Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Labour’s far left is a personality cult without the personality

The Labour left that has dominated radical culture since 2015 appears to have had a stroke. Its candidates for the Labour leadership seem paralysed. The ‘journalists’ who have sold their souls and become propagandists don’t know what to say.

Supporters of the Keir Starmer and Jess Phillips campaigns believe the machine will crank up again when a left-wing candidate finally emerges. But no one can be sure. At present, all we can see is factional hatred. Readers who have grown tired of pious lectures about the ‘issues being more important than the personalities’ will not be remotely surprised to learn that the hatreds are all about personalities, with divisions on points of principle being as substantial as stage props.

The Labour left did not expect Jeremy Corbyn to win the leadership election in 2015. If John McDonnell had thought a left-wing candidate stood a chance, he’d have run in his place. In 2019, the prospect of power, or at least the leadership of the Labour party, hovers in front of the far-left like the dagger before Macbeth, and many are willing to seize it and thrust it into the back of a rival.

I know I risk losing readers in the minutiae of far-left spats, but they cannot be avoided, so here goes.

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