Honestly, is there some sort of unwritten rule that says that every time the Left gets vaguely near unity, someone must immediately chuck in a custard pie of ideological self-sabotage? A sort of Bat-Signal goes up over Westminster, and before you know it, there\u2019s another furious email, a hastily deleted tweet, and a party launch that looks like it was organised by people who\u2019d struggle to coordinate a pub quiz, let alone a political movement.<\/p>\n
So, \u201cYour Party\u201d \u2013 because of course it\u2019s called that, presumably to save time when blame is being allocated \u2013 has chaotically burst onto the scene like a very earnest clown car. One minute, it\u2019s a rumour; the next, it\u2019s launched without its supposed founder being told. And then, within a day, Jeremy Corbyn goes from \u201cfurious and bewildered\u201d (I can\u2019t remember a time in my life when he hasn\u2019t been those two things) to issuing a statement welcoming it all, with the oblivious detachment of a man who\u2019s just realised his phone was on silent.<\/p>\n
Then, to outshine his secondary school drama performance, Zarah Sultana decides to send out a membership email to the mailing list without telling her co-founders \u2013 one of whom is, yes, Jeremy Corbyn, whom Zarah would describe as the \u201cold boys\u2019 club\u201d ring leader. Said club would include co-founder Corbyn himself, Adnan Hussain, Ayoub Khan, and a few more from their consistently bewildered brigade.<\/p>\n
Yet it does feel as if the Left spends more time arguing with itself than actually getting anything done. In an ideal world, they would finally be putting all their ideological superiority to good use. Is it because they are too honest and transparent? Or does this most recent argument further solidify the opinion that seemingly every politician is completely inept at doing the job we so desperately need them to do?<\/p>\n
What is needed is ideological unity. Why do our career politicians find it so challenging to quickly glance at the bigger picture?<\/p>\n
And yet the maddening thing is, when the Right does this sort of thing, I don\u2019t feel as painfully disappointed. When Suella Braverman torpedoed her own leadership prospects via an opinion column that read like it was written after a heavy night, or when Reform starts another punch-up in the comments section of their own website, it feels like typical chaotic evil. But when the Left does it? It\u2019s chaos in the name of ideological purity. Which somehow feels even worse.<\/p>\n
Is it the Murdoch media whispering in my ears? Perhaps. Or is it simply the last decade of political pantomime that has conditioned us to see Left-wing infighting as some sort of national pastime \u2013 like complaining about train times, or assuming the Green Party is just a vibe.<\/p>\n
Of course, the grand tradition of past and present left-of-centre parties in this country is to form a circle and begin the firing squad at any whiff of dissent. And if the ammunition runs out, simply ignore it and hope it goes away. \u201cYour Party\u201d could have been a breath of fresh air \u2013 instead, it\u2019s stumbled at the first hurdle.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Sir Keir Starmer continues his slow-motion impersonation of a biro left in the sun. It\u2019s all very \u201cstrong and stable\u201d \u2013 but only if you\u2019re comparing him to a moderately competent office filing cabinet. Every time he opens his tightly pursed lips, Labour haemorrhages votes to the Greens, Reform, Lib Dems, or anyone within a three-mile radius of Whitehall offering something that sounds remotely like a plan.<\/p>\n
Labour is also trailing Reform in the opinion polls, indicating potential losses in the Welsh Senedd and local elections in May next year. And of course, this week especially, Keir is feeling the tingling sensation of coals underneath his feet. One could argue they\u2019re Andy Burnham-shaped. Maybe the Mayor of Greater Manchester isn\u2019t as seemingly tepid as Keir Starmer, but he\u2019s yet to seem hot enough to fix Britain\u2019s ever-growing problems. None of his proposals thus far \u2013 bit of nationalisation and some wealth taxes \u2013 touch the sides of them. But Burnham looms large, with soundbites like \u201cnarrow and shallow\u201d when describing his very own party. Although, let\u2019s not pretend being Mayor of Greater Manchester is quite the crucible of national salvation, yet.<\/p>\n
And let\u2019s not talk about the Lib Dems. Every time Ed Davey attempts another stunt \u2013 jet-skiing for clean air, zip-lining for affordable housing \u2013 it distances him from being taken remotely seriously, and instead places him in the slandering eyeline of every other political party wanting to heighten their chances come 2029.<\/p>\n
And yet, somewhere off in the quiet corners of the political wilderness, Zack Polanski, the fresh face of the Greens, is\u2026 just doing the job? Calmly? Sensibly? Not screaming across Newsnight or getting metaphorically clobbered by his own deputy? Honestly, it\u2019s a bizarre sensation. Where\u2019s the unnecessary drama? Where\u2019s the unhelpful backstabbing? If we\u2019re not watching the Greens implode online, what are we even doing here?<\/p>\n
The truth is, the Left\u2019s inability to stop eating itself is no longer quirky or even especially tragic \u2013 its just boring. When the stakes have risen; and far right no longer whispers from the shadows\u2014they cling to lamposts, and have far surpassed just chomping at our heels in the polls, we watch, disheartened, as another bright spark of socialist promise flickers out in a gust of clumsy words and battles dressed as blueprints. It would be comic, if it weren\u2019t so heartbreakingly familiar.<\/p>\n
So maybe the question isn\u2019t \u201cWhy can\u2019t the Left agree?\u201d Maybe it\u2019s \u201cWhy do we keep expecting them to?\u201d<\/p>\n
Credit: stocknshares \/ Pixabay<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Honestly, is there some sort of unwritten rule that says that every time the Left gets vaguely near…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":632849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7826],"tags":[748,918,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-632848","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-glasgow","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-glasgow","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-scotland","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115720598683830011","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/632849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}