Oh dear. After three Momentum candidates – including key Corbyn ally Jon Lansman – were elected to Labour’s national executive committee on Monday, the NEC swiftly moved to oust Ann Black as chair of the Disputes Panel in favour of Christine Shawcroft. Given that Shawcroft was previously suspended by the party in 2015, the move has raised alarm bells in the Labour party.
However, should you be concerned that Shawcroft is now responsible for deciding whether to investigate sexist, racist, homophobic and anti-semitic abuse, you’re probably just a member of the elite. Or at least that’s what Paul Mason thinks. The journalist-turned-revolutionary took to social media to cause an elite panic* last night as he launched a bizarre tirade explaining why the ‘Labour NEC elections has the elite and their media friends spooked’:
‘Gramsci said taking power is not enough; behind the state, the elite have line after line of trenches with which to their defend privilege and enforced poverty and ignorance for the rest….’
Mason went on to blast the ‘elite core’ of the Tory party and the main vanguard of the British elite – the Labour Party; ‘not its members or even MPs but its machine, dominated by right-wing union leaders.
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