There is a fundamental difference between what the leadership of many left groups puts at the centre of its concerns and those that are seen as central by the bulk of the British population and the main political parties. This leads to tactical and resource use errors. Of course the we have own focus which we have to prioritise which is not determined by majority public opinion and politics – but that wider situation, and our analysis of what it means, is central to our ability to intervene successfully around our long term objectives. The leadership of some left group is focused on Corbyn’s Labour Party whereas British politics are focused around Brexit and the Trump presidency. Despite our anti-Brexit focus around the referendum our new focus is resulting in our missing key aspects of the problems facing the movement. In practice anything to do with Corbyn, and the Labour Party as a whole, is being chewed up in both long and short term shifts in global and British politics – whatever the strengths and weaknesses of the forces grouped around him.

What is central to some groups’ strategy is what is referred to as ‘the Corbyn revolution’. They wish to see this revolution capitalised on in order to take the Labour Party to the left. The only way this objective can be supported is to take their organisation’s members and political focus into the LP, and build those forces which are part of the ‘Corbyn movement’ – particularly Momentum. This can be criticised from a number of angles.

First – it fails to understand the degree to which the working class movement has been hollowed out. We are not looking at how to intervene into a vibrant movement. There is no swell of working class consciousness, militancy and resistance. Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party has served to bring to a head the party political aspect of this hollowing out. If Corbyn or the Labour Left are capable of leading anything then that is only a new broad left grouping. An unlikely event as they are mostly thoroughly wedded to the Labour Party. It is also unlikely as they appear to be incapable of organising anything other than an internal conflict amongst some of the usual suspects.

Second – it fails to understand the strength of competing political rivals. Blair is back with his reversing of the ‘historic’ split in British radical politics by his new centre initiative. This is not something for the Blairites in the LP (and probably confirms their defeat) but it could be part of a re-launch of a social liberal centre politics which will have enormous appeal to millions of anti-Tory, anti-Brexit young, multi-cultural working and middle class people. Brown is trying to overcome the split in the union and the economic divide in England with his constitutional convention, now backed by Scottish Labour. This is at least a programme aimed at refocusing the Labour party as a formally social democratic organisation.

Third – Corbyn’s victory has been over interpreted in Labour Party terms. Large numbers of radical people had the unexpected opportunity to vote in a party that they were organisationally and, increasingly, politically alienated from – but maintain an electoral loyalty to (as the only serious alternative). They were not queuing up to be activists in the LP – they were just carrying out a 38-Degrees tactic of electronic lobbying of an unusual (and more costly) kind. A small minority have become active but seem to be disappearing into LP routineism – elections and pointless policy making. Corbyn’s victory’s biggest success has been to bring matters to a head. The problem is that this has happened in totally adverse conditions – and routineism is not going to be a solution. A good lead by Corbyn would be very helpful – but is very difficult given the centrality of Brexit.

Tristram Hunt in his final speech as an MP when stepping down from Stoke Central said two things which we need to understand the significance of. First, Corbyn is out of step with Labour voters and second this separation ‘highlights the deep seated challenges which centre left parties are facing’. The core of his case is 1) that the centre left has lost its way because many working class voters have rejected the ‘politically correct’ (it’s a wonderfully succinct slogan to encapsulate popular alienation from social change and radicalism) inter linked, globalised world that is leaving them behind. 2) it accepts that these problems have been a long time coming. The irony that the coup MPs in the past attacked Corbyn for not arguing the case for the EU well enough, and now attack him for not bending to the key popular issue that won the vote for Brexit, does not seem to trouble them. At least Hunt is right in taking the Labour Party’s problems away from the immediate issue of the leadership of the Labour Party.

Brexit poses the possibility of a major shake-up in British political structure. All five main parties face major challenges which involve reinventing themselves. May is seeking to build a new Tory Party based on patriotic Britain, strong in a free trade world. The Liberal Democrats were cut to pieces by being in coalition with the Tories and are at a weak starting point for rebuilding a social liberal, pro-EU centre. The Labour Party (and most of the unions) has been caught out by being loyal to an EU that has not delivered for many people, and is rightly seen as an agent of liberal globalisation by those same people. UKIP, if it is to continue, needs to accept that its founders’ objectives have been achieved – the recreation of the Tory Party as the party of an independent UK – and shift themselves to primarily taking on the Labour Party. The SNP is now all over the place because the wheels are coming off everything – out of the EU and in the UK seems to be the future.

Whole swathes of the population are looking at new ways of voting and developing new political loyalties. Working class consciousness is weak and confused. This is where we have to start. What values and policies should we be arguing for a radical workers movement to adopt? We are at a point of re-founding of the workers movement. The fundamentally not radical ideology of the Labour movement has come off the rails. It has ceased to be able to defend and improve within capitalism. In many ways the far left and particularly the SWP have provided a left social democratic presence on the streets and the picket lines for 20 years, under the shadow of which actual social democracy has withered away – courtesy of New Labour as much as anything else. Left groups in unions are based on bureaucratic shells and manoeuvre. Committees are empty talking shops.

The left has not been able to make any headway in providing an alternative to liberal globalisation. This has meant people looking elsewhere for pragmatic solutions. We now have to deal with a situation where all the non union progressives are looking for a way to overthrow the referendum result. At the same time a majority of union members have no interest in overthrowing that result – to say nothing of the unorganised working class. The link up of these two groups as Labour Party internal electors is what put Corbyn where he is – and their coming apart will be his undoing.

The consequences of all this are very significant for how we use our very limited resources. All into the Labour Party to defend Corbyn as leader is not the way forward. Our ability to play any role in this internal fight is minimal anyway. If comrades can be members of local LPs that are outward looking then that can be useful. But the fight lies in taking the resistance that made Corbyn’s victory out into the wider working class – this does not require an exclusive base in the Labour Party, though it probably does require some of its base being in existing working class organisations.

Momentum appears to have failed on all counts – both as an internal LP radical group and as broad umbrella of struggle. We have to accept that a big part of the problem is the nature of the English far left – its capacity to reduce anything it touches to a self destructive in-fight is totally demoralising for sane comrades and drives away many who would be interested in what the left has to offer.

At the level of political programme we have to address two main problems. One is how to re-link working people to working class organisations. The other is how to link up with those who had the same voting line as us in the referendum who now see the political left-centre as the place where radical social values exist. The labour movement is now permanently divided on Brexit. This is why everybody knows defending the NHS has to move centre stage as we can do that without mentioning the EU. But Brexit is going to be at the centre of electoral and parliamentary politics for years to come and could easily destroy the Labour Party. A consequence of Trump’s victory will be a global fight back by liberalism (with the Liberal democrats and Blair being the British arm). They are not going to give up on their global project and are already counter attacking vigorously. This is just the beginning of a four year struggle which starts with dealing with Le Pen in France. It means that the people leading the fight back against Trump are going to be the social liberals – this will not an easy time for developing the strength of socialist forces. Indeed Coyne’s campaign in Unite is quite compatible with liberal politics, they see unions legitimately in the work place and peripheral to politics – old Democratic Party style.

To play any role with our tiny resources in any of this we cannot become deeply embroiled in the internal events in the Labour Party. We have to focus on other tasks which have longer term objectives. We have to produce propaganda that recognises and analyses the depth of the working class political crisis. We have to put forward proposals for how this crisis could be confronted. We have to reconstruct broad campaigning organisations across the movement.

We have to accept that the most effective way our extremely limited resources can be used is in developing a class struggle analysis and seeking to draw revolutionary Marxists around it and winning new people to Marxism. This can only be done by participating where we can in struggles that are going on and participating, without liquidating ourselves, in any organisation that is campaigning. Our central resources have to up the importance of party building. Tactical flexibility on the ground locally, combined with theoretical and strategic consolidation as the basis for recruitment, will be the only viable option in the coming period.

CJ