With its interminable infighting and crackpot ideas about the world, the far-Left has never seriously threatened to win power in the United Kingdom.
Rather, it’s generally been perfectly safe for those of us attached to reality to view the various sects that make up the Left more as entertainment (or irritants) than viable political forces.
When it comes to self-parody, the Trots, the Tankies, and – that more recent addition to the catalogue of cults – the Corbynistas are without parallel. All of the above mentioned revolutionaries may claim to be fighting on behalf of the poor, the marginalised and the downtrodden but, in reality, members of the perpetually-fractured Left are unable to resist the temptation to turn on each other.
Today, there remains a network of tiny parties united by almost identical beliefs and all-consuming hatred of each other.
If you need something to fill up your weekend, you hate Jews, and you yearn to conduct vicious and unreasonable purity tests on people you don’t like the look of, then you have plenty of choice.
An increasing number of those who like their politics heavy on authoritarianism, light on logic, and speckled with anti-Semitism are now turning to Your Party, established by a group including the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and the MP Zarah Sultana.
Displaying absolute commitment to the traditions of the crank Left, Your Party began with disagreements over direction and structure.
Ms Sultana accused Mr Corbyn of overseeing a ‘sexist boys’ club’ and threatened legal action, later backing down ‘for the sake of the party’.
An increasing number of those who like their politics heavy on authoritarianism, light on logic, and speckled with anti-Semitism are now turning to Your Party, established by a group including Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, writes Euan McColm
Councillor Dan Hutchison has defected from the Scottish Greens to Your Party and said at the weekend he was proud to be joining ‘a truly Socialist party who will not accept the status quo’
Amid an uneasy ceasefire, Your Party – which, in time will adopt a new name, to be agreed upon by members – is on the rise.
Tens of thousands of people have already signed up to Mr Corbyn’s new vanity project. Those sceptical about claims of rising support from Your Party should bear in mind that, under Mr Corbyn’s leadership, Labour’s membership soared from less than 200,000 to more than half a million. The MP for Islington North may not be able to win an election but he is skilled at rallying the disaffected, the angry, and the downright wrong.
Last weekend, Your Party announced its first elected representatives in Scotland, with the defection of three Scottish Green councillors. Five candidates for next year’s Holyrood election have also made the leap from the Greens to this new Left-wing force.
One of those defectors, Dan Hutchison, is the archetype of the never-satisfied Leftie. By any standards, the Scottish Green Party is of the hard-Left. It favours high taxation and state overreach, endorses gender identity politics and, of course, sees Israel as the greatest evil in the modern world.
But to Councillor Hutchison, they are nowhere near pure enough.
‘I’m proud,’ he said at the weekend, ‘to be joining a truly Socialist party who will not accept the status quo, will actually involve ordinary people in the politics that impacts their lives, and won’t be accepting brutal cuts in exchange for scraps off the table.’
Oh, how that must have stung recently-elected Scottish Greens co-leader, Ross Greer, raised on the mean-streets of Bearsden and now Scotland’s leading cosplaying revolutionary.
For the rest of us, Councillor Hutchison provides a useful warning: If Your Party makes the Scottish Greens look like establishment stooges, its members must be wired to the moon.
Trans-identifying Ellie Gomersall abandoned the Greens and will stand for Your Party at next May’s Holyrood election
Trans-identifying Ellie Gomersall, who will stand for Your Party at next May’s Holyrood election abandoned the Greens because ‘only Your Party can be taken seriously to stand firm against austerity and work to materially improve the lives of the working class’.
Given the fact we know nothing about Your Party’s platform beyond the hatred of Israel seemingly shared by many of its members, it’s not entirely clear how Gomersall can make this judgement but, then, we are talking about someone who, until five minutes ago, thought the Scottish Greens were the answer…
It’s easy – and, often, enjoyable – to laugh at the crank Left. For all their sound and fury, they’re impotent outsiders. They might see themselves as revolutionaries but they achieve nothing.
This may be about to change.
For the past 20 years, the story of Scottish politics has been a straightforward one. The national debate-turned-argument over independence dominated everything. When the hard-Left did make it into Holyrood, in the shape of the Scottish Green Party, it did so under cover of the Saltire. For the Greens to win over young, radical voters it required to be pro-independence and thus, it came to pass.
But, for all First Minister John Swinney’s bluff and bluster about a secret plan to achieve a second independence referendum, the constitutional question has been answered for the foreseeable future: there will be no Indyref2 during the next term of the Scottish Parliament; a 2026 election victory for the SNP will confer no mandate; the Prime Minister will not inflict another painful, energy-sapping, and wildly-expensive referendum campaign on the UK.
This being so, perhaps a space had opened up for something new on the Scottish Left.
Of course, those who defected to Your Party in Scotland over the weekend are all pro-independence but I don’t for a second believe that the break-up of the Union is their focus.
Whether by design or not, Your Party is a new conduit for hard-Left anti-Semitism and extreme gender ideology. These – with, perhaps the occasional nod of approval in the direction of a former boarding school girl arrested for chucking paint at a Vermeer – will be the key issues for Mr Corbyn and his acolytes.
Mr Corbyn in the past has strongly denied that he was an anti-Semite, saying: ‘No absolutely not. I’ve spent my whole life exposing racism in any form. I do find [former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ comments that we was anti-Semitic] actually quite hurtful and quite offensive. I say to Rabbi Sacks, with all due respect, that is beyond excessive.’
Ms Sultana, in now-deleted posts on social media, strongly critised Zionists, but has since said that she ‘wrote them out of frustration rather than any malice’ as she had felt ‘exasperated by endless cycles of global suffering, violence and needless killing’. Since this, she has attended interfaith conferences and travelled to Auschwitz with an anti-fascist delegation.
There is no suggestion that any of the councillors who have moved to Your Party have made any anti-Semitic statements themselves.
Energetic young Your Party activists won’t want to be marching through Glasgow waving Saltires when it’s two-for-one on Palestinian flags on Dumbarton Road all year round.
We live in move-fast-and-break-stuff times, an era of the nihilistic political opportunist.
First, we saw the SNP rise on a wave of undeliverable promises while introducing a cruel, dehumanising dimension to our national political debate. Then we saw the Eurosceptic Right made similar easy-answer promises to achieve its Brexit dream.
Welcome to the populist parade, Your Party, which aims to give parliamentary voice to the people who call for the deaths of IDF soldiers and scream abuse at women who believe sex is real.
If Mr Corbyn’s new party can continue to peel away support from the Scottish Greens, it should win seats at Holyrood next May, maybe a handful, perhaps just two or three.
And once they’re in the Scottish Parliament, they might just have too much power for comfort.
Mr Swinney is on course for victory next year but not for an overall majority. If he is to form a stable government, he will have to strike agreements – either formal or informal – with fellow pro-independence politicians.
Will the First Minister deal with the misogynists and anti-Semites of Your Party, bowing to their demands, if doing so will keep his independence dream alive?
You bet he will.
