What does #JeremyCorbyn mean for us all? The General Election of 2019 was possibly the most important election we've had since 1945. It may have set our direction of travel for the next 75 years. What kind of state will we have? What friends will we have? What can we hope for?

"Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production & their operation for profit." ( @Wikipedia) No political system that is hooked on that dismal prescription for selfishness is likely to see the public good as other than stuff to be sold.

We who joined Labour in or after 2015 saw a period of hope. Peter Mandelson saw that as cause for despair:

“...we need to acknowledge that those who supported him have invested a lot personally in Corbyn, we are not going to convince them overnight they were wrong.”

“We are in for a long haul during which time the atmosphere in the party will become increasingly acrimonious at branch & constituency levels. Let’s put our dramatic setback in context. The original New Labour generation owe the younger generation an apology: ...”

“... what we passed on when we left government in 2010 was not fit for purpose … we provided good policies & a strong electoral machine but not organization in the party & not enough renewal of our ideas as circumstances changed.”

“...the unpopularity of Blair’s public service reforms … was the beginning of our “Tory lite” problem – accusing the Labour government of following a quasi-Conservative agenda - which has de-legitimized Labour’s moderates.”

“We then drifted badly for a year after the non-election in 2007 until the banking & financial crisis kicked in & gave us...a new lease of life. When the election came in 2010, we were...without adequate explanation of why people should vote Labour again & no forward agenda.”

“By 2015, under Miliband...our whole profile as a party became desperately weak & narrower in its appeal as we saw at the election this year in the north as well as the south of England, not to mention Scotland.”

“Under Miliband, Labour was anti-austerity but then intermittently tough on the deficit. We were pro-growth but anti-business. We were against inequality but for caps on welfare. We were for immigration but didn’t want people taking ‘our’ jobs.”

“We were internationalist but against foreign intervention. And so the jumble went on.”

So far, so gloomy, so good as an excoriation of what New Labour had done & been & become. But we, those despicable new members, chose Corbyn not Miliband, “...exchanging one loser for an even worse one. We cannot be elected with Corbyn as leader.”

“Nobody will replace him, though, until he demonstrates to the party his unelectability at the polls. In this sense, the public will decide Labour’s future & it would be wrong to try and force this issue from within before the public have moved to a clear verdict.”

“We must be ready when this happens.” Ready for what? Shakespeare’s Richard III had the answer to that question: “Now, my lord, what shall we do, if we perceive Lord Hastings will not yield to our complots?” “Chop off his head! Somewhat we will do!”

Meanwhile, there was thinking to do: “The last five years’ intellectual sterility has left Labour floundering before an electorate that wanted to vote against the Tories but did not feel they were being offered a  workable alternative.”

“They are open to new ideas & approaches...” Aha! New ideas? “... to building a responsible & inclusive capitalism – in this sense Ed Miliband identified something important – but just because they question aspects of markets does not mean they are in love with the state.” Oh.

Peter Mandelson in his intelligent but narrow analysis saw clearly what had gone wrong with Blair & Brown’s New Labour, saw that Jeremy Corbyn could bring back old votes & maybe find new ones, & yet was so blinkered. His memo was leaked to @NewStatesman: https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2015/09/peter-mandelson-s-memo-how-labour-s-modernisers-lost-their-way-and-where

‘Capitalism’ & ‘State’: New Labour’s Mandelson had got the right words, but got them all wrong. New Labour had fallen in love with wealth dressed sober as ‘responsible & inclusive capitalism’, Voters now know we need states that do work to create public good & well-being for all.

So in 2015 Peter Mandelson mapped out in few words the years of disaster we've lived & will live until the Labour Party recovers its wits & remembers why it exists, what it was for. All else is mere noise. New Labour chose to let Tories win. For them, our thoughts are extreme.

Democracy & capitalism? What happens if the state imposes no limit on ‘private ownership of the means of production & their operation for profit’? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind: it’s a virus. Since 1979 it's been destroying the state we'd been building since 1945.

Until 1997, the Labour Party was a key element in the immune system that was essential to our health as a nation by limiting the space in which privatising infection could spread. It didn’t always work well, but, as New Labour, that immune system mutated & so became a new vector.

The state we are in is the direct & fatal result of the stance that Peter Mandelson so frankly described in 2015. New Labour’s plan was at best to refuse to help Jeremy Corbyn, at worst to damage him & sabotage his project. They are extreme. Our whole public good is their prey.