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Socialist Unity: Lefty Blogging Lists and Labour Politics
LOL has made yet another ranking list, placing 74th in a list of lefty blogs compiled by a bit-of-fun-personal-preference-ranking-system by Andy at Socialist Unity. This is a blog - like Lenin's Tomb (placed 260th in Mr Dale's main list) - that IS getting hits in five figures every week - three times better than this blog's best week so far.
If Andy's method was transparently pure whimsy and personal preference, with a weather eye on traffic I guess, Mr Dale's method has been subject of some demystification with Andy building on an investigation by Dave at Complex System of Pipes. I had thought it had been done by a rather different method.
The fundamental message coming out from the judges is that Dale's left list is in fact more or less a Labour bloggers list. Perhaps in 2008 there can be a Labour list and an Other Left list? I'm sure Iain will be responsive to constructive criticism and polite comment, as ever.
Socialist Unity has also used the writing of John McDonnell to spark a discussion on the future of the Labour Left. May write on that here later. I have posted a comment over there if you can't wait.
Essentially I don't agree with either the sometimes whiney Labour Left analysis of being stitched up or the sometimes strident Independent Left analysis of being time for the comrades to give up completely on our Reformist Democratic Socialism or if you will even Social Democracy.
6 comments:
No-one's whining - we were stitched up. fact.
Nope Susan. There is a huge amount of whining. Dreadful amounts of grinding and gnashing of teeth. Appalling tantrums.
You, "we" even, are simply being out worked and out strategised.
If Bob Wareing had recruited a relatively small number of activists to his wards he could have possibly avoided a selection battle and he could certainly have won one if it were trigggered.
Ask him how long it is since he recruited any number of supporters to the party and why he didn't bother to prepare for this process.
In Leeds West an extremely able and somethingly lefty nominee lost to someone who had moved into the constituency a year or so back.
10-20 more recruits - her Labour-supporting friends, neighbours and family would have secured the selection for her.
Of course there are times when a stitch up or a carve up occurs. Left caucuses do the same thing.
But at the moment, these last few years, there are serious tactical mistakes. Not least an inability to recruit and retain comrades to the party that we know will support traditional labour values and traditional labour candidates.
"In a modern setting" if you must.
must say that even if there were no other whining the amount of it on susan's blog is epic
susan cross = whinger up north
Thanks for the plug Chris.
I am not so sure that the problem is "whining" which is a bit too perjorative a term.
But there is an element of not accepting reality. And thereofre defensiveness and slight hostility towards anyone who questions the core assumptions.
Whatever the intrinsic merits of john McDonnell and his politics, his constituency of support is limited within the Labour Party, and that particular brand of leftism has much reduced currency in the wider world.
All along I felt that the critique coming from Jon Cruddas was more constructive, because it was an attempt to understand and explain the situation we are actually in, even though I don't agree with Jon's conclusions.
oh BTW
an = andy newman
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