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Over the 1990s and 2000s we got used to a politics that was pure "form", devoid of content. Politics was more like a members' club- fine if you were keen enough to sign up and follow the code of conduct, but not for everyone... 
For the members, this club was great. It gave them "expertise" - access to a hidden world of political strategy and psychology, in which only they & other privileged people could understand what was *really* going on, while the rest of us stumbled about in the dark.
To join, the most important thing that members had to demonstrate was that they were not constrained by anything as naive as ideology. Instead, they prided themselves on a politics that was weightless, & unencumbered by any kind of systematic view of the world.
From the club's perspective, nothing really bad could happen in politics because they were assured of each other's fundamental good intentions. The Iraq war had devastating consequences, but they were in no doubt that the politicians behind it meant well.
PFI & student loans sure worked out badly, but who could possibly have foreseen it? If people died needlessly under austerity (surely not?), that was an unfortunate by-product of unavoidable circumstances, not a political choice for which anyone could be held accountable.
The entire edifice held up well because politicians and commentators on all "sides" were invested in maintaining it. They imagined themselves to be the necessary and rightful mediators of politics, since ordinary people could not possibly hope to understand it for themselves.
And then, in 2015, the Labour Party members elected a leader who was not in the club. The response was the rage that any elite group feels when its authority is questioned. How could these people not realise that this wasn't in the rules? Had they not been listening?
Wasn't it undemocratic to let people determine political outcomes for themselves, without being safely mediated by those who knew best? Of course, this couldn't be said out loud, so the club instead focused relentlessly on exposing the new leader's failure to grasp the rules ...
Here was a man who believed that an ideology provided insights into how the world operated! That leaders could be held accountable for how their decisions affected the public! That content mattered more than form!!
Of course, they assured each other, he will not last long...
Of course, they assured each other, he will not last long...
& then the 2017 General Election happened. The club's dire warnings about the dangers of failing to adhere to their rules failed to materialise. Instead the perception that politics had actual consequences led to an increase in turnout, and a huge boost for the opposition.
It is impossible to overstate the potential consequences of this. If the club's members had been wrong in their assumptions about politics, then they had no secret knowledge at all - it had all just been a game of dress-up & make-believe played with earnest friends.
All of this explains why the battle that is currently being waged in opposition politics matters. In Keir Starmer, the club have found their exemplary politician, one who believes in the rules to the very core of his being.
He has followed them to the letter: he has declined to hold the government responsible for their catastrophic failures, he has colluded with them in protecting the state, & he has shown his disdain for political content by disregarding his "10 pledges".
The club's hostility to forms of power that they don't understand is fundamentally anti-democratic. It has enabled politicians who have destroyed lives at home & abroad, and faced no consequences for their actions.
There is no place on the left for a politics that lacks sincerity, conviction and courage. There is no place in democracy for a politics based on codes and symbols. There is no chance of change if we rely on the system that brought us to this point.
Ends.
Ends.
Postscript - one of many examples of how politics is viewed by the club, complete with the "Authentocrat" language that signals both how ordinary you are *and* your specially privileged political insights (as dissected by @joekennedy81) https://twitter.com/JSkeaping/status/1362718149976739842?s=19
