The membership is captured by what we mockingly call a cult. It certainly is more of a religious than political movement. The CLPs (local party structures) have in many places been entirely taken over by newcomers to Labour from what used to be Militant, Socialist Workers Party, Communist Party of Britain (and its many variants) or by an influx of cranks and oddballs, old and young those who regard Corbyn as saintly and infallible, and no, im not exaggerating. They worship and adore him. This influx of newcomers now controls all power and positions from local to regional to executive*.
The only thing thats put some cracks in the wall of the temple is their approach to Brexit. I’ve seen some pretty heavy duty Labour diehards who have stated they will be voting for LD or Green in the EU elections such is their despair over Labours position.
It is also entirely fair to say their isnt a decent challenger, plenty I would vote for, but not plenty everyone would vote for, and not one that can win over membership where the deciding votes sit with the hard left.
*Example: our new Director Of Compliance is Laura Murray. Laura is 30, formerly an admin worker, has no experience in Compliance other than the furor and lawsuits caused when she was sent by Leaders Office where she worked on secondment to Compliance, where she interfered with and disrupted dozens and dozens of high profile cases against pro-Corbyn members. She was appointed Director with no transparency, oversight or competition.
Laura is the daughter of Andrew Murray, one of Corbyn’s oldest associates and now a senior advisor holding considerable power and influence. Murray was Communist Party of Britain executive until 2016. He is a Stalinist, a direct employee of Putins Foreign Ministry, he’s banned from Ukraine for publishing Putinist pro-rebel propaganda, and an apologist and defender of the DPRK. He, like many in the Communist/Hard Left figureheads is a product of the aristocracy.
Murray was born in 1958 to Peter Drummond-Murray of Mastrick, a stockbroker and banker who was Slains Pursuivant from 1981 to 2009, and Hon. Barbara Mary Hope, daughter of former Conservative MP Arthur Hope, 2nd Baron Rankeillour who was governor of the Madras Presidency of British India from 1940 to 1946. His wife and Lauras mum, Susan Michie remains a CPB leader, has equally as blue blood, granddaughter of Sir Henry McLaren, 2nd Baron Aberconway.
Hilariously, at a meeting where she declared that the CPB will support and vote for Corbyn, she opened with “We, the working class”
Laura Murray is just one of the offspring of Corbyn, McDonnell, Murray and other senior Labour figures who now have executive or VP level positions within the HQ hierarchy. Loads of nepotism in the Blairite Labour, in the Tories (of course), LibDems you name it, the Westminster bubble encapsulates all parties, despite those declaring they arent part of the system.
Anyway, that’s my anecdote of the sordid machinations of the far left Establishment in the UK, who despite lots of talk about working classes, the people, and equality and are actually aristocrats engaged in nepotism and corruption, just like the rest of their peers in Westminster.
Also of note, Murray, Seumas Milne (the actual guy in charge, and product of a privileged upper class himself) and a few others in the hierarchy were behind Straight Left in the 60s. Straight Left and others famously split from the Communist Party of Great Britain when the CPGB condemed the invasion of Hungary by the Soviet Union and over the decades are the ones who always apologise for Stalin, or defend totalitarianism and are the origin of the phrase “tankies”
Some of these new defenders of the Soviet Union follow the ideology of Stalin known as Marxism-Leninism, and is reflected in the split groups who have “ML” in their name, like the CPGB-ML, another faction in Labour now, but if you ever see the phrase Marxist-Leninist then you now know this means they are Stalinists.
If, like me, the history of the hard left and ongoing stuff is of interest, then do check out
https://shirazsocialism.wordpress.com/
https://twitter.com/gsoh31
https://twitter.com/robfordmancs
