 'vote Corbyn, transfer to Cruddas'. Or no?

Hay un problema, dudes. Getting on the ballot paper requires the signatures of 44 Labour MPs. That is a major barrier to even one candidate to the left of Gordon Brown making the cut. If both try to do so, neither will suceed. Simple as that. Simpson is a savvy bloke and realises all this, of course:

'Mr Simpson said that the two men might have to agree that one would stand down to give the other one a clear run.

'"The harsh message for both of them is if they neither of them can get the 44 [nominations], there are going to have to be discussions between them about getting people to switch."'

Quite. And no surprises for who Simpson wants to see back down. The snag is, even though McDonnell is a no-hoper, Old Nine Homes is a no-hope no-hoper, if you see what I mean.

Given that only real point of running a Labour left candidate at all – other than to fuck up Gordon’s coronation party, a worthy aim in itself – is to regalvanise the Labour left activist base, McDonnell is clearly the man for the job.

Ladies and gentlemen, raise your glasses to the Socialist Campaign Group. So faction-ridden they cannot even organise a purely tokenistic leadership challenge without making a pig's ear of it. Doncha just love ‘em?

Incidentally, Simpson has made it clear that he has no personal ambitions in all this:

'Mr Simpson also sought to quash rumours that he may stand in the deputy leadership race as part of a dream ticket with Mr Meacher.

'"What I have been trying to do is persuade [Michael] Meacher to stand for the leadership."'

Update: Mole writes in the comments box:

'Alan Simpson IS planning a deputy leadership bid. You can take that as fact. He's been driving the Meacher bid nearly single-handedly SOLELY so he can launch his deputy leadership bid on the back of it. The idea is to launch a 'Climate Change' ticket.'

Kinda makes sense. Simpson is a smart guy. There must presumably be some method in his madness.

To his credit, Meacher is pretty straight-talking by politico standards. Meanwhile, a couple of Dave’s Part comments box regulars manage to get their oar in. Well done Susan, for eliciting the promise that he will drop out of the running if John McDonnell gets more backers.

A majority on the Labour left support John McDonnell and see your campaign as a spoiler which will only split the vote and stop a contest. Will you stand down if John has more nominations when Blair resigns? SUSAN PRESS, Calder Valley

‘There is no evidence whatever that a majority of people on the Labour Party left and the affiliated trade union movement support John McDonnell for leader. I have a great deal of respect for John, but I don't believe he can get the necessary 45 nominations, whereas I believe I can. I am not splitting the vote, but rather giving the centre-left the chance, to run a candidate who can pass the nominations threshold. But I do agree that whichever of the two of us has the larger number of nominations, the other should stand down when Tony Blair resigns.’

And here’s Marshajane in action:

You criticise the 'Westminster bubble' but said you spent the last two months talking to MPs about your campaign. Does this not show you have the same disrespect for people's views as the rest of the Westminster bubble? MARSHA JANE THOMPSON, by email

’I said that when people around the country come to vote, they may well take a quite different view of things from the inward-looking Westminster scene, and should be listened to. But I also extensively canvassed my colleagues in the Parliamentary Labour Party because they alone are the ones who make the nominations.’

Finally, I thought this one was rather cheeky .,.

You always look a bit boring. Are you? ROB JACKSON, by email

’No. Why? Are you?’

Leading psephologist Anthony King takes one look at the results and declares:

'Neither Michael Meacher nor John McDonnell, who have said they would like to stand, has any significant support among the rank and file.'

Asked ‘in any contest for the Labour leadership, who would you vote for if the following candidates were nominated?’, the punters put Brown on 52% and Miliband on 14%. Meacher and McDonnell scored 6% apiece, while 18% were not sure and 5% would not vote. That’s sobering stuff, although at least the combined left candidate score reaches double figures, which is better than it could have been.

Oh well, look on the bright side. At least Clarke and Milburn will be seriously pissed off. And 35% disagreed with the statement that ‘to go one winning elections, Labour needs to govern from the centre, not to adopt more leftwing policies’. That said, 55% agreed.

For the deputy job, first preferences go 25% for Benn, 16% for Johnson, 11% for Harman, 9% for Hain, a disappointing 6% for Cruddas and just 5% for Blears.

Update: Thanks to Tim in the comments box for pointing out that the figures as published by the Torygraph do not break down the results between party members and affiliated trade unionists. But the YouGov website does, revealing:

’Amongst party members 69% would vote for Brown to 20% for Miliband, 8% for John McDonnell and 3% for Michael Meacher. In a straight fight between Brown and Miliband, Brown would win 70% to 30%. Amongst trade unionists the two left-wing candidates have more support, but Brown remains the runaway leader - Brown 63%, Miliband 15%, Meacher 13%, McDonnell 10% - in a straight fight it would be 64% to 36%.’

http://www.ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/951

Three to one sounds more like the ratio of support for McDonnell and Meacher that I would have expected among individual members.

But the maths don’t quite stack up. Surely John is averaging 9% between the two sections of the electoral college? Presumably – for whatever reason – the pollsters have stripped out the don’t knows, and the newspaper hasn’t.

’More than half half wanted Mr Brown to win, or thought him certain to become leader, with no significant support for any alternative figure. Very few saw a leadership election in terms of personalities, but were instead impatient for a chance to debate their core beliefs and the party’s future …

‘The lack of a credible — or sufficiently courageous — challenger thus poses a dilemma for the chancellor’s supporters. Eight members backed John McDonnell — the left-wing backbench MP who was the first candidate to declare — to be leader, compared with 43 supporting Mr Brown or regarding his succession as inevitable. Only a handful of other Labour figures were named by members in the first instance …’

Who do you want as Labour’s next leader?
Gordon Brown 43
John McDonnell 8
Michael Meacher 3
"Not Gordon Brown" 2
Peter Hain 2
Charles Clarke 2
David Miliband 1
Dennis Skinner 1
Tony Blair should stay 1
Undecided 17

Do you want a contest?
Yes 66
No/"not for sake of it" 6
Don’t mind/no view 8

If so, who should stand?
David Miliband 6
John Reid 5
John McDonnell 5
Charles Clarke 2
Alan Johnson 1
Alan Milburn 1
Unsure 14

Hmmm. Just thinking out loud here. But suppose neither McD nor Meach gets the 44 nominations and the Blairites can’t find anyone stupid enough to put their head above the parapet.

In other words, suppose New Labour did decide to go ahead with an affirmative ballot. Of course Brown would win. But the number of abstentions and votes against him might just prove embarrassingly high. And that wouldn’t be a good start to the Brown premiership.

The feeling among many mainstream party members locally is that she has been more concerned with appearing on telly than putting in the hard graft required of a constituency representative.

Meanwhile, even some of the 'Ackney Norf hardcore Trot cadre crew have been disquieted by her decision to pay £10,000 a year for a private education for her son and by her failure - so far, anyway - to declare support for leftwing leadership contender John McDonnell.

Then again, her voting record on most socialist touchstone issues has been pretty consistently good. Her decision to vote against the government on Trident is a case in point.

However, if Diane does need to seek re-endorsement, I'm told that there are at least three local women councillors ready to make a contest of it, namely Rita Krishna, Nargis Khan and former deputy mayor Jessica Crow.

Every vote counts, as the saying goes. So readers ... what do you think? Is it my bounden proletarian duty to back Abbott or not?

Michael Meacher sets out the policies for his Labour leadership bid in The Times today. There is a call for reduced inequality, but no details on how this might be achieved; some commonsense ideas on how to reduce the prison population; a demand for the decentralisation of power through constitutional reform; great stress on climate change, including the need to reduce carbon emissions by at least 60% by 2050; and a ‘troops out soon’ stance on Iraq, based on the advice of British rather than US military commanders.

Thoughts/observations?

‘BAY CITY ROLLER TO HOOK UP WITH TONY BENN AT GLASTONBURY'S LEFT FIELD

‘Former Bay City Roller Eric Faulkner - pictured left - will open a session with veteran Labour politician Tony Benn on Sunday afternoon at this year’s Glastonbury Festival under the banner "Another World is Possible".

‘The Left Field stage is promoted by the Battersea and Wandsworth TUC who own the Worker's Beer Company. It has grown from a beer tent to the biggest covered stage on the Glastonbury site with a capacity of 5000. The promoters are promising a stunning international line up this year in support of the global fight for economic and social justice.

‘Geoff Martin, Left Field Director, said:

‘"Eric Faulkner is a top bloke and dead proud of his union roots and he was blown away when we suggested he open for Tony Benn at Glastonbury.

‘"It's been suggested that there's a touch of Life on Mars about this connection - Eric was a teenage star in the 1970s when Tony Benn was a Labour minister.

‘"One things for sure - they'll have a packed house at this years Glastonbury under the banner "Another World is Possible" and watch out for a rendition of Bye Bye Baby specially for Tony Blair."’

‘The truth is that I have 24 signed statements from MPs nominating me, with further support from another dozen colleagues who have indicated that they will sign up once the contest is about to start.

Michael Meacher MP
Lab, Oldham West and Royton

Two dozen signed pledges? Is that really the God's Honest, Michael? Oddly enough, the page listing campaign supporters on the MM website does not name anybody with higher electoral office than councillor.

By contrast, John McDonnell’s site names 11 sitting MPs who back him publically. Not just verbally, but in writing on the worldwide web. Still, perhaps the mystery Meacherites are just keeping their powder dry.

John McDonnell and Michael Meacher have done the sensible thing and agreed that whichever of them garners the fewest nominations in the Labour leadership race will back out, The Times reports this morning. Or have they?

‘But last night The Times discovered there are tensions between the two candidates, with Mr McDonnell saying that a deal had been struck but Mr Meacher saying the details still had to be worked out.

‘By contrast, Mr Meacher said that there was still some way to go before the final details were ironed out. "We are moving towards what I hope will be an agreement. I think it’s jumping the gun to say there is an agreement at the moment though. I do think we will reach an agreement along those lines. The important thing is there is a single centre-left candidate."

Read that last quote from Old Nine Homes again. ‘The important thing is there is a single centre-left candidate’. MM locates himself on the centre-left; McDonnell clearly doesn’t. Nothing like leaving yourself some wriggle room, is there, Michael?

[Hat tip: Stroppyblog]

This press release in my in box this morning:

JOINT LEADERSHIP CAMPAIGN PRESS CONFERENCE

ON BEHALF OF
 
JOHN MCDONNELL MP AND MICHAEL MEACHER MP

4.00 pm
 
THURSDAY 10TH MAY
 
Macmillan Room
 
Portcullis House

TO ANNOUNCE WHICH CANDIDATE HAS MOST PARLIAMENTARY SUPPORT AND WILL BE CONTINUING WITH THEIR CHALLENGE FOR THE LABOUR PARTY LEADERSHIP
 
Thereafter the successful candidate will be available for interview from the Atrium, Portcullis House and elsewhere, as required 

 
-ends-

What on earth is going on?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

McDonnell and Meacher Campaign Update . . . Press Conference postponed

As agreed, the campaign teams for Michael Meacher and John McDonnell have met to assess the level of support for each candidate. The outcome is that the issue is too close to call at the moment and a number of clarifications need to be made.

The good news for the Labour Party is that there is clearly sufficient support to ensure that a leadership candidate will come forward from the Centre-Left.

The Campaign Teams will reconvene on Monday to clarify which candidate goes forward from the Centre-Left. There will be a press conference late in the afternoon. Time and venue tbc.

-Ends-

This from the Evening Standard:

Gordon Brown looks set to be unopposed this week after an admission from Labour's Left-wing that MPs are failing to unite behind sole rival John McDonnell.

Nominations close on Thursday and the Hayes and Harlington MP needs 45 endorsements to qualify.

This press release in response:

PRESS NOTICE…………….PRESS NOTICE……………….

For immediate release

Meacher campaign rubbishes Standard report and confirms MPs are switching to McDonnell

Alan Simpson MP, Parliamentary Manager for the Michael Meacher Campaign said: "The story in the Standard today is complete nonsense. Michael, myself and the whole of the Meacher team are absolutely committed to supporting John McDonnell. We are in the process of contacting all of Michael's supporters and we have no doubt that the vast majority will be prepared to switch their support to John."

ends

As I said earlier … McDonnell isn’t on the ballot paper yet. And, in all fairness, all Meacher can do is encourage his supporters to switch. He is in no position to give orders.

Staunch Brownite finance spokeswoman Wendy Alexander (pictured) has thrown her hat into the ring. The other two likely contenders, Andy Kerr and Margaret Curran, have ruled themselves out, paving the way for the sort of coronation that gave Gordon Brown the keys to Number Ten.

Now the BBC reports that the Campaign for Socialism, the main grouping on the Scottish Labour left, is holding an emergency meeting this weekend to discuss mounting a potential challenge. Any candidate would need nominations from six MSPs.

Questions for Scottish readers/anyone else on the case:
(1) Who are CfS likely to stand? Names with potted political biogs, please.
(2) What are the chances of finding six MSP backers?
(3) Is the same electoral college system in use north of the border?
(4) What sort of percentage could a leftie reasonably expect to poll if he/she makes it onto the ballot paper?
(5) Likely responses from Scottish Socialist Party and Solidarity?

UPDATE: Several of the questions I pose above are answered in this piece in The Scotsman:

The left wing of the parliamentary party, the Campaign for Socialism Group, will meet on Sunday to discuss putting forward a candidate, but with only five MSPs and limited support, the chances of one coming forward are remote. Bill Butler, the MSP for Glasgow Anniesland, was mentioned last night as the only possible member of the group who might stand. But he will need six MSPs to sign his nomination form and it was not clear where those nominations would come from …

One critical response to [Ms Alexander’s] likely elevation came from Tommy Sheridan, the Solidarity leader. He said Ms Alexander would be "disastrous" for Labour, adding: "Socialists who are left in the Labour Party must be in despair that they can't even find a left candidate to stand."

Still interested to hear what the Scottish comrades make of it all, though.

Around 300 Scottish Labour lefts met in Glasgow on Sunday to determine whether or not they could muster the five MSPs necessary to mount a challenge to Wendy Alexander for the party leadership north of the border. They couldn’t.

[Hat tip: a gloating Luke Akehurst]

The sitting MP since 1983 has been 77-year-old Campaign Group stalwart Bob Waring (pictured), who was deselected. As a result, he is likely to stand as an independent.

'Serbian Bob', as he was dubbed for his pro-Milosevic views during the Kosovo conflict, is a member of the RMT parliamentary group and will probably attract the backing of the rail and shipping union.

He told the Liverpool Daily Post:

“The party leadership (under Blair and Brown) have regarded me as a thorn in their side as I rebelled against their betrayal of the basic principles of the Labour Party.

“Worst of all has been the disaster of the invasion of Iraq, an illegal war in defiance of the United Nations.

[Hat tip: For a New Left Party, a new blog that does pretty much what it says on the tin]

The natural tendency is to close ranks, to prevaricate, make excuses, advance more or less spurious justifications, plead attenuating circumstances, and shrug off inconvenient accusations as baseless allegations mischievously gotten up by political opponents.

Yet such desperate avoidance of candour leaves socialists open to accusations of double standards and logical inconsistency. Are we for the highest standards of probity in politics, or are we not?

When those ostensibly on the left are under fire from the right, to call for them to put up a convincing defence case or take the rap is not a route to easy popularity; some even regard it as tantamount to scabbing. My criticisms of George Galloway after the ‘cash for oil’ charges five years ago brought me intensive opprobrium from those now making the very much the same points.

Today it is the turn of Livingstone race adviser Lee Jasper (pictured), who has been forced to step down after revelations that he sent intimate emails to a woman just days before advancing a £65,000 grant to one of her projects.

Now, that infinitesimally small proportion of the population at all interested in the nuances of leftwing politics will know that I am closer to the McDonnell/Corbyn wing of the Campaign Group than the Livingstone/Socialist Action side of things, and that relationships are sometimes less than comradely.

But in as far as 99% of the politically aware public lump all of the above together as ‘the Labour left’, the Labour left should take a clear stance on the Jasper affair. If the reported details are correct - and I haven't seen them being denied - then the allegations must be taken seriously.

Let’s leave aside the fact that the use of a work email account to send messages of an inappropriate nature to a colleague would merit disciplinary proceedings in many workplaces. Cheesy chat-up lines are not a crime, although some of Jaspers's are so bad they probably should be; misuse of public money very clearly is.

Jasper properly benefits from the presumption of innocence and the right to due process, as anyone else does in these circumstances. Earlier claims against him have been investigated, and Scotland Yard has ruled that he has no criminal case to answer.

But it is not enough to cry ‘racist stitch up’ and dodge all questions. Nor will it do to accuse Andrew Gilligan of being a Tory; I happen to know he isn’t.

Jasper has only his own actions to blame for finding himself in the unenviable position he now occupies. It would be a huge mistake for Livingstone to allow his project to be prejudiced by understandable loyalty to a political associate of long standing.

I hope – for the sake of the Labour left and for the good of the Labour Party as a whole ahead of the crucial London elections on May 1 - that Jasper is exonerated. If not, we should, to use his own choice of words, let him cook. Honey glazing optional.

But somewhere deep inside in the cerebral cortex – presumably next to that bit that continues to urge you to smoke, however long ago you gave up – whispers a siren voice of temptation. As an ex-Trot, I am experiencing the political equivalent of nicotine cravings.

The thing is, these elections offer London voters who identify ideologically as either leftists or rightists the chance to mark a first preference for whatever whackjob outfit comes closest to their ideal, and then pragmatically transfer to either Labour or the Conservatives. It won't make any difference at the end of the day.

Given the choice of three – count ‘em, three – leftwing alternatives to New Labour, why not indulge in what would amount to no more than a minor extramarital knee-trembler in the privacy of the voting booth? Go on, you know you want to! Labour HQ will never find out!

I’m even spoiled for choice. While manufacturers of high definition televisions have been able to agree on a standard format, the Socialist Workers' Party and the British section of the Fourth International clearly haven’t, so both versions of Respect will be touting their wares. Pictured are George Galloway (left) and Lindsey German (right), two of the people the factionally divided organisation will be standing on May 1, as well as some other guy in a stripey sweatshirt.

And if I suddenly come over all tankie – well, the election is on May Day, tovarisch - the Communist Party of Britain is after my business, too.

Sure, supporting these tickets would be gesture politics of the purest kind. None of them believe in a parliamentary road to socialism, but all have plenty of experience of the municipal road to lost deposits; they cannot be expecting anything other than humiliating drubbings.

But then, gesture politics shouldn’t automatically be ruled out. Wouldn’t the largest possible left of Labour vote underline to the Labour leadership that a section of the electorate cannot be taken for granted? Wouldn’t that indirectly benefit the Labour left?

That’s a possible argument. But I am a Labour Party member, and it is an entirely reasonably requirement for membership of any party to vote for those it nominates for public office.

I suppose my major reason for not backing the trio of Marxist lists – even clandestinely – is that they all strike me as entirely pointless. I could understand, for instance, if the SWP wanted to run what gets called in Trot jargon a ‘propaganda candidacy’, using the London-wide mailouts and the free broadcasts to push the full revolutionary programme, with the general idea of picking up a few recruits.

But instead, all three far left alternatives are standing on an almost identical political basis; each of them wants to go back to the Old Labour future. Only sectarianism and accumulated grudges prevent them from getting their act together and creating a unified platform that could perhaps have pulled in union support. If the far left doesn't take itself seriously, why should anybody else?

Livingstone, meanwhile, has of course called on RMT members to cross picket lines and backed the Met over the Jean Charles de Menezes case. Allegedly he pours whisky on his cornflakes.

The incumbent is even said to be under the sway of fanatical Trotskyites, hell bent on turning London into a socialist city-state through the unorthodox tactic of doling out bucketloads of spondoolicks to any women they vaguely fancy, in the vain hope of luring them into cold rubber-insulated sex in a Manchester hotel bedroom. Incredibly, some commentators say this like it is a bad thing.

Ultimately, it is continued Labour occupation of City Hall that will create the best conditions for the left to promulgate its ideas and promote its campaigns in the UK capital. The best way of ensuring that is to cut to the chase and vote Labour.

Let’s skip the bits where Livingstone (pictured) offers the de rigeur exculpation for Meltdown Thursday. As the man points out, his share of the capital’s vote went up by both relative and absolute measures. There’s no gainsaying the psephology, so on that score alone, the ‘it wasn’t me guv’ routine has to be entirely convincing.

The money paragraph is probably this assertion:

Following May 1 some people are posing the choice as between moving ‘to the left’ or ‘to the right’. This is not the right question. Labour must place itself at the centre of a progressive alliance that can solve the problems facing the country.

The notion of being ‘neither right nor left but in front’ is one of the most malleable memes in modern political rhetoric; over the past two decades, we have all heard variations on this theme trotted out by Greens, Lib Dems, and even the fascist right.

It’s hackneyed beauty is in its very evasiveness, the way in which it loosely promises everything to everybody and yet simultaneously nothing to nobody. This is non-positional positioning, vacuity elevated to the level of principle.

In this specific case, it translates to an argument for getting the Labour Party in London – and by implication, nationally as well – to bring the Greens on board, and hopefully the Liberal Democrats too.

Although there is no reference to Respect Renewal in the article as such, Livingstone has earlier dropped hints that there is a place for George Galloway inside a city-wide Big Tent, if only because it remains the beneficiary of a not negligible mosque-directed block vote.

It is also plain that the City would be a welcome, indeed critical, component in any lash-up. Livingstone makes repeated reference to the support he enjoys from big business. Yet the labour movement does not merit a single mention.

Given the omission of any reference to working class organisations – and I fail to see how this omission can be otherwise than by design – the implication is that trade unions are not regarded as core constituents of the progressive alliance Livingstone has in mind.

This is qualitatively new in terms of the history of projects of this type. For the first time since 1935, when Dimitrov harangued the seventh congress of the Comintern with a call for what has since become known as popular frontism, the working class is not accorded even a walk-on part in such a schema.

Nor is the progressive alliance justified in terms of any longer-term socialist strategy, however dilute. Unlike the doctrine that underpinned the orthodoxy of Stalinist parties for decades – including the Communist Party of Great Britain’s calls for an ‘anti-monopoly alliance’ – it doesn’t even seem to be envisaged as the first stage of a stages theory. Indeed, its goals are notably timid:

There are three tasks for a government and a mayor - to ensure the country and London are an economic success; to ensure everyone shares in that success; and to ensure that success is sustainable in the long run through improving the environment.

Livingstone maintains that ‘the difference[s] with the Tories are stark’, but doesn’t expand on this point. Little wonder; there is nothing here to which David Cameron could not sign up, at least verbally. With economic success defined in capitalist terms – and the Square Mile will ensure that it would be so defined – the Conservatives even have a legitimate claim to be the best vehicle to bring it about.

The net result of implementing Livingstone’s suggestions would be yet more cartel politics, with the outer limits of its radicalism designated by what is acceptable to hedge funds and venture capital. An ambitious, assertive and confident left could and should press for a whole lot more than that.

Yes, this is me handing over the cheque to join the LRC at last week's conference, courtesy of John McDonnell's mobile phone and somehow now on YouTube. If I'm looking sheepish, that's because I am still slightly worried about being part of an outfit that incorporates the ultra-Stalinist New Communist Party and a bunch of scarcely-reformed diehard Healyite whackjobs.

But given the clear evidence that Left Alternative, the Campaign for a New Workers' Party, the Socialist Labour Party, the Campaign for a Marxist Party and Respect Renewal ain't going anywhere fast, it probably had to be done. It's interesting that Compass now has me down as a member, too, simply because I attended their last event. That's one way to massage the figures, I suppose.

I USED to practice deep entry, and let me tell you, it was nowhere near as much fun as it might sound. For the uninitiated, the phrase refers to the strategy of sections of the Trotskyist left, who have been active inside the Labour Party continuously since the 1930s.

The idea, of course, was that Labour constituted the mass party of the working class, and that immersion inside what we used to call ‘the social democracy’ would allow revolutionaries access to the bulk of class conscious workers in this country.

In reality, this often involved clandestine advocates of world revolution having to sit through excruciatingly dull ward meetings discussing the niceties of traffic light provision in Walthamstow, just so they could briefly move a resolution demanding solidarity with the heroic struggles of Bolivian tin miners.

Since the 1980s, the vast majority of entrists have been expelled or have simply walked. True, there are at least a couple of Trot groupuscules who survived the Kinnock purges and are hanging on in there. But given the social basis of today’s Labour Party, the tactic long ago lost any real point it may once have had.

That makes the current online mini-debate between Fabian supremo Sunder Katwala and my Hackney North Constituency Labour Party comrade Luke Akehurst just a tad surreal.

Luke seems to think that Labour needs what he calls ‘a Trot infestation strategy’ in place for the internal battles he expects to break out after the next year’s all but inevitable election defeat.

The Bennite left and its Trotskyist allies have not gone away. I see the evidence of that every time I go to my local Labour GC meeting. Their cadres are getting older but a Labour defeat in the General Election will allow them to recruit new activists and reactivate old ones around a myth of leadership betrayal.

This is not a pleasant task but it is one that has to be done. Sunder worries that this is "deeply alienating for new generations of activists". Not half as alienating as having your local party taken over by revolutionaries is.

Hmmm. Do I detect a certain degree of relish at the prospect here, Luke? But frankly, I suspect that comrade Akehurst hasn’t got much to be worried about.

My back of the envelope calculation is that the number of current Trot activists is down something like 90% over the last 24 years of so, and many of the diehards are barely active, now having to factor in such quotidian concerns as paying the mortgage and pitching up at parents’ evening.

In most constituencies, the traditionally Labourite trade union militants and tenants’ association people are long since departed, and nobody on the far left is going to devote the bulk of his or her spare time to meaningless bunfights with ultrablairites with no discernible prospect of recruitment gain.

In any case, since the 1990s, the focus of so-called ‘party building’ activities has been firmly focussed outside Labour. Note the inverted commas; not one single organisation worthy of the designation party has actually emerged from the Socialist Labour Party/Socialist Alliance/Respect/Scottish Socialist Party/Solidarity/Campaign for a New Workers’ Party/Respect Renewal/Left List/Left Alternative/Unity for Peace and Socialism/No2EU milieu.

Of course, some commentators in the rightwing press argue that Labour has moved to the left in recent months, and in a qualified sense, I guess this is true. Let’s face it, there was nowhere further right for New Labour to go.

Moreover, milquetoast social democracy has re-emerged in the form of Compass, while residual Bennism is now incarnated in the shape of the Labour Representation Committee.

Like Luke, I expect that Labour will lose the next election; I also expect there will be some debate about ideological direction in the what remains of the Labour Party on the ground, which will be very little once the careerists quit en masse to seek their fortunes elsewhere in the coming Cameroon decade.

Socialist Appeal or Socialist Action – whose combined forces cannot number more than a few dozen – will presumably seek to participate. But the slanging match will largely be had out by currents indigenous to broad church British Labourism, ranging from the quasi-Marxist left that has been present from day one to the old school trade union right.

Now, I know Luke personally. He’s a bloody good local level organiser – I’d go so far as to say the best bar none I have ever come across, in fact – and not an unpleasant chap face to face. He’s even personable to Trots, provided only that they are willing to dish out leaflets.

I would like to think that when not camping up the superannuated NUS politician act, as he sadly sometimes does on his blog, he would agree with the proposition that inevitable political differences should be resolved by debate and majority decision, rather than proscriptions and expulsions. Excitable talk about ‘smashing the left’ is childish nonsense and entirely out of place among grown ups.

ROLL calls of great thinkers, from ancient Greeks to trendy continental PoMo merchants, probably do not constitute a staple of pub conversation in his Barking and Dagenham constituency. So if nothing else, Jon Cruddas deserves credit for name dropping so many star philosophers and economists in his speech on the renewal of social democracy earlier this week.

Rarely can references to Aristotle, Crosland, Kondratiev, Rorty, Hobbes, Rand, Foucault, Schumpeter, Minsky, T.H. Green, Hobhouse, Hobson, Tawney, Cole, Laski, Rousseau, Marx, Hume and Polanyi have been delivered in the same peroration, and all in a mockney accent to boot.

Perhaps I am missing something. Maybe the small talk at the local Labour club goes something like this: ‘That’s three pints of Pride, two pints of Stella, large G&T with ice and a slice, packet of pork scratchings and ‘ave one for yerself, love. Now don’t mind us, we’re just discussing the extent to which Schumpeterian creative destruction is ultimately derivative of long wave theory.’

Either that, or outer London voters reading the text will have assumed that their MP was discussing this season’s Hammers line up. But gratuitous intellectualist sneering at the working classes aside, Cruddas is a clever bloke – wot wiv a PhD, and everyfing – and raises some serious questions for everyone on the left. The trouble is, he does not offer serious answers.

Despite the obvious ‘look at me, what a lot of books I’ve read’ pyrotechnics on show in the body of the speech, Cruddas at least gets to the theme as early as the third and fourth sentences:

Put simply: what does Labour stand for any more? There are plenty of initiatives and announcements, but no sense of animating purpose - and thus, as yet, no compelling case for re-election.

Yes. But socialists could have told you that years ago, Jon. It is no use waking up to this reality just months ahead of the impending meltdown.

From constituency meetings attended by dwindling numbers of committed activists; up through the council chambers of great cities that we no longer govern; up through the dazed and disorientated Parliamentary Party; and to the very centre of government, one thing is increasingly clear. A sense of loss pervades the Labour Party. It is almost palpable. Not just of power sliding away, but a more profound loss: one relating to our essential mission - our very identity.

It is good that a rising mainstream Labour politician recognises the bleeding obvious and is prepared to state it unequivocally. While it pulls too many punches for my taste, Cruddas’s diagnosis of Labour’s maladies are cogent enough. There follows an unexceptional history lesson on previous crises of Labourism. I’ll skip the incidental points I could make here, in the interests of brevity.

Next we are treated to an exposition of the contention that:

It is wrong to think of socialism as a tradition that stands in opposition to liberalism.

I know lots of socialists – and not a few Liberals – who would have something to say about that one. Cruddas achieves the necessary political legerdemain by invoking that brand of pre-war ethical socialism that was indeed both indigenous to Labour and largely based on the New Liberalism of the earlier part of this century.

The difficulty is that the Labour and Liberal parties of today are in no sense in ideological hock to their forebears. Whatever their secondary differences, Brown and Clegg alike cling to the neoliberal consensus that became orthodoxy in Britain after 1979. Brown is no Laski and Clegg no Beveridge. That is the problem.

Is the implication here that whatever is left of the Labour Party this time next year should seek to join the every-so-slightly-left-of-centre-but-don’t-tell-my-mum wing of the Liberal Democrats in some form of anti-Tory clusterfuck after the impending triumph of the Cameroons? If that’s the plan, wouldn’t Labour be better served by a reorientation towards the mass labour movement and the organised working class?

Finally we get to the money shot:

But what might be the programme? Let's start with four pillars: Equality, Community, Sustainability and Democracy.

Buzzwords are not good enough. All politicians today – not least the post-makeover detoxified Tories – ostensibly stand for equality, community, sustainability and democracy.

Not even Dan Hannan in his cups would get on the stump and proclaim the need to increase the gap between rich and poor, promote greater social atomisation, wreck the planet and remodel our unwritten constitution along Pinochetian lines. Or maybe he might, but boy, then he’d be in trouble.

True, we get some concrete policy proposals tacked on the end, all of them entirely supportable. Cruddas calls for ‘radical overhaul’ of the taxation system in order to ‘build a more equal distribution of income and wealth’; the indexation of benefits, pensions and the minimum wage to average income; a graduate tax; a mass council house building programme; cancellation of the third runway at Heathrow; the mutualisation of those parts of the finance sector currently under state control; and the introduction of a universal banking obligation.

As I say, I would welcome all of these measures. But let us be clear about what is being proposed; Cruddas starts be proclaiming the need for British Labourism to reinvent its entire theoretical basis and ends with a shopping list of demands over which no Labour Party member would have batted an eyelid in the late 1980s or early 1990s. It is a case of back to the Kinnockite future.

Michael Heseltine famously said of the Prawn Cocktail Offensive that never can so many crustaceans have died in vain. After this Cruddas speech, I’m tempted to observer that never can so many philosophers have been quoted to such nugatory effect.

TONY Benn doesn’t hate the Tories anymore. That’s according to yesterday’s Sunday Times, anyway, which reports that these days ‘the veteran radical campaigner’ finds his views on issues such as civil liberties and Europe closer to those of the Conservatives than those of New Labour.

OK, the poor old sod is 84 and recovering from an operation on his prostate gland, which involves surgeons sticking scalpels into regions of the anatomy that make most men somewhat squeamish.

But for those who have critically admired his consistent advocacy of democratic socialism for three decades and more, this is as shocking as the first time you hear your nine-year-old daughter utter a grown-up cuss.

You can use those words in the playground if you have to, Tony, but I never, ever want to hear you say them in this house, do you hear?

This is the social democratic equivalent of that day at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, when Bob Dylan picked up an electric guitar before a live audience for the first time, prompting booing and shouts of ‘Judas!’ Younger readers are directed to ask their parents if they need to take in the full cultural resonance of this reference.

Don’t believe me? Think I’m exaggerating? Here are some verbatim quotes:

“There are issues I find myself in agreement with some of the Tories on, particularly on civil liberties,” said Benn. “All this security state stuff is very, very worrying. Libertarians like David Davis, a right-wing Conservative, resigned over the government’s 42-day detention law and I went to speak for him.” He said he also agreed with the Conservatives over the Lisbon treaty.

Steady on, mate. Socialists shouldn’t find themselves in agreement with the Tories on anything. Ever. We might share the Tories’ opposition to given aspects of New Labour authoritarianism, but that is a different thing entirely from being in agreement with them. The difference is one of nuance, perhaps, but nevertheless vital to grasp.

Then Tony goes on to make things worse:

“As I grow older I have reached the conclusion that issues unite people, whereas ideologies divide them,” he said.

For those who have not sat through dozens of Tony Benn speeches in their time, it must be pointed out that ‘the issues’ is the central construct of Bennism. That’s why the standard way to impersonate the man was to pretend to smoke a pipe and start taking about the ishoos in a silly upper class accent.

Now we have reached the point where ‘the issues’ align Benn not with striking miners or the women of Greenham Common, but with David Davis and his ilk. When your methodology brings you this far off track, you know that somewhere you have gone wrong.

Sure, as we grow older, our politics mature. Things that seem ever so simple when you’re young – general strike! smash the state! international socialism, bop bop bop! – are actually a tad more complicated than you appreciate as a spliff-addled teenage Trot.

Once you have had a few decades to think things through, you understand that there are serious ethical issues raised by abortion. It turns out that many good progressive people want to see a two-state policy in Israel/Palestine, for what to their minds amount to good progressive reasons.

If you favour unrestricted immigration, you have to answer the real points that working-class people – by no means all of them racist – raise about housing, schools and social tension.

You don’t jettison your underlying ideas, but you do have to sharpen up your arguments. So while I do still want to see the bourgeoisie swinging from the nearest lamppost, it has finally dawned on me that this is something of a long-term strategic perspective.

But at the same time, this means that I have a different ideology to that of the Tories. And that I want to be divided from them, as they will want to be divided from me.

That is why Benn is wrong to privilege issues over ideologies in seeking out alliances. I fear that his newfound tendency to elision brings him to the brink of final political collapse.

[Hat tip: email from Will]