Weekender 3: New Balls Please

Drowning in irrelevance, in the midst of a pandemic, the Labour party crown another centrist to the position of leader. Big woop.

They are walking the path toward oblivion. The centrist Blairite rump will be pleased, a chance to sweep away the Corbyn anomaly. This was inevitable. In truth Labour are a capitalist party. All they have to offer is to soft soap the capitalist mode of production with all its ills. Even Corbyn, as a Labour politician, was no different. A nice guy for sure, and with good ideas. But as a politician he was happy appeasing big business. That was his job as leader. There is no escaping that.

Now that job will be done with someone who, while they may proffer the hand of compromise and reconciliation, won't really mean it. Backed up by those whose disdain for left wing politics is naked and bare toothed. This will cost them the membership that enjoyed a honeymoon surge under the Corbyn anomaly. Ultimately they will align softly, once again, with capital. They will offer nothing more than a slightly less acidic alternative, but in reality it will be no alternative at all.

We don't need a government of national unity. We don't need platitudes. We don't need piss poor apologetics for austerity. We need to end capitalism. Nothing more nothing less. That may be a big ask, but in reality it's the only ask. Look at the world right now. Don't forget that, while nature hides a resurgent flourishing (perhaps all too briefly) under the human crisis, the climate is still aching. Capitalism cannot fix that problem; it can only create it.

Perhaps Labour will try for that government of national unity foolishly believing this will play well. That we must put aside politics, ignoring that politics is at the heart of this crisis. It was deliberate decisions made over ten years, austerity not least of all, all based on long standing ideology. These are the choices the Tories must be left to own - unless sir Keir Starmer personally knows how to provide medical equipment.

I don't say do nothing. I'm not even saying let the Tories dig their own grave (as well as those of the working class right now). But do not make yourself a willing partner in the crimes of the ruling class. But then he's got his knighthood, that makes him fully a part of that class. He is not our friend and never will be. Knights don't exist anymore; gone are the days of Lancelot and King Arthur. Knighthoods are just offered for services rendered.

The only ones that can help us survive this and any crisis are the working class. Us. The lie that politicians spread most perniciously of all is that we need them. In truth it is the reverse.