There are two camps of critics of Labour leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn and I have things to say to both.
1. The “he’s far too lefty” ones.
Calm down.
2. (And these ones actually annoy me more) the “he’s not lefty enough” ones.
He might not be, but in terms of people with any chance of running the show right now he’s the best of the bunch. You may well be right, Socialist Worker article, perhaps the answer doesn’t lie with Labour; so might you, Facebook commenter, maybe we do need an anarchist revolution; but the way the electoral system currently works is skewed towards a two-horse blue vs. red race and revolution feels far from imminent so, and surely this is obvious, until we can change – or indeed completely overthrow – the system shouldn’t we also try to get the best we can out of it?
I’m all for radicalism, perhaps revolution even, but it’s difficult to entirely change the way things work. I’m not saying we shouldn’t try, but there’s short term and long term. Corbyn-led Labour won’t bring the downfall of capitalism or anything, but it’ll be an improvement on years of Tories and New Labour and, in the meantime, we can keep plotting the collapse of neoliberal global capitalism or whatever.
