The left is no longer a happy family

The far left controls the Labour leadership because the centre left did not take it seriously until it was too late. For a generation indeed, Labour and much of the rest of liberal-left Britain has lived with the comforting delusion that there was no far left to fight.

The left, on this reading, was one family. It may have had its troublesome teenagers. Their youthful high spirits may have made the little scallywags ‘go too far’ on occasion.

But everyone was still in one family, still on the same side. The old notion that the far left was the centre left’s enemy died away as the Labour party gave up on argument about what it was and what it wanted to achieve, and entered its long period of intellectual stagnation.

You can see the failure to think about basic principles, if you contrast how we talk about right and left-wing extremism. If a Tory politician shared a platform with a prominent member, or any member, of the BNP or Ku Klux Klan it would be a national news story.