It was easy to laugh. Despite the vile nature of the far left – with its yearning for ‘solidarity’ with assorted terrorists and dictators across the globe – there has always been a comic aspect to its tendency to fragment. The sectarian disputes prompting this involve some obscure ideological point that leaves most of us baffled. The 1979 Monty Python film ‘Life of Brian’ parodied it with the Judean People’s Front, the Popular Front of Judea and the People’s Front of Judea – all hating each other more than the Roman occupiers.
Last week, they surpassed themselves with a split with a new party before it had even been formed and with its only two declared members. Zarah Sultana, the MP for Coventry South, announced: ‘Jeremy Corbyn and I will co-lead the founding of a new party.’ That was news to Corbyn, who said that ‘discussions are ongoing’. Karie Murphy, who served as Corbyn’s chief of staff when he was Labour leader, objected to him being ‘treated with such a lack of respect’. She deleted various comrades from a WhatsApp group – the equivalent in contemporary Islington to being sent to the salt mines in Siberia.
Of course, Corbyn, with his high profile, is the obvious choice of leader despite being a rather shambolic figure. Some might suggest this is all irrelevant anyway. Would it not be just another tiny fringe left-wing party – joining many others, of which George Galloway’s Workers Party is currently the most prominent?
On the contrary, in these volatile times it could have a substantial impact. The Labour Government is pursuing socialist policies but without any conviction or clarity. This pleases no one. We are hurtling towards national insolvency with ever higher levels of state spending, taxation and regulation. But Ministers do not come across as giddy with excitement at this socialist adventure. They combine doubts about the direction they are taking us in combined with a lack of ability to do much about it. Modest attempts to do so, such as tinkering with welfare entitlements, prompt dismay from the true believers.
We already have an indication of the potential from the Green Party’s opinion poll rating. At the general election last year, they only got 6.4% of the vote. Opinion polling now has it at around 10%. That has combined with them becoming a much more explicitly extreme socialist party, proudly stressing their position to the Left of Labour. Zack Polanski, who is standing for Green Party leader, proposes an alliance with the Corbynista party, should it materialise.
There were four ‘Gaza independents’ elected as MPs last year. That followed Galloway’s victory in the Rochdale by-election. Labour used to be able to take the Muslim vote for granted – even Muslims who were hard-working entrepreneurs. That community is now disaffected. No surprise that Corbyn (who called Hamas and Hezbollah his ‘friends’) has formed a Parliamentary group with them.
Yet the potential for friction in this electoral coalition is considerable. The Green Party is strongly ‘woke’ and intolerant of those who are not. Last month, The Daily Telegraph reported:
The Green Party has expelled its former health spokesman for raising concerns about transgender ideology. Dr Pallavi Devulapalli had been suspended since September after the party received a complaint about comments she made at a hustings in June last year. In her role representing the party on health, the GP of 20 years spoke in favour of the Cass Review investigating gender services for children. The independent report recommended halting the prescription of sex hormones to young patients with gender dysphoria.
If Dr Devulapalli is not sufficiently woke. What of the Gaza Independents? One of their candidates won a council seat in Lancashire in May after campaigning in favour of segregation between the sexes. Maheen Kamran, warned against ‘free mixing’ between Muslim men and women and was duly returned in Burnley Central East.
Could the Ayatollahs offer a means to unity for the trans campaigners and the Islamic fundamentalists? The BBC reports:
Iran is one of a handful of countries where homosexual acts are punishable by death. Clerics do, however, accept the idea that a person may be trapped in a body of the wrong sex. So homosexuals can be pushed into having gender reassignment surgery – and to avoid it many flee the country.
Surely even the Green Party would have some reservations.
These challenges are not new for the British Left. Ken Livngstone was adept at managing them – both as Leader of the GLC and in his later incarnation as Mayor of London. Gay rights groups and Muslim activists were kept on board – helped by a generous allocation of grants funded from the public purse.
Then we have the trade unions. The Labour Government has sought to placate them with a hefty public sector pay rise devoid of any tiresome requirement to improve productivity. Also, a boost to ‘workers’ rights’ which really means increased trade union power and diminished opportunity to get any work at all. Yet it is still not enough. Some unions might well throw in their lot with Corbyn.
A lot could go wrong. All the contradictions, the scandals, the extremist outbursts. Perhaps having an avowedly socialist party on prominent display will spur the rest of us to give counterarguments – which have not often been put in our schools and colleges in recent times. It could be that even in alliance with the Green Party they only get to the low teens.
That should still be enough to add considerably to Keir Starmer’s woes. When I see him I’m reminded of the Beatles song ‘Nowhere Man’. Starmer’s ‘making all his nowhere plans for nobody’ – he ‘doesn’t have a point of view’, and ‘knows not where he’s going to’. That leaves him vulnerable to insurgent fanatics who, for all their differences, have a clear desire to overthrow Western society as we have known it. If Starmer is a true patriot, he should be pleased to be rid of them. But he has already lost the confidence of the mainstream patriotic majority. Now he is losing the ragtag ‘progressives’ too.
