Posted in As I Please

The alt-left: A critical appreciation

Among the big winners of the general election are the wave of new blogs collectively dubbed the “alt-left”. You know who I’m talking about. The Canary, Skwawkbox, Novara, Evolve Politics and Another Angry Voice have been singled out by the mainstream as the authentic voices of the new socialism that has seized hold of the Labour Party and powered it to its highest number of votes for 20 years. Despite these blogs being around for some time (AAV since 2010, Skwawkbox 2012) they constitute part of the third age of blogging, which saw outsiders seemingly appear from nowhere to muscle in on online comment. In a short period of time, they have all carved out serious audiences, according to Buzzfeed’s in-depth feature (itself a product of the third wave). How, and why is it – Novara’s Aaron Bastani aside – they are all outsiders? Why didn’t established radical journalists, other socialist blogs, or the regular output of the far left become key artefacts of the Corbynist zeitgeist? It’s because of how this ‘outsiderness’ relates to their content which, in turn, has found substantial audiences. Continue reading →

The Corbyn effect isn’t going away

This article first appeared in the Boston Globe in October 2016, reflecting Jeremy’s second leadership victory. We are republishing it in the wake of the General Election as a prescient analysis of the mistakes that his critics made in underestimating ‘the Corbyn effect’.

The election of Jeremy Corbyn last month as leader of the Labour Party — for the second time in a year, this time with an increased majority — continues to baffle and infuriate his enemies both within and without his party, as it does the serried ranks of Britain’s commentariat. Even The Guardian newspaper, for so long the Bible of the typical left-leaning British liberal, has been vehement in its opposition to Corbyn. Its strictures weren’t just ignored; a proportion of its readership is angry and gives every impression of feeling betrayed.

How is it, critics ask, that a majority of Labour’s membership — now over a half million — should go against the bulk of the parliamentary party and most of a shadow Cabinet that had resigned en masse in a failed attempt to defenestrate their leader? And what of the increasingly strident warnings of a former Labour leader, Tony Blair, who helped win general elections for a party that has spent rather too much time in opposition over the decades? Continue reading →

Who has eaten their humble pie?

Matthew Goodwin eats his book live on Sky News

Before this election, Jeremy Corbyn was subjected to such incredible levels of hostility from sections of the media that even David Dimbleby, along with a former chair of the BBC Trust, former BBC politics editor Nick Robinson and a BBC investigation into Laura Kuennsberg began to criticise his treatment by some journalists.

The offices of the Guardian and Observer have been at the forefront of this, and have churned out tens of thousands of words in anti-Corbyn blogs and op-eds in the past two years. Someone has even compiled 24 of their most vitriolic anti-Corbyn hit pieces. 

Of course, much of the criticism Corbyn came in for was spurred on by fellow Labour Party politicians, who helped drive and shape a news agenda that focused on Corbyn’s apparent incompetence or unsuitability, by simply providing broadcasters and broadsheets with what they wanted to hear. Evidencing this, Channel 4 news recently published a video featuring dozens of clips of senior Labour MPs and politicos predicting doom if Corbyn remained as leader.

Since Thursday night however, our well-salaried commentariat and the backbenches of the Parliamentary Labour Party have been falling over themselves to recant their words. A huge deluge of ‘mea culpas’ and apologias have littered the pages of the Guardian and Observer, and across the airwaves of Sky and the BBC.

One pundit literally ate his words, chewing through his new book live on air. Continue reading →

Explaining Laura Kuenssberg’s Bias

There’s a headline. It’s from the BBC, written by no less a figure than the corporation’s chief political editor. Not something up to the standards expected, you might say. As readers know, I tend not to moan much about the recipient of the licence fee. As a general rule, its news coverage is much better than most and where it fails in impartiality, it can make up in balance – particularly with regard to its flagship current affairs programme, Question Time. But there have been plenty of Labour people outraged by the behaviour of senior BBC journalists of late. Here are some much-shared and criticised examples. Continue reading →

Postcapitalism: A belated review

Is capitalism coming to an end? Perhaps not its end, but it is facing a number of difficulties. These aren’t episodic issues that can simply be reformed away by enlightened politicians or ironed out by a spot of Keynesian demand management here and there. They are structural, fundamental, and would require a political struggle and defeat of whole sections of capital for them to be sorted out. This, however, is not a counsel for despair. The development of capitalism has brought forth new relationships and technologies that give a glimpse into a future beyond the market, beyond wage labour, beyond the despoliation of the environment. At least this is the image Paul Mason provides us in his well received book, Postcapitalism. Continue reading →