The shock of defeat has brought Blairites,Brownites and others stubbornly immune to Corbynmania together in search of a current titanic idea. Can they find a way out of the wilderness – even whether it means a definitive rupture with Tony Blair’s toxic brand?
It is not perhaps how John Woodcock hoped to spend his autumn. But the man who ran Liz Kendall’s campaign for the Labour leadership was in rural Belgium final week, visiting the site of the Battle of Waterloo as part of his masters in international relations. Like many on his wing of the party, or lately he has found himself with time on his hands.
But he won’t,he swears, be filling it with a war on Jeremy Corbyn. The two men have clashed publicly on Trident – shipyard jobs in Woodcock’s Barrow-in-Furness constituency depend on its renewal – but he sounds less like an rebel than a man grappling with a disconcerting current world order. “I think we have to accept reality, and be seen to accept reality,” he sighs, when asked what the 90% of the parliamentary party who didn’t want Corbyn as leader should do now. “But when things are just beyond the pale, or we say so or it would just look absurd. That’s the balance we have to strike.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com