A noninertial frame

Apparently MxV stands for 'momentum times velocity'. This is most likely a bad physics joke gone wrong. The more alarming thought is that somebody at Momentum head office thinks that it sounds down with the kids. People who believe this kind of thing also think that the kids in question say things like 'down with the kids'. We are at this point millimetres away from the organisational equivalent of dad dancing.

The internet you see is a double edged sword. At once a means of communication without parallel and fertile forum for political ideas and campaigns, and yet also a new occasion for surveillance, control, and - less seriously but more irritatingly - gimmicky naffness of the highest order, the technology needs to be handled with care in order to be an asset to an organisation.

It is perfectly in order then that Momentum's National Committee, meeting last week for the first time in too long, scrutinised and rejected the Standing Committee's plans for an on-line conference, with One Member One Vote, to be managed through the MxV system. Instead there will be a delegate conference, in line with the norms of the labour movement. This will allow genuine meaningful debate at a local level, with everyone getting their say in a way the respects them as an agent, able to contribute to arguments within an organisation, rather than simply a passive clicker of a mouse button. It will also prevent the centralisation and leadership control to which the more plebiscitary alternative would be prone, and avoids frustration by technological hiccup.

It was the right decision. National Committee member Laura Murray doesn't agree. Reported by the Guardian today she hands our opponents on the right the opportunity to repeat the tedious line about Trotskyist infiltrators. Quite incredibly, moreover, she claims that the Alliance for Workers Liberty - an organisation which doesn't have enough members to launch a coup in the Inverness branch of the Crewe Alexandra Supporters Club - is plotting to unseat Jon Lansman.

I happen to think that Jon Lansman's role within Momentum is quite unhealthy and inimical to the organisation doing everything it needs to do, particularly outside of London and amongst working class voters disillusioned with Labour. That's beside the point, however. What on earth incited this vitriol in Murray?

You'll need to read her blog. Leaving aside the unhelpful elision of OMOV with the internet-conference idea, there is an attempt to portray the division as being along generational and sectarian lines. Forward thinking, urbane, and inclusive young people wanted MxV. Conservative factional elderly Trotskyists wanted a delegate conference. As far as the debate in Momentum goes, this is nonsense. Not being based in London, I have the privilege of being involved in an incredibly active, diverse, and energetic local Momentum group with a wide age-span. It overwhelmingly backed a delegate conference, as did our regional representatives. This was because people, having experienced grassroots democracy, being involved in the labour movement, and listening to the arguments were not convinced by the Momentum leadership's case for MxV.

Partly, I think Laura's viewpoint is distorted by her being London-based. I can well imagine that London Momentum meetings feel more like a far-left talking shop than anything useful. But London bias is indicative of a deeper problem that goes to the heart of the current problems in Momentum. It can be seen in the, uncannily Blair-like, assumption that the leadership know what 'people', especially 'young people', want. The upset at the weekend's vote reflects a professionalised polite elite whose role in the organisation has been scuppered. It has this in common with some recent outbursts within the Labour Party.

Momentum will remain relevant and interesting to the extent that it is a genuine grassroots movement run by its members, rather than by a London based leadership of political hacks. That leadership not getting things its own way over conference is a welcome sign. The priorities now are twofold: making sure that conference defends and extends democracy within the organisation, and - much more importantly - building Momentum at local levels.

For the record, momentum times velocity equals twice kinetic energy. That might win you a pub quiz one day.

There are many, many, more of us than you: 172 face thousands

Jess Phillips once remarked that if Corbyn messed up she would stab him, not in the back, but in the front. In spite of Corbyn not having messed up, spin and bluster to the contrary notwithstanding, 172 Labour MPs this evening carried through on that threat.

The battle begins now. It is not over, it has not even begun.

There are, you see, two models of democracy coming head to head. For one, basically a form of quasi-democratic elitism, parliamentarians need to be comfortable above all else. They are the experts, they are the ones who do the hard work, and they need to feel good with their leader. If their confidence goes, then so does the leader. The alternative, a democracy with a meaningful demos, was the motivating thought between those trade unionists who at the turn of the 19^th and 20^th century organised to get working people represented in parliament.

Democracy is nothing more than a hollow slogan, the uninteresting five-yearly choice between identikit media-performers, unless it is grounded in mass movements, connected to workplaces and communities. The direction of communication and accountability within a party, for this model, is from the bottom up. The members of the Labour Party choose the leader of the Labour Party. And, let the 172 think about this as they lie down to sleep tonight, it is the members of the Labour Party who choose Labour MPs.

If a model of democracy that gives the disenfranchised a sense of control over their own lives doesn't win over, in the form of a fighting, organised, growing, locality-based Labour Party, linked to revived trade unions and social movements, there are other supposed solutions on offer. They are from UKIP, and at the fringe Britain First. They don't care very much about democracy of any sort.

So get ready for a fight. I'm no doubt preaching to the choir here, but if you haven't already done it:

• Join Momentum (and go to its events)
• Join Labour (and go to meetings)
• In a few weeks, vote for the CLGA candidates for Labour's NEC

We need to keep our nerves. The strategy will be to dent your confidence. It is not about policy, they will say, but Corbyn can't win. Journalists and academics will be wheeled out to confirm this diagnosis. Commentators will use the word 'realistic' a lot. You will be made to feel like an oddball or a mischief-maker for supporting Jeremy. Do not fall for it. We are right, they are wrong.

This is the fight of our lives. Let's win.

There are weeks when decades happen

There's nothing like a popular vote to remind you where power lies in society; spoiler - not with popular votes. Thus, the hands of any British government wanting to operate within broadly mainstream economic constraints were today tied, not by the electorate, but by the ratings agency Standard and Poor, who cut the UK's credit rating. Expect others to follow. More generally, those most curious of creatures known as 'the markets' have not responded well to Thursday's Leave vote.

It would have been possible for a determined Leave campaign with a co-ordinated economic plan, prepared to stray beyond both mainstream constraints and the interests of capital, to manage a Leave vote in a way that didn't promise widespread poverty and public spending cuts whilst keeping the, uncertainty averse, forces of global credit capital and those irksome markets sufficiently content to spare it the coup de grace. However, that is not the Leave campaign we had: that was a monstrous concotion of xenophobes, British nationalists, economic reactionaries, and oddballs: an assembly of grotesque misfits wrapped in the Union Jack, who could only appeal to anyone on the basis of a widespread discontent, disaffection and desperation in search of an outlet. They had no plan, other than to 'Take Back Our Country' and 'Make Britain Great Again', all the while defending the sectional interests of a narrow part of British capital with no sense of a broader picture.

There is much still to say about the campaign, the EU, and the British economy. There is even more to say about what the referendum result shows about class. And there is still more to say yet about the petulant arrogance of much liberal reaction to the result. A strand of opinion in broadsheets, academia, and the Waitrose-shopping end of social media thinks that what last Thursday showed was that the swinish multitude should not be trusted with big decisions.

I will write about those things at some point. More urgent than any of them is the foul upsurge in open racism that has followed on the referendum campaign and result. Make no mistake, it wasn't that these things caused racism. Britain is, whatever the panglossians who inhabit Guardian columns might imagine, a racist society through and through. However, racism often lies buried - waiting nervous and Gollum-like in the shadows, consumed with self-hatred and unwilling to show its face. That it does is one of the greatest political achievements of recent decades. Yet, it's still there: hidden behind the remark that 'the area has changed', disguised as patriotism (if the two can ever be disentangled), implicit in a choice of friends. Once mainstream political discourse gets racialised, as it was by the immigration-focus of both main referendum campaigns, racists gain confidence. Things usually unsaid are spoken aloud. Combine this with the jingoistic upsurge that followed the result, the general flag-waving feel of Jubilee year, and most noxiously the ever-present threat of the far-right, and you have a toxic mix.

Jo Cox was its victim. There have been others. Since Thursday, racial abuse soared. Eastern Europeans were a particular focus: with cards reading 'go home Polish vermin' distributed outside a Cambridgeshire primary school. In West London, a Polish cultural centre was attacked. In East London two Polish men were beaten unconscious. The list of incidents goes on and horribly on:

But at least there's a political party in Britain, committed to equality and anti-racism, that will make the case strongly against racism, and build a cohesive movement in solidarity with its victims, right? Enter the Labour Party, glorious and ready to do battle against injustice and bigotry. Well, ordinary party members have been doing this. The PLP, however. Well, as the far-right roars and the economy falters, their priority is obviously to try to topple a popular leader who has increased Labour's share of the vote and presided over modest, but real, by-election successes.

The line is, of course, that Jeremy's weak leadership was responsible for the Leave vote. This is nonsense on several levels. Never mind the fact that Corbyn is not a weak leader - although this would not appear obvious to those whose idea of political leadership looks as though it has been cobbled together from a few evenings watching The Thick Of It - but that the bulk of the PLP don't want to be led by him, or by anyone with political ideas remotely similar to his. Never mind the fact that Corbyn was not in a position to persuade key Labour constituencies to vote Remain: one of Blairism's besetting sins is the reduction of politics to campaigns and soundbites, whereas all of those Leave votes in the north-east of England were about decades of feeling forgotten, being stripped of hope, crushed economically, and mocked culturally; not matters that can be set right with a broad grin. Never mind the fact that the only thing that would have been achieved by Corbyn going in all guns blazing on behalf of Remain would have been a Scotland-style meltdown in Labour support in parts of the north of England. None of this matters.

It is irrelevant because the coup is not actually about the referendum campaign or Corbyn's leadership style. It is about politics. A sizeable chuck of the PLP, Blairite clones imposed during the years when Labour had the imagination of Jeffrey Archer and the conscience of Dr Crippen, do not want a left-wing leader. You understand nothing about New Labour until you understand that it is about making the Labour Party permanently safe for capitalism. Most of its warriors, not being the most cerebral of souls, would be a bit hazy about what the word 'capitalism' means, preferring instead to wax lyrical about 'a dynamic, modern, economy'. For sure, New Labour is about winning elections, but not at any cost. Their lord and master Tony Blair let the cat out of the bag in this respect when he said that he would not take the 'route to victory' if it were a left-wing one.

In actual fact, the quisling tendancy in the PLP may not have to choose between power and principles. It is not inconceivable by any means that we will see some kind of National Government on a somehow-managing-to-Remain basis - composed of Tories, Lib Dems, and an SDPesque rump of Blairites - after an autumn election. Whether the split will come before or after this election will depend on the right's tactics, and whether they have the front to let unions and party activists pay in time and money for their election. (Incidentally: this scenario should be anticipated and pre-empted. Bold thinking about Scotland, up to and including the possibility of an electoral pact with the SNP in exchange for the promise of a second independence referendum, should be considered).

We cannot stop the right being right-wing. Nor can we make them loyal to the leadership: the strategy of a 'kinder, newer, politics' has been tried, in good faith, and has failed. The co-ordinated spotaneous resignations of shadow ministers throughout today put that beyond doubt. Now is the time to fight for the Labour Party. This, to be sure, should not be at the expense of defending communities against racism, nor at that of arguing for an alternative strategy on the economy. However, the remaining strangehold of the 1990s on Labour in parliament is a barrier to doing both these things. Words like 'accountability' and 'deselection' have now to be uttered openly. At constituency level the left has to plan so that the Labour Party in parliament in future looks more like the Labour Party at large.

The immediate priority is to support Jeremy. He is under attack, facing a vote of no confidence as I write. See Momentum here for a petition, and keep an eye out for more ways of offering support. These are desperate times within the Labour Party. Yet there is some hope. Here is Parliament Square this evening:

The ballot versus the wallet

I received the text from David Lammy just as the protestors broke through the police line.

At that moment, I was standing opposite the gates of Downing Street on Whitehall. The group of protestors, who had marched from Trafalgar Square to join a demonstration against the Queen's Speech, were young and angry. David Lammy, meanwhile, was on the scrounge for nominations to be Labour's candidate for Mayor of London. "London needs leadership", his text acclaimed, leaving the reader in little doubt that it was Lammy's leadershipthe capital was lacking. The banner-waving crowd forcing their way down Whitehall didn't give the impression of needing leadership. And if they did, they weren't going to be looking to the MP for Tottenham to provide it.

The  disconnect between a parliamentary Labour Party largely resigned to austerity and the ongoing movement against the attacks on public services deserves reflection. One thing is clear, however: the anger of those protestors was fully justified. Today's Queen's Speech was the most reactionary for a generation, and it laid bare the anti-democratic nature of austerity.

Austerity, as I like to think of it, is neo-liberalism in crisis mode, ever more frantically proposing the marketisation of society as the solution to the all too evident ills we face. As such, like neo-liberalism in general, it is a strategy to strengthen the power of capital against labour; in other words, to protect profit against the vast majority of people. When stated in those terms, neo-liberalism sounds like it is on a collision course with democracy - as indeed it is.

The self-denying approach to fiscal measures, asking parliament to tie its own hands by blocking tax rises for five years, already signals a commitment to a society where the market reigns supreme. More serious is the all-out attack on trade unions, the organisations through which working people begin to take control of their working lives. A double wammy of an assault on strike ballots and the legalisation of the use of agency scabs has the potential to paralyse unions' effectiveness so long as they remain within the bounds of the law. Proposals around subscriptions and political funds will also make life difficult for the union movement.

Beyond industrial democracy, political organisation is under attack. A draconian bill aimed at that slipperiest of characters, the extremist, promises to increase the state's power of surveillance and to allow it control over the activities of individuals considered extremist. Left-wing activists who do not fear for their freedoms are naive. Yet a democracy that does not allow fundamental questions to be asked about its nature, does not permit people to organise with the aim of transforming society, is a hollow sham.

Today the government declated an all-out war on democracy. And to add insult to injury, they propose to substitute a pastiche of the real thing, a vote with no good options. If we do want a future where our control of our own lives extends beyond the supermarket, now would be a good time to fight back.