Labour Party

In politics as in life always expect the unexpected. Jeremy Corbyn’s astonishing and crushing victory in the Labour Party leadership contest was beyond everyone’s wildest dreams a few months ago. When I think of the local MP who, for most of my 40 years of teaching in Islington would cycle up and down the Holloway Road, the main artery of his constituency, supporting every strike and progressive campaign under the sun, I could barely have imagined his current elevation.

This has been the summer of Corbynmania. Thousands of people have attended Labour leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn’s election rallies in towns and cities across Britain.

These meetings have been some of the biggest we’ve seen since the anti-war movement in 2003, with venues overflowing into outdoor rallies from London to Liverpool to Norwich.

Corbyn, with his principled stance on war and oppression and vow to end austerity, has become an unexpected figurehead for discontent.

The immediate response of most people remotely on the left to the election of the Tory majority government last month was despondency. This was not what we had expected; not what the polls had predicted — until that exit poll, which was largely met by disbelief.

The bemused look on the face of Jim Murphy, then leader of the Labour Party in Scotland, the day after the general election summed up the fate of Scottish Labour. His explanation for what had happened was an object lesson in delusion and denial. According to Murphy the almost total wipe-out of Labour at the hands of the Scottish National Party (SNP) was as a consequence of “two nationalisms — Scottish and English”.

That sound you can hear is a bandwagon starting to roll. Four years after everyone else it has finally dawned on the Labour Party that their leader is inept. Step forward Alan Johnson.

Last month’s Labour Party conference was a moribund affair, judging by all reports. “Despair” is a word that crops up repeatedly. “Ennui” has also been noted.

Labour MPs should have been upbeat after securing a No vote in the Scottish referendum. After all, Gordon Brown became the toast of the Union when he emerged from his monk-like retreat to head up the “great pledge” for DevoMax.

But the morning after the vote left Labour looking like the biggest loser.

It is difficult to imagine the British labour movement without Tony Benn. All on the left will miss him and the simple arguments he put for socialism. The man once demonised by the press as "the most dangerous in Britain" was declared a "national treasure" at the end. But the abiding animosity towards him shone through some obituaries.

A Labour party special conference in March will review how unions fund the party and, by extension, the link between the two. At least, that is what Labour leader Ed Miliband pledged last July to the delight of New Labour acolytes and Blairite former ministers.

Miliband announced the review in the wake of allegations of malpractice by members of Unite in the selection of a parliamentary candidate in Falkirk. It was a decision Miliband appeared to be bounced into at the time. But there seemed little ambiguity when the Labour leader declared himself "incredibly angry".

On 30 November a new party of the working class will be launched in Britain. There is little disagreement among socialists that such a party is necessary. What will be its aims and what will be its chances of success?

Something surprising happened in September. Ed Miliband managed to dominate the party conference season and even make mainstream politics spark to life for once.

Miliband's decision to respond to the Tories' boast the economic "recovery" vindicates their austerity measures by focusing on what he rightly called the "cost of living crisis" gave some expression to the mood among millions of workers across Britain.