When ppl say 'now every1 is talking about Corbyn' they mean a tiny fraction of political twitter and some talk radio hosts are talking about Corbyn - its not the talk of the steamie. People are concerned about jobs and loved ones - not endless left/centrist infighting.

The Labour Party only matters to the left if its interested in power. Corbyn becoming leader was more like an accident. Cut losses, move on. I always felt Corbyn was better suited to social movements than party politics. I suspect most of his followers are similarly inclined.

And yes he was done dirty by the press wayyy before the antisemitism stuff emerged, but what did people think would happen? Guys an anti western socialist. Establishment doesn't roll out red carpet for that. He had no strategy to confront this and was subsumed by uk institutions

You can't be radical and also end up in Downing Street. I think a lot of youngish Corbynites have this sense that Blairism was some kind of blip in Labour's otherwise unblemished history as a vehicle for working class interests.

But even the 20th century reforms many attribute to Labour (to which we look back through rose-tinted specs) were developed by coalitions of leftists, liberals and conservatives. My feeling is that people on the far left would do well to just let go of Labour.

I'm well aware I am not a political historian, academic or even that well educated. Much of what I am saying will be sneer-worthy among the chin-strokers. But I think that complete immersion in 'strategy' and the pure politics of stuff is actually really alienating for folk.

And not because they are stupid, but because they live in a real world. They don't think in narratives. They appreciate figures who communicate well. Who are affable. People who are moderately well turned out. The left is really missing someone who can connect.

Those who possess the skills to connect are rarely seen as worthy by the intellectuals & on the left they hold much sway. Many activists on the ground await the next ideological download, the next plank of strategy, issued by folk who are often useless in real life scenarios

People with bookish confidence about what is really going on but who often lack the emotional sophistication or life experiences to understand how lives are lived by ordinary people. Ordinary people for whom it is not a massive deal to vote Labour one year and Tory the next.

Right now, those people would rather talk to LBC than to most lefties. That's the puzzle people have to solve if they really want to bring about change. We live in a society where newspaper owners can dictate the narrative - that's life. The question is what do you do about it?

I always just take it back to how the anti-poll-tax movement operated. It was local. It was led by people everyone was familiar with. They met in fucking council closes, back-gardens, prams, kids running about everywhere.

They knew they couldn't rely on the press so they distributed their own information. They worked to educate their fellows, not preach to them. By the time the movement went national the police were frightened to enter certain communities. They were SO organised.

And they certainly were not on Twitter greetin every day. I look at @Glasgow_LR and @betterthanzero and I think to myself 'that is how you fucking do it'. You make politics about practical stuff - not ideological wank. And you slowly build out from there.

Anyway, what the fuck do I know. I realise that having not read Das Kapital that my input is unwelcome in some quarters. But you should hear the stories about the mad chinstrokers that used to charge into Pollok trying to read Marx to everybody - they got laughed at.

And the people that laughed at them were not educated. They didn't get into politics as a supplement to their identity - they had to stop everything in their life just to fight for basic dignity. Those people were not well educated but they knew the script.

Now what do we have? Novara fucking Media? Get the fuck out of here, man.

I remember what it felt like to live in a community where activists made our lives better. They didn't see us as a herd to corral - they walked along side us. They knew us, knew our families. The crime rate fell in Pollok while these guys were operating.

It wasn't about hating tories, it was about respecting ourselves. It was about participating. It was about getting educated on what we actually HAD to know so the system couldn't fuck us. And it was also about challenging each other.

It was about saying violence, and drug dealing and gang fighting is unacceptable but also modelling what alternatives looked like - not moralising. I was just a boy but those were my formative years. The left is soooo remote from this now that it hurts.

There are certainly pockets of proper grassroots work going on all over the place, but not yet the means to piece it together. I guess that was the attraction of Corbyn. Oh well.