Time For a Democratic Socialists of Britain?
No website, nor any name yet. Indeed, the LabourList article says they're not interested in splitting from the SCG, but instead it's an effort at pooling resources and pushing their particular kind of politics. Their leaked strategy document says it aims to provide "intellectual leadership" for the new left, and get slick with the social media game. This attracted some hostile commentary from an existing SCG MP, saying they should bugger off and split if that's what they want to do. Before rowing back and stressing the importance of sticking together to get Jeremy Corbyn the whip back. What's the game then, People's Front of Judea hi-jinks or something more?
The latter, in my view. One of the frustrating things about the left in the Labour Party is its disorganisation and lack of coherence. All that unites us is what we're against: awful Tory policies, their adoption by the party, and the petty tyrannies of the Labour right. Apart from that, what is there? Consider the infrastructure. The left is bigger now than before 2015, but the old faults are replicated at a larger scale too. Momentum does its thing of mobilising people and having policy primaries, but is not known for articulating an analysis and an intellectual project. Time serving organisations like the Campaign for Labour Democracy is barely perceptible among members except when it sponsors fait accompli slates for internal elections. The newly rejuvenated Tribune, as good as it is, stands a step removed from Labour Party shenanigans. And there is the SCG themselves. While most of its MPs are fine, from the standpoint of the ordinary member trying to build the party and the labour movement, it is less than the sum of its parts. Newer comrades like Zarah Sultana and Richard Burgon make the right interventions in the Commons, turn up at demonstrations, encourage extra parliamentary mobilisation, but like the older generation they do not try and provide political leadership. They do their own thing, campaign, and occasionally backed by warm words from the more radical trade unions.
Contrast this with the Labour right. Progress, when it was a thing, used its finances to coach candidates, publish its own literature, and influence party debate with its regular publication and conferences. This was the shiny front that complemented the dirty business of working selections, competing/cooperating with Labour First over shenanigans, networking, and all the other things. And while now living in reduced circumstances, it offers an intellectual outlet for those on the Labour right who fancy themselves brainy revisionists but see the Fabians as too left wing. And from their point of view, their factionalising works well. If the Corbyn interlude taught us anything, all sections of the spectrum of right wing opinion are more serious than the left about taking power and holding it within the party.
Hence this initiative from some of the left MPs should be welcomed. It puts our representatives on the spot when it comes to pushing ideas, building capacity in the party, and doing the job of cohering the left - the job that, let's be frank, the SCG should have done from the beginning. If the left are going to advance in the party it needs a strategy and some coordination between parliamentarians, activists, and trade unionists while articulating its own standpoint. A Democratic Socialists of America if you like, but here in this plague-blasted isle. Whether the new group reaches out to the wider left or not, winning ground back definitely won't happen for as long as we amateurishly chug along, fighting the good fight but never fighting to win.
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