When any leader says ‘it’s my way or the highway’ – as he effectively has – they sign their project’s death warrant
All political projects carry within them the seeds of their own destruction. Contradictions, paradoxes and limitations are hardwired through the context and conditions of their creation. An endpoint is built in at birth. After Keir Starmer’s announcement that Jeremy Corbyn will not be allowed to stand as a Labour candidate at the next election – the leader’s latest shut-up-or-ship-out message to the party’s left – the lifeline of any incoming Labour or Labour-led government has been shortened, perhaps dramatically.
This is not about support for Corbynism or leftwing ideas per se. Instead, it is to argue that in an age of increasing complexity, chaos and confusion any political project must have an agility, nimbleness and fluidity that allows it to forge ever-changing intellectual and movement alliances. Pragmatic politics is now defined by openness – not the closure of debate he has called for with a legitimate, though some would say misguided, wing of his party.
Neal Lawson is director of the cross-party campaign organisation Compass
