Well, yeah, but the trouble is that you vote for them as individuals, but the national party (which is still predominantly New Lab, overwhelmingly so higher up) will trumpet that as some kind of bleeding mandate or endorsement for them, so you are also shoring up the traitorous New Lab crew.

Glad to see that Wes Streeting (Labour Students president of the NUS) thinks this is “shameful” (see: his Twitter)

Initial reaction to the piece was skeptical but reconsidering my options after learning this!

For those that don’t know, Wes is the guy who sold the NUS down the river by “phasing out the outdated 1970s trade union model” (e.g. democracy and elected officials) and introducing a board of external trustees that run the NUS like a service provider to students rather than a national union to represent their interests.

He’s also anti-Free Education based on the fact that he obviously eventually wants a job in the Labour Party’s New Labour clique and has to toe the line, putting him to the right of the Liberal Democrats and a good number of the Labour MPs (including this article’s author). Under him we’ve seen the NUS reduced from a strong campaigning organisation to a brand name for a Top Shop discount card.

Wes Streeting is one of a long line of NUS presidents who are “shameful,” such as Jack Straw, Charles Clarke, David Aaronovitch, Lorna Fitzsimons, Stephen Twigg and Phil Woolas.

It reads like a Who’s Who of tossers.

As far as the article goes – yay to the LRC, but I do wish they’d abandon the skullfucked corpse of the Labour Party and form the real thing.

#1 That’s nonsense, Peter Mandelson would probably love John McDonnell to lose his seat. There is no planet on which he would see McDonnell being re-elected as endorsing privatisation.

@ tim f, with respect, it’s not nonsense. Mandelson et al dislike and hate many figures, but they would take any held labour seat and spin it as part of a mandate for the project, be they awkward squadders or not. The numbers don’t stack up: New lab still control the party machinery and their staying in power would lessen the chances of the project being toppled. McDonnell would be used as a headline while of course being ostracised by the extant party hierarchy.
Only with a hung Parliament or a defeat for Labour can the ridding the party of “the project” be properly achieved. By all means vote for John, yes, as he is the kind of politician I too would back (don’t have the option in my constituency where the PPC is New Lab), but don’t be blind to the fact that backing him sadly also gives succour to New labour in a backhanded fashion.

Well certainly they would spin the increased numbers to their advantage, but if McDonnell lost, they would spin that it was down to his left-wing policies which the electorate rejected (eg they wanted a third runway). They will spin to their advantage whatever the result is.

In practice electing McDonnell and other MPs like him makes life much more difficult for New Labour as he does more to oppose them than eg another Tory MP would do. Take welfare reform for example – Labour’s official programme was very close to and barely better than the Tory version, but McDonnell opposed it wholesale.

I’m going to write about this properly one of these days but there are several issues at stake here.

For one, I think that Mandelson may not like McDonnell but I think if he was intelligent enough he’d recognise that any coalition on the left needs to be broad in order to win power.

Secondly, and relatedly, if the socialists formed their own party then neither Labour nor this new socialist party would ever get into power. Splitting into smaller and smaller groups to remain ideologically pure doesn’t help anyone at all. I suspect the LRC know and recognise this – which is why they haven’t pushed the nuclear button (quite rightly).

Thirdly – as other commenters have pointed out, the Tweet by Wes Streeting above summarises the problem a bit. There are people like him who seem interested only in political careerism than a bit of ideology.

That ultimately hurts parties because intellectual vacuousness helps no one. But at the same time – constant accusations of being ‘traitors’ doesn’t either. No political party is going to follow your agenda 100%. Perhaps they’ll follow 60% if they are roughly on your side.

The aim for the left should be to increase their influence and support among all the left-liberal parties. That includes Labour, otherwise you’re left with a clutch of smaller, left parties that will never get into power. Labour isn’t going anywhere – their recent rise in polls should have made that very clear.

The game changer would be Proportional Representation. We can dream, can’t we?

Sunny, I think it’s a bit unfair to say that Wes’s tweet shows him to be “interested only in political careerism than a bit of ideology.”

Wherever you are on the spectrum within the Labour party, isn’t part of the point of a political party that you work together despite your differences? I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that party members should be prepared to support and campaign for anyone who has been selected by that party, by that party’s members, according to that party’s rules. It may not be a viewpoint you share – and for what it’s worth, there are a handful of supposedly-Labour MPs I probably wouldn’t be prepared to canvass for either – but I don’t see how it’s a viewpoint that marks someone as a careerist or uninterested in ideology. After all, if the MPs on the left of the Labour party – who are most definitely not careerists, and certainly are interested in ideology – didn’t believe something similar, wouldn’t they have given up the Labour whip by now?

Bugger, I wrote a long response to that, Tom, and then foolishly closed my browser window.

Look – I think it’s pretty presumptuous and idiotic to brand someone as “despicable” if they want to campaign only for specific candidates.

I worked on the Obama campaign and it was obvious that he attracted far more supporters and people then the other candidates did. That is partly why he won and got the nominations.
We’re not living in the old times any more where party loyalty matters only, even when it comes to supporters, campaigners and activists. The people who think that, and keep repeating party line are who I call careerists.

PS – I have nothing against party loyalty. I’m just pointing out that with any broad coalition, there are going to be people who disagree on certain issues. There are Labourites who don’t care much for abortion rights and there are those are only in the Labour party for that reason. If a woman refuses to campaign for the “it’s all about my personal conscience” god-squad who voted to reduce the legal limit – would you call her “despicable”??

That would lose your ordinary support very quickly.

I have more time for people who see the point of broad coalitions and want to ensure we’re all moving in the same direction.

Well, for a start, the word he used was ‘shameful’ not despicable. I also think there’s a bit of a difference with someone deciding not to campaign for a specific candidate because of particular views, and someone rejecting the vast bulk of their party’s candidates as “warmongering clones”.

But neither of those are my main point, which is that I don’t agree with your definition of anyone who believes the success of the party as a whole against the other parties is more important than the success of a particular faction within the party as a ‘careerist’. To me it seems like a perfectly legitimate pragmatic viewpoint, albeit not one that I subscribe to 100%.

I think its somewhat of a moot point because Wes Streeting is generally a careerist and New Labour through and through for his other actions. This tweet is more of a symptom than conclusive proof.

Thanks Sunny, yours comments are appreciated and well argued.

Regarding Wes Streeting tweet and also the one from Tom Harris, well what can I say. Why am I shameful? Because I don’t want to canvass MPs or PPCs who were spineless enough to vote for an unjust war, who merrily vote for privatisation, cuts, welfare reform which attacks and penalises the poorest in this society, support the curtailment in civil liberties….need I go on. And the funny thing is that my post is described by comrade Sweeting as shameful…. Well, if I am shameful then so be it. And it is an awful shame that Sweeting’s tweet has derailed debate on the issues raised in my post.

I will canvass for leftie MPs who have defied the NL machine and showed they can actually think for themselves hence why I have immense respect for McDonnell, Corbyn, Clark et al and nothing for the NL apparatchiks who have dragged Labour into the mire.

Btw: Tom Harris’s tweet, thanks for the back handed compliment, I know I am brave ta very much but way off beam regarding me being anonymous (tad mischief making methinks) if you look at the top of my blog ‘Harpymarx says’ then you will see this, ‘Harpy Marx is the alter-ego of Louise Whittle. Socialist feminist. Photographer. Politico.’

Hope that clears that up, Comradely, Louise Whittle aka HarpyMarx

I think anyone criticised by both Tom Harris and Wes Streeting, both right-wing New Labour scum, must be doing something right.

Fuck them – good article, Louise, I’ll be helping John McD.

One day Streeting will be Phil Woolas – a racist, fearmongering Labour minister with no qualms about stigmatising immigrants if it means the right-wing press goes a little easier on you (not that it ever does – stupid as well as xenophobic).

Thanks Blanco!

Perhaps I’ve missed something, but why can’t those on the left of the Labour movement see that the “last best hope” for actually stopping a Tory or New Labour government is a hung parliament, followed by progress towards electoral reform?

I agree with Sunny @8; most people just aren’t that interested in the level of kremlin watching required to see who the keepers of the flame of ideological purity are this month.

In the sunny uplands of post electoral reform parliament, the natural centre-left coalition will no doubt include socialists, social democrats, liberals, greens, maybe a few nationalists and independents.

That’s the only realistic route to a “truly equal transformative” society, unless the left would prefer leaving things open for a centre-right dominated future and the tender mercies of Cameron’s “New” Conservative project?

Forget campaigning for numerically insignificant representatives of ideological purity, campaign to ensure a hung parliament and voting reform!

It’s good to see Tom Harris backing up Wes Streeting’s fulminations. As a longtime supporter of Iraq and ID Cards, who thinks that civil liberties campaigners are “ignoring the terrorist threat“, he throws a suitably nauseous light on the “party loyalty” rot.

Just a thought, but wouldn’t life have been much easier for the Labour party if they’d had any sort of vote on party direction in the last eighteen years or so?

This looks to me (and this may be optimistic hope) like one of the symptoms of a monolithic movement with dissent surpressed (see the late-medieval Catholic church for a key example), with factionalism and focus on personalities replacing open debate. In this respect Messrs Streeting and Harris can be argued to have a legitimate concern, although I doubt either can be exonerated from the accusation they seek to maintain the dominance of their own faction rather than to preserve the party as a whole.

Tom – I stand corrected, but I don’t think the different words make much difference.

Also – wanting the entire party to succeed, and not just particular factions isn’t careerist – but it is when you spend all your time criticising factions and not figuring out ways to bridge gaps.

Tom Harris – well, what else can I say about him? The guy goes around condemning single mothers while trying to protect rich bankers, while having the audacity to criticise others who are more socially democrat minded. He cares for public opinion on immigration but not bankers bonuses. If there’s any evidence of a loose coalition – he is in it. And yet he thinks people with the Labour party actually think like him.

Can you explain what you see as “the interests of the working classes” ?

So pleased to see Mandy has parachuted one of his champagne socialist friends ( he’s called Tristram for gawd’s sake! ) to stand in the “safe” Labour seat of Stoke Central and that a furious local Labour member has announced he will be standing as an independent! So far that’s the dwindling Labour vote split and the BNP vote split ( an ex-BNP member is also standing as independent).
I predict Tristram to win with BNP close behind – but only thanks to Labour’s expertise in postal vote scammming. After all, no true working class Stokie would vote for anybody called Tristram! What say you?